SST Bands And All That

The album that changed my life:  1984's Zen Arcade by Husker Du.

In previous posts I’ve often discussed the rapidly changing nature of post-punk music.  After punk imploded in the late 70’s, many artists sought to fuse the energy and emotion of punk with other rock forms to create innovative (and potentially longer-lasting) musical forms.   In England, bands merged punk with reggae, funk, mod/ska, Northern soul, and electronic music to create interesting new sounds.  In a previous post I also discussed how in Los Angeles punk musicians began hearkening back to groups and sounds of the 60’s, forming the Paisley Underground sound. 

At the same time the Paisley Underground was catching fire another such musical revolution was occurring in Los Angeles, one that would eventually spread across America.   This revolution centered around Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn and his label SST Records, which eventually became a powerhouse independent label by the late 80’s (though it was eventually eclipsed by Sub Pop in the late 80’s and early 90’s).  Ginn formed Black Flag in 1976 and they quickly achieved notoriety as the South Bay’s most intense band.  They went through a number of singers (including future Circle Jerk Keith Morris; I still think “I’ve Had It” and “Nervous Breakdown” are two of the best American punk songs of the 70’s) before former S.O.A. singer Henry Rollins joined in 1981.  It was with Rollins that Black Flag achieved their most lasting success; their album Damaged remains a high point for hardcore punk, with songs like “Rise Above”, Six Pack”, “Thirsty and Miserable”, “Life of Pain”, and “Padded Cell” remaining as intense and violent today as they were almost 30 years ago when they were first recorded.  In fact, this album was considered so anti-parent by their record distributor that initially they sought to block its release. 

Black Flag did everything right:  their name was one of the greatest punk band names ever for its connotations of both piracy/anarchy and insecticide (there’s even a legend about how Black Flag fans made stickers with “Black Flag kills Ants on contact” on them and stuck them all over LA during a visit from poncy new ro band Adam and the Ants in the early 80’s); their logo was incredibly simple yet iconic and forceful (I faithfully copied it onto my black leather jacket); even their album cover and flier art was incredible, done by Ginn’s brother Raymond Pettibone, who went on to become a highly acclaimed visual artist.

At this point, Black Flag was the epitome of the Southern California hardcore band:  shaved heads and songs that were short, intense blasts of energy and emotion.  But as the 80’s progressed, Black Flag moved more and more away from their beginnings and instead became a leader in the evolution of post-punk hardcore music.  Black Flag, and Greg Ginn’s guitar playing in particular, started to become more and more influenced by such non/pre-punk musical genres as free jazz, blues, classical, heavy metal, progressive rock, and jam band rock.  Many if not all of these genres, which emphasize technical ability, improvisation, and longer, slower, less strident songs, were extremely antithetical to the punk sound of that time, and in adopting these disparate strains of music Black Flag alienated huge chunks of their audience.  Black Flag almost seemed to revel in this antagonism, and would often do purposely annoying things like insist on playing tapes of Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple albums over the PA system before their set.  They also started growing their hair longer, most notably Rollins, who went from a shaved head, skinhead look to having arguably the longest hair of any musician in Los Angeles.

Due to legal entanglements, Black Flag was unable to release albums or even use the Black Flag name for several years.  Finally, in 1984, they were freed of these litigious encumbrances and as if to make up for lost time released four studio albums in the next two years which highlighted this new, sludgier sound.  The first, My War, contained several songs highlighting this longer, slower, heavier vibe.  However, songs like “Can’t Decide” “Forever Time”, and “My War” walked a thin line between the short fast blasts of noise of the Black Flag of old and the newer, more metallic feel. 

Their next album, Slip It In, was even more metallic, particularly on the title track, which starts with a noodling, ominous bass before Bill Stephenson’s staccato drumming kicks in.  Ginn’s guitar here sounds like the sky melting at the end of the apocalypse:  its loud, soaring, noodling, raging, maniacal, intense.  This song to me was the ultimate fusion of the angry energy of punk and the technicality of metal; the only other song that comes remotely close to me is from the metal end, “Peace Sells” by Megadeth. 

