SPOT — SST Records’ producer for Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and more — has died

Spot, left, and Mike Watt | Photo via @wattfrompedro

SPOT, the in-house producer and engineer who helped make albums by Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Descendents, Meat Puppets and more for the hugely influential SST Records in the early 1980s, died Saturday morning, according to label co-owner Joe Carducci.

Born Glen Lockett in 1951, the musician, producer, writer and photographer better known as SPOT — he used all caps — died at Morningside Healthcare in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, according to a lengthy tribute Carducci posted on Facebook. SPOT suffered from fibrosis and had been awaiting a lung transplant, Carducci wrote.

The son of a Tuskegee Airman, SPOT got his start playing and recording jazz, Carducci wrote, and “took the primacy of live jazz playing into recording bands against prevailing attempts to soften or industrialize a back-to-basics arts movement in sound.”

“When approaching the mixing board,” Carducci continued, “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!'”

Minutemen bassist Mike Watt tweeted about SPOT’s passing, calling it a “terrible blow.” He wrote: “he recorded the minutemen’s first stuff, I go way back w/ this man… man, this is a terrible blow. I love you spotski forever.”

Steve Albini, a noted producer and engineer in his own right, and frontman of Big Black and Shellac, offered his thoughts on Twitter as well: “Every music scene needed someone to document it, someone with no agenda, an open mind and hot mics. SPʘT was the archetype scene recording guy, the guy we all emulated and whose role we tried to play. For a while there half the records I bought had his name on them.”

SPOT put his imprint on SST’s legendary punk-era catalog, producing, co-producing or engineering a litany of albums including Black Flag’s Damaged, Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade, Minutemen’s The Punch Line, Meat Puppets’ Meat Puppets II, Descendents’ Milo Goes to College, Saccharine Trust’s Surviving You, Always and many more.

He also published a book about 10 years ago of his Southern California beach, punk and skateboarding photography called “Sounds of Two Eyes Opening.”

Below, remembrances and tributes to SPOT:

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