I met Steve Albini in 1985, when I was 15 years old. Me and some friends had driven up to northern Kentucky to see Big Black perform at a club, which we had to create fake IDs for. Afterwards, Big Black, myself and a couple of other folks from Louisville all retired to the same apartment to sleep on couches and floors, which was the thrill of a lifetime – to be in their company after they’d blown us away. We were more properly introduced in the morning and Steve recognised my name as somebody who had sent him a cheque for a record and T-shirt: “Will Oldham, I owe you a T-shirt!” A T-shirt I still have today, which my wife wears sometimes.
Big Black did these song concept sheets instead of lyric sheets – a blob of text that was not the lyrics, but prose that augmented the experience of listening to the songs. Which I still find to be wonderful and unique. And it’s a good example of the way Steve would approach things, in kind of a beneficently deconstructive fashion. He had the inclination to question – and to question with the idea that if you’re going to ask a question, you need to be prepared with something resembling a workable answer. Steve had the idea that there’s no end to the amount of work you can put into your music, and that it can be fun! That the work doesn’t have to be just gruelling and harsh. The making and playing of music, the recording and distributing of music, and the design of the covers – those are the infrastructure on which we can base our friendships.
