Fabulously Unscrupulous
May 5, 2022 4:09 PM Subscribe
How did it come to this? In the 1980s, a vibrant opposition to mass culture thrived. Punk formed a whole DIY ethos, a collective way of life outside of mainstream structures. At any rate, that was the promise. Michael Friedrich looks at Jim Ruland's new book on the legendary punk label in The Unraveling of SST Records [The New Republic; punk rock no-paywall version]
SST previously and previouslier
SST previously and previouslier
And as Negativland declared, 'Corporate SST Sucks Rock'
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:36 PM on May 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:36 PM on May 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
We might let SST’s story serve as a reminder that before the punk movement was sanitized into the “alternative” format, there was a real alternative.I don’t see how SST does show that. Why believe that a company was ever an alternative to the market?
posted by clew at 5:09 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wait, fuck Gregg Ginn? FUCK GREG GINN?!
Well alright. Still, I wish I had said it first.
posted by evilDoug at 5:23 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well alright. Still, I wish I had said it first.
posted by evilDoug at 5:23 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Punk rock was never not the music business.
posted by whuppy at 5:59 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 5:59 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Punk rock was never not the music business
Can you elaborate a bit? I believe it, but as a student of capitalism, I'm always curious the ways in which things are able to get escape velocity in some direction (and also how even when it looks like they've made good, they're almost always sucked back into the gaping maw of Unicron).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:10 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Can you elaborate a bit? I believe it, but as a student of capitalism, I'm always curious the ways in which things are able to get escape velocity in some direction (and also how even when it looks like they've made good, they're almost always sucked back into the gaping maw of Unicron).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:10 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Wait, fuck Gregg Ginn? FUCK GREG GINN?!
Well alright. Still, I wish I had said it first.
I’m sure somebody in a band on SST said it first when the royalty check didn’t come.
posted by atoxyl at 6:11 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well alright. Still, I wish I had said it first.
I’m sure somebody in a band on SST said it first when the royalty check didn’t come.
posted by atoxyl at 6:11 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Snort, Punk (fireworks) - Wikipedia. Like to start things up and set thing off, but not much more than a smouldering ember. Some old homeless guy told me this once, had to mostly agree. Surprised when this was sorta early 90's drama. And the number of bands mentioned that I sorta knew. So I guess fuck Gregg Ginn? Never paid that much attention to labels.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:43 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by zengargoyle at 6:43 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just that even if you're DIY you're still busting ass to sell tickets, merch, and records. For example, I admire the hell out of Pete Shelley for so many reasons, and a big reason is for inventing the DIY model with "Spiral Scratch." Here we see a DIY producing THE vital punk catalog then becoming a successful record label and then predictably succumbing to it.
posted by whuppy at 6:53 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by whuppy at 6:53 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think it's a stretch to say there's no 'meaningful' counterculture today. I think it's more accurate to say that opposition to the mainstream has splintered into hundreds of different movements that each represent alternative viewpoints and lifestyles, and that it's no longer possible to point to a dominant, monoculture-style counterculture as a result. Which is kind of the point, if you think about it.
posted by jordantwodelta at 7:39 PM on May 5, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by jordantwodelta at 7:39 PM on May 5, 2022 [10 favorites]
Greg Ginn is problematic for sure and I’m not sure I even know all of the problems. But he published some amazing music by some amazing musicians.
posted by sjswitzer at 8:10 PM on May 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 8:10 PM on May 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I had some artwork from his brother Raymond that I threw away when I moved once. It would be worth some serious money now, I think, but it was just something that came in SST record packages at the time.
posted by sjswitzer at 8:13 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sjswitzer at 8:13 PM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, I’m not completely sure I’m sad I threw away the Raymond Pettibon artwork. It had the same R. Crumb vibe that was similarly problematic and I just don’t want to try to justify it artistically. I see how you might do it but, um, no.
posted by sjswitzer at 8:34 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 8:34 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
In Long Beach, California, in 1988 (when I was 18) or so, there was some SST facility - maybe it was a warehouse, maybe it was a studio or offices - that had a coffee bar open to the public. It was right by where I was staying at the time and I thought it was awesome that I could get an espresso to such a soundtrack - I was not a purist. There was a parking lot across the street that said "SST parking only." Then it was gone. The parking lot sign was there for years afterwards though. It may have been on 4th and Linden. I am 95% sure this was a real thing I experienced.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 9:24 PM on May 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 9:24 PM on May 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Holy shit SST was at 4th and Linden anyway.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 9:44 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 9:44 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
@pH Indicating Socks, your memory is A-OK. I lived in Long Beach in the early 2000s and took some pictures of the SST signs.
posted by quartzcity at 1:13 AM on May 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by quartzcity at 1:13 AM on May 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Having been in on the end of the 1st stage of this and all of the 2nd (and now spending my middle age in the backwash the lot, mentally), I have to reluctantly say that I think "a vibrant opposition to mass culture" is really overstating things. There was absolutely a hard-built, DIY network of record stores, punk houses, venues, labels, and zines thinly scattered across the entire country in the US, but it was an inch deep and had almost zero impact on the mass culture in its heyday.
