The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Remembering Steve Albini

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

In honor of Steve’s passing, we are re-sharing his conversation with Andy Richter in August 2023. Legendary punk musician, producer, and engineer Steve Albini joined Andy Richter to discuss his love for the city of Chicago, the differences between comedy and music, sticking to your principles, wildfire research, and much more. 

Hi everybody, it's Andy Richter and you're listening to The Three Questions. Today I'm talking to Steve Albini. He is a legendary punk, a proud Chicago resident, audio engineer, and although he hates this phrase, he's a record producer. By his own estimate, he's worked on several thousand albums, including records by Nirvana, The Pixies, PJ Harvey, The Breeders, Cheap Trick. And as a musician, Steve was a member of the very influential band Big Black and currently records and performs with his band Shellac. He's speaking to us from his electric audio recording studio in Chicago. Here's my conversation with Steve Albini. Can't you tell my love's gone? to the very busy uh mr steve albini uh you know current chicago and i'm a former chicagoan

and you you stayed you never left yeah it's the best city in the world honestly like all for yeah you know if you if you rank everything on a you know on a scale and then you just take the aggregate score chicago's the best city there's ever been you know you can do more stuff here there's more interesting people here you know if you're doing anything like creative with your life where you have to involve other people and things like you know fabrication or construction or electronics or shipping or like any of those things, Chicago is just infinitely more convenient than any other place. The arts and music community here is unparalleled. It's, you know, I really do feel incredibly lucky that my random choice of a university put me here, you know.

Yeah, because you went to Northwestern, correct? I went to Northwestern to study journalism. Technically, I'm a degreed journalist. We got to get to like that. Technically, I'm a degreed journalist. We got to get to that career change. Did you fall in love with Chicago right away when you got there? When I came to Chicago, I had spent the previous 10 or 12 years of my life in Missoula, Montana, which is physically an aesthetically beautiful place, natural wonder all around you. But culturally, I felt kind of stifled there.

Yeah. Because, you know, in a pre-internet era, you're sort of limited to the culture that is brought to you wherever you happen to be. And so when I came here and like, you know, was immediately in the company of artists and bohemians and radicals and queer people and musicians and artists of all kinds, it was just such an exhilarating thing that I was just intoxicated from the first. And probably people of color too. I bet you there's not a lot of... Yeah. I mean, the incredible amount of diversity in Chicago is sort of mirrored or is sort of echoed in all the little scenes. Like the music scene and the arts community and stuff is way more diverse here than it is in places where it's just like the local community theater and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. It was a real eye-opening experience for me.

And it was a gradual appreciation of everything that all of that brought to the table. But the change was noticeable instantly. And it was intoxicating. That's the only way to put it. It was like I was just dizzied by all of this crazy stuff. Yeah. And then, but I mean, I imagine then, you know, from that point, you go to college at Northwestern and you start playing in bands and you start touring and you start seeing the world. When you go to New York, aren't you kind of like, oh, this is Chicago, but even more.

You know, this is a more concentrated. I always kind of hated New York. I mean, I didn't hate it. Like, it was obviously a serious place where a lot of things happened. But there was stuff about it that just seemed so awkwardly constructed. You know, like, yes, you can go to, you can go to the bodega 24 hours a day. So like, yes, you can get like an off-brand soda at all nights,

you know, at all times of the night. That's charming. You know, there, there are things about it that are nice and cool, but there are also things about it that just seemed like, like antithetical to human hospitality or human habitation like the way they pile garbage up on the streets as just like you know there's no alleys like why don't they have alleys they could have built the city we could have built alleys you know yeah but they didn't so they just so everybody has to pile their garbage on the

sidewalk it's just it's just a very dumb way to function. And there's a thing that I noticed. When I went to Northwestern, my degree is in journalism, but my minors in the Medill School of Journalism, they have a very aggressive, well-rounding program as part of your degree. You have to do a lot of other things to get a degree in journalism. So you have to have a technical minor and you have to have a social sciences minor. My technical minor was chemistry, my social sciences or humanities or social sciences

minor. And my humanities minor was painting. So my painting advisor was a guy named Ed Paschke, who is a famous painter from Chicago who was part of the Harry Who experimental movement in the 60s and really inspirational character. And I learned a lot from him and we became friends. And he described this thing that I hadn't recognized until he explained it to me. until he explained it to me. And it was that there are places that have been sort of ordained as cultural centers like New York and Los Angeles, right?

And all over the world, there are people who are not quite good enough to get noticed on their own merits, but they have an ego that presumes that they should be getting noticed and they resolve that conflict by saying well it's just because i'm in iowa if i wasn't in iowa people would get me so i'm going to move to new york where people will get me. Right. And so New York has this, it's this attractor for people whose ego slightly outstrips their actual ability or their actual value in whatever their field is. And so there are all of these people who, as Ed Paschke described them as the runners up of the whole world. All of these people congregating in New York, every one of them with a chip on their shoulder, like beleaguered, like if only I had had some breaks, I could be somebody by now, but here I am, you know, working in a fucking coffee shop. Right.

Yeah. Everybody has this chip on their shoulder. So that, that functions in two ways and on one level it's atrocious because there's all of this pain and all of this frustration around you all the time and and frankly a lot of really unchecked egos are around you all the time in new york yeah but the good thing about it is that everybody there has ambition and everybody there is cultivating something

in their life that is really important to them that is a creative or an expressive thing. So there are a lot of people in New York who are, you know,

on the sly, artists or poets or musicians or sculptors or whatever, just, you know know bon vivants of some kind right and you do get that that sort of bohemian um sort of second layer of culture is really readily apparent when you're there and so you are you do get introduced to a lot of people who are doing music projects and art projects and in your world i'm assuming a lot

of experimental theater or writing and comedy and that sort of stuff in new york that's invigorating but there is this veneer of frustration above all of it like that everybody had to move there from you know winnetka or whatever in order to yeah to get And what I liked about Chicago was that in every venue, like in every discipline, Chicago arts are completely self-satisfied. Like the people who are in music in Chicago are content in Chicago. The people who are doing comedy or theater, like there is a list of people I'm sure you're familiar with from the improv and comedy scene in Chicago who have been offered a leg up into the, the Denton, Texas or, you know, Oklahoma City version of that person who feels frustrated at being in a non like culture center and not being appreciated. Like those people would fight a room full of people to get that opportunity and take yes but people

