from The Guardian UK

Label of love: SST

From an inauspicious beginning selling spare radio parts, SST went on to establish the US indie underground of the 80s. But its 30th anniversary earlier this year went uncelebrated – even by its own bands

Black Flag with Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn

American hardcore … Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn, of SST stalwarts Black Flag in 1982. Photograph: Frank Mullen/Wireimage

With a roster that included Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, Soundgarden and Meat Puppets, SST was the most individualistic US indie label of the 80s. But few, if any, of its alumni celebrated its 30th birthday earlier this year.

SST’s fall from grace is a similar sad story to Alternative Tentacles and its founder Jello Biafra, that is, a DIY-punk utopian dream turned sour by money wrangles and ego wars.

From its ever-shifting base on the fringes of Los Angeles, SST embraced everything from pop-punk to prog-metal, art-noise and proto-grunge, until it all went wrong in the early 90s.

The shit – or more precisely, U2 – first hit the fan in 1991, when SST faced a huge bill from Island Records for Negativland’s parody of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. SST’s ensuing battle with Negativland saw the dominos fall one by one: Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Meat Puppets all reclaimed their back catalogues through taking legal action.

No one from SST’s glory days seems to have a good word to say about founder Greg Ginn, who expanded his radio parts operation Solid State Tuners in 1978 so he could put out a record, Nervous Breakdown, by his band Black Flag. Turning on its head the preconception that making a record was an unattainable holy grail, he found a pressing plant in the phonebook and used his brother Raymond Pettibon’s acerbic comic strip artwork for the cover.

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