Greg Ginn (SST, Black Flag) Didn’t Really Listen To Music Until He Was 18(?!)

Late starters, already missed it’ers, people on the why even bother self-defense train, LISTEN:

Greg Ginn changed the course of modern music with his band Black Flag and his record label SST. 

When you do you think he started making music? This, underground revolutionary and visionary? This, artiste?

In 1962 Ginn’s family moved to Hermosa Beach, California. Jan & Dean’s 1963 classic “Surf City” was about to be written about it. He was 8. 

He didn’t go surfing. 

Counter-counter culture from the beginning I guess. 

He wrote poetry and got deep into ham radio. If it were the 1970s, maybe he’d have become a computer nerd. But it was the 60s and so, words in poems and parts in radios it was. 

It wasn’t music. Not yet. 

By 12 he started his first fanzine, The Novice, about radio. He was not a cool kid with the local surfers. He was becoming a cool person within the radio scene. 

He started a mailorder business selling parts to modified WWII radio gear that was easy enough to come by. He named it Solid State Tuners (SST for short). 

He still wasn’t into music. 

In 1972 he was enrolled in the economics program at UCLA. He decided to make a donation to a local public radio station. They gave him a record as a thank you for his fundraiser contribution.

In 1972. At 18 years old. That’s when punk music and record label pioneer Greg Ginn officially owned his first record, not because he went out and bought the thing he just had to have, not because he was dreaming of someday making records that would get played on radio stations, but because he thought it a god task to make a charitable donation to a public radio station who then unexpectedly gifted him a record in return, which he went home and played, once, then twice, and then some more, for the first time, with his own, privately owned, recording.

And that’s how Greg Ginn’s first record ended up being American Gothic by David Ackles. 

Which is weird, right?

If you don’t know what that record sounds like, just press play for a minute please:

This is the record that inspired him to pick up a guitar. He felt like guitar was a way to release some tension after studying economics all day and working on his mail-order radio parts business. He was right.

He played acoustic guitar first, and then moved onto electric guitar later. 

Ginn started writing his own stuff, which had a little blues, a little extra aggression, and a lot of not what was popular in 1970s California. People wanted to sound like the 1960s, all polished and - “Genesis” like. People wanted to be technical. He wasn’t that good at guitar, so he let it go in favor of focusing on making whatever was good enough for him. 

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T STARTED SOMETHING THEY THINK THEY KIND OF WOULD LIKE TO DO MORE OF YET. 

Ginn kept listening to music. He discovered the Village Voice, and read about punk rock. He got obsessed with everything not 1970s-popular. Motown, disco, country stuff, jazz, B.B. King, and his all-time favorite band, The Grateful Dead. 

Then he saw the Ramones play. It blew his mind. He realized he could start a band. If they could do THAT, he could do THIS. Only he’d make it faster. Maybe gnarlier. He suddenly had an angle to work. 

At age 18, he never owned a record. 

At age 20, he was pretty into music. 

At age 22, he saw the Ramones, met a wild man named Keith Morris, and figured he might as well try to start his own band. 

Within a few years, Ginn would be converting his mailorder business into SST the record label, because why not. He studied economics and ran a business. He could put out Black Flag’s albums, and their friends albums, and distributing them. 

There would be hiccups and mistakes, but there also would be an American revolution, in no small part, thanks to Greg Ginn. 

If you didn’t start, if you don’t even know what you’re into yet, just be patient. 

Oh, and most importantly, be curious. 

The more curious about something you are, the more unstoppable you can be in your exploration. 

Here’s Black Flag circa 1980. A far cry from American Gothic. A farther cry from The Grateful Dead. 

Beautiful. 

h/t Michael Azerrad and his book (maybe one of my favorite books ever at this point), Our Band Could Be Your Life.

ps. he kind of started as just a professional, then became a professional slash artist, and ended up as an artist slash professional, which is really cool to me.