Glen 'Spot' Lockett: The Punk Producer's 10 Essential Recordings

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https://tinyurl.com/SPOTNYT

(paywall-free link)



By Christopher R. Weingarten
March 7, 2023, 2:10 p.m. ET

Between 1979 and 1985, Glen Lockett, the producer and engineer credited as Spot, captured the first generation of American hardcore punk bands — Black Flag, Minutemen, Descendents, Saccharine Trust and more — as they came screaming and flailing from South Bay beach cities outside Los Angeles. The house producer for the standard-bearing independent punk label SST Records, Lockett sculpted hardcore’s hyper-fast and caustic sound with a documentarian’s ear. He died on March 4 at age 72.

A Spot recording was brittle, intimate and — crucially — affordable. Lockett preferred that a band play in the studio all at once instead of overdubbing, giving SST Records a feeling of immediacy. It was a visceral alternative in an era when major labels were investing in ostentatious filigrees like gated reverb and prohibitively expensive synthesizers. Spot’s no-frills production not only gave shape to these bands’ spittle and blurs, but served as an abrasive metaphor for an entire movement that was rethinking, and self-managing, everything from album art to record distribution to touring.

By the mid-80s, the SST founder Greg Ginn and his roster of uncompromising artists had grown creatively restless, putting Lockett at the bleeding edge of emerging subgenres and microscenes like sludge metal, stoner metal and cowpunk, as well as at the controls for Hüsker Dü’s double-LP masterpiece “Zen Arcade.” He decamped for Austin in 1986, leaving a legacy of recordings that would serve as a crucial inspiration to the alternative and DIY rock booms of the 1990s and beyond.

Here are 10 essential tracks from Lockett’s scene-defining tenure at both SST and New Alliance, the label helmed by the Minutemen.

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[blondebanshee]

1. Missed this. Thank you for sharing

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2. Oh, you betcha.

I featured some SPOT-produced cuts on my radio show last night, as well:

https://xray.fm/broadcasts/50542