in chicago are like you know what actually it's pretty good here i don't really i don't yeah you know i i don't need to go anywhere else or do anything else john belushi said what he liked about chicago was that on the you know there's new york and la and he said that it always seemed to him when he first started going to either of those places that everybody in those places wanted to get to the other one that the people in LA felt somehow inferior and that they wanted to get to the kind of gritty reality of New York and that the people in New York wanted to be in sunny LA experiencing the life of a of a star and that people in chicago are just happy being right there it holds up somewhat but then there's no you know because like when you

say people in my line of work that are there and that have quit things like the ones that i know the ones that i know that are still in chicago uh that are like the town you know like really talented people like the one that i can think of is like dave pesquise who you probably know sure but who was able to stay there and had you know did mcdonald's voiceovers for a bazillion years so everybody that knows him is like well yeah sure you know he didn't need to go anywhere he's got a recording studio in his nice house that he paid for, you know? Because ultimately the realities of earning a living, and especially with my business, which is like even, you know, want to talk about egos, you know, like the egos in a punk band are nothing compared to one improviser, you know? The thing that I thought, the thing that blows my mind about the people in the comedy world is that they are on the sly, the most bitter, vindictive people.

I'm nodding for people at home. When they see someone else get an achievement that they coveted, it burns a hole in them deeper than any other failure in their own life. Like they could have blown it and it wouldn't be worse than that guy that they think is not quite as funny as them get it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, and I experienced it. I started, you know, when I started doing improv in Chicago and I had a couple friends that got on SNL and my first thought was god damn it motherfucker yeah and and and over time I realized that is kind of natural especially when you're young you to have that kind of ambition and want to strive for to be as big as you can in this thing you know in this thing that's already just drenched in ego, you know,

like everything, but both what you and I started doing was we want to get on stage and have everyone in a room, shut up and look at us and, and listen to us. They can't, they're not supposed to talk. They're not.

In fact, all the lights will be on us. Even the rest of the room will be dark and they got to look at us because it's worth it to look at us that's a that's a motivation that comes much more from the theater side and the comedy side than the musical performing side because in my world there are equal numbers of people who are absolutely happy doing it in their bedroom alone after work and, and, you know, only being noticed by accident. You know, there, there isn't the kind of, there is a tier of people who are in music for celebrity or for notoriety and, but they're obvious. Right.

And that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who are driven to make music and who were, you know, and it's the, the thing that struck me when I hit Chicago was that I would go to a show and it would be in a completely makeshift environment, like somebody's loft or like a repurposed back room in a gay bar or something. Or a backyard.

Yeah, it would be like a completely put together ad hoc environment. And all the people doing the work, all the people like humping the PA in and running the cables around and taking tickets and all of those people were the same people that were in the bands and were the same people that you'd see hanging flyers on the L station and were the same people that if you needed a bass amp, you would borrow a bass amp from them or the same people who would offer you a practice space if you didn't have a spot for your band to rehearse and like it was everybody was doing everything and it clearly was not a scenario where there was a a pre-established venue that drew an audience and performers in front of the audience like that was absolutely not what was happening and so it completely broke my conception of performance and of like the, the value of art and the rationale for doing it. And it made me realize that the people were doing it because they were driven to do it. And they were doing it in front of other people like them.

And they were doing the cooperation and assistance of other people like them. It was a, you know, it was an entire circle of people, every single one of them wanting to have an amazing event, wanting to have an experience. And so it was a collaborative effort, no matter what was happening. And that, that, that is an enormous distinction between the,

you know, a standup comic who just shows up for the open mic because the open night was Mike was running anyway. And he, you know, a standup comic who just shows up for the open mic because the open mic was running anyway. And he, you know, wants to dominate the room and be the breakout star or whatever. Like that's a completely different paradigm. It has nothing to do with that. There is some, I've noticed some parallel in the experimental theater community, you know, like people doing living room plays and things like that, like where it's done on a very small scale and it's, you know like people doing living room plays and things like that like where it's done on a very small scale and it's you know an insular community of people who are sort of in the know

it's not really meant for the general public like i see some parallels there but more what it seems like to me is it seems like like rent parties it seems like yeah like inviting people over to have an event and in the process you generate some money and that allows you to do it again. But it's not, it's not part of the show business ladder where you do this and then you do this and then you do this and you do this and you get bigger and more famous and more wealthy as you move up the ladder. It's not, it's a completely separate thing. It's not part of that spectrum at all. That's what, that's what drew me into the music scene in Chicago.

And I've, and I've, you know, it formed me as a person. Like I based all of my working principles on this idea that we're all in it together. We're all trying to have a great show, you know?

Yeah. I can't remember. I think it was Patty Chayefsky, the screenwriter. So I remember reading a quote of his that said something like, it's an entirely valid drive or motivation when you are young to be rich and famous. When you're young, be rich and famous. That notion to get you through just sort of like the initial shit of trying to do something creative with your

life. But he said, but you got to throw that away after a while. You can't, that can't be your motivator after a while. And I, you know, as I get older, I try and, I mean, I never was like a giant, you know, I never had like huge ambitions anyway. I don't have the attention span for it mainly. But I do try and think like, well, just to have a happy, fulfilled life towards the end of it is really what I'm looking for. But I often reflect on that and say, well, yeah, but you've been on TV 30 years. It's easy to say, oh, I'm satisfied just doing good work. And it's like, yeah, because I got to enjoy the success that most people setting out on this sort of path that they're looking for.

So it's easy. You know what I mean? So that's a kind of a phrase, that's a, a kind of a phrase. It's easy for you to say like that, that's a kind of a disqualifier that's used by critical people. Yeah. Whenever they disagree with your premise, they can find a reason to say, well, your worldview doesn't apply to you. Yeah. They negate your validity. Yeah. There's always a way to do that. to say, well, your worldview doesn't apply to you. Yeah.

