Spot's Signing Of 'The Sounds of Two Eyes Opening’ At Amoeba, Wednesday, December 3rd 2014
Spot
Spot has many hats, he is a record producer, a musician, a multi-instrumentalist, a hardcore punk engineer for the influential independent label SST Records (he is credited on many legendary albums by iconic bands such as Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Saint Vitus, Hüsker Dü, Descendents, Minor Threat, Misfits,….), but he is also photographer. And it was this last hat (he was actually wearing a baseball cap) he had on at Amoeba on Wednesday night, for the signing of his new book of photographs, entitled ‘The Sounds of Two Eyes Opening’ published by Sinecure Books.
Spot sounded like the funniest guy you have ever met, he had a super expressive face, with a bon vibrant look and high-pitched voice, spending almost 20 minutes talking with each person who was on line (the line wasn’t too long, fortunately for him), rising his arms in the air at each story told, examining carefully each Black Flag memorabilia put in front of him, giving a thumb up to the DJ (Reverend Dan from KXLU) when a happy jazzy song came up – I may have heard the name of Richard Scott – laughing all the time and writing a long paragraph on books, 7” and vinyl…
‘The Sound of Two Eyes Opening’ is Spot’s first photograph book, and it reflects the exciting times he spent in the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s, documenting the punk hardcore scene of Southern California. The book doesn’t include a narrative, or a real story, ‘That story’s been told to death!’ said Spot in an interview to the NY Times, ‘There are so many people who think that punk erupted on its own, but that’s such a misnomer. The skating thing, really, that was the heart of it. I just wanted to make sure the photographs in the book felt like what I lived.’ The book will give you a large dose of black and white photographs of familiar faces, such as Henry Rollins, the Cramps, the Germs and of course original posters by Raymond Pettibon, Ginn’s brother, but also a lot of skater girls. ‘A lot of the girls I knew back then were girls I skated with, girls who were doing things, not just trying to look pretty. They were going in there and trying things and getting hurt. It was this radical roller-skating world,’ said Spot in the same interview. There are indeed a lot of boardwalk pictures with skating hot girls in bikinis, mixed with punk rock scenes drenched in sweat and action. What a dream life!
May be these hardcore guys had it all, a good and full life and enough memories to made them as jovial and funny as Spot is in his 60s! Well, I may retract this after reading all this bad news about Greg Ginn, and I just wonder how a nice guy like Spot could even get along with big villain Ginn.
