‘Success means I get to do it again tomorrow’

Steve Albini

     One reason I let almost 40 years go by without reaching out to Steve Albini is that our last conversation was so engrained in my mind. It was the summer of 1982. I bumped into him at Norris Center, Northwestern's student hangout, and he showed me this little electronic drum machine he had just gotten. I told him that I was leaving soon for my first job in Los Angeles. "Well, don't die," he said tersely, and walked away. Coming from Steve Albini, that remark was the equivalent of a teary hug from anyone else, and I doubted I'd do any better than that. But perhaps driven mad by COVID isolation, I leapt across the chasm, and was glad I did.  A smart man, and there aren't enough of those around. I only wish I could have printed more of our conversation. 

     “Do you feel successful?” I asked Steve Albini, at a taco place near his Belmont Avenue recording studio, which readers visited Monday.
     Albini is successful, by any measure. A legendary sound engineer — known for producing Nirvana’s last album. Notorious lead man of Big Black, “some of the nastiest noisemakers in rock” according to Rolling Stone, and, more recently, Shellac of North America. They tour the world.
     But those tough on others, as Albini certainly is, are often hardest on themselves. So I was curious. Does he consider himself a success?
     “To the extent that I could care about that, I would say yes,” he replied. “I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”
     COVID-19 has turned many friendships into slag heaps of cold ash. It seemed perverse to seek out Albini, whom I hadn’t seen in decades, who doesn’t suffer fools and can summarize your failings with a precision that’ll haunt you to your grave. Driving to lunch, I wondered if I was ready for his notorious scrutiny, conjuring a potential headline: “Steve Albini explains why I suck.”
     I told him I have a hard time sharing his perspective.
     “I can’t conceive of somebody who’s done what he’s wanted to do every day for four decades, published books and still writes a daily column and have that person think of himself as anything other than a success,” he said.
     That was unexpected.
     “You’re mellower than when we were in school,” I said.

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Put Dante in the game.

     Guys talk. And not everything we say, we want to share with the public, right? For instance. In Sunday's description of going to the Cubs game, I left out a certain digression of mine at the ballpark. Didn't seem germane. But it actually was germane, as you will see. The problem was, it's embarrassing.  A little. Okay. A lot.
     I started talking about Dante. At the ballgame. I was with book editors, remember, and the topic came to books I'd like to write someday, and I explained my theory that Dante is funny, in a wicked, Spy magazine sense, creating this hell and putting all his enemies in it. They nodded politely.

    It wasn't easy for Dante. It took some creativity, see? I continued. For instance. He was betrayed by Pope Boniface VIII. Whom he very much wanted to put in his newly-minted hell. But he couldn't, because the Inferno actually takes place at a certain time, over Easter weekend, 1300. And Boniface had not yet died. So trying to be faithful to the faux verisimilitude that lets people forget this is all something he made up, in the narrative, Dante, led by Virgil, comes to this hole, where the popes are kept, head down, their feet kicking, the red flames burning their feet a parody of their red papal slippers. And one pope hears a sound above, and says, "What, Boniface? Is that you? You're early?"

     Funny, right?

     Eventually I stopped. And no harm done, except perhaps two guys really, really sorry for whom they decided to invite to the game. My shame would have been hidden.

     Then a Facebook pal, Ann Hilton Fisher, alerted me to a program that begins tomorrow, that I have to alert you to: "100 Days of Dante," beginning Sept. 8 and running until Easter Sunday, they are reading three cantos of the Divine Comedy a week. Here's a story about it.
     I'm not endorsing the project en toto. And if you watch the video, you'll see they slip in that the Divine Comedy is "which has taught generation of people a deeper way to love God." That's one take. It could also better rationalize apostasy. It's put together by a consortium of American Christian universities, who are not famous for the range of their intellectual scope, and the lead organization is Baylor University, the Waco Texas Baptist school. For all I know, it's a thinly disguised 100-day orgy of anti-Catholicism, which Baylor was once known for. Though I hope not.

    The 700th anniversary of Dante's death is Sept. 14, and we have to do something, right? I plan to at least tune in until I have reason to drop out, and figure you might want to join me.

‘I want the music to survive’

Steve Albini

Monday is Labor Day, an apt moment to consider a profession rarely featured in a daily newspaper.