They negate your validity. Yeah. There's always a way to do that. And I mean, I think this is an important point because it, because it's used to frustrate people with contrarian opinions or people with counter-industrial or counter-commercial inclinations, you know, like, oh, it's easy for you to say that you don't care about uh success material success because you have this big recording studio that you've built and you have been in successful bands it's easy for you to say that you don't care about the success how the fuck do you think i got those things yeah you think i got those things by pandering to the

notion of success you think that you know playing in bands that made obscene and horrible music you think that that was done as a as a way to aggregate an audience. Yeah. Do you think that me like literally declining to accept millions of dollars of compensation, do you think that was done as a way to accrue wealth? doing things in a manner that is true to your principles, but that deny conventional capitalist notions or conventional show business notions, right? If you're successful doing that, you won't be allowed to be seen as an example of something that can be repeated. That you will be, you will, you'll you'll if you say yeah people say to be successful you have to pander and you have to do all of these things and you have to participate in this corporate and capitalistic structure you know that's just the cost of business you just have to do it and then you say well i didn't do that and things worked out fine

for me then instead of that obviously puncturing and invalidating that prior argument then then the disqualifying statement is well it's easy for you to say you you you did it you know yeah yeah and and i and i think that's it's such a childish mode of argument that um that i think it's it's important to to lay out the fallaciousness of it because it's it's it's trivially easy to say oh well you being successful following your own advice that's meaningless for someone else who might follow your advice because they won't be successful doing it. And I know because people aren't successful doing that. And then you say, I was successful doing that. And they say, well, you don't count. What I mean is all of the other fictional people in my

head who haven't done the thing that you say that you did and of them were successful in my head. and yeah of them were successful in my head can't you tell my loves are growing let's go back i'm amy because you know this podcast likes to go back to you know your starts um i mean did you grow up feeling weird in Missoula, Montana? Yeah. I think everyone, everyone, when they start recognizing them themselves and they start differentiating themselves from their peers and from the people around them to a certain degree, they feel some alienation of those people. Yeah. I can think of one person on my life that I know who never felt a moment of alienation is a musician named Brett Rout from Louisville, Kentucky.

And I was talking to him one time and he said, you know, everybody I knew had a terrible time in high school and they felt like outsiders. I fit in everywhere. I loved it. Must be nice. He's the only person I know. Everybody else i know felt like a weirdo like you fucking prom king and the captain of the football squad and you know the you know the shift manager at uh pizza hut or whatever you know it doesn't matter who it is yeah in your local hierarchy like the top dog they feel a little weird and uncomfortable and unsettled and and

unwelcome you know you are talking to yorkville high school's 1984 prom king who fell on what were they there were like three people in your class you motherfucker um no but I will say that, uh, there were, if you were on the homecoming court in fall, uh, you were disqualified from being on the, on the prom court. So I like to think of it as I was the sixth most popular person, uh, because the first five were already picked in the fall. Um, but yeah, but no, I mean, I, I was popular and, uh, and I felt like I didn't even know what was, I didn't know what was wrong by the time that I was getting ready to, to leave Yorkville, Illinois.

I did not understand how miserable I was. I had friends and I was like, what the fuck is going on? I got to the city and I was like, oh, that's what it was. I just, I needed to move to the city and i was like oh that's what it was i just i needed to move to the city and okay you know and it's the same it's a similar thing to what you said just and i mean it's it's a word that's been that's been dragged through all kinds of nonsense to make it an awful word but diversity like diverse like diversity, like just being around, I, you know. You mentioned Montana as being a kind of a monoculture and it is definitely like it's, it's primarily, it's, you know, there's, it's primary, it's a conservative,

somewhat religious, very libertarian minded place, right? Within Montana, the diversity is, place, right? Within Montana, the diversity is, it's a narrower spectrum of diversity. There's not a lot of minorities in Montana. There's Native Americans and Native Americans are getting much more of a voice now in social life and in policy and politics in Montana than they used to. They used to be completely marginalized. And that's, that paradigm is shifting very slowly um there but there was an intellectual community yeah in missoula uh there it was a college town so there there was a thread of lefty politics there was like for example there was a in there was a progressive political party that was founded in missoula called the new party that for a while controlled the city council um there was a thriving arts and literature community there.

And today, Missoula, the town I'm from, is represented in the state legislature by Zoe Zephyr, who's a trans woman. Oh, that's right. That kind of thing would have been inconceivable during my tenure there. But now, of course, that's what Missoula is like. during my tenure there. But now, of course, that's what Missoula is like. Missoula is a fairly open-minded place. It has always had that threat of progressivism,

largely due to the influence of the university and the fact that the university was an aggregator for people from outside the culture of ranching, farming, local business, which is what Missoula was otherwise. Anyway, so personally personally i feel like midwestern suburbs are more of a monoculture than missoula missoula was yeah you're right having met a bunch of people from the midwestern suburbs where everyone that they went to school with everyone within their can as they've walked out their front door lived essentially the same kind of life as them and looked exactly like them like that to me is a rougher go that's a bigger transition i'm assuming that's what it was like for you yes

um that that's a that's a bigger shock being dropped into a melting pot like chicago than it was for me i because i i was already predisposed to be somewhat open-minded about what other people were like you know yeah well your dad um i i've never seen these two a wild a wildfire researcher yeah so my dad was a genius like uncategorically like unqualified dad was a genius, like uncategorically, like unqualified. He was a genius. He had multiple degrees from Caltech. He was an aeronautical engineer at first, and he worked in aerodynamics and literally designed missiles and guidance systems for missiles. And thus your birth in Pasadena. Thus your birth in Pasadena, I assume. Yeah.

There were a bunch of aerospace companies in California at the time, and he worked for Hughes Aircraft, and he worked for a company called General Research Corporation, and another company called Electrodyn, maybe. I can't remember. I honestly don't remember what the other company is. All those company names sound so evil now general research corp it's like oh we make poisons that make your brain melt um and so he and he you know he was a he was a brilliant engineer and he would would would

regularly be sort of headhunted for projects specific projects by other engineering firms and eventually worked his way up to where he was working for defense contractors who had the biggest contracts, like they had the most money to burn. And so they were hiring all the big brains and he was working on missile systems. But he was always an outdoorsman. He always loved fishing and hunting and being outdoors. He grew up in the Central Valley of California and he spent a lot of his time outdoors.

He rode motorcycles when he was younger. Like he was kind of a grease monkey and, you know, like to work with his hands, like to technical bent, like the way his mind worked solving really difficult engineering and math problems, but somehow applying that to the natural world so he could be out in the mountains hunting and fishing and stuff. And this opportunity came up with the Northern Forest Fire Research Laboratory in Missoula for him to go and essentially start working on the science of forest fires. Like there had been very, very little research done to sort of codify the behavior of forest fires as distinct from other kinds of burning things.

Forest fires are massive systems. Like huge fires create their own weather, you know, and propagate themselves. Like as the fire gets bigger, it creates its own internal fire tornadoes, which then yank burning trees out of the ground and fling them tens of miles, you know, to sort of propagate the fire. Like the behavior of forest fires is insane. And it's such a complex problem. It was perfectly suited to my father. know, to sort of propagate the fire. Like the behavior of forest fires is insane. Yeah.

