Saccharine Trust

Past Lives double-live set is primo too

I dig Pagan Icons but I think I need to give We Became Snakes another couple of listens to really "get" it.

hey guys WHERE NEXT

chronological is not gonna hurt you, you're halfway through already

paganicons '81
surviving you always '84
worldbroken '85
we became snakes '86
past lives '89
the great one is dead '01

I was just reading this thread yesterday and then last night I saw an old (drummer) friend of mine who grew up in Pedro and worked at SST in the 80's. She moved back there in the last year and I asked her if she was playing at all. Casually, she says "yeah, I've been playing with Dukowski, Baiza, and Brewer"..... wow. Don't think they're recording though, just jamming.

sry for namedropping but it seemed relevant to the thread.

"surviving you always" (yet another amazing album title) is the one that seemed to have the most adherents back when

hmmm I guess there isn't a thread for Universal Congress Of, but imo they were great (esp live) as well.

yeah, I never understood the universal love for surviving you always, it's a good album but not my favorite... it's their most trad rocking / black flaggish I guess, the way brewer says SAAAAAATAN on that spoken word thing is pretty cool tho

wau @ yr drummer friend, sleeve!

we became snakes is *so fresh*

arrrrgh paganicons is so goooooooooooood

It warms my heart to know these guys are still going. Also, now I'm reminded to get my hands on that San Pedro punk book before the summer's out.

I got a bootleg of Pagan Icons on LP recently, have yet to verify its quality tho

fwiw i'm pretty sure there's no space b/t pagan and icons: hence, paganicons

does Ginn have the masters in a closet in Tyler TX or something? SST was overrated in its day imo but there ought to be remasters of the Saccharine Trust stuff

yeah, I never understood the universal love for surviving you always, it's a good album but not my favorite... it's their most trad rocking / black flaggish I guess
― mr. mandelbrot flythrough vertigo, esq. (Edward III), Sunday, October 31, 2010 12:29 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm going to take issue with a four-year-old post for a moment and say that surely Paganicons is their most trad-rocking/Black Flaggish. Surviving You, Always seems like a big step further into abrasive weirdo jazz-damage territory in comparison.

By the way, does anyone know why SYA is out of print? You can still buy every SST Saccharine Trust release through the label except that one, and I've heard it was never got a CD release to begin with. Something to do with the "Peace Frog" cover, maybe?

By the way, does anyone know why SYA is out of print? You can still buy every SST Saccharine Trust release through the label except that one, and I've heard it was never got a CD release to begin with. Something to do with the "Peace Frog" cover, maybe?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ginn or whoever lost the masters to that one, since it never got a CD release. On a related note, I remember reading Brewer writing on the web somewhere that the CD master for PaganIcons was a needle drop, like SST did it that way all the time in the early '90s. (Doesn't mean they have to be bad - the Dicks reissues on AT, including their SST album Kill from the Heart, were remastered from LPs since the tapes are gone - but yeah.)

It's probably nothing to do with the 'Peace Frog' cover since there's a version of that on the Past Lives live LP (which has one or two other covers as well, like 'Express Yourself').

Ah, that makes sense. What a shame.

It warms my heart to know these guys are still going. Also, now I'm reminded to get my hands on that San Pedro punk book before the summer's out.

― wronger than 100 geir posts (MacDara)

Saw them a few months ago in LA, they still got it, which warms my heart even more.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ginn or whoever lost the masters to that one, since it never got a CD release.

Ethan James engineered a lot these records at Radio Tokyo - the studio no longer exists and James died in 2003. Back when, recording in southern California (and still in plenty of places), bands would often leave the mixes at the studios where they were recorded -- the procedure is record / mix / take final mixdowns to mastering place (usually John Golden in SoCal) / store mixdowns either at the label or at the studio. When there's a "home" studio the bands on a label use, I've often seen the tapes being stored there. My guess is when Radio Tokyo closed a lot of the mixdowns got thrown out; it happens all the time.

yeah something similar often happens when film labs close. film companies leave the negatives there and forget them. then when the lab closes or moves, everything is tossed.

I first heard Saccharine Trust (in 94? I think) when I was at my local record shop and the gents behind the counter told me I should check out Saccharine Trust cuz based on the other stuff I was into they figured I would dig it and they were right. But, the main reason it had come up was SST had told them that the they were letting the record go out-of-print and the last copies in stock were the last available.

I never heard the reason why SST was letting the record go out of print , maybe mid-90s vinyl demand drop? Don't know but it seemed weird even at the time cuz Surviving was considered the ST record. I'm glad I snagged a copy when I did. One of my all time favorite bands.

Maybe they pressed the same amount of all the Saccharine Trust albums and that went out of print first because it was more popular?

That's assuming there was any logic behind it at all, which when it comes to SST is a losing game.

"Maybe they pressed the same amount of all the Saccharine Trust albums and that went out of print first because it was more popular?"

This is def the most logical answer, and couple with the fact the band was broken up at the point maybe SST didn't foresee any future demand, but those are all reasonable answer and with SST who knows.

I CAN'T BELIEVE WE ARE STILL DESPERATE

one of my biggest vinyl collecting regrets was not picking up the last new copy of SYA in my local store around a decade ago. it had been there for years. wish these guys would do a needle drop version themselves at this point.

And for the heads (which at this point I got to imagine any into Sac Trust qualifies as a "head") I bang on and on about but the two records Brewer did with Bazooka, him spieling over their jazz improv, remind two of my absolute favorite albums & you can probably get them both for cheap in the various cut-out bins of the world.

2004 Perfect Sound Forever interview with Joe baiza--Jack keeps in touch a little with Greg Ginn, in a near-futile attempt to get him to do a couple of things for us.

2015--Is there ever gonna be a reissue of Paganicons?
We were gonna try to do a reissue with another label, but Greg Ginn at SST still won't allow anything to be done with it. It's kind of being held prisoner right now.

http://www.vice.com/read/talking-about-minutemen-and-sst-with-joe-baiza-from-saccharine-trust-015

wish these guys would do a needle drop version themselves at this point.

There's a noisy but decent vinyl rip to be found amid the jungle of mp3 blogs, which is the best one can get right now if it isn't possible to grab a second-hand copy.

Also, regarding PaganIcons, Jack Brewer had some interesting things to say on Facebook.

]It really is time to close down and give all of the artist the rights to their music. Because SST has crossed a line that they will never be able to step back from.

OTM

Man, I was in a room with Ginn once. His band sucked and that alone should make him back off on this bullshit.

dude the music Ginn makes now is some of the worst music of all time, it's really pretty special

some of the universal congress albs are gd, too

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:24 AM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am reviving a very old thread to ask: which ones? I saw a few recently and realized that I've never heard anything Baiza did post-ST (despite being a ST fan back in the day)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnU4kfugRb0

Recently uploaded 1981 live footage w pretty good sound considering. The person who posted it commented "Recorded on 3/4" U-matic tape that was found in a dumpster from a friend of a friend."

Feel like I saw them on that tour but in DC , probably a few days before or after that Peppermint Lounge NY gig.