     “Let me show you the rest of the studio,” said Steve Albini, moving through a musician’s paradise of musical instruments — fine guitars, timpani, two grand pianos — plus an audiophile’s dream of equipment: Marshall amplifiers, reel-to-reel Ampex tape machines, high-end speakers, coiled cords, headphones, mixing boards, rows of phase shifters and fuzzboxes and other effect pedals. The walls are enormous bricks, each weighing 13 pounds.
     “These are adobe bricks we had brought up from New Mexico,” he explains. “They have some interesting acoustic properties. The walls are self-isolating ... massive, enormously heavy and that stops the transmission of sound from room to room. We built this whole place. Everything you see is a new construction.”
     Since 1997, here at Electrical Audio on Belmont Avenue, Albini has recorded music by thousands of musicians, from the world famous to the deeply obscure. Commercial clients, too. A few cases of Mamba fruity candy are scattered around the foyer — the manufacturer needed a recording studio to shoot a commercial, and hired the space, which has a feel that is somehow both cutting edge and classic.
     “Everything that we’ve seen so far is Studio A — the bigger, fancier studio,” Albini said. “Each of the rooms has a different sound footprint, and that is intentional, so you can make an active choice about what you’re recording. That room over there is Alcatraz — super dead, super dry sound. This room is called the Kentucky room, much brighter and more lively recording environment. It has a quick slap of reverb and not a long-sustaining decay. Very good for drums. Any acoustic instruments, acoustic guitar, banjo violin, mandolin. Any percussion instruments, vibes and marimbas and all that kind of thing — all that sounds great in there because you get this quick, bright, reverberant sound from the room.”
     If you’re wondering why we’re here, it’s complicated. Among the many bad things that COVID-19 has done is isolate people. Casual relationships vanish. It gets lonely. A few weeks back, I read a Tribune story about speed cameras that quoted Albini saying the typically challenging, contrarian things I remember him saying when we were in college together. Unlike drivers such as myself, merely irked to get speeding tickets, Albini finds the automatic speed cameras “a nicely implemented, mild reminder to keep speed under control in those areas.” Besides, he said, better to trust automatic cameras than give discretion to cops, who have proved “they will abuse that discretion.”

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'Take me out to the ballgame...'

     Confession: I have never gone to Wrigley Field of my own initiative.
     That is, never conceived the thought, "I think I'll go to a game," and either taken myself, or invited a friend and headed to the Friendly Confines.
     I've gone because someone was in town—a business associate, relative, friend—and I wanted ot show off the park. I've gone to take my children, so they can experience a game. And I've accepted many invitations, such as Friday, when a pair of book editors invited me along to round out their group, blessed—or should that be burdened?—with free tickets from some season ticket holder too disgusted with the Ricketts gutting the team to attend another game.

    It occurred to me, arriving to meet them, slipping into my seat, Section 31, Row 7, Seat 1, that this was nice. Even. being by myself, even knowing the Cubs had traded away their good players. I vowed to someday come alone, of my own volition, just for the heck of it, maybe next summer. Just because I can.

     The whole process was enjoyable. Parking at the Skokie Swift. Getting on the 'L' at one of its rare forays into the 'burbs, with a variety of folks clad in their Cubbie gear, a few kids carrying gloves, the zenith of optimism 
     The seats were great. "Like sitting on the field," I texted to my wife. I bought a Bud Zero—a new and welcome development, and only $8. Munched peanuts, bought a hot dog from a vendor (the condiment options are ketchup, mustard and relish. Just sayin'). The game was exciting, to the degree I watched, with a home run, a wildly overthrown pitch.
      The really fun part was the conversation. A lot about Nicholson Baker, whom one of the editors had met and worked with. When he revealed that, I reached out and touched his shoulder with the pad of my index finger, as if to access by contact a bit of the Nicholson Baker writerly mojo. An extraordinary novelist.
     And there was one moment I really savored, which I should explain, because I doubt anyone at the ballpark would pick it as the highlight. Cubs coach David Ross being out with the COVID, Andy Green stepped in. He was spectacularly upset over the umpire's call at second base—we all missed the play, and my pals turned to their phones to find out what had happened. I didn't actually care that much, so my gaze strayed to the left field scoreboard while Green foamed and gesticulated and marched around the umpire.
     Whoever operates the video scoreboard, kudos to that person. At one point the camera zeroed in on the Wrigley clock, as if to say, "Tick tock, Andy, let's wrap up your tirade and get on with the game." I fumbled for my phone, but the operator cut away, and I took a photo of the clock.

    A reminder that as much as we focus on the players and coaches, there is an enormous substrata of people who make baseball worth experiencing, to the degree that it is. Friendly usher when you walk in. Unsung heroes, like the rangy afro'ed attendant—once I would have called him a "ball boy"—who sat on the field in front of us, snagging stray balls that rolled his way. When he did, a small boy would inevitably appear at his elbow and wait patiently, glove proffered. Eventually he would turn, tuck the ball through the net, into the mitt, and the boy would turn, agog and delighted, bearing his treasure in triumph. I listened as a father gently urge his son to do that—7-year-old boys can be maddeningly shy—and eventually he went and learned one of life's key lessons: you don't get what you want unless you ask.

David, left, and Gary.