And it's such a complex problem. It was perfectly suited to my father. My father was like, he wanted the hardest problem. He wanted the thing that seemed completely impossible. That's what he wanted to work on. And he became an extremely, um, well-respected scientist in the field. He's, you know, published a lot. He went to a lot of international conferences. He was allowed to travel to Russia pre-Perestroika to work with their interior ministry on the problem of forest fires.

He brought Russian scientists to the U.S. to work with the forest fire research station in Missoula and to work with the larger forest fire science community. Like he was kind of a big shot in that world as you know, it's a very small world, but it, it had, and it had a few geniuses involved and he was one of them. Did he and your mom encourage a sort of, well, contrarian, independent kind of bent in you? well contrarian independent kind of bent in you uh i'm gonna say no but also they weren't judgmental about how odd their children were like my brother made motorcycles built motorcycles and race motorcycles my sister was kind of a a savant for languages like she learned languages in high school by the time she got to college she was she could speak a half a for languages like she learned languages in high school by the time she got to college she was she could speak a half a dozen languages wow like and we were all kind of nerds and weirdos

and introverts my sister was more she was way more popular than my brother and i were like she was much more of a social person than we were my brother and i were like we were nerds we were like straight up nerds and what were you a nerd for? If he had, you know, she had language, he had, was it always music? Uh, no. Like I went before I found music, I was really into writing. I wrote like short fiction. Um, I was on the school newspaper.

I was on the school yearbook. I drew cartoons, uh, journalists. Yeah. I kind of went on to journalism school. Yeah. Like I, I did have a few early heroes as a teenager, people like ring Lardner and, um, HL Mencken and Ambrose Pierce,

like people who were, um, who used language in a way that was engaging. Uh, but, uh, but then I also like, um, through like learning about was engaging. Uh, but, uh, but then I also like, um,

through like learning about journalism as a practice, I, like, I really, I became very fond of the muckrakers, you know, the early 20th century people inspired by the early progressive movement. Upton Sinclair and all of them.

Upton Sinclair, Ida Wells, like the people like that, like that whole, like the police politicization of information and knowledge of the behavior of the corporate world and capitalism broadly written like that intrigued me. you know, like, and learning about the way the Watergate scandal was broken, and made the Washington Post investigative writers like kind of heroes of ours as well. And, and like, I say ours, cause it was like a small group of us, like journalism dorks at, at the high school and school newspaper,

people tend to be an insular crowd as well. And, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't fully formed as a person but i could see but the way my mind worked was like kind of hungry for information respecting people who held other people and themselves accountable and people who were after a deeper meaning beyond the superficial and that was in in in parallel with an indulgence that I felt like of just being a goofball. Like my friends and I were goofy and irreverent and I liked trash culture.

Like I had Fangoria magazine and all of those like, you know, comic books and trash culture kind of appealed to me just on a base level because it was amusing and when i just when i found the ramones i i felt like there was this weird pairing of of the the goofy irreverent side of my personality but also the slightly perverse outsider, I'm a weirdo kind of thing that was going on at the same time. And the deeper I got into their music and punk rock as a thing, the more I felt like,

oh, that's obviously where I belong. That's obviously my frame of mind. When I leave town to go to college I'm I should find a place that has a cool music scene and and at what point you head off to Northwestern which is a fantastic journalism school I mean you know you're in like one of the best places in the country to learn journalism when does when does music grab you like when does when do you realize because and also i mean you know a lot of your music is it's anti-establishment you know um it's you know it's very confront you know it's very confrontational i mean somebody you know you and you've apologized

for it but you know like a band called rape man you, like a band called Rape Man, you know, like in your face, I'm going to offend you. I'm going to challenge you. When does it, when, I mean, so obviously there's this kind of journalistic bent, there's this like undoing lies and opening eyes kind of bent, but you didn't go work for the washington post you started big black you know i mean how how does that happen so contemporaneous with me being in school i was in bands and i i was playing music and getting deeper involved in the music scene in chicago while i was in college and um so and part of my part of my degree at northwestern was that i had to go and work on a small daily newspaper for a semester like that it's the equivalent of a business internship but called the teaching newspaper program and you in order to get your degree at northwestern you have

to go and work as a general assignment reporter at a daily newspaper somewhere. And I went to a small town called Marion, Indiana, and I worked on the Marion, Indiana Chronicle Tribune for a semester. And working on a small town daily newspaper, which is precisely where a fresh journalism graduate would start working, coming out of any journalism school. Working there for a semester disabused me of my fantasies about what it would be like to be a journalist. Yeah, yeah. Having to avoid infuriating the local business community with anything that you might write.

Yeah. Having an internal hierarchy within the newspaper that had its own agenda for this for what would be covered and why and all of the national news just being received by wire from the chain that had just bought your newspaper. Yeah. So you had no flexibility about what you would be writing about on a national level. Like that, that changed my graduating journalism school in 1984 corresponded with the beginning of the sort of homogenization of journalism, which was echoed again in radio stations being bought up. All the small newspapers were bought up by Gannett.

All the small town newspapers were bought up by Gannett, so it sort of homogenized all their coverage and their behavior. Then all the radio stations were bought up by various aggregators. And then you would hear too, I mean, and I had friends at the time who were writing jokes, just a little side gig. They were writing jokes for DJs. And then that same joke would be told in 12 different cities.

Yeah. You know, some whatever joke about Madonna and and sean penn dating or whatever you know um so yeah it's it's it's the same kind of there's no geographic specificity to anything it's just there's different containers that hold the same information that's plopped in there every morning yeah and that started with newspapers in the late seventies, early eighties that, that began with Gannett buying up all of the local newspapers and, and, and sort of consolidating everything. Um, there's a guy that works here at electrical audio named John San Paolo, who got a broadcasting degree and started working in radio in the nineties.

And he was an on-air personality he was a dj played you know he did his show and he was at on a local radio station in springfield missouri and then the station got bought and they started automating the programming and he was still on air a little bit but his you know his title was changed and he was no longer an on-air personality. He was, you know, part of the broadcast production team or whatever. And then eventually things got so automated and so regimented that they were just streaming content that was being presented to them. And his title working for that radio station had was reduced to person in building. What a dream come true.

