Early years:<br />
SST was originally an electronics company called Solid State Tuners (As noted in Micheal Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life) that specialized in the production of amateur radio components. While he was in high school, Ginn worked...Early years:<br />
SST was originally an electronics company called Solid State Tuners (As noted in Micheal Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life) that specialized in the production of amateur radio components. While he was in high school, Ginn worked at this company his father founded and SST continued with electronics well after Ginn began pursuing a career in music.<br />
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SST got the title SST Records in late 1978 when Greg Ginn required an outlet to release Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown EP. The EP had been recorded in 1978, and Ginn shopped it around to various labels. Only Bomp! was interested, but Ginn grew frustrated with their delays, so he decided to release the EP himself, as well as Black Flag's 1980 EP Jealous Again. Embracing a DIY ("Do It Yourself") ethic, SST's employees/owners included Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski, their roadie Steve "Mugger" Corbin, and Joe Carducci (who also ran his own micro-label, Thermidor Records).<br />
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Even in its nascent stages, the label was a prominent figure in the Los Angeles punk scene around 1980 and 1981, releasing albums by Black Flag as well as the Minutemen, The Descendents, and The Stains.<br />
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Middle years:<br />
After a few years, SST quickly branched to release albums by bands outside of the southern California area. The company was one of the key American independent record labels of the 1980s, releasing well-regarded albums, including a few classics, by Saint Vitus, Soundgarden, Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Negativland, Screaming Trees, Slovenly, and others. Also from the mid-1980s, albums were released from more experimental musicians or groups, including Elliott Sharp, Blind Idiot God, Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser.<br />
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In 1987, Ginn bought New Alliance Records from Mike Watt, who had founded the label with his best friend, Minutemen bandmate D. Boon. Ginn and SST proceeded to reissue some of New Alliance's key releases - albums by The Descendents, Hüsker Dü's Land Speed Record, and all of The Minutemen's non-SST releases - on SST. He then converted New Alliance to a label based around unusual jazz, rock, and spoken word releases.<br />
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In the late '80s and early '90s, Ginn started two SST-distributed sub-labels. The first, Cruz Records, which started in 1987, released three solo records by Ginn in the space of a year, and also released records by ALL, Big Drill Car, and Chemical People. The second, the short-lived Issues Records, concentrated on spoken-word releases, including a double album by former NBA player Bill Walton with music by Ray Manzarek.<br />
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Legal troubles and SST's present:<br />
Despite the rise of alternative rock in the early 1990s, a series of draining legal troubles nixed the possibility of SST profiting off of the myriad bands it had inspired.<br />
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One of the earliest signs of trouble was due not to lawsuits, but to what might have been a poor business decision. In the late 1980s, SST began releasing jazz records by several ensembles. It released recordings by groups such as Bazooka, Brother Weasel, and Virginia's Hotel X, among others. This new direction was generally of little interest to fans expecting more punk rock from SST, while jazz fans were unlikely to look to a punk rock label.<br />
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SST went into near-hibernation in the mid-90s, deleting much of its jazz output, and releasing little new material apart from Ginn's projects (including Confront James, Mojack), but still keeping the catalogs of Black Flag, The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Hüsker Dü, The Descendents, and Bad Brains in print.<br />
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Also in the mid-'90s SST began to suffer an exodus of much of its classic back catalog because of disputes with some of the artists who charged that SST had not paid them proper royalties; journalist Michael Azerraddescribes the royalty disputes as "an alarmingly common complaint" amongst SST's recording roster. Several artists had to regain their master recordings from SST after pursuing legal action. The Meat Puppets were the first to sue; their albums were later re-released by Rykodisc. Sonic Youth obtained their SST masters, and sold them to Geffen Records, the major label to which they have been signed since 1990. Dinosaur Jr's SST releases have been reissued on Merge Records, and in 2005, Hüsker Dü made similar claims of accounting irregularities, and are pursuing legal action against SST based on claims of improper royalties and unsubstantiated sales figures.<br />
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In the most publicized and expensive trial for SST, sound collage group Negativland fought a long legal battle with SST in the wake of its sampling lawsuit over their notorious "cover" of U2's hit "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," on 1991 U2 single. The case was settled when Ginn and SST agreed to fully release most of Negativland's masters (mainly their Over The Edge series of cassettes) in exchange for completing work on a live album that had been planned long before their legal battles began, as well as keeping Negativland's three SST releases on the label for a short period (the copyright in those has since reverted to Negativland). This entire battle was later the basis for Negativland's 1995 book/CD, Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. (SST was also known before this for its anti-corporate-rock stance; e.g. its "Corporate Rock Sucks," "Fuck Sony," and "Kill Bono" t-shirts.)<br />
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In 2002, Ginn signed a new distribution deal with Koch Records and promised that new material by his various musical projects was forthcoming[1], these releases eventually appeared on their homepage. In 2006, independent digital music distributor The Orchard announced that 94 titles from SST's back catalog would become available on digital services like eMusic and the iTunes Music Store.<br />
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SPOT, the engineer for many SST albums, is a barback in Austin, TX and has never been fully compensated for his work on these albums.
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