Three 65, Day 49
Big Black, Songs About Fucking

All the great, great music you love, the Nirvanas, the Tools, the Ministrys, the Nine Inch Nails... all of them have at least one of their roots traced back to Big Black. Steve Albini's band of pranksters from Illinois were the first at marrying electronics to sheer guitar angst, and some would say they were the best.

The central conceit behind Big Black is simple: thrash out on guitar, set the drum machine to maximum, sing about whatever makes the audience uncomfortable, and fuck all the rest, including production values. That Albini ever became the go-to production guy for a generation of alternanerds looking to get street cred for their debut is one of the biggest jokes in rock music. The guy turns on a microphone and leaves the room; simple as that. Fuck Pro Tools, fuck processed sounds, fuck polish: Just record it, slap a sticker on it, and sell it.

Fucking was Big Black's last album - they knew it at the time, the audience knew it at the time, and Albini was determined to go out with a bang (pun most definitely intended). "Bad Penny" is the ultimate synthesis of Black's sound, the final snarl: "I think I fucked your girlfriend last night / Then I fucked all your friends' girlfriends / Now they hate you." The song topics here are about murder, debauchery, sex and death, the ultimate pigfuck anthems for a group of Midwestern teens to disaffected to care about much of anything. It's no accident that of all the bands to cover Kraftwerk, Big Black were the only ones able to inject pure hatred and evil into it (see "The Model").

The album ends with "Bombastic Intro," thirty or so seconds of pulsing drum machine and screaming guitar. That they ended their career with an intro is an insight into Albini's modus operandi: be contrary, and confound at all costs. One can now find Albini fronting Shellac, and doing things like playing bowling alleys at 10 am on January 1st. Fuck you? No, fuck you.