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In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends' bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record - the first thing I did that was an actual record.
Steve Albini Big Black -
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 Big Black
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Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment
Steve Albini Big Black -
I think good-looking naked ladies turn on the majority of men.
Steve Albini Big Black -
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 Big Black -
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 Big Black -
The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens.
Steve Albini Big Black -
I want to be in cahoots with bands who want to make the record of their dreams.
Steve Albini Big Black
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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 Big Black -
I learned to cook from my mom. Most of what I ate growing up was Italian cooking.
Steve Albini Big Black -
There won't ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that's fine with me because that industry didn't operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.
Steve Albini Big Black -
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 Big Black -
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 Big Black -
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 Big Black