With all of this extra time that I have to sit around my house, I have been getting reacquainted with my record collection. I recently took a long walk through the releases put out by the record label SST.
At one time, SST, founded by Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn, was one of the greatest independent record labels to ever put out music. In addition to Black Flag, the SST roster included the Bad Brains, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Husker Du, the Minutemen, the Descendents, Saccharine Trust, Sound Garden and many others. Of late, SST has fallen into neglect and disrepair. It is well past time for tapes to be remastered and records to be reissued.
One of the greatest records that SST ever put out was the self-titled album by a band called The Stains (SST 010.) There were only one thousand copies pressed in the early '80s and the album was never given a second pressing due to a dispute over royalties between the band and the label. Every so often a copy pops up on the internet at such an astronomical price that it always makes me laugh instead of making me want to sacrifice my credit rating in order to say that I have that record on my shelf. There used to be not so legitimate downloads of the record readily available on the internet but I guess they have all been removed. Some upstanding citizens have posted the album to YouTube for our enjoyment so it's not lost to the ages.
Hours and hours of unreleased music by Black Flag is sitting on a shelf or in a shoebox somewhere going unheard. When that band wasn't on the road, all they did was practice and record. All of that music could be mixed down and packaged with the corresponding album that was the result of those sessions.
Instead of using his time to sue his former bandmates and pull videos off of YouTube, Greg Ginn could invest some time into his label and correct some of the production issues that are present on most SST releases due to the budget limitations at the time they were recorded. If nothing else, the output volume could be increased because the original levels were so quiet. And if there is so much fretting over copyright infringement, the better quality bootlegs and live recordings could be collected and released as well.
This would be a massive undertaking that would hopefully keep Greg Ginn so occupied he'd be unable to tour with that abomination of a band that he still calls Black Flag. One of the funniest Amazon reviews of any record I have ever read was aimed at the album that came out a few years ago. It went something like, “If my dad hadn't died, listening to this record would be the worst thing that happened to me this year.”
Reissuing all of these records could also help make right some of the sins of the past when it came to royalties and other payment problems with SST. All of the members of the bands involved could get paid. All of these musicians are around the age of sixty and could probably use the extra walking around money. After all, there are no punk rock retirement and healthcare plans so get these folks paid.
I am aware of all of the arguments against the reissuing of records and why it shouldn't be done. The excuses that range from a recording being a snapshot of a particular moment in time that should be preserved all the way to it being a crass cash grab. Those are just attempts at holding up some false sense of integrity.
If, at the very least, Damaged was given the half speed remastering treatment and recut at 45rpm over two 180g LPs, I know I'd buy at least one copy for myself and enough to give one to every high school student in the city. Damaged changed so many lives the first time people heard it. Now imagine everyone getting to hear that record again for the first time and at the same time sharing it with younger generations at full velocity. Police stations and banks all over the country would be on fire by the end of the first week of that record being on the shelves.
Damaged is a record that could cut a mother fucker and should sound like it will jump out of my speakers and do so. I know it's probably never going to happen but dreaming about records and civil unrest are two of my favorite things.
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