       It rained for almost an hour, but a gentle rain, and we sat in it without complaining too much. I struck up a conversation with the beer vendor, Gary from Albany Park, who delighted to see that I was Jewish, spent a long time discussing Romanian hot dogs, which are sold at a certain stand in the field, as well as the Jewel on Howard, "the Jewish Jewel" he called it. Gary has been selling beer at Wrigley since 1984. But that's nuthin', he effused, calling over David, who has sold beer here for 58 years, or since I was in nursery school. I took their photo.
     We stood and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and shortly thereafter the game was over. Filing out, I thanked my friends for inviting me, and thought what a thoroughly enjoyable time I had had at the ballgame. Just as we reached the steps down to the causeway out, I paused.
     "Just a second," I said, and turned, my eyes searching the scoreboard. Six to five, the Cubs won—I thought they had, based on how the crowd cheered when it was over.
      "My wife might ask me the score," I said, hurrying to catch up.

Ravenswood Notes: Fancy

       

     Like most people, I hold onto my possessions longer than I should: that butcher block my wife hates, jammed in a corner of the dining room. That red chair in our foyer that really doesn't match the style of the house. I'd probably be lighter and freer if I could give them up. The house certainly would be less cluttered. But as Walt Whitman suggests, they own me more than I own them. There is another way, as Caren Jeskey illustrates in her post today.

            “Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”                                                                                          ― Anais Nin

     As I look around my home now, I see that it is filled with gifts. A cedar wardrobe friends in Texas brought to my home in the woods in 2016, that other friends drove back up to Chicago for me. A rug from a neighbor. A leather storage cube, and an orange poof to sit on.
     When I left Austin I gave away a beloved cedar chest, a memory foam mattress, frame and bedding, a full dish set and so much more. I miss these things sometimes, and then I remember that people like us will always have all we need, and much more— even if we don’t realize it at times.

     Giving and receiving possessions, as needed, makes more sense than clinging to them always. That's the genius of Buy Nothing, a movement that promotes creating a hyper-local gift economy.  I joined my first group in Texas a couple years back. Buy Nothing operates on Facebook and other social media platforms, and they also encourage groups.
     Buy Nothing is where I received gift cards last March when I abruptly lost my job and then my rental home. It’s where I met neighbors who came to find me sitting in a park, garnishing fresh eggs from their backyard chickens. This same pair offered me a below market rental — the charming tiny house I’ve shared about in previous posts, like this one, to bail me out during a peak of the COVID crisis.
     It’s where I met neighbors who dropped off bag after bag of masks, food, sanitizer, backpacks, blankets, clothes and more on my porch, which I then passed out to a group home and folks living on the streets in our neighborhood. A member made extra Thanksgiving food and offered it to those who were without families in November of 2020.
     Funny thing is that even with all of this goodness there were problems. Who was it who said “put two people in a room together and you have a problem?” There was the neighbor who was unhappy that I was giving hand sanitizer to folks he said were sure to drink it. Neighbors who were rigid and unwilling to have conversations, and pretty much trolled others rather than coexisting harmoniously.
     I decided to start a local Buy Nothing group in my neighborhood here in Chicago and already have people mansplaining incorrect things to me and criticizing the way I am using one of my new gifts— a fabulous piano-room-red velvet sofa.
     It started with a post on another giveaway group called Free Box. A person posted a photo of the couch with its approximate location in an alley, and I immediately jumped into action. My emergent root canal earlier that day would not stop me from scoring this baby. When I got to her I knew she was mine. Don’t worry! I’m not interested in a bedbug infestation either.
     I rang the bell of the impressive Frame Two Flat home with a Victorian feel, which I learned was built in 1890. A kind man introduced, who himself as Mr. Reece, and his little princess dog greeted me.  She vetted me, and he graciously wrapped up a call to give me the scoop. The couch came from Domicile and has had several incarnations. She’s lived in two offices of a food designer and more recently their backyard, which was set up for an outdoor soiree. She has not been touched by bedbugs.

     After her party debut where the guests marveled at her beauty, it was time for her to say goodbye to the Reece’s. She was standing up on her end, leaning against a garage. Mr. Reece gingerly placed her back down on the ground so I could sit on her while I figured out how to get her home. He also brought me a cup of ice and a Diet Coke.
     As luck would have it, new friends who work on the block where I live were able to come to the rescue with their landscaping truck. They were all the way on 31st and California dumping trash, and I was in the Lakeview area. It was 4pm on a weekday. I settled in for the wait. An antique coffee table came with the couch, so I sat down with my Coke on the table and enjoyed the smiles and laughs from a copious amount of alley walkers and drivers who passed by.
     When we got the couch to the back porch of my 3rd floor walk up it would not fit into the undersized door frame. We took the legs off and the couch was still several inches too wide and too tall to make it happen. (Please don’t suggest what we could have done. It won’t fit, and a professional couch disassembler has quoted me at $700 if I want them to get it inside). My friend said “why don’t you just leave it on the porch?” Aha! Solution. Along with my patio chairs I now have a perfect COVID visiting spot.
     Now I have a regal sofa where I spent all day yesterday working from home. Some folks in the free groups are criticizing me for leaving a couch “that nice” outside. Well it’s my choice and I love it there. She’s awkwardly covered with plastic bags right now since there’s a threat of rain, and her permanent, waterproof, forest green cover will be here soon enough. She and I can survive what’s sure to be a colder damper winter than I’m used to in Texas.
     Happy lounging y’all.

