SHELLAC

SHELLAC

CREEM PROFILES

NAMES: Steve Albini, Todd Trainer, Bob Weston.

AGE: Timeless.

FROM: Chicago.

OCCUPATION: Making the best of the best sound their best, cleaning clocks at the poker table, being a role model to thousands despite themselves.

HOBBIES: Driving everyone crazy by insisting on calling the Mel Brooks movie/musical The Engineers.

LAST BOOK YOU READ: Wake Me Up When I’m A Size 5: A Cathy Collection, Scar Tissue.

LAST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Outliving at least half of Steely Dan.

QUOTE: “One will prepare, revise and rehearse carefully, with intent, honing an idea to a keen edge, ready to cut the cloth of execution.

The other makes other people responsible by saying, ‘do it again,’ until by chance they are satisfied, then take credit.” —Albini on the two types of perfectionists

PROFILE: Here we are, interrupting a chirpy and chipper Shellac moments after a set at Primavera Sound in Barcelona in 2022, where they indubitably rocked (and hard), made the crowd erupt in a hearty belly laugh, and gave the posers and clueless onlookers the good ok what for. That was a Shellac set in a nutshell—searing noise rock of piercing intensity with thundering low end, peppered with jokes from the band about the crowd and the band members themselves. You know, pure old-fashioned fucking ENTERTAINMENT. It’s hard to believe we won’t see these sourpuss old codgers live anymore, but at least they left us a keepsake in the To All Trains LP to tide us over for a little while. We’ll miss Steve Albini and his witty repartee forever, but maybe not how he’s been right 100 percent of the time. R.I.P., you ledge.

There are zillions

Authentic

of ways to get your name in the papers, but only one way to slake your thirst for CREEM. The quality standards we set down in the dawn of the Seventies

have been a Wild Mouse ride through the Highlands, the Lowlands, and the Barstools. Every drop’s a hoot.

Always say “Boy Howdy!”