Remembering SPOT - Glen Michael Lockett
(photograph: Photobill/Bill Daniel, SPOT at Third Coast Studio, Austin Texas; March 14 1982 - Big Boys "Fun Fun Fun" session.)
Glenn Michael Lockett was born July 1, 1951 and passed away on March 4, 2023. He was better known as Spot, an American record producer best known for being the house producer and engineer for the influential independent punk record label SST Records. He styled his name SPʘT, using all capital letters and adding a dot inside the O. Spot recorded, mixed, produced or co-produced most of SST's pivotal acts between 1979 and 1986. He is credited on albums by such notable bands as Black Flag, Minutemen, Mood of Defiance, Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Saint Vitus, Misfits (Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood) and Descendents. After leaving SST in 1986, Spot moved to Austin, Texas.
Spot was an accomplished photographer and writer and published a book of his work titled Sounds of Two Eyes Opening. In 2018, a gallery showing of his photographs was mounted at Pacific Coast Gallery in Hermosa Beach. He also wrote for L.A. newspaper Easy Reader.
Production and engineering discography
Black Flag - Jealous Again EP (August 1980)
Descendents - Fat EP (1981)
Black Flag - Six Pack EP (June 1981)
Minutemen - The Punch Line EP (November 1981)
Black Flag - Damaged (December 1981)
Saccharine Trust - Paganicons (December 1981)
Big Boys - Fun, Fun, Fun (July 1982)
Descendents - Milo Goes to College (September 1982)
Minutemen - Bean-Spill EP (1982)
Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets (1982)
Hüsker Dü - Everything Falls Apart (January 1983)
Minutemen - What Makes a Man Start Fires? (January 1983)
Big Boys - Lullabies Help The Brain Grow (July 1983)
Hüsker Dü - Metal Circus (October 1983)
Minutemen - Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat EP (November 1983)
Misfits - Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood (December 1983)
Saint Vitus - Saint Vitus (January 1984)
Black Flag - My War (March 1984)
Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II (April 1984)
Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade (July 1984)
Black Flag - Family Man (September 1984)
Black Flag - Slip It In (December 1984)
Saccharine Trust - Surviving You, Always (1984)
Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising (January 1985)
Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun (March 1985)
Saint Vitus - Hallow's Victim (August 1985)
Saint Vitus - The Walking Dead EP (October 1985)
The Crucifucks - The Crucifucks (1985)
From Joe Carducci:
"I hate to type out the words but... SPOT passed away after 10am today/Saturday (Mar. 4, 2023) at Morningside Healthcare in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. His nurse told me he woke up alright but later showed no pulse and several attempts to revive him failed. He had cancelled a planned photography exhibit in late 2021 when he found his fibrosis began to impair lung function. Since then he'd been on oxygen and was hoping for a lung transplant, but a stroke about three months ago put him in the hospital. I was hoping he was recovering speech but realistically he was not likely at his age and condition to become a candidate for a lung transplant, though that would have solved his health problems. SPOT didn't dwell alot on his personal history but I believe he was born in Los Angeles, grew up in the Crenshaw neighborhood, moved to Hermosa Beach in the mid-70s, moved to his favorite Black Flag tour stop, Austin Texas, in the mid-80s and then to Sheboygan to be near his favorite Celtic music scenes in Milwaukee and Chicago. His father was Claybourne Lockett who was a Tuskegee Airman who flew British Spitfires and Spot told me once his mother was Native American and from New Orleans. His older sister has advanced dementia. SPOT was a musician and writer and photographer who spelled his name in all caps with a dot in the middle of the O. 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!" His recorded work as player and producer is listed at discogs.com. I'll be going through his writing with an eye toward publishing a collection including his writings on jazz for the Hermosa Beach free weekly. He spent recent years writing the novel, Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization, and producing a radio-like dramatization of it which is online. Last year he posted new SPOT music at his bandcamp page. In recent weeks I read off lists of the names of his well-wishers to him and SPOT nodded at the mentions of his friends from around the country and the world."
