Spot, 1951-2023
The iconic producer behind much of SST Records' early catalog has left the control room for the last time.
Glen Lockett, better known by the mononymn SPOT, has passed away from complications relating to both fibrosis and a stroke at age 73.
The producer/engineer of many now-iconic releases from SST Records had been battling fibrosis since late 2021, and was a candidate for a lung transplant before a stroke felled him in December of 2022.
Mr. Lockett had taken on his famous mononymn when he was writing and taking photographs for the Hermosa Beach free weekly newspaper Easy Reader in the mid-70’s, often spelling his professional name SPOT in all capitals, with a dot in the middle of the O when handwriting it. At the same time, he had started to apprentice at Media Art Recording Studio, a situation that had him recording jazz acts, a methodology he would adapt when he started producing and recording the first Black Flag release, the Nervous Breakdown EP. SPOT’s proximity to the Black Flag/SST camp and his work for the Free Reader would coalesce in him taking photographs of the infamous Polliwog Park gig where BF guitarist Greg Ginn had bullshitted the band’s way into a weekly free concert series usually reserved for cover bands - and thus inspiring picnicking families to throw their lunches at the band. It would be that very gig that led SPOT to tell himself, “I’ve got to record this band before they get killed.”
Acclaimed by his peers and clients for both his engineering skills (“He can basically run a studio by himself”, Henry Rollins recalled on an episode of his podcast Henry And Heidi devoted to Black Flag’s My War album) and for his multi-instrumental skills (he started out on guitar at age 13 and added various string instruments as well as clarinet, bagpipes, keyboards, and drums to his skill set throughout his life), SPOT’s engineering and production credits (sometimes sharing the latter with the band or various members thereof) include much of SST Records’ early catalog: all of Black Flag’s recorded output from 1978’s Nervous Breakdown to 1984’s My War; most of the Minutemen’s pre-Double Nickels On The Dime discography; Hüsker Dü’s Everything Falls Apart, Metal Circus, Zen Arcade and New Day Rising albums; the Descendents’ FAT EP and Milo Goes To College (both initially released by the Minutemen’s New Alliance label before being reissued by SST in the late 80’s); Pagan Icons and Surviving You Always by Saccharine Trust; the Dicks’ Kill From The Heart; and the first two albums by the Meat Puppets, including their iconic second album Meat Puppets II.
SPOT had also occasionally toured with Black Flag for their first few years, acting as their live sound engineer before retiring from the road to produce full-time for the label. He would recall in his liner notes to Black Flag’s archival double album Everything Went Black, “What a job, let me tell ya — ever try micing a 100-megaton blast?”
He occasionally made instrumental or vocal contributions to his SST productions, such as singing background vocals on Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade (that’s him doing the powerful upper-register wail on “Standing By The Sea” and “Turn On The News”) and contributing an improvised clarinet solo to the Minutemen’s “Joy Jam” on The Politics Of Time. Pictures and camcorder footage of Black Flag playing a party in Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir’s garage in 1983 show SPOT playing his clarinet, although Henry Rollins admitted in his book Get In The Van: On The Road With Black Flag that he didn’t know how audible SPOT was above Black Flag’s amplifiers and PA, as SPOT can be seen in the photos sitting off to the side while playing.
Although identified primarily as SST’s house producer, SPOT also did outside production work for The Big Boys, The Fix, Poison 13, The Crucifucks (their debut LP, featuring a pre-Sonic Youth Steve Shelley on drums), and the Misfits, amongst others. Outside of the now-classic SST albums bearing his name in the liner notes, SPOT’s best-known outside production and engineering work is The Misfits’ Earth A.D. album and its companion 12” Die Die My Darling.
In later years, SPOT retired from producing and recording other artists, moved from California to Austin, Texas (said to be a favorite touring spot for Black FLag), and became a performer himself, recording folk-influenced material for his own No Auditions label. He appears amongst the star-studded cast on Mike Watt’s first solo album, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?!, playing mandolin on “Drove Up From Pedro” and viola on “Heartbeat” and “Coincidence Is Either Hit Or Miss”.
While rarely giving interviews, he willingly participated in the making of the Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo, where in the course of the interview he revealed that he was in possession of the original vinyl stampers for the first pressing of the Minutemen’s first album The Punch Line, amongst other pressing plates from the time period. SPOT was so protective of his work and that of his clients that when he found himself displeased with the original mastering job on The Punch Line, he actually went to the pressing plant and confiscated the stampers for the album in order to force a superior mastering job for all subsequent pressings.
SPOT’s interest in Celtic folk music led him to relocate from Austin to Sheboygan, Wisconsin. In 2018, he released a book of his photography, Sounds Of Two Eyes Opening, which includes his now-legendary photographs of the Black Flag Pollywog Park gig. He was getting ready for an exhibition of his photography in the second half of 2021 when breathing issues forced him to cancel it. In December of 2021 he was incapacitated by a stroke. He was being rehabilitated at a health care facility in Sheboygan for the fiurst couple of months of 2023, with former SST Records co0owner and longtime friend Joe Carducci regularly visiting him, passing on well wishes from friends and fans and posting updates via Carducci’s own Facebook page. It was Carducci who broke the news of SPOT’s passing:
I hate to type out the words but... SPOT passed away after 10am today/Saturday (Mar. 4, 2023) at Morningside Healthcare in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. His nurse told me he woke up alright but later showed no pulse and several attempts to revive him failed. He had cancelled a planned photography exhibit in late 2021 when he found his fibrosis began to impair lung function. Since then he'd been on oxygen and was hoping for a lung transplant, but a stroke about three months ago put him in the hospital. I was hoping he was recovering speech but realistically he was not likely at his age and condition to become a candidate for a lung transplant, though that would have solved his health problems.
…When approaching the mixing board SPOT would assume an Elvis-like stance and then gesturing toward all the knobs he would say in a Louis Armstrong-like voice, "This is going to be gelatinous!" His recorded work as player and producer is listed at discogs.com. I'll be going through his writing with an eye toward publishing a collection including his writings on jazz for the Hermosa Beach free weekly. He spent recent years writing the novel, Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization, and producing a radio-like dramatization of it which is online. Last year he posted new SPOT music at his bandcamp page. In recent weeks I read off lists of the names of his well-wishers to him and SPOT nodded at the mentions of his friends from around the country and the world.
UPDATE #1: Mike Watt just posted on his own Facebook page:
good people, we just lost my old buddy spotski, a terrible blow. he recorded the minutemen's first stuff, I go way back w/this man. brother matt took this shot six years ago when spotski came to visit our pedro town... man, this is a terrible blow. I love you spotski forever.
May SPOT, an indispensable part of 80’s alternative music, Rest In Power and Record In Paradise.
This article will be updated with tributes from SPOT’s peers and any corrections, factual or grammatical, as time dictates.