I can still remember when this album came out, what a revelation it was.  It was WAY different from “Damaged”, which I’d owned for several years and loved, and while part of me at that time was still uncomfortable with the metal aspects here I could see how this was a logical evolution of the band.  I first heard this album in 1985, a year after it had come out, on a compilation tape a girl from Las Vegas who lived on my dorm floor at UCLA had made; she used to claim listening to Black Flag made her sleepy.  She has to be the only person on earth to feel this way as this music still makes me feel like destroying something!!!  She eventually just gave me her mix tape, but I soon bought it on cassette since I liked it so much.

An interesting note to me is how similar several of the songs on this album are thematically to the Stooges’ seminal Fun House album.  “Slip It In”, which is about promiscuity, is reminiscent of “Loose”; “Black Coffee”, which is about jealousy, mirrors “TV Eye”, and “Rat’s Eyes” recalls “Dirt”.  This was salient to me because in 1985 or ’86 Henry Rollins wrote a short article for Spin magazine about his two favorite albums of all time, Fun House by the Stooges and White Light, White Heat by the Velvet Underground.  Inspired by this, I soon after this bought Fun House and it absolutely rocked my world too. 

At this time, 1985/1986, Black Flag was by far one of my favorite bands (much to my then-girlfriend’s dismay; she HATED loud angry music like this, leaning more towards bands like Boston herself).  I listened to “Slip It In” and “Black Coffee” almost incessantly, and loved nothing better than skateboarding around the wide open parking structures at UCLA while playing them at full volume on my Walkman. 

I was less of a fan of their two subsequent releases, Loose Nut and In My Head.  Loose Nut was sloppy, sludgy, ponderous and had no catchy songs.  Moreover, the mix was muddy and Rollins’ vocals were deeply buried in it, something I think Ginn did on purpose since he and Rollins were not on the best of terms by that point. I bought it on cassette shortly after it came out but it never clicked with me, and I currently don’t own any of its songs in MP3 format.   In My Head was somewhat better, a logical extension of Slip It In, which took the technicality of Ginn's guitar playing even further.  But in so doing it removed nearly all of the anger and passion that characterized classic Black Flag.  On some songs it simply sounds like Henry Rollins dispassionately reciting poetry over Ginn playing scales (“I Can See You” is the most flagrant example here)—boring.  Only on a couple of songs, “Drinking and Driving” and “Society’s Tease”, do they approach the intensity of the Flag of old, but even here the rage is muted, suffocated under Ginn's ultra-intricate guitar.  

Alas, my timing in terms of becoming a Black Flag fan could not have been worse; by 1986 Black Flag were falling apart.  That year they rarely gigged around LA; I can remember avidly poring over the LA Weekly to find a gig to attend.  The only one I remember was one at Cal State University Long Beach, which is about a mile or so from my parents’ house in Long Beach so I was eagerly awaiting it but it ended up being cancelled.  In August of ’86 they broke up for good; that fall I saw Henry Rollins do one of his first poetry readings, at UCLA’s Cooperage, and I approached him after the show about when Black Flag might play again (few people were aware they’d broken up at this early point, just a couple short months since the breakup), and he told me “Black Flag is no more.”  I was devastated but soon moved on, as did they.

If all they’d done is release their own music, Black Flag still would have been one of the most influential bands of the 80’s.  But it was arguably as a record label owner that Ginn had his greatest impact on the 80’s independent music scene.  SST records, started as an outgrowth of Ginn’s business dealing high end audio components in the mid-70’s as a teenager, quickly became established as one of the great independent record labels of the 80’s.  Ginn signed bands and released albums that reflected his own evolution away from the simplicity of punk and reflected the extreme eclecticism of Ginn’s own tastes.  Some of their signings showecased Greg’s continued interest in the sounds of 70’s metal a la Black Sabbath.  Overkill and Wurm (Chuck Dukowski’s first band) had a very metal sound.  Nothing is available by either band on iTunes but Overkill’s  “Triumph Of The Will” from the album of the same name is posted on YouTube and accurately reflects the band’s heavy, sludgy sound.   Similarly, “Feast” by Wurm off the album of the same name is also on YouTube and is even more traditional in its metal-ness—Simon Smallwood’s screechy vocals are clearly influenced by predecessors like Robert Plant and Ronnie James Dio.  “Bad Habits” continues in the same vein, striding between Mountain and Deep Purple. 

