PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH SST, GREG GINN, OR ANYONE ELSE THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE LABLE. I AM SIMPLY A FAN WHO WANTS PEOPLE TO HAVE SOMETHING TO CHECK OUT, LISTEN TO, AND REDISCOVER THESE GREAT BANDS.
SST was originally an electronics company called Solid State Transmitters that specialized in the production of amateur radio components. Ginn founded the company while he was in high school, and it continued in this capacity well after Ginn began pursuing a career in music.
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 thought they were dragging their feet, 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, Joe Carducci (who also ran his own micro-label, Thermidor Records), and The Minutemen's Mike Watt.
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.
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 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.
In 1987, Ginn bought New Alliance Records from 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.
In the early 90's, Ginn started two SST-distributed sub-labels. The first, Cruz Records, 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.
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. 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.
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; several artists had to regain their masters from SST after pursuing legal action. The Meat Puppets were the first to sue; their albums were later re-released by Rykodisc. Sonic Youth claimed back 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 because they claim that they are owed large sums of money and do not know the sales numbers of their records released on the label.
In the most publicized and expensive trial for SST, 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.)
SST went into near-hibernation in the mid-90s, deleting much of its jazz output, and releasing little in the way of new material, but still keeping the catalogs of Black Flag, The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Hüsker Dü, The Descendents, and Bad Brains in print.
In 2002, Ginn signed a new distribution deal with Koch Records and promised that new material by his various musical projects was forthcoming[citation needed], but these releases have yet to materialize. 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.
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