VMP Magazine

Afrobeat — a hypnotic synthesis of funk, jazz and traditional West African rhythms — began life in the mid-’60s as an offshoot of Ghanaian highlife and Nigerian juju. It became a regional sensation with the release of Orlando Julius’ Super Afro Soul in 1966, but it took Fela Kuti, a Nigerian artist and activist, to garner worldwide attention. Kuti was prolific — he released multiple albums every year throughout the 1970s — and his larger-than-life persona helped build an international audience. By decade’s end, influential Western acts like the Talking Heads and Brian Eno were incorporating afrobeat’s endless vamps and polyrhythmic flavor into their music.

Afrobeat’s signature sound is an organic flow of repetitive, interwoven guitar parts; call and response vocals; polyrhythmic drum figures usually played against each other on a combination of Western and African instruments; large horn sections that often feature two baritone saxophones; and — at least on Kuti’s recordings — multiple soloists.

In the 1960s and ’70s, if you were a free-thinking hippie backpacking through the Middle East en route to India or Afghanistan, you stopped, inevitably, in Tehran, the Iranian capital. And during your stay — in addition to whatever else you were up to — you encountered, on the streets and in the clubs and cafés, one of the region’s most vibrant and diverse music scenes.

Iran, at that point, was a nation in flux. The Shah, an absolute monarch, had been installed following a U.S.-backed coup. He ushered in an era of modernization that brought in western interests, oil tycoons and an influx of cash, but also classical music and rock ’n’ roll. Those foreign sounds — like fuzzed-out psych, R&B, Indian pop, Latin rhythms and American Top 40 — merged with Iran’s traditional musics into a distinctive musical hybrid, Iranian pop.

Iranian pop, with it’s funky rhythms and untempered tunings — performed on Western instruments and recorded with Western-style arrangements and production values — boomed out of cars, clubs, cafés, the marketplace and at the Friday bazaar. It was everywhere. It was all-encompassing.

And the undisputed Queen, the Beyoncé of Iranian pop, was Googoosh.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, corporate rock was a ubiquitous cultural force. Major labels decided which artists got signed, what got recorded, and what got released. They controlled distribution. They controlled access to radio, TV, the press, and made touring possible. They determined the hits, dictated popular tastes, and if you liked it, you were in luck, because corporate rock was everywhere and easy to find. If you didn’t like it, you were stuck. As Dead Kennedys guitarist East Bay Ray told me in July 2016, “At the time, in the late ‘70s, the radio was all disco and the Eagles. Neither one rocked my heart very much.”

The answer, for many, was punk. But punk—specifically punk’s second wave, not the original punk the majors embraced—was ignored. Corporate rock wasn’t interested. Your band wasn’t going to get signed. Your music wasn’t going to get recorded. Clubs weren’t going to book you. The press wasn’t going to write about you. The radio wasn’t going to play your songs. Record stores weren’t going to sell your music. And that left you with one of two options: You could complain and do nothing, or you could do it yourself.

And “do it yourself” meant do everything yourself, which included starting a record label. Many people did, and a number of small-but-mighty independent labels popped up in the early 1980s, labels like Dischord, Touch and Go, Alternative Tentacles, Homestead Records, and many others, which today retain an aura of legend. But the undisputed kings—the hitmakers of the 80s underground—was SST.

SST Records started life in 1966 as Solid State Tuners, a business founded by Greg Ginn, a 12-year-old ham radio enthusiast, which sold modified surplus WWII-era radio equipment. In 1979, Ginn converted his business into an independent record label to release Nervous Breakdown, his band Black Flag’s first EP. By the mid-’80s, the label was thriving. It boasted a formidable roster and offered younger bands a pathway to bookings, tours, college radio, and press.

SST was a big deal, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. By the end of the ‘80s—plagued by lawsuits, band defections, major label poaching, and their distributor’s bankruptcy—SST fell into decline. They didn’t go out of business, but it was the end of an era. The glory days were over. Below are the 10 best SST releases. SST’s catalog lists nearly 400 titles, which is a lot to chose from. Also, this list only includes albums that SST originally released, which is why a great album like the Descendents’ Milo Goes to College isn’t included (it was originally on New Alliance, the Minutemen’s label, which Mike Watt sold to SST following D Boon’s death). The albums SST still owns—that haven’t been reissued on other labels—are still available on vinyl. SST sells them direct and—consistent with their DIY ethos—they’re still relatively cheap.

Heavy metal, like most styles of music, didn’t pop out of nowhere. It went through a lengthy gestation before emerging in the ’80s as a commercial force with a distinct style with set rules and conventions. Metal’s earliest purveyors—influenced by bands like Blue Cheer, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Cream, the Who, and even the Beatles—were steeped in the blues, but played it slower, heavier and louder. They sometimes experimented with odd meters, dissonance and extended song forms, but their common denominator was guitar-centric, riff-heavy, distorted and dark.

It’s something you don’t notice, until you do, and then can’t not notice. Call it, “Now Abuse”—the habit many singers have of ending random phrases with “now.” Saying “now” might not make sense in relation to the rest of the song, but many singers say it anyway. You hear it all the time. It’s like a person who says, “you know,” after just about everything.

“Kafka was really insecure. You know?” “The triangle is an important shape. You know?”

Once you hear it, you can’t stop hearing it. “Now” is a musical “you know.” Here are a few classic examples.