One of SST’s most legendary metal bands was Saint Vitus.  Vitus were pioneers in the field of doom or stoner metal, which took Black Sabbath’s first album as the musical gospel, and thus all of their songs are incredibly slow and heavy.  Vitus’s songs in particular were about the same speed as dripping tar and rarely deviated from the same doom-laden guitar chords from “Black Sabbath”. 

I was lucky enough to see Saint Vitus during their heyday in the mid 80’s, at LA’s Anti-Club.  They were hands down one of the loudest bands I’ve ever heard, but even more salient was the fact that they were some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.  I attended this concert with the yuppie boyfriend (he was still wearing his tie from work) of my girlfriend’s roommate who also happened to be a scary/psycho alcoholic (the foot wells in the back seat of his Z were filled with empty beer cans) and I’m sure we both totally stuck out in that crowd, but even through my drunkenly hazy memory of that night I still remember having a long, fascinating discussion with guitarist Dave Chandler and bassist Mark Adams.  They were interesting guys with broad tastes in music (Chandler told me one of his then-favorite artists was Madonna!). 

Their music remains some of the most ominous and horrific sounding music ever recorded in my opinion, almost as freaky scary as the song “Black Sabbath”, which I consider to be the scariest song ever recorded to this day both for the supernatural lyrics and for the doom-laden feel of the music itself.  My favorite Vitus songs are “Hallow’s Victim” (which REALLY channels the bridge of “Black Sabbath” into a new and equally despairing song), “Look Behind You”, “War Is Our Destiny”, and “White Stallions” from when Scott Reagers was their vocalist, and “Born Too Late” and their ponderous cover of “Thirsty and Miserable” by Black Flag from when Scott Weinrich was their vocalist.  Music has never gotten any heavier than this.

Another of SST’s proto-metal bands is the legendarily excoriated SWA.  SWA were formed by former Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski, former Overkill singer Merrill Ward, and October Faction drummer Matt Cameron.  Their sound was a sludgy proto-metal similar to Overkill but Merrill’s almost operatic, grandiose vocals were a major component here.   SWA have been widely derided for being one of the worst bands SST ever recorded, but I saw them live several times in the mid-80’s and they were a fantastic live band.  In fact, I even interviewed them for the UCLA radio station around 1987 or so, and they were really nice, interesting guys (though I also remember them asking me if they could smoke weed in our recording room; I said yes even though I’m not much of a loadie myself; after the interview they snuck into the midnight cinema at UCLA).  I’m still partial to “Sex Doctor” (which sadly is not available on either iTunes or YouTube), even despite its ham-fisted metaphors and dated misogyny (ironically, the next year guitar goddess Sylvia Juncosa would join the band).

Another SST band that mined the sounds of 70’s guitar rock was the amazing DC3.  Formed by former Black Flag guitarist and vocalist Dez Cadena after his departure from the Flag in 1981, DC3 looked to the jam band/space rock sounds of such 70’s pioneers as Mountain, Hawkwind, and the Pink Fairies for inspiration.  I can still remember reading an interview with Dez from around ’86 or ’87 where he talks about Lemmy of Motorhead being a member of Hawkwind; this was my very first introduction to Hawkwind and I later made it a point to hunt down MP3s by them during the Napster era just so I could finally hear what they sounded like.  DC3 did a number of covers by these bands, including Mountain’s “Theme From An Imaginary Western” on SST’s Blasting Concept compilation, a blistering cover of Hawkwind’s “Master of the Universe” on SST’s Melting Plot compilation, and Hawkwind's “Psi Power” off their own live CD Vida. 

