Quotes by Steve Albini - Page 2

If I'm working as an engineer for another band, the responsibility for brilliance pretty much rests on their shoulders. I think I'm pretty good, but I'm not good enough to turn a trout into a sausage, or the other way around.
Steve Albini / Singer
Brilliance
Not Good Enough
Sausage
Trout
Rests
Pretty Good
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We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.
Steve Albini / Singer
Design
Investigation
Novel
Thrust
Accident
Conceptual
Discovered
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I hate 'foodie' because it's cute, like pretty much all diminutives associated with eating. 'Veggies,' 'sammies,' 'parm.' I eat food, and I cook it: it's for eating, preferably with friends, and I don't make a fetish out of it.
Steve Albini / Singer
Cute
Smile
Cooks
Eating
Fetish
Hate
Associated
Cook
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The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.
Steve Albini / Singer
Dating
Abuse
Crazy
Flesh
Meat
Prepared
Vegetarian
Years
Currently
Case
Commercially
Eaten
Otherwise
Packaged
Properly
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I'm only interested in working on records that legitimately reflect the band's own perception of their music and existence. If you commit yourselves to that as a tenet of the recording methodology, then I will bust my ass for you.
Steve Albini / Singer
Band
Perception
Records
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I'm not really interested in participating in mainstream culture. Participating in the mainstream music business is, to me, like getting involved in a racket. There's no way you can get involved in a racket and not someway be filthied by it.
Steve Albini / Singer
Mainstream
Mainstream Culture
Music Business
Participating
Racket
Way
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There is a lot of use of ProTools in professional studios, but this is mostly for the special effects it allows, not for sound quality. These special effects soon fall out of fashion, and I don't think this trend will define studios permanently
Steve Albini / Singer
Fall
Fashion
Thinking
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There is a lot of use of ProTools in professional studios, but this is mostly for the special effects it allows, not for sound quality. These special effects soon fall out of fashion, and I don't think this trend will define studios permanently.
Steve Albini / Singer
Quality
Effects
Fall
Fashion
Special
Special Effects
Studios
Define
Mostly
Permanently
Professional
Soon
Trend
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Cranking the Auto-Tune is so easy to do that there's almost no systemic resistance to trying it. So when someone's stuck for an idea, that's what they do. I mean, to the extent that it's been embraced by an entire idiom of club music and culture.
Steve Albini / Singer
Idiom
Resistance
Stuck
Cranking
Embraced
Extent
Systemic
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A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars.
Steve Albini / Singer
Artist
Cooks
Impulse
Liars
Mean
Visual
Equivalent
Just Be
Several
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As a recording engineer - someone who is deeply embroiled in the process of making records every day - you see trends and fads run through the social organization of the population of musicians in the same way that they would run through a high school.
Steve Albini / Singer
Fads
Population
Social Organization
Day Process Every Day
Deeply
Engineer
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Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed.
Steve Albini / Singer
Children
Display
Drama
Good Taste
Jamie
Julia
Mario
People
Speed
Taste
Technique
Good Free People
Admired
Cook
Exposition
Jacques
Masterful
Oliver
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Shellac was asked to do a recreation of our first album, but we've always been a band that improvised our sets. That's critical to the way that we function on stage. Whatever the mood takes us on stage can vary from night to night with what you feel like playing.
Steve Albini / Singer
Critical
Function
Mood
Recreation
Vary
Improvised
Sets
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My dad, Frank Addison Albini, was a terrific shot with a rifle and had generally excellent hunting skills. While my dad loved hunting and fishing, he didnt romanticize them. He was filling the freezer, not intellectualizing some caveman impulse or proving his worth as a real man.
Steve Albini / Singer
Dad
Men
Real
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My dad, Frank Addison Albini, was a terrific shot with a rifle and had generally excellent hunting skills. While my dad loved hunting and fishing, he didn't romanticize them. He was filling the freezer, not intellectualizing some caveman impulse or proving his worth as a real man.
Steve Albini / Singer
Dad
Excellent
Filling
Fishing
Frank
Hunting
Impulse
Real
Skills
Terrific
Had
Shot
Loved
Generally
His
Some
Proving
Real Man
Rifle
While
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I feel like bands should be growing, living, functioning entities and to crystallize a band into a single album, and for that to be a touchstone - I understand it from a fan's perspective but I also feel like it's a little bit misleading in terms of the way bands actually function.
Steve Albini / Singer
Function
Perspective
Crystallize
Entities
Misleading
Touchstone
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Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument, the harmonics continue to sound along with the fundamental note.
