Talking Uniforms, Logos, and Aesthetics With Music Producer Steve Albini
Talking Uniforms, Logos, and Aesthetics With Music Producer Steve Albini
From indie-rock to the World Series of Poker — and a lot in between — the renowned musician and audio engineer has had a surprisingly uni-adjacent career.
If you’ve been a fan of rock music over the past 40 years, there’s a decent chance you’re at least vaguely familiar with Steve Albini (shown above). He’s recorded, engineered, and produced literally thousands of albums during his career — some by super-obscure bands that almost nobody’s heard of and others by big names, including Nirvana’s In Utero; the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa; the Breeders’ Pod; PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me; Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s Walking into Clarksdale; and countless others. Many of those albums were recorded at Albini’s own studio in Chicago, Electrical Audio, which he opened in 1997. He’s also played in several bands of his own, most notably Big Black (1982-1987) and Shellac of North America (1994-present), authored a slew of influential and sometimes controversial articles about the music industry, and, more recently, had a side career as a professional poker player.
While Albini and I have never hung out or shared a meal or anything like that, we are not completely unknown to each other. I’ve been a fan of his music and writing since first encountering them in 1985; he was a fan of my 1990s fanzine, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption, which led to him writing the foreword to my 1997 book, Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted. But that was ages ago, and I’ve never gotten the impression that he cares about sports in general or sports uniforms in particular. So I was surprised when this tweet showed up in my Twitter mentions a few months back:
Why would someone who doesn’t care about sports be following me on Twitter? And why would he be tweeting about following me on Twitter?
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that while Albini may not be a sports guy, he’s always shown an interest in design and aesthetics, and his career arc has included a surprising number of uni-adjacent junctures. I figured it would be fun to pick his brain about all of that. So after I saw his tweet, I sent him a note (our first interaction, I’m pretty sure, since that 1997 book was published) and asked if we could do a Uni Watch interview. He said sure.
It took a little while for our schedules to align, but it was worth the wait. Here’s a transcript culled from two separate Zoom conversations we recently had, edited for length and clarity.
Uni Watch: The impetus for this conversation came a few months ago, when you mentioned on Twitter that you follow my account. I was surprised by that, because I never got the impression that you cared much about sports or sports design. Are you into all of that?
Steve Albini: Not at all. But every day my feed is saturated with all of these design details that you cover, and just knowing that there’s somebody out there clocking all of it makes me feel good. I have an appreciation for people who have arcane obsessions, and over the the long arc of your career, arcane obsession is probably the one constant. So I marvel that you have somehow created a life by just making observations about the way things look. I’m charmed by that, and I’m particularly charmed by how minute and microscopic the detail is in some of your observations, and that there’s enough public interest in that to sustain you.
UW: Well, thank you — I really appreciate that. I like to say that not everybody is into what I do, but the people who are into it tend to be, you know, really fucking into it.
Albini: I especially like that there’s kind of an obsession in your circles with removing the logos of sports merchandise companies, and you even offer Uni Watch-branded seam rippers specifically for removing the New Era logo from ballcaps, which I think is an incredible merchandise option. I mean, I can’t honestly can’t think of a merchandise item more specifically arcane than that. The office manager here at our studio had a White Sox cap, and I said, “Would you like me to clean that up for you?” He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I took it away and spent 15 minutes getting rid of the New Era logo. And he immediately appreciated it. It would never have occurred to him to do anything about it, but it obviously looks better without that big promotional logo on it.
UW: I’m glad he appreciated it, because there are some fans who would say — and who do say — “Oh, now it’s not as official, now it’s not as authentic, now it’s not like the ones the players were on the field.”
Albini: That’s an argument toward authenticity as opposed to an argument toward aesthetics. And I think just the aesthetics of the cap are better without the dumb logo on it.
UW: I’m in total agreement with you there, obviously. What about when you were a kid? Did you play youth sports of any kind? And if so, did you get geeked out about your own uniform?
Albini: Yeah, I played Little League, I played Pony League, I played American Legion ball. I was always scrawny, so I played baseball up until my late teens, when everybody muscled up except me. I wanted to be a catcher, so I was constantly getting steamrollered. I would stay there in position, blocking the plate waiting for the throw, and I would just get creamed every game.
UW: Did you care about wearing your uniform just so, or your catcher’s gear?
Albini: No. For a long time I used a hand-me-down 1950s catcher’s mitt that was my uncle’s. It was like this big, dumb sofa cushion of a catcher’s mitt. I eventually got my own mitt. But I’m not that into all the specifics — again, what I appreciate about Uni Watch is your enthusiasm, the obsession over all the logos and details.
UW: What about your studio, Electrical Audio — do you have a company softball team or anything like that?
Albini: Chicago has an adult baseball league — the Chicago Metropolitan Baseball Association — that’s been around since the 1920s. So in 2003 we put a team together, called the Winnemac Electrons, “Winnemac” referring to Winnemac Park, where we played our home games. The team started as as Electrical employees and Electrical-adjacent kind of people. We were all in our 40s, with a lot of heavy smokers. It was sort of a drinking society of baseball enthusiasts, well past their prime, who were looking for a way to play baseball again. So that’s how the Electrons were born. The team still exists today, although I think only one of the original Electrons is still on the roster.
UW: Did you play?
Albini: I was only on the team for a couple of years. I didn’t play much because I’m bad. I’d basically be subbed in to play first base or something as a mercy, you know, out of pity. I don’t have any photos of me playing. I was kind of a mascot more than a player.