I saw Saint Vitus, SWA, and DC3 a couple of different times in the mid-80’s as a triple bill; SST would often organize shows like this with two or more of their artists playing on the same bill; in fact, they used to throw these hugely popular barbeques where these and other SST bands would play at the Anti-Club during the day but since I didn’t own a car (and the Anti-Club was in east LA, miles and miles from UCLA’s campus where I lived) I never was able to attend. 

Other SST bands explored a similar jam/blues musical territory.  Ginn himself was a member of several other bands at the time, including Gone and October Faction, which contained various (and often rotating) memberships consisting of members of other SST bands (including Black Flag itself).  Sadly, no songs by either band are currently available on iTunes or YouTube, or any other internet outlet that I can tell, though their CDs can still be purchased via SST's online store.  In addition, several live songs by another Ginn-associated jam band, Tom Troccoli’s Dog (Ginn actually played bass for them), are currently posted on YouTube.  Jam bands don’t do much for me personally; indeed, most of the stuff I’ve watched/listened to on YouTube by TTD sounds like the post-Nigel Tufnel blues/jazz fusion exploration that Spinal Tap played at the amusement park where they were second bill to a puppet show.   Since I’m not a major fan of the Grateful Dead or Phish this music doesn’t really do much for me. 

Several SST bands infused their sound with elements of the 70’s but without being so overtly indebted to specific artists or movements.  Das Damen made music that touched on 60’s psychedelia but still managed to maintain a post-punk vibe.   Similarly, Dinosaur Jr. went on to greater acclaim after they left SST in the 90’s but I still love “Kracked” and the intense wah and feedback of “Little Fury Things” off their SST album You’re Living All Over Me.  Washington’s Screaming Trees created music that also had heavy elements of 60’s psychedelia but also had bizarre freak-out elements similar to the Butthole Surfers.

Another SST band that went on to huge success in the 90’s was Soundgarden.  I still consider their first release for SST, Ultramega OK, to be their crowning moment, and the song “Beyond The Wheel” in particular is the ultimate in heavy 70’s sludginess coupled to a heavily Zep-influenced vocal. 

Not all SST bands were so heavily indebted to the 70’s:  several were straightforward hardcore bands.  For example, some of their earliest releases were by the East LA hardcore band the Stains as well as albums by Austin’s Dicks and Vancouver’s Subhumans (not to be mistaken with the English band of the same name).  Most songs off the Stains’ first album are posted on YouTube, including “Young Nazis” and “Pretty Girls”.  What’s interesting is how much these songs sound like Black Flag songs from around the same time—hardcore but with a metallic edge. 

Another band whose records were released by SST, Bl’ast, were in fact derided for sounding TOO much like early Black Flag.  Singer Clifford Dinsmore had a raspy shout that was eerily similar to that of Henry Rollins.  I like “Tomorrow” and especially “Surf and Destroy”, which I found on YouTube.

Painted Willie, formed by famed musician/filmmaker Dave Markey after the demise of his seminal hardcore band Sin 34, was a bit more straightforward but still made music that had complex rhythms and heavy guitar chords.  Their 1985 album Mind Bowling is available on iTunes, and the songs “405” and “Cover Girl” exemplify this heavy-but-complex sound.

One of the greatest pop punk bands of all time were another SST band, the Descendents, who played a very catchy form of punk that would likely appeal greatly to anyone who is a fan of Green Day or Blink 182.  One of my favorite songs from the 80’s is their cover of the Beach Boys’ “Wendy” off their album Enjoy, and I also like “Clean Sheets” off All and “I Won’t Let Me” and I’m The One” off their 1996 reunion album Everything Sucks.  Amazingly, all of these albums are available on iTunes.