I've always wanted to be a person in a building. Yeah. So, you know, you grow up listening to. So that was on his tax forms. Person in building. Incredible. That's great. So anyway, so like that kind of homogenization and the removal, even when I was a, a, you know, a teenager,

like Mike Royko's column was syndicated and Mike Royko was a really engaging writer and he wrote about stuff. And unafraid to shitster too. And I'd never been to Chicago. I didn't know anything about Chicago, but then I was reading about Slatskrobnik or whatever. And like, I, and the, the, the, the realization that there are these like conflicts and these, uh, and these like the, the class divide survives, you know, any, uh, geographical relocation or whatever, like that sort of stuff. It appealed to me to be in that world. Like I wanted to be in that world.

I wanted to be part of that, like a journalistic world where there were identities of the people who are writing and they express themselves. But while they were doing it, what they were doing was getting to something deeper. Anyway, working for a daily newspaper for even a short period disabused me of that as a notion. And I gave up on the idea before I'd even graduated. I gave up on the idea of ever being a journalist. I was writing here and there for fanzines and stuff, like nothing of substance, but to amuse myself and also to extend my participation in the music scene. I wanted to do more things in the music scene.

And that was another avenue. The fanzines were really important. Pre-internet, the fanzines were a really important way for people to communicate with people around the world. And we booked, you know, my band booked tours based on things that were written in a fanzine about a show at a club in a town that was on the way. So we would go to the Yellow Pages for that city and find the phone number for that club and, you know, ring it at all hours of the day until we got an answer. And then we could book a show at that club that we'd heard about from this fanzine. Yeah. And then we had another gig on the tour.

Yeah. That was a really important part of the network of communication that existed pre-internet was this all this super informal stuff yeah and every time you'd run into another person in a band like you know there's a band would come here from some place that we hadn't been yet like a band would come up here from kansas or missouri or indiana or whatever And they'd have contacts for people farther downstate than we did. So we'd share the people that we knew in Minneapolis and Milwaukee and Madison. Like, oh, here, here's the guy that books shows in Madison. You should, you know, you can call this guy, you can call this guy in Minneapolis.

You can call this guy in Milwaukee. And they would say, okay, well, if you need a show in Bloomington, you can call this guy and show in Indianapolis. You can call this guy in Milwaukee. And they would say, okay, well, if you need a show in Bloomington, you can call this guy and show in Indianapolis, you can call this guy and it can show in Mary. You don't want to go to Marion. It's a shitty little town, you know, like things like that. Like all of that was super important. And just being willing to participate and share information made you a credible and good person in that scene.

And my peer group, my, the people that I surrounded myself with were all people like that. All people who were, you know, giving of information and trying to make everything easier for everybody. can't you tell my love there is there's a component to you know like when we were kind of comparing you know music versus kind of you know like being somebody in comedy in chicago being somebody in music in chicago there is something about music that's that there is the actual doing of it which doesn't need anybody at listening there's just you know you can get lost in the music it's hard to tell jokes to a forest you know yeah um but you can play music and and it you know especially with the band you can just get lost in it you don't need an audience but there has to be some component of getting on stage in

front of people that captured you and was that a surprise did you know that was there or i mean and how did it feel when you started playing for a live crowd this is one of the weirdest things about my personality if i can evaluate my personality from the from inside it please do i've never for a moment not once in my life felt a moment of trepidation about walking out on stage and playing a song singing do doing like doing whatever in front of other people like the the the notion of stage fright has no resonance with me like i just do not give a shit like it never has like not the slightest bit it's never it doesn't impress me like i we have my my bands have played shows for 10 people and we have played shows for 40 000 people and the effect of

me going out in front of a microphone and doing what i have to do is exactly the same and i try i try pretty hard not to be impressed by any of it just because i feel like that would prevent me from paying attention to my job at the time and uh i've we've done great gigs in front of three people yeah and we've shit the bed in front of 10 000 you know yeah yeah you should do the opposite you should just my advice do the opposite but i also i also feel like it like at a big gig what's what's notorious about it is that it's big that there's a lot of people there and there's a lot of money on the line right yeah i don't give a shit about that that's not the part that matters to me like the the first 10 people in front, like I'm probably having the gig for them.

I'm probably having the gig with them. Like we're having a gig, me and the first hundred people up by the stage. We're the ones who are actually at the show. Everybody else is like, they're in a room. Yeah. I guess they're walking, but they're not, they're not, they're not at the gig really. And I feel like the small club environment like a couple hundred people is about the peak of where you can get the whole room involved in the gig and where everybody

on the same mania and it's and that's that's the best for me that's where like my eyes roll back in my head and everything goes white and i feel like this is the greatest thing that i get to do in my life you know yeah but it's um yeah i've just never like the idea of an audience is kind of weird to me like the band i'm in right now shellac like it's an what we're doing is for us we write the songs for our to amuse ourselves or to to keep our ourselves engaged i guess amuse is kind of a dismissive term but we're doing it for our benefit we want to be in the band i want to play with bob and todd like and we're doing these songs because these songs excite us and because playing this music is great right you're in a band because being in a band is great we're not you're not doing it for external reasons.

And when you're doing it in front of other people, there are other people involved in that moment and it can amplify the moment and it can get like, you know, more exciting to a degree. Yeah. But we're not doing it for them. Yeah. difference between a thing like music which is a can be a a purely creative pursuit and something that is more of a purely performance art like what what you do for a living requires an audience yeah what i i'm perfectly content for the three of us in the band to be in Bob's basement rehearsing and hit a moment like that's, that gives me as big of a, of a, a charge as doing it in front of 10,000 people.

