Every once in a while, something cuts through the noise and reminds you
why you started doing this at all.
I watched Rock vs. Cancer
and I was in tears by the end of it.
It snuck up on me like a flash flood.
The film follows John Grabski III, a musician dying of cancer, as he decides to spend what little time he has left making a record — not for legacy, not for career, but because making music is how he knows how to be alive.
There’s no sentimentality here, no inspirational soundtrack telling you how to feel. It’s just a man, a clock that won’t stop ticking, and the stubborn decision to
make something before the lights go out.
Steve Albini’s presence in the film is what really cracked me open. Albini doesn’t posture. He doesn’t mythologize himself. He shows up, listens, sets the mics, and gets out of the way. He serves the music — fully, humbly, without ego. Watching him work with John feels like watching someone who understands exactly what matters and what doesn’t. No bullshit. No preciousness. No industry games.
Just: What does this song need? And then doing that, cleanly and decisively. There’s a generosity there that’s rare.
What hit me hardest is how much of myself I saw in both of them. In John, there’s that “fuck it” clarity that only comes when the illusion of endless time is stripped away. There are no guarantees, no later, no someday. You either make the thing or you don’t. You either stand for something or you drift. John didn’t drift. He kept his head up and made his mark, not because it would save him, but because it was true to who he was.
And in Albini, I see the kind of engineer I believe in being: someone in service. Someone who understands that the job is not to impress, not to dominate, not to polish the life out of a performance, but to protect it. To create a space where a person can give you something real and know it won’t be mishandled. Albini’s rawness — his refusal to dress things up or soften the truth — isn’t cruelty. It’s respect. He treats musicians like adults with inner lives, not content generators.
I watched this video before Steve Albini himself died, which makes it land even heavier now. Two people in the film, gone. What remains is the work, the attitude, the example. It’s a reminder that none of us get out of this alive. The only real choice we have is how we show up while we’re here. Whether we hide, hedge, and wait — or whether we commit, speak plainly, and make something that actually matters.
All that remains are the echos of Albini and Grabski, their voices, music, moving images, and the choices they made and committed to. That becomes their legacy, and we can infer from that legacy who they were and the standards they held themselves to.
This is why I do what I do. This is why Panama Sound exists. Not to chase perfection, not to satisfy engineering orthodoxy or a gear addiction, not to win arguments on the internet — but to serve music while people are still breathing. To help capture moments that are alive now, because
now is all we ever get.
Watching people like John Grabski and Steve Albini show up with this kind of clarity makes you want to pause, take a breath, and raise a glass to the ones who taught us how to serve the music with integrity.
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