2. In the early days of the label, who were some of the bands signed to it?

Before I got there SST had two Black Flag 45s out (“Nervous Breakdown”, “Six Pack”), plus the “Jealous Again” 12″ e.p. and the Minutemen “Paranoid Time” 7″ e.p.; these were the releases we were distributing up at Systematic Record Distribution in Berkeley.  There were other releases we distributed like the Poshboy label Black Flag “Louie Louie” 45 and the “Future Looks Bright” split release cassette so I knew Saccharine Trust, and The Stains from that compilation plus the New Alliance comps, “Cracks in the Sidewalk” and “Chunks”.  I had also seen these bands live in San Francisco except for Overkill who also had recorded a 7″ e.p. that was still unreleased.  In early 1981 Hermosa Beach condemned the Church and the Wurmhole buildings, Black Flag left on tour after a last party at the Church where according to Dez they invited all the HBers figuring they’d begin the demolition, plus Media Art’s lease ran out and the rent more than quadrupled so the studio folded.  SST then moved to Torrance and lasted there about half a year before they were kicked out.  The Poshboy releases were to keep something coming out while the band was on tour figuring out what they would do when they returned, including who would sing and whether to re-record the entire “Damaged” album since Henry would be singer and Dez would be a second guitarist and the sound would be different.  The first things I worked on were getting Minutemen “The Punch Line” and Saccharine Trust “PaganIcons” released, the first Meat Puppets album recorded and released, the Black Flag “Thirsty and Miserable”/”Life of Pain” Licorice Pizza giveaway 45 ready for Unicorn, and getting The Blasting Concept compilation and Black Flag “Everything Went Black” together.  Spot did all the tape editing and I mostly organized the graphics and parts so things were ready to print and press.

3. What was it like on a day to day basis at SST?

It changed over the years I was there.  We weren’t kicked out of town again but often had to move to expand our warehouse and office space.  We moved back to South Bay instead of following Unicorn to Santa Monica in May 1982.  SST-Phelan Ave was small but had a shower so it was the office and where most of us lived.  Black Flag was still touring on “Damaged” and that was Black Flag, Spot, and Mugger until the end of 1982 when Spot quit the tour, Mugger became soundman and Davo Claassen the roadie.  Pettibon rented a studio a couple blocks away on Artesia Blvd and Black Flag found the space next to him that became Global Booking and the practice room for Black Flag and other bands.  So the phone at SST was used mostly for record manufacturing and distribution calls, then in early 1983 Mugger left the touring and was doing mail order and accounts on that phone too.  The Global phone was used mostly by Chuck Dukowski for booking or Jordan Schwartz tour publicity calls by 1983.  People were sleeping at both addresses, though Dez stayed with his family in Torrance, Henry stayed at Phelan, then with Rosetta in Lawndale, before settling in at the Ginn’s house in Hermosa Beach.  The Phelan Ave year-and-a-half seemed to bring a crisis every week to do with Unicorn, Black Flag’s vehicles, jail, Medea’s return… but we also made alot of progress.  When we lost the Phelan space ($150/mo.) we rented a small garage studio w/ shower ($250/mo.) in Redondo Beach from Greg’s sister Linda Flynn and her husband John.  We stored record stock in their garage too.  I lived at the Ginn’s and I think Mugger improvised at girlfriends’ places or Global.  He started going to night school for business classes so SST became his lab project.  In late 1984 Mugger moved SST into a strip mall office in Lawndale and I moved into that garage studio.  Mugger stayed at the Lawndale office and took showers at the Ginns’ or at girlfriends’.  At the Lawndale office Mugger and I were in the back, and up front Jeannine Garfias took over the mail order, and Mike Watt was Spaceman, our retail promo guy.  We probably had four or five phone lines at this point because Spaceman was talking to every record shop in the country non-stop!  When we had promo mailings to pack up we often had D.Boon and Tom Troccoli, a Global tour-hand as of 1984, come by.  Also Naomi Petersen shot some good Minutemen promo photos at that address (D.Boon on the handtruck being wheeled around by the other two) and John Talley-Jones shot the Minutemen video for their version of his Urinals song “Ack Ack Ack” after SST moved out to Hawthorne in early 1985.  At SST-Hawthorne we finally had a real drive-in warehouse connected to a large office space where people worked in the open with cubicle-like dividers between desks.  Ray Farrell did press and radio promotions, Mike Whittaker became Spaceman for retail promo, and Linda Trudnich became the receptionist.  When we had large mailings to do Mugger would go to some day-laborer corner and pick up Mexicans, eventually there were some regular guys we used and as they spoke no English Jeannine often did the translating.  Jeannine did mail order until she was injured in the van crash that killed D. Boon.  At Global in late 1985 they took over Pettibon’s office and Naomi Petersen and Jordan did tour promotions.  I left SST in March 1986 after training Rich Ford to manage the manufacturing and Kara Nicks took over distribution.