Steve Albini / Singer
Add
Dull
Fundamentals
Length
Sound
Sustaining
Vibrations
Content
Complex
Fraction
Fundamental
Instrument
Note
String
Vibrating
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In the late '80s and early '90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it's very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks.
Steve Albini / Singer
Bass
Classic
Retro
Drum
Resonant
Slightly
Tracks
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Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients require cooking, cleaning or otherwise denaturing them, some are fine as they are.
Steve Albini / Singer
Cleaning
Cooking
Engaging
Ingredients
Meals
Presenting
Satisfying
Taste
Technique
Aspects
Best Food Way
Flavors
Meal
Require
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I think fashion is repulsive. The whole idea that someone else can make clothing that is supposed to be in style and make other people look good is ridiculous. It sickens me to think that there is an industry that plays to the low self-esteem of the general public. I would like the fashion industry to collapse.
Steve Albini / Singer
Collapse
Fashion
Fashion Industry
General Public
Low Self Esteem
Self Esteem
Thinking
Good Me Look
Clothing
Good Look Me
Low
Repulsive
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You see something happen to a population whereby everyone adopts something that's just preposterous in a way that makes it normal instantly. If any one person prior to the rash of puka shells, for example, was seen wearing puka shells, he would look like an idiot. But when everyone is wearing them, it instantly makes them normal.
Steve Albini / Singer
Population
Shells
Adopt
For Example
Wearing
Instantly
Prior
Rash
Whereby
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I have no problem with bands using participant financing schemes like Kickstarter and such. I've said many times that I think they're part of the new way bands and their audience interact and they can be a fantastic resource, enabling bands to do things essentially in cooperation with their audience. It's pretty amazing, actually.
Steve Albini / Singer
Band
Cooperation
Enabling
Fantastic
Financing
No Problem
Schemes
Thinking
Bands
Essentially
Interact
New Way
Participant
Resource
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Over the last thirty years or so, I have definitely become more enlightened about corners of the social spectrum that I had less exposure to as a young man. I've interacted with more poor people, more minorities and more sexual minorities. As you get more people from different backgrounds involved in your life, you get a broader perspective and you're less cavalier about your opinions.
Steve Albini / Singer
Men
People
Perspective
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Record labels, which used to have complete control, are essentially irrelevant. The process of a band exposing itself to the world is extremely democratic and there are no barriers. Music is no longer a commodity, it’s an environment, or atmospheric element. Consumers have much more choice and you see people indulging in the specificity of their tastes dramatically more. They only bother with music they like.
Steve Albini / Singer
Choices
Labels
People
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There's a stupid trend in American politics right now with people who have no experience with politics and no grasp of public service as a profession just deciding that they're going to jump into it. The obvious figurehead of this whole "I am an idiot, therefore I can be a politician" is Donald Trump. People think that ignorance of a profession is somehow qualifying for that profession. It's utterly baffling.
Steve Albini / Singer
Ignorance
Stupid
Thinking
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I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band. I would like to be paid like a plumber. I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.
Steve Albini / Singer
Jobs
Song
Writing
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Toast is bread made delicious and useful. Un-toasted bread is okay for children's sandwiches and sopping up barbecue sauce, but for pretty much all other uses, toast is better than bread. An exception is when the bread is fresh from the oven, piping hot, with butter melting all over it. Then it's fantastic, but I would argue that bread fresh out of the oven is a kind of toast. Because I'm an asshole and I refuse to be wrong about something.
Steve Albini / Singer
Children
Hot
Sandwiches
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Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.
Steve Albini / Singer
Hate
People
Suffering
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In terms of other people's perception of me, that's their business. There are people who I have never met but, for whatever reason, I am certain that these people are jack-offs. I've never met Billy Joel, but I'm absolutely convinced he's an asshole. I can't justify that opinion, that's just what I think. But my opinion about Billy Joel isn't going to affect him in the slightest. In the same way, I am sure there are people out there who are completely convinced that I am an asshole, for whatever reason. They might even feel more justified than I feel about my presumptive opinion of Billy Joel.
Steve Albini / Singer
People
Perception
Thinking
Copy Quote

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Steve Albini Quotes - Page 2

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