I realize I technically already logged my eulogy to Steve Albini, but when has that ever stopped me?
I’ve mentioned him a few times, here (notably here, here, here and again here), but my friend Greg Fasolino was a near “Zelig”-like figure in terms of attending (and, even better, recording) certain gigs back in the day, and he and I share an almost perfectly aligned taste. A great example of this is the clip below.
The summer Greg recorded this video – capturing vintage Big Black at CBGB in the July of 1986 – I would have been sequestered out in a group house on Long Island, washing dishes at Ina Garten’s Westhampton Beach iteration of The Barefoot Contessa. That honestly doesn’t matter, as I wouldn’t go on to first hear Big Black until the fall of 1987, when a friend of mine walked into my shift as a disc jockey at my college radio station and demanded I play the 45 he was shoving in my face (the “He’s a Whore”/”The Model” 7”). I dropped the needle on the Cheap Trick cover and was a convert for life.
Being quicker to the table than myself, Greg not only went to this gig, but he captured it on video -- which was still no small feat, in 1986, if you consider how unwieldy and bulky video equipment was, at the time.
The resultant footage is a revelation. Here’s Steve Albini, looking sorely undernourished, unleashing a ferocious onslaught of visceral noise and invective, interspersed with bone-dry quips of the blackest pitch. It’s also a telling example of what shows in the intimate confines of that fabled room were actually like. Peter Prescott of Mission of Burma/Volcano Suns joins them for later numbers.
I was going to say, “not for the faint of heart,” but given the tragic circumstances of Albini’s death, that seems a bit tasteless … which he’d have probably endorsed.
Rest in peace.
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