Like the front of 10,000 people just means more people got to see the cool moment, but I don't really care about that. Having the cool moment is what matters. I, I it's, I mean, there's just,

there's lots of things you're saying that resonate with me but just in a different category and like for the all the years doing the conan show like and people don't understand like i didn't i came from improv i didn't come from stand-up and like i've told i and i've tried stand-up and I said I don't like being on stage alone and when people would say you know like don't don't you miss a studio audience I would say no I would because I never played for them anyway when I would what would make me the most proud is when I could see a cameraman behind a camera with his headset on shaking because something I said made him laugh and that and and that like came over too from working starting in student films and working

on film sets I like this little team I like this little band and I'm going to perform for them and I and I'm when I say band I didn't even mean it as a musical thing. Like, you know, I like this little touring group of weirdos, and I'm going to play for them. And if other people are watching, that's cool, but I'm playing for them, you know. I think what you described, the improv scene in Chicago, like the way that a group of people will name their team, and then their team will stick together and do and do a bunch of do do shows or

do workshops or whatever or play together like that's as close as someone in the comedy world can get to the sensation of being in a band and to to have like a working group that does that is improvising stuff that's coming up with ideas that they're bouncing ideas off of each other like any a given moment any one of them can be like the lead thought any one of those people can be driving the scene and you know everybody else is there to make sure that it keeps going you know like that's about as close as a as some in comedy can get to the sensation of being in a band where you're all playing on a group or whatever and my my wife heather winnow who you know is the managed the second city for many years oh right and her and our circle of friends and includes an enormous number of improvisers and people in comedy and theater in chicago so i've gotten to see all of these people in social moments,

like sparring with each other and being funny. And it's true that like, or like if Dave Pesquasey makes TJ Jagadowski bust up laughing, like that's a bigger hit than having a show picked up or whatever. Like there, there, there is a thing where it's an inside, it's inside baseball with comedy.

And there are, there are like these legendary bits in Chicago improv. I'm a poor correspondent in that regard, just because I don't know all the details, but I know that there are legendary, legendary bits that were derived from like a poorly attended show where there was nobody there, but the bit sort of went through the community and everybody heard about the bit and how this one thing kind of blew up within

this one group. And then that can sort of make the reputation of the person who came up with the bit. Despite the fact that nobody saw it, nobody laughed at it, it wasn't part of a show. It was just, it was like those, that community values the inventiveness and the creativity of the process. Yeah. And when people can use that process to do something unique,

it gets recognized even if it doesn't have an audience. And not only do they value the process a part of the process is in the purest form is that you don't repeat yourself right so it's basically it's like saying you're in a band but we don't ever play the same song you know so it's it's it's insane for just for commerce it's insane you know it's like when i started out in television i had all these you know like dumb young person ideas about like i'm i want to do a show where it's different all the time like where you know like every week you just follow a different character and it's different all the time, which I just now think everyone's going to go, hey, dummy, nobody watches TV like that. They want to tune back in for the same, for more of the same.

And it's like, oh, yeah, right. I guess that wouldn't work. And with improv, with pure improv, that's really asking a lot. And Chicago does a wonderful job of being an audience for that, but you take it anywhere else and it's like, wait, what? You're going to just do that once. And then I'm going to come back next week and it's going to be all different and I'm going to have to like it as much. Yeah. I mean, it's not, I think that the critical thing about the improv community in Chicago is that it's not about the show. Like the show, the thing that happened, the thing that they're selling tickets to, that's

trash. Who cares? Absolutely. Doing it. You're, you're training the muscles of everyone who's working on it so that they can be fucking brilliant for the rest of their lives. Like it's incredible. If you look at the roster of people who have, have funneled through second city, everybody

from fucking. Yeah. Asner, Alan Arkin, like Mike Nichols, Elaine May. Right. Who have, have funneled through second city, everybody from fucking as their Alan Arkin, like Mike Nichols, Elaine may, right. Like it's like the funniest people there have ever been. Yeah. Like pretty much all of them at one point or another, like had to make up jokes on the spot and then forget about them instantly, you know? And I feel like that, that that's and and i feel like that that that's valuable like as an audience member i being frank watching improv can be a chore yes you're seeing things fail it apologizes for itself

out the door at the very beginning it there is the under and i've been scolded by other improvisers for saying this but there is the notion, hey, cut us some slack. We're making this shit up, you know, and it's there and God bless the audiences that enjoy that. But if you don't, if you're not willing to say that what I'm watching is not a finished product, what I'm watching is people learning to be great at something. You can gain, you can get an enormous amount of satisfaction from that.

Yeah. And it's, it's the way like you, you can see people finding their legs under them and becoming expressive people in a mode that they hadn't previously done before. And then that riff comes around again and they get to do it again, a little bit bigger and they get a little more confident in it. And then that riff comes around at the end of the show as a callback. And suddenly that guy's a fucking hero, right? Yeah. Like seeing that arc over and over again, you start to recognize the value of improv as a product,

as a pure entertainment product. Like if you buy a ticket to an improv show, you know, you have my sympathies because it is most of the time it's going to be like, if you're just going someplace to be amused, it's not that amusing. A lot of the time you have to invest yourself in the idea that what you're seeing is more than a show. It's more.

And, and I do see the parallels between that and working stuff out within a band when you're in a band you have them you have the the you know mercifully you get to do that in bob's basement with no one no one feeling disgruntled that they paid ten dollars to come see it right yeah you but you also have the option of doing it on stage you have the option of doing it on stage in front of an audience yeah but it's not the only form of the art i i we've been talking a while here uh so i gotta move forward i i definitely wanted to touch on you went from being a musician to being an engineer i mean you're a scientist basically uh sort of you know i mean yeah i mean you know the the depth of knowledge that you have about sound to go from journalist to punk rocker to engineer is the is your dad in there do you think like like is there something yeah yeah i've

been told i resemble my dad like i resemble my dad visually if you look a picture of my dad and you look at me we look quite alike um and but he always had this sort of grease monkey side to him you know very like he was you know he was a scratch bowler he liked to you know hang out at the bar with, at the Elks Club with the veterans, you know, like he. Yeah, yeah. Not, he was not a snobbish person or an effete person. He happened to be brilliant. He was the first person in his family to get out of high school.

And he went to Caltech and got multiple degrees, you know, multiple doctorates from Caltech. He was one of the first people to program computers in Fortran. Was he older? Like, were you, when you were born, was he kind of on the older side or? No,

I mean, he was born in 35. Oh, okay. Um, so yeah, so he, he packed a lot into an early life then.

I mean, he, he, he did a lot because he was capable of a lot yeah and what i what i definitely see parallels like between like his appreciation of kind of working with his hands and and you know he worked on farms when he was a kid and uh like he and he he sees that as valid work and it and sees that as a you know valid culture or whatever um but he also was academically rigorous and technically minded and like and those those two things also form aspects of my personality um we didn't get along

particularly he was a pretty straight-laced guy, pretty conservative guy. And at an early age, I kind of gravitated towards the freaks and the weirdos in the arts community and the music scene. And so we didn't share a lot of values in that way,

but I respected his intelligence and he respected my self-determination and that sort of thing. Yeah. Do you think that, because there is, there is a duality to the, you know, messiness of punk and the particulars of sound engineering and the science of

it, you know, like, you know, you don't hear about the Ramones caring much about whatever, sibilants, or that they knew much about electronics. Yeah, and the music scene was poorly rendered because of that. In the early days of the punk scene, punk music was not taken seriously. And so it wasn't, it wasn't, uh, like if it ever made it into the studio, whoever was responsible for the recording sort of often would take it on themselves to sort of smooth things over and like make the music less brash and less abrasive and less distorted.

