Glen “SPOT” Lockett, the in-house producer and engineer for lengthy operating punk label SST Records, has died. The information was confirmed by former SST co-owner Joe Carducci, who posted a tribute to SPOT on his Facebook web page. Carducci wrote that SPOT handed away earlier Saturday morning at a healthcare facility in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He had been on oxygen in late 2021 after his fibrosis impaired his lung operate “and was hoping for a lung transplant, but a stroke about three months ago put him in the hospital.” SPOT was 72.
Born Glen Lockett in Los Angeles in 1951, SPOT discovered to play the guitar at age 12 and listened to a wide range of genres — no matter was obtainable on AM radio. At one level, he tried out for Captain Beefheart. Later, after serving to construct a recording studio, SPOT discovered find out how to produce and engineer.
SPOT met Greg Ginn, the long run co-founder of SST Records and Black Flag, whereas ready tables at a vegan restaurant, and the 2 started jamming collectively. At one level, SPOT was the bassist for Ginn’s band Panic, which finally grew to become Black Flag.
SPOT finally sat behind the board for Black Flag’s 1980 EP Jealous Again. His resume would finally come to incorporate Black Flag’s Damaged (1981) and My War (1984), Minutemen’s The Punch Line EP (1981), What Makes A Man Start Fires? (1983), and the Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat EP (1983). SPOT additionally labored on Descendents’ 1982 studio debut, Milo Goes To College, Hüsker Dü’s Everything Falls Apart and Metal Circus (each 1983), plus 1984’s Zen Arcade, Misfits’ Earth A.D. / Wolfs Blood (1983), Saint Vitus’ self-titled debut (1984), Meat Puppets’ self-titled debut (1984) and Up On The Sun (1985).
In 1986, SPOT left SST and moved to Austin, Texas. In addition to his groundbreaking manufacturing work, SPOT was additionally a photographer and freelance author; he revealed a e-book of his work titled Sounds of Two Eyes Opening in 2014. In 2018, Pacific Coast Gallery in Hermosa Beach did a present of his work.
“SPOT was a musician and writer and photographer who spelled his name in all caps with a dot in the middle of the O,” Carducci wrote in tribute. “His principal sideline was as a record producer-engineer and an architect of the natural approach to recording a band in the punk era. He started in Hermosa Beach playing and recording jazz and he 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 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!’”