An album that was never officially released but given away to friends.
"The cover of the album contains 779 names—one for each copy of the album. At the bottom of the cover is a blank space for anyone not named on the cover to write their name. Each person who received the album got a copy with their name circled on the cover; this was done for identification of a "culprit" should the album ever end up for sale.The Futurist was never released commercially. There is speculation that this was because Shellac were not satisfied with the finished product."
Not much of a gift then!
Oddly, I once invoked the Italian Futurists in the context of Big Black:
"Big Black's anti-Romanticism was signaled very clearly in the sleeve note salutation on Songs About Fucking to "all bands who don't write love songs", which recalled the Futurists' proclamation that the nude in painting was an exhausted idiom, sentimentalized and enfeebled."
Would you believe, I have never listened to Shellac - until today.
After Rapeman, I didn't bother with Albini's musical efforts.
Listening to At Action Park, I didn't feel like I'd missed a whole heap.
The Brillo Pad guitar sounds like someone fixated fairly fruitlessly on trying to replicate - without exactly repeating - the impact that Andy Gill / Bruce Gilbert / et al - had on him at an impressionable age. So not really Futurist - Past-ist, if anything.
I've had more time for Albini as thinker and opinionator - I don't think there's been an interview, or a piece of writing, that he's done in ensuing decades that didn't have something in it that made me think, even if the thinking was to work out why his opinion was bullshit. He did work hard to achieve and maintain consistency in his ideas about aesthetic integrity and the right(eous) way to go about being a band. Anybody who attempts to formulate a system of ideas and values - even at the risk of rigidity and self-dogma - is worth paying attention to.
I found myself nodding at these acerbic remarks about Zorn - from an Invisible Jukebox in the Wire, probably '94, or '95 - even as they nestled amidst absolutely ridiculous opinions about Black Sabbath and The Beatles.
Albini's comments on Zorn could equally apply to Bobby Gillespie - from C86 indie-jangle (Sonic Flower..) to House (Screamadelica) to Stones/Skynyrd blooze rock (Give Out...) to Dubby Trip Hop (Vanishing Point/Echo Dek) to electroclash (XTRMRTR) ....and that only takes us up to 2000! (What are the Scream doing now? Black Metal? Barbershop quartet? Footwork?)
ReplyDeleteThere's a dilettante lack of commitment with this sort of thing, an over-intellectualised, self-conscious lack of artistic grounding -studied craft but no heart, producing work that is easy to admire, but impossible to love.
Colin Newman doesn´t appreciate much from Primal Scream or their somehow lack of personality. The comment about John Zorn by Albini made me think that Zorn´s music, beside the multiple projects/bands seems interchangeable, too similar from record to record, regardless of the musicians involved.
ReplyDeleteWell, I most certainly do not hold Steve Albini in any positive light. Reading this Invisible Jukebox excerpt only reinforces my negative view of Steve. While he did acknowledge the wrongness of his edgelord persona, it was really a case of too little, too late. It's not like he became some super humanitarian in his final years, so I shed no tears for his loss. I guarantee that if one were to take mid-'80s era Steve and transport him to the present, he'd be a total MAGA-head complaining about cancel culture.
ReplyDeleteThere are far more egregious, offensive examples of musical dilettantism (e.g., Beck, Elvis Costello). Being a John Zorn fan myself, I haven't detected any lack of commitment in listening to his vast discography. John genuinely appreciates and enjoys various styles of music, from spaghetti western film soundtracks to free jazz, so it's nice to hear musicians who reflect that eclecticism in their work, provided that they are serious about their passion.
Based on my own experience with John's music, he did indeed develop his own aesthetic, which is a truly free approach to playing and composing music. The Naked City album alone reflects the musical talents and imagination of John and his bandmates to play both mid-length (3-5 minute) and super-short (1-minute and under) pieces with equal dedication. I'd even wager that Naked City's shorter tracks beat the Minutemen at their own game (and without the exaggerated, pandering working class man schtick that the Minutemen fostered).
For Steve to argue that "enforced eclecticism and self-conscious multiculturalism" brought down a lot of musicians' work only reveals Steve's myopic, dogmatic ideas on music. Oh yes, heaven forbid that artists should wish to acknowledge other musical styles and develop an appreciation for them enough to create their own takes on those styles. Steve is practically parroting Joe Carducci's (another very regressive ideologue when it comes to music) belief that only power trios composed of guitar/bass/drums are true rock bands. Well, it doesn't take much time for that tried-and-true formula to wear thin. Frank Zappa was 100% on the money on his observation that progress is only possible when you deviate from the norm. Thank goodness that bands like Zappa's, Roxy Music, King Crimson, Henry Cow, Radiohead and countless others have done just that.
It's a really good thing that most of that politically incorrect, edgelord mentality that infected large portions of the '80s American musical underground (e.g., Big Black, Butthole Surfers, G.G. Allin, pretty much any artist that was championed by the highly risible Forced Exposure crowd) has mostly vanished from subsequent generations of musicians. That garbage certainly wouldn't hold water in today's market and will hopefully continue to fade as a reference point/influence.