But the absolute kings of pop punk in my opinion were Husker Du.  The Minneapolis trio made some of the best music of the entire 80’s, most notably on their double album Zen Arcade from 1984.  I bought this album around this time and it quite literally changed my life.  Until then my main musical passions had been English new wave and post-punk, but starting in 1984 and continuing through my high school graduation in 1985 I got more and more into true punk music.  I’d read some gushing review of Zen Arcade somewhere (possibly in Rolling Stone I think) and bought it on a whim and was just FLOORED by how amazing it was.  I’d expected loud, angry, possibly silly music, and what I got was a startling range of music from straight-out hardcore (“Something I Learned Today”, “Broken Home, Broken Heart”) folk (“Never Talking To You Again”),  psychedelia (“Dreams Recurring”, “Hare Krshna”, “What’s Going On”), even classical (“One Step At A Time”, “Monday Will Never Be The Same”).  This was easily the most wide-ranging and ambitious music I’d ever heard, and it literally shifted my musical axis away from England and the sounds of the Smiths and Depeche Mode and firmly toward American post-punk.  My favorite songs from this album are the beautiful and catchy pop punk songs, like “Newest Industry”, “Whatever”, “Pink Turns To Blue”, and best of all, “Chartered Trips”.  I bought, and loved, their next album, 1985’s Flip Your Wig—the title track and “Makes No Sense At All” are two other favorite songs by this amazing band--even though the production was very muddled and Bob Mould's vocals are often lost in the mix.  I also saw Husker Du on the Flip Your Wig tour, at LA’s Roxy club in spring 1986, and it was an incredible show—the energy was unreal, and that was one of the first shows I ever attended that had an actual slam pit (my dorm friend Scott got sucked maliciously into it and barely escaped major injury).  I didn’t have a car and neither did my friends so I borrowed my friend Julie’s VW squareback to get there.

I didn’t get into Husker Du’s other album, New Day Rising, until years later for some reason.  I like “Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” and “Celebrated Summer”, where Husker Du further fleshed out their melodic hardcore sound.  In addition, I’ve gone back and gotten three other great songs of theirs on MP3, including the truly disturbing “Diane” off their Metal Circus EP, their cover of “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds, and the B-side to this, “Love Is All Around" (the Mary Tyler Moore theme song).  Everything this band did was amazing.  I think a recent quote from no less an expert than Dave Grohl is pertinent here:  “No Husker Du, no Foo Fighters.”  That to me sums up extremely succinctly the influence this band has had on contemporary music.

Another thing SST was noted for were bands that explored the territory between rock and jazz.  One of the earliest proponents of this sound were San Pedro’s Minutemen, though I have to say my favorite Minutemen song is their distinctly UNjazzy cover of Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” off the Blasting Concept compilation.  But the Minutemen were one of several SST bans to achieve massive critical acclaim in the 80’s for their jazzy, funky, arty explorations.  All of their albums are available on iTunes, including their massively respected double album Double Nickels On the Dime, which mixes everything from acoustic folk to jazz to funk to art rock with punk.  I can still remember seeing the video for their song “King of the Hill” off their Mersh EP, and thinking man, this band is WEIRD.  They were, and their music still sounds like almost nothing else recorded before or since.  Leader D. Boon tragically died in a car accident in 1985, but bassist Mike Watt eventually went on to form another hugely acclaimed 80’s SST band, fIREHOSE with guitarist and vocalis Ed Crawford.  I can remember when their first album Ragin’ Full On came out in 1986; “Brave Captain” is still a favorite of mine, a hugely catchy song but that also still has that funk/jazz edginess of classic Minutemen. 

Other SST bands carried on in an even more overtly jazzy/arty direction.  Saccharine Trust melded the atonal avant garde sound of the Velvets with hardcore punk and even jazz.  Their album Paganicons (available on iTunes) was reportedly one of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain’s favorite albums of all time; I like “I Am Right” for its mix of strident atonality and jazziness.  Guitarist Joe Baiza would go on to form the even more jazzy Universal Congress Of; two of their later albums are available on iTunes, and “Pickled Bullhorn” veers toward a wild amalgamation of Pat Metheny style jazz guitar with John Coltrane-inspired sax honking.  Former Saccharine Trust drummer Tony Cicero’s next band, Slovenly, also fused funky and jazzy rhythms with the stridency of art and punk rock; there is a post of them performing “Orange Crush” at LA’s Anti-Club from 1987 on YouTube.   