Um, not recognizing that that was where the excitement and where the power and the energy of the music came from was that it was unhinged and that it was messy, messy and overwhelming. And so the, the sort of professional class of engineers, you know, with the best intentions, I must say, did a lot of damage to a lot of the early punk and

underground recordings, just because they didn't get it and they didn't take it seriously and they thought that it should try to fit into the pop music paradigm. And I, um, I've described that behavior as like, you see a grizzly bear, like an incredible creature, giant, imposing, powerful creature. But you thought that you were going to be seeing some beautiful, elegant woman. But instead, you see this grizzly bear. But instead you see this grizzly bear and instead of appreciating the grizzly bear as this incredible creature, you convince the grizzly bear to put on a dress and lipstick. And you haven't improved matters at all. Right.

Although maybe you made a love connection. I don't want to judge. You never know. But, you know, the most likely you've just irritated the grizzly bear. And you haven't gotten any closer to your ideal. Yeah. But it's a practice that

people would engage in regularly when music would come into the studio that they didn't deem worthy or that they didn't comprehend or they would try to fit it into this paradigm. They would try to put lipstick and a dress on it and um when there developed a sort of um a kind of role in the music scene for someone like me who like a local guy who would take the band seriously on their terms and try to do an efficient and respectful recording of them and there was a guy like me in every music scene like in

in southern california there was spot who did all of the early sst records and he did the minute man in the black flag and all the sst records um in minneapolis there was a guy named brian paulson who was like in the band community there um in madison wisconsin there was butch vig who was a guy in a band from madison and he ended up you know and he recorded all the local bands all the midwestern bands and so the and in chicago there was a guy named ian burgess who was kind of my one of my mentors and uh eventually me like like there there were guys like that all over jack and dino in seattle wharton tears in new york and like all these people eventually that practice of being a guy in the scene who made recordings of bands on the scene that sort of solidified into this sort of a professional tier of recording engineers who were sympathetic to bands of that ill and i

think that was a necessary development in the music scene in order for bands to start being properly represented in their recordings by people who would take go through the effort of reading the manual and figuring out how to do the thing and to record a band but meanwhile being in the same headspace as the band and appreciating their aesthetic and doing things their way and after that class of a person developed like after there developed a community of guys like me who could do that or and would deign to do that that's when you started to get really great records coming out of the punk scene and the underground you know and like the those records sounded leagues better than the early tentative ones and a lot of those bands identities were

kind of formed by the process of making and releasing those records and getting them disseminated well i've kept you long enough it's time to move on to the other part of the program which is well the second one is um what do you want to do with the rest of your life uh more of the same you got anything you know well i mean i'm old enough i finally want that number one single is that really not yeah i don't really give a shit about that i'm i'm old enough now that i'm i'm sort of actively contemplating the end of my professional working life like i just turned 61 this year so that that's very old, you know, on, in, on any metric 61 is old. Right. So I, I am, I have to contemplate the ending of my professional career.

Do you really though? I mean, why? I mean, well, okay. I mean, Al Schmidt, for example, who's one of my heroes was actively recording as an engineer into his nineties, you know, and he finally, and when he finally died, he was still working when he died. Right. And I admire him tremendously. Like he, he worked on all manner of records, like everything from like breathtaking, brilliant records to just pure shit. Like whatever walked in the door, he worked, he could apply himself to it. I admire that aspect of him tremendously. And, uh, and you know, in a, in a sense, I've kind of modeled my career in, as an

engineer after him, like I, I want to be the guy who's just always there, always doing a good job, you know, doesn't make it about himself. Like I'm just doing it. Right. Yeah. And I'm happy to keep doing that, but I'm conscious of a couple of things. Like one, when I resemble my dad in a lot of ways were related for one. And around my age, his hearing started to go and haven't noticed yet.

And if that my hearing has affected my professional capacity, it eventually it must right like everybody is hearing as they get old so eventually i'm going to get to a point where i'm going to have to stop just purely for that reason where it'll be irresponsible for me to keep making records so i'm going to have what i want to do is i want to i want to create an off-ramp so that i can do that gracefully so that i can end my career without embarrassing myself in the studio and making bad records for people. I still feel like I know way more than I used to. I still feel like I'm making the best decisions in the studio that I can, and I feel like I'm making good it, like whenever I'm called on to use my hearing acuteness, I feel like I can equip myself well with my, like, I can still hear all the details that I need to hear. I can still

work in all parts of the frequency spectrum. I still feel good about my hearing. So I'm not concerned at the moment, but I do have to prepare for it. So I have to be, and then I built this studio, this massive fucking enterprise where that took all of my money and it's now everything I have is all tied up in the studio. So eventually I have to figure out, am I going to try to make it so that the studio can continue without me as a, as a, the breadwinner of the studio, for example, there's a crew of guys that work here who are the fucking salt of the earth. There's a crew of guys that work here who are the fucking salt of the earth. I would take a bullet for any of them and I would love them to keep going in the studio long, you know, long after I'm no longer a figure, no longer valid as an engineer. I would love for them to keep making records out here. That would be great.

But I don't know if I can viably do that. Like, um, my wife and, and I would love to just spend the, the golden years or whatever, like with no obligations and no responsibilities. Like I would love to just be able to hang out with my wife every day and like for once in a while and go see a show once in a while, you know, make dinner every night. Like that sounds fucking amazing to me.

So you're, you don't, are you so you know you don't are you somebody like you don't you're not like one of those people like i need to do this to continue or is that a question i enjoy the work right i'm very gratified by what i do for a living but it's a job right i have to do it i have to cover my mortgage i I have to pay, cover all the salaries. I have to, you know, pay for my wife's healthcare. And, and like there is, there is an, uh, an obligation for me to keep working, which is unrelated to my desire to work. I do have, I do enjoy working.

