Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records
For two whole years, we owned a home in the bizarre South Bay Los Angeles suburb known as Lawndale. Going into the experiment (pre-COVID), I knew virtually nothing about the town, except that it shared the same zip code and mailing address as SST Records, and I know this because they advertised in Thrasher and BMX Action/Freestylin’ before I was even a teenager.
From New Jersey, Lawndale CA 90260 sounded very far away, but I immediately looked up to the label because they had supplied entire Santa Cruz skate videos with SST bands as soundtrack (that I rented in the video store) and advertised in the magazines I worshipped. These new sounds bewildered me, such as Black Flag, The Minutemen and Hüsker Dü. (And even the names of the bands were distinct.) But the ethos of the label: underground, skate and BMX associated, and closely tied to a DIY ethos I was about to discover, captured me from a young age. I spent literal years listening to Descendents, All (on SST sister label Cruz Records), Black Flag, Minutemen, Firehose, Dinosaur Jr, and Hüsker Dü.
I still do.
Released last month, “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records,” is an inside look at the label’s history, which spans from the early 80s to the current day (although the label doesn’t really release new music anymore.) It’s also a loose story about the label’s founder, Greg Ginn, guitarist of Black Flag and former Redondo/Hermosa/South Bay local, so it sorta hits home for me (I lived in North Redondo and Lawndale for a long time and was always spotting places from old SST promo photos….)
But whereas most independent labels grow and then shrink and then figure out a way to either keep going or call it a day and redistribute the music back to the bands, SST retained publishing rights to an enormous part of their back catalog, and the financial dealings seem to be murky at best. So presumably, every time you hear The Minutemen’s “Corona,” otherwise known as the intro to “Jackass,” SST gets paid before the remaining members of the band do. That aspect feels overly corporate to me (considering SST sells t-shirts that read “Corporate Rock Still Sucks”) and the second half of the book is partly devoted to the years where SST seemingly outgrew their roots and became “corporate.”
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are literally years where SST releases ruled the college radio air waves, giving crucial exposure to bands such as Sonic Youth, Bad Brains and Descendents. And this book is full of insider details about the label’s process, practices and incubator-esque environment. These bands also then cross-pollinated with the second generation of late 80s/early 90s skate and BMX videos, producing a legion of suburban skate and BMX rats that remain loyal to these bands that blared across their VCRs when underground videos started to flourish. And this is why, despite all of the murky dealings that might sour SST’s past, I remain a loyal (but suspicious) fan of the label.
I mean, c’mon, Jason Lee’s part in the Blind video is scored to Hüsker Dü.
So okay, we get it: I had a lot of connections to the book going in, and after reading it, I have even more connections. Last March, before moving away from Lawndale, I went and found P.O. Box 1 in Lawndale, which formerly belonged to SST for decades. It was non-descript, boring, and just what I expected from an intrinsic part of an underground revolution that continues to this day.
I am very grateful Jim Ruland took the time to document this important part of underground music history.