4. Any stories about spot? how did you meet him?

I didn’t see Black Flag until Feb. 20 1981 at Barrington Hall in Berkeley.  I had been ordering records for Systematic via mail and phone.  I met up with them the next day to show them Systematic on a day off.  Mostly I talked with Greg and Chuck but I think Spot and Mugger were with the band.  As they toured they went into shops and when they asked where they’d gotten their SST records the answer was always Systematic at that point so they knew we had something going on that helped them make touring pay.  I was impressed that Black Flag came with their own studio engineer-producer and live soundman.  We dealt with records and alot of the sound on records didn’t really work well with punk rock as by the 80s the scene tastemakers had it that rock and roll was dead and post-punk was something softer and studio-determined rather than played live and recorded that way.  I called SST in spring 1981 and got Spot on the phone but he was watching the Torrance cops ransacking the office looking for drugs so he wouldn’t answer my questions about ordering records; he’d just laugh nervously and say, “Uhhh… I don’t know!”  I don’t think I really met and talked with Spot until I came down to SST at Unicorn in West Hollywood.  I watched the finishing of the “Damaged” album and then I was more involved with Spot on the Meat Puppets first album.  Without Spot each gig and each record’s production would’ve been a crapshoot because in those years the technical people in the recording industry and live music venues were actively hostile to punk rock.  When we had legal problems with Unicorn and they dragged on and cost us time and money I worried Spot was bumming hard and was going to leave, which he did sometime in 1985.  He was tired of listening to Greg and Chuck by that point but he liked what Mugger and I were doing to make the label work.  I wish we’d had the capital to release and work every record he recorded.  Black Flag tours were how a new scene was organizing itself and many bands wanted to steal fire from them by using Spot in the studio.  It wasn’t until 1984 that our bands began to think about getting on the radio and Spot had no interest in that aspect of commercial record production.  I think Spot as a musician came into his own after he stopped recording bands other than his own.  I’d see him solo in Wyoming and his playful, jazzed, time-signature bending fusion of garage, beatnik, and Celtic folk was unlike anyone else’s.  I described his live guitar playing then as splitting atoms on the neck.

6. Tell us about your latest book, Joe.  Are you a fan of the western genre?

Since Western Stories was published I’ve got a new collection out, Chicago Stories.  I like genres, especially for films.  It seems to me the movies began showing people the wide world from the beginning in 1900.  The first films were short collections of what have since been called actualities.  People wanted to see Rome, Egypt, etc., before anyone knew they wanted to be told stories visually.  But all those sights meant that literature was going to be changed in that one didn’t need to describe things so much in a novel or especially in a screenplay.  Photography changed painting, and movies changed novels or should have.  I write screenplays for the reader but don’t get into any technical things except for what might be called the money shots, where a close-up or a tracking shot would have a particularly impact.  Otherwise the reader’s imagination is going to do a better job (with an unlimited budget to boot).  I do like western films; I can’t say I’ve read many western novels.  If I do I’ll start with Luke Short novels based on the quality of the film adaptations.  Early Elmore Leonard novels were mostly westerns and I’m sure they are great too.  Chicago Stories are police stories:  a retired cop, on-duty detectives, and one involving a rivertown detective and a reservation sheriff tracking a killer during hunting season.

 

7. Any favorite punk bands? What do you think of punk these days?

I don’t really search out much new music, sad to say.  Sometimes I’ll idly search through youtube clips from the fifties or sixties – things i remember or just stuff that looks like it might be good and if it is I’ll post it on facebook.  I also like reggae 45s with the dub side included – those are from the 70s up to 83 when they started using drum machines in Jamaica.

8. What was it like working with The Minutemen, Saint Vitus and Black Flag, to see them in their early days?

It of course helps to know the songs when seeing a band for the first time.  The Minutemen were unusual in that even that didn’t always prepare you to comprehend what they were putting out live.  I first saw them in a hall gig in San Francisco on a Black Flag bill (prob 10th St. Hall Apr 25 1981).  I liked “Paranoid Time” e.p. and maybe the “Joy” 45 and some compilation tracks were out by then.  At Systematic we destributed all the records and I knew all the released tunes of most of the bands I’d see live.  But I don’t think you could really appreciate the Minutemen unless you saw them at a small club like the Anti-Club.  When they were just a few inches above the audience and maybe only the vocals and snare were thru the PA.  Then the directness of the playing thru the amps and in the room could be heard as if in 3D sensurround like you were on stage with them.  Then all the tumult clarified and you could hear the music and how it was put together in front of you.

Slower heavier bands can be appreciated in larger, echo-y halls; I especially liked Flipper and their sound made more sense as they graduated to the larger venues.  Saint Vitus were like that too in the sense of their slow-to-slower tempo allowed the music to work in large venues and they probably played enormous venues later in their career as they got big in Europe – they were always a club band in America.  Saint Vitus early on were really like a garage band.  Each time in the studio they were able to play a bit more adapted to the studio for overdubs, etc.  But the first album was live in one large room.  The Walking Dead was released on a UK e.p. and its the slowest recording from the largest room they ever recorded in.  Listen to it and when the band drops out of the arrangement leaving the drum beat naked you can hear the room size and aura clearly.  SPOT was kind of using the polar opposite approach working with these two bands – Minutemen and Saint Vitus.  He had also done the Descendents Milo Goes to College album in that same big room at Total Access but with close-mic’ing of the amps and drums – if he set up room mics for Bill Stevenson’s drums he probably used very little in the mix.  While at Systematic I bought a small Aiwa tape recorder to tape Flipper gigs.  While it worked well with them and Saint Vitus it didn’t work so well with the Minutemen or especially Black Flag.  Black Flag played fast and the overdrive of performance and distortion settings made them hard to record.  Once you knew their songs well it would be the less streamlined B-sides with their rhythmic twists and stops that made those radical early audiences respond like they could hear old Pavlov ringing a bell:  Fix Me, I’ve Had It, My Rules, I’ve Heard It Before, Wound Up…