Welcome to medieval times, Texas-style

     On Wednesday, in an abrupt cultural shift that would be funny were it not so tragic, our nation veered directly from shedding crocodile tears over the fate of women in Afghanistan— the Taliban, they’re so mean, they might not let girls be robotic engineers — to realizing that Texas, the second-largest state in the union with a population of nearly 30 million, has effectively banned abortion, a right guaranteed in most civilized nations and protected by law in this one for the past 48 years and something most Americans believe should be legal.
     The Texas law criminalizes abortion after six weeks — before most women are even aware they’re pregnant — and imposes a Byzantine system to enforce itself, using not the state that created the law to police it but deputizing third parties, whether religious fanatics, freelance profiteers or self-appointed members of the Texas Taliban who can sue not only abortion providers but anyone aiding the process or even “intending” to aid it: boyfriends bankrolling the procedure, Uber drivers taking women to clinics, counselors providing an address.
     Anyone except — and this gives away the game — the women themselves, who aren’t punished for their supposed crime.

     Why exclude them? Why aren’t the women having abortions responsible? Let’s discuss.
     All religions are cruel, in their original forms, offering some version of a man in the sky demanding unconscionable barbarities. “What Lord? Slay my young son, Isaac, just because you say so, to prove that I’ll do anything you tell me? Why sure!”
     Christianity offers a novel spin on this, taking Jesus’ suffering on the cross and using his biblical pain as a springboard to rationalize actual atrocities committed against a wide variety of real people: Jews, Indigenous tribes, non-believers.
     And women.
     When you puff away the fog of obscuring bullshit, the endless frenzy over abortion in the United States is the Passion of the Christ writ small: the notional sufferings of imaginary babies on their tiny intrauterine crosses, seized as pretext to inflict true harm on half the population.
     Not to single out Christianity. Women get the shaft in every fundamentalist faith on earth: female circumcision in Africa, the brutal restrictions in parts of the Muslim world, Hindu honor immolations. Orthodox Jews say a prayer of thanks for not being born a woman, and it’s hard to argue. Men rule because God insists we do. It isn’t our fault. Just following the Big Guy’s orders.

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And a Snickers bar has 70 calories...

     "The eagle does not hunt flies," the great Samuel Johnson once said, an edict that Mike Royko recast as, "Never shoot a flea with a bazooka."
     Words to live by. Even after years of decline, the newspaper, or even this little blog, is a soapbox, a megaphone and a responsibility. Thus, for instance, I tend not to use the names of readers who write in saying vindictive, stupid things, to shield them from the embarrassment they're too thick to perceive. Be kind even if others aren't. 
     Certain businesses, too, are small enough and marginal enough that to hold them to professional standards is almost cruel. I've had some pretty watery lemonade at the lemonade stand of a local tot. I'm not calling out the proprietor though. To what end?
     So I thought to let this go. But there is a larger point here. I had a taste for hummus and pita a few days back, and bought a container of always excellent Cedar's hummus, and a bag of Papa Filin's Pita,  a brand produced by Biondillo's Bakery, 4900 W. Division in Chicago.
     I watch my weight, so check calories and portions. The pita I took out of the bag weighed 4.1 ounces, and was pegged as 100 calories on the nutritional information label, which is impossible. More like 300 calories, easily. I cut the pita in half and recorded that as 150 calories. Still, three times the probable figure. Quite an error, really. If it was an error.

     Later, I phoned the bakery, but the owner never returned my call. Silence is often the strategy of the guilty. Papa Filin's are sold not only at Sunset, but at Jewel and Mariano's, and you'd think even if the bakery doesn't care, the stores might care a little about such wildly inaccurate packaging appearing on their shelves. Apparently not. At least not yet. They can't say they weren't told.
     The moral of the story is: you have to think for yourself. I could see somebody biting into a dense, delicious Papa Filin's pita and thinking, "Only 100 calories? Hoo-boy, bar the door Katie. I'm eating two of these." Or about 600 calories worth. What is too good to be true usually is just that. Let the buyer beware.