I I'm engaged by it. It works all the parts of my brain that are gratifying for, you know, the problem solving and the aesthetic parts of my brain are all stimulated by it. And I love doing it, but I have to do it for the moment. And I would love to find a way that I didn't have to do it where I could, you know, just relax with the wife and cats and, and make dinner every night. Like, yeah, back to that, but that sounds like the, just like the perfect way hang out with my wife and cats. And then every night I was like, what would you like for dinner? You know? Yeah. No, that's like the notion of retirement, like the pandemic,

because I, I wasn't really do, you know, there was a good chunk there where I wasn't really doing anything, but I had an income. And after a while, I was like, this is retirement? Yeah, I think I can do this. I think I'll be fine. I would fucking rush retirement. I would be like best ever. Some people feel frustrated that they're not in the swing of things.

Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. No. I don't need to be in the swing of things oh no no no yeah yeah no oh like i don't need to be in the swing of things yeah i like to watch it swing yeah well what what do you uh what's the point of it all i mean what what do you think is like the biggest lesson that you've learned or the kind of thing that you would impart uh to people there is a conventional wisdom about how you must conduct yourself in in order or to in order to to persevere in any endeavor and that conventional wisdom is received from people who people whose uh position of authority or whose self-image of authority is important to them.

So they will tell you how you should proceed because it's important to them to be kind of a sensei. It's important to them to feel like they know this thing that they can impart to you. Right? Yeah. I don't have that drive. to you. Right. Yeah.

I don't have that drive. Like, I don't feel like it's important for me to teach other people things or to instruct other people. I tend not to be very critical of other people's career choices or the way they do things. Like I can see pitfalls and I'm happy to explain the pitfalls that I see, but everybody's going to work it out on their own no matter what. Yeah. but everybody's going to work it out on their own no matter what yeah well to a young person

wondering if they can do things in their own perverse manner and still be satisfied with them and still make a life out of it i would say i would say without question you can do it you if the main thing is just to not quit like If you're in something and you're doing it and you're getting satisfaction from doing it, whether you're earning anything at the moment or not, if you keep doing it, then you get to keep doing it. No one can stop you. And that's the most important thing. And again, that's easy for you to say you you know you were successful

by not stopping yeah i was successful by not stopping you know like yeah i was the first bands i was in were in the late 70s late 70s and i had a straight job and i worked as a you know doing music and engineering on the side. And I worked for a company that did fucking advertising images. Like I did that did photography and photo manipulation for advertising, which is like the worst people in the world. So I was working, doing, uh, doing deceptive work for the worst people on earth. Right. And I had to keep a straight job until the late eighties.

Yeah. So it was like the better part of 10 years before I could say that I was a recording engineer and musician as a, as a full time. Yeah. So for, and so if it takes a few years before you get any notice or any income from what you're doing if you don't quit you know there's still the possibility that you will get to

a point where you can make your living at it i can't promise you that you will become well known and successful yeah and in capitalist terms and famous in general terms, like that's unrealistic, but you get to keep doing it for sure. You get to keep doing it. Yeah. Well, and I think, I think part of the work of it is learning to enjoy it in spite of all these, you know, all the things that are not, are not happening. Those are going to stack up. And if those are impeding your enjoyment of it, you're not enjoying it. And maybe you should stop doing it, you know, because the thing that I always hear, and you talked about it a couple of times with the, well, it's easy for you to say, I mean,

look at you, you, you, you know, you've had it easy. You know, that to me, there's always a, a little bit of, of subtext there. There's like, well, you're talented. Like, well, you know, like you had a, you had a facility for it, you know, an obvious facility for it. That was, that was acknowledged by the industry that you, that you're in. And we, you know, what if you don't have facility for it? Like, that you're in. And, uh, you know, what if you don't have facility for it? Like, I don't know what to tell you. You love it and you keep doing it, but, and, and, and if not being successful at it gets in the way of you loving it, then maybe you got to stop. But also like people get hung up on this idea of either, you know, you're instantly good at something or you're not right. Yeah. And like, I'm, I am personally, I'm gratified when I see people who have been working at

it or ever, and then something clicks in the greater culture and other people come into sync of it, sync with it all of a sudden. Like I I'm, I'm sure, you know, Abby McInerney and, uh, I'm sure you're familiar with the, um, the, her show work in progress. Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. And she was a fixture on the improv community in the improv community.

Like she would show up at, at all the shows and she was on teams and she would do, you know, for a very, quite a long time. quite a long time and then as an adult as a fully formed adult with years of practice under her belt other people finally got it she did this very personal show and other people finally got it and she got some notoriety and some and some attention and what she did that was special was that she didn't quit she kept kept doing it. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's the whole lesson is like, I can't promise you that you'll have a moment where other people will get what you're doing, but if it's valuable to you, obviously it has value. Right. Because it means something to you.

Yeah. And, and if you quit, then it's over. Right. And for some people be having it be over as a relief. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, I just want to make dinner for my wife and hang out with her and the cats. It's I want it to be over. Right. Yeah. And I believe me, I get it. I get that. I believe it. Believe me. But if you don't quit, the evidence is that you get to keep doing it. And every now and again, the rest of the culture will synchronize with you.

And then you'll have a moment where you like, you know, where you gain traction with other people. Well, speaking of quitting, we have to quit this interview. It's been going on. It's been really awesome though. And I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for having me. Sure.

Sure. I was happy to do it. And, um, and it's, you. And it's just been a great conversation. And I hope that all of you enjoyed it out there. You better have. God damn it. I mean, we're not doing this for each other. Speaking to audiences.

Apparently, everybody else is getting paid for this, is what I understand. Like, I'll send you, I don't know, a t-shirt or something. Oh yeah. Let's go. Yeah. Can you do me a favor? Can you, can you sign it with someone else's more famous signature and then I'll put it

on eBay. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's always like I got, I did something with Jane Fonda and she gave me a Jane Fonda mugshot t-shirt, you know, that sort of Jane Fonda mugshot t-shirt, you know, that sort of clued era Jane Fonda mugshot. I was like, that is the coolest fucking shirt ever.

And then she signed it. And it's like, I can't wear a Jane Fonda shirt with a Jane Fonda signature, you know? Anyhow. Well, thank you, Steve Albini. Thanks for having me, Andy. Have a good day and thank all, Steve Albini. Thanks for having me, Andy. Have a good day. And thank all of you for listening.

And we will be back next week with more of The Three Questions. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco production. It is produced by Sean Daugherty and engineered by Rich Garcia. Additional engineering support by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel. Executive produced by Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, with assistance from Maddy Ogden. Research by Alyssa Grahl. Don't forget to rate and review and subscribe to The Three Questions with Andy Richter

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