A Veteran’s Debut
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After about a year in LA, Carducci realized he wasn’t ready for prime time and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a clerk and then a buyer in an import-only record store called Renaissance. He persuaded the owner to get into record distribution, and by 1979, when the shop closed and the business (which changed its name to Systematic) moved to Berkeley, Carducci was running the first major system for disseminating punk rock in America. For Systematic he tracked down obscure early punk records and released new music by acts like the Dead Kennedys and Negativland, but around the same time he also started his own Thermidor label, which would eventually put out records by Toiling Midgets, the Minutemen, and Chicago’s Ono and Sport of Kings. It also licensed overseas recordings by seminal industrialists SPK and Nick Cave’s early band the Birthday Party.
“I didn’t know anybody in LA,” Carducci says. “I was cadging pennies and nickels, buying the cheapest loaves of bread I could find…and then I’d have to open the last can of tomato juice.” In his best Clint Eastwood voice, he adds, “I hate tomato juice.” But he lumped it in LA because he believed in the music, and his days at SST were the label’s salad days, when it put out records by the Meat Puppets, the Minutemen, and Husker Du, among others. He never drew a regular salary, working instead for equity, and when he left in 1986 the company was better than just solvent. “I saw SST as an interesting opportunity to learn something about what it takes to sell art,” he says. “But I was always calibrating when the time was to leave.”
Rock & Roll Punk shows Saturday at 7:15 PM at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont. Tickets are $6; call 773-327-5252 to charge by phone or 773-866-8660 for recorded information.