(Gregg Ginn's sins aside, Black Flag's relentless touring at a time when there was almost no model for this for punk bands played an important role in helping to build that network.)
It may have well been invisible to everyone beyond the handful of people who participated in it, most of whom - but not all - were white, educated, middle-class-to-affluent, and lived in or adjacent to big cities. Its invisibility was, for many people, a big part of the appeal - it felt like a secret club that you had to work hard to join. But most of us (me included) also had at best rudimentary politics and were clueless about our own privilege and eager to conflate things like making records or having basement shows where no one made any money w/real social progress of some kind.
Its real power was to change individual minds, and to give us a glimpse of a world - as counterculture always has - where something other than money was the goal and standard for success. Also to expose us to radical politics that had very little mainstream visibility in the 80s and early 90s. A lot of the people I know from that time have gone on to do very interesting things as a result, and a number of them have have made real cultural and political change happen where they are.
Like the 60s and 70s counterculture whose models we were both mocking at the time and unconsciously benefiting from, though, the way it impacted the mass culture was through commodification and finding its way out to small towns and exurbs via - as Teegeeack AV Club Secretary notes - chain record stores, radio play outside college stations, "120 Minutes" on MTV, etc. Was it a watered down, tamed version? Absolutely. But I also know a lot of people now who found their way into the underground stuff via their exposure to that, and had their lives changed in exactly the same way as the friends who found it beforehand.
The retrospective using of hippy and punk as shorthands for the respective eras hugely oversells how visible and influential these countercultures were before the mass market got ahold of them. Saying that this somehow explains why there is no counterculture today (there is - a bunch of them - just so fragmented and slippery that, when aspects of them do rise to mass culture visibility, it's often a lot harder to tell) or that Gregg Ginn is somehow an arch-villain in this timeline seems to fail to grasp just how messy, counterintuitive and still-unresolved this whole thing (whatever it is) is.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:19 AM on May 6, 2022 [23 favorites]
(Gregg Ginn's sins aside, Black Flag's relentless touring at a time when there was almost no model for this for punk bands played an important role in helping to build that network.)
It may have well been invisible to everyone beyond the handful of people who participated in it, most of whom - but not all - were white, educated, middle-class-to-affluent, and lived in or adjacent to big cities. Its invisibility was, for many people, a big part of the appeal - it felt like a secret club that you had to work hard to join. But most of us (me included) also had at best rudimentary politics and were clueless about our own privilege and eager to conflate things like making records or having basement shows where no one made any money w/real social progress of some kind.
Its real power was to change individual minds, and to give us a glimpse of a world - as counterculture always has - where something other than money was the goal and standard for success. Also to expose us to radical politics that had very little mainstream visibility in the 80s and early 90s. A lot of the people I know from that time have gone on to do very interesting things as a result, and a number of them have have made real cultural and political change happen where they are.
Like the 60s and 70s counterculture whose models we were both mocking at the time and unconsciously benefiting from, though, the way it impacted the mass culture was through commodification and finding its way out to small towns and exurbs via - as Teegeeack AV Club Secretary notes - chain record stores, radio play outside college stations, "120 Minutes" on MTV, etc. Was it a watered down, tamed version? Absolutely. But I also know a lot of people now who found their way into the underground stuff via their exposure to that, and had their lives changed in exactly the same way as the friends who found it beforehand.
