Theories, rants, etc.
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“I WILL ALWAYS BE THE KIND OF PUNK that shits on Steely Dan,” wrote Steve Albini on Twitter, back in February 2023. A series of withering posts followed about “that cocaine shit music”, including several lampooning people in his comments who pleaded a Damascene conversion to Steely Dan in older age. “I’ve never feared aging, there is genuine wisdom in experience and I try to appreciate that as my youthful capacity for other things fades,” Albini replied. “Not that though. Never that.”
Albini’s thoughts on Fleetwood Mac don’t appear to have been recorded for posterity. But there is a certain karmic balancing to this issue of MOJO being one that mourns the shocking loss of Albini, a genuine underground revolutionary, while celebrating a mainstream superstar like Stevie Nicks on the cover. Albini, capable of both trenchant aesthetic consistency and evolving self-knowledge, might have cavilled at sharing magazine space with such an establishment figure; Nicks, though something of an uncompromising trailblazer herself, probably never considered hiring him as engineer. Nevertheless, this is the broad church that we try to bring together in each issue of MOJO. Not every part of the congregation might get on with each other, but the noise they’re all making can often transcend old prejudices and tribal lines. For some of us, anyway…