The zenith of all 80’s art/damage/noise bands was of course Sonic Youth, and they released one of the finest albums of their long, storied career, Evol, on SST in 1986.  I was a young DJ at the UCLA radio station the year this was released and I often had late night slots (12-3 AM or 3-6 AM); hearing either “Shadow of a Doubt” or “Star Power” to this day reminds me of being alone in Ackerman Union, pitch dark outside, and feeling like I was the only person left on earth. 

Another favorite of Kurt Cobain were Arizona’s Meat Puppets, whose heady musical brew of punk, country, and psychedelia was hugely respected in the 80’s and beyond, and who, along with Husker Du and the Minutemen, brought SST its most acclaim.  Their first album hewed closely to a straight hardcore sound, though “Milo, Sorgum and Maize” and “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” and their cover of “Franklin’s Tower” by the Grateful Dead hinted at the craziness to come.   Another great offbeat early track is their cover of “I Just Want To Make Love To You” by Foghat, which is on the Blasting Concept compilation.   It was with their second album, 1984’s Meat Puppets II, that they started to achieve their full potential.  As any Nirvana fan knows, this album was one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite of all time, and he covered no less than three songs on it in his MTV acoustic show, “Lake of Fire”, “Plateau”, and “Oh, Me”, all fantastic songs.  Another standout is the instrumental track “Aurora Borealis”.

1985’s Up On The Sun was even more country- and psychedelia-tinged, and established them as bona fide indie gods.   This extremely mellow album was worlds away from their debut’s atonal punk shriek, and may well be the greatest Grateful Dead album the Dead never recorded.  Their follow-up, Huevos, is similarly mellow and psychedelia-tinged, a wonderfully peaceful and fun album.  “Look At the Rain”, “Bad Love” and “I Can’t Be Counted On” exemplify this mellow vibe. 

One of the first concerts I saw in my first year in college was the Meat Puppets supporting Up On The Sun at UCLA’s Cooperage in fall of 1985.  I remember it being literally full to the rafters:  the small venue was so crowded there was literally people sitting in the crossbeams in the ceiling.   Literally every punk, alternative, indie person who went to UCLA (or knew somebody who did) was there.  It was also one of the loudest concerts I’ve ever been to; I can remember barely being able to hear anything it was so loud. That concert, along with my recent discoveries of Husker Du and of post-Damaged Black Flag, set me on a path toward American independent music that I haven’t strayed that far from since. 

As should be evident from this post, my collegiate musical experience is extensively colored by my various interactions with the SST bands, from discovering their albums (Husker Du, Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr.), seeing them live (Meat Puppets, Husker Du, SWA, DC3, Saint Vitus, Leaving Trains, Treacherous Jaywalkers, Sister Double Happiness, Screaming Trees), playing their songs on my college radio show (Sonic Youth, Das Damen, Slovenly, Zoogz Rift, Descendents, Gone, October Faction), meeting/interviewing them in clubs or on my radio show (SWA, Saint Vitus), many of my musical experiences in the 80’s were centered around bands on this label.  As mentioned throughout this post, several SST bands went on to bigger success post-SST, including Sonic Youth, Husker Du (who were one of the first independent bands to sign to a major label when they signed with Warner in 1986 and released Warehouse:  Songs and Stories), Soundgarden, Dinosaur Jr. and Screaming Trees.  Many of the SST bands were major influences on the subsequent indie/alternative explosion of the early 90’s; indeed, except for Flipper you’d be hard pressed to find any band who was more of an influence on the grunge scene of the late 80’s and early 90’s than Black Flag.  Flag toured relentlessly throughout the first half of the 80’s, and unquestionably were a major influence on the then-nascent Seattle sound which eventually produced Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, etc.