The retrospective using of hippy and punk as shorthands for the respective eras hugely oversells how visible and influential these countercultures were before the mass market got ahold of them. Saying that this somehow explains why there is no counterculture today (there is - a bunch of them - just so fragmented and slippery that, when aspects of them do rise to mass culture visibility, it's often a lot harder to tell) or that Gregg Ginn is somehow an arch-villain in this timeline seems to fail to grasp just how messy, counterintuitive and still-unresolved this whole thing (whatever it is) is.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:19 AM on May 6, 2022 [23 favorites]
An early distribution deal with a major label subsidiary, for example, famously ended with SST being sued and Ginn spending five days in county jail after he violated a court injunction by releasing new Black Flag material.
that's... punk-rock
posted by ovvl at 7:40 AM on May 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
that's... punk-rock
posted by ovvl at 7:40 AM on May 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Stumbled on this, which is obvs related: Miscellaneous Punk Zines
posted by chavenet at 8:55 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 8:55 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Miscellaneous Punk Zines
Lord, that's a walk down memory lane. I used to own stacks of zines (in fact, I owned a bunch of the zines pictured there). I have zero idea what happened to them all. Some probably disintegrated (some critical MRRs were lost to incidents involving clumsily-handled coffee), and at least a few did not survive the old porcelain bath tub in my college apartment (where I did a lot of reading while waiting for bleach/hair dye). But as a noted packrat (I still have my letters from summer camp when I was a kid), it seems unlikely that I threw all of them away.
posted by thivaia at 9:03 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Lord, that's a walk down memory lane. I used to own stacks of zines (in fact, I owned a bunch of the zines pictured there). I have zero idea what happened to them all. Some probably disintegrated (some critical MRRs were lost to incidents involving clumsily-handled coffee), and at least a few did not survive the old porcelain bath tub in my college apartment (where I did a lot of reading while waiting for bleach/hair dye). But as a noted packrat (I still have my letters from summer camp when I was a kid), it seems unlikely that I threw all of them away.
posted by thivaia at 9:03 AM on May 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have a musician friend who knows Greg Ginn fairly well, and got a call from him when Ginn was reforming his version of Black Flag a while back. He asked my friend if he would play bass on tour for the "reunion". Since my friend was in his 60s and had never played in a punk band, he turned him down. When I asked him why Ginn had asked him, my friend said, "I think I'm one of only two or three people left on the planet who still get along with him!"
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 9:34 AM on May 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 9:34 AM on May 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
Punk as political rebellion was always weak sauce. (Punk as musical rebellion against major label crap, definitely, and, sometimes as favored entertainment for people who were otherwise political rebels, sure.) But in my early 90s heyday of paying attention, I always thought the metal bands made better music, and metal fans had a better time, because they were not under the pressure of political signification, even if (as was often the case for punks) the primary response was to deny any political intent.
posted by MattD at 10:18 AM on May 6, 2022
posted by MattD at 10:18 AM on May 6, 2022
The retrospective using of hippy and punk as shorthands for the respective eras hugely oversells how visible and influential these countercultures were before the mass market got ahold of them.
I mean, that's the definition of influential, right? It influenced the mainstream by degrees.
But your comment in general is dead on. There is a kind of rose colored hindsight that happens where people think that this stuff was going on and blowing peoples minds, when most people had no idea it was happening.
In music that usually shakes out as musicians being influenced by a thing before audiences are. The Ramones never had any hits, but went on to be one of the most influential bands maybe in all of rock and roll. Fugazi never got any radio play, but are claimed as an influence by virtually every band (I worked on Maroon 5's website way back when and they listed them as an influence...)
This book is on my night table, but I haven't gotten to it yet, so I shouldn't comment on it. I will say that whatever else Ginn and by extension SST did, they did make it so that when I was in high school, I went to see Black Flag and Meat Puppets opened and that juxtaposition blew my little mind.
posted by lumpenprole at 11:26 AM on May 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I mean, that's the definition of influential, right? It influenced the mainstream by degrees.
But your comment in general is dead on. There is a kind of rose colored hindsight that happens where people think that this stuff was going on and blowing peoples minds, when most people had no idea it was happening.
In music that usually shakes out as musicians being influenced by a thing before audiences are. The Ramones never had any hits, but went on to be one of the most influential bands maybe in all of rock and roll. Fugazi never got any radio play, but are claimed as an influence by virtually every band (I worked on Maroon 5's website way back when and they listed them as an influence...)
This book is on my night table, but I haven't gotten to it yet, so I shouldn't comment on it. I will say that whatever else Ginn and by extension SST did, they did make it so that when I was in high school, I went to see Black Flag and Meat Puppets opened and that juxtaposition blew my little mind.
posted by lumpenprole at 11:26 AM on May 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Alternative English labels like Rough Trade and Factory records created a real buzz in the 1980's.
I'm not sure the founders received much financial rewards for their efforts.
Just some fame amongst the music press and fans.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 2:32 AM on May 7, 2022
I'm not sure the founders received much financial rewards for their efforts.
Just some fame amongst the music press and fans.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 2:32 AM on May 7, 2022
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posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:32 PM on May 5, 2022 [10 favorites]