Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That...

by Joe Carducci

Mike Davis (City of Quartz): "This is an absolutely mesmerizing introduction to L.A.'s punk pantheon of outside musicians, artists, photographers, and performers."

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Punk

255 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2007

About the author

Donald Joseph Carducci is a writer, record producer, and former A&R executive, formerly most closely associated with the influential record label SST Records.

He was born in Merced, California in 1955 but grew up in Naperville, Illinois. He also lived for a time in Chicago in the late 1970's where he ran an independent mail-order record retailer. From 1981 to 1986 he was an A&R man, record producer, and co-owner of SST Records, working with, among other bands, the Minutemen, Saint Vitus, the Meat Puppets, Black Flag and Saccharine Trust.

He wrote lyrics for the song "Jesus & Tequila" by the Minutemen (Double Nickels on the Dime, 1984) and "Chinese Firedrill" from Mike Watt's 1995 solo album Ball-Hog or Tugboat?. He now resides in Centennial, Wyoming, where he runs Redoubt Press and O&O Recordings. Carducci is probably best known as the author of Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

Carducci wrote the screenplays for the 1998 films Rock and Roll Punk and Bullet On A Wire, and has other script projects in the works. Carducci has also been known to contribute to bimonthly rock periodical Arthur the Aardvark.

In 2007, Carducci published Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That..., which contained his reflections on his time at SST Records and the life and death of former SST photographer Naomi Petersen.

Reviews

[Rachel Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I come to this book from a different place than every other reader. Naomi is my husband's first wife. For the past 15 years, she has been the beautiful ghost in my life, the woman I never met, but who I felt I had to measure up to. This book has taught me more about what made her into the person my husband adored, tried to help as he was working on his own sobriety, but ultimately had to leave to save his own life. I wish someone had made the effort to talk to him about his time with her. It is my biggest issue with this book--stating J was abusive to her without getting his side of the story is not fair, especially now that he has children who may someday read this and the other things that have been written. Ending the marriage was difficult for him--he didn't want to leave her because he was committed to the marriage and to her, but he also knew his sobriety was in jeopardy. It took years for him to recover, to be open to loving another person in that way. But I know he loved her and it hurt to lose her. The characterization of him as an abuser is an exaggeration; none of us really know what went on in that house or that marriage.

Anyway, I think this was a beneficial read for me. I did learn about punk, and I appreciate that. It's also helped my husband and I talk a bit more about her and their relationship. So I thank you for that. I will now be passing this on to a friend who will appreciate it for the musicology aspect.

Note: my husband and I do not wish to participate in any projects about Naomi. Please DO NOT reach out to us outside of Goodreads to ask about her. Let her rest in peace and let us have our lives.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Men buzz around as hardly more than hairy boys until the hand of fate squashes them in their tracks like bugs. Women's lives are demarcated by a series of traumatic, usually bloody, rehearsals for death: the death of the little girl at menses, the death of the nymph at the loss of virginity, the death of the single girl at marriage, the death of the bride at the birth of the mother, the death of the mother at menopause. On occasion, under such pressures a girl might easily add some bloodletting of her own.

Jenna hates that quote -- for starters, this whole idea of a "nymph" "dying" with their virginity -- but this is an example of how Carducci grapples hard with the sticky issue of sex and women in the early L.A. punk scene. Whence came this grappling? Naomi Petersen -- the primary visual chronicler of early-eighties punk -- had been dead for two years before Carducci found out in 2005. Motivated by guilt and nostalgia, he wrote Enter Naomi, a hard-nosed, insightful memoir/tribute the likes of which I've never encountered. I remember seeing Naomi's photo credit on all those SST LP inserts back in the day, but little did I know that she was a real person, with all this surrounding her loud, lusty, short life.

The book works as both a visual tribute to Naomi -- featuring lots of her photos, memorabilia, reprints of letters, etc. -- and an insiders view of SST and L.A. punk when it was still a scruffy, interdependent scene. Carducci's depiction of the era as the tail-end of hippiedom (complete with the requisite gender roles) seems spot-on, and he compensates by focusing on the many women in the SST scene... though, alas, many of them are now dead.

On top of the gossip, you get lots of insights about aging, sex, capitalism, LP manufacturing, gig publicity, and guilt. The title refers not only to the cultural rupture that she facilitated, but to an early incident when she showed up at the SST offices weeping with bleeding wrists (cf. "bloodletting" above), having been four-F'ed by SST wrangler Mugger earlier that evening. She spooned under a desk with Chuck Dukowski for the night, and a peculiar relationship with SST and rock culture was born.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this book to those who have read the recent book about SST Records, "Corporate Rock Sucks." This book, ostensibly an account of the brief life of SST photographer Naomi Peterson, is a very personal account of the label and the people who ran it, by a guy who was there.

If you've read any of Carducci's other writing, you know that he likes to sprinkle in his right-wing politics to whatever he's writing about, and in some parts of this book he uses the context of a story about a woman in the 80s-90s West Coast punk scene to espouse his bizarrely puritanical views on sex and gender. I'm usually able to filter this crap out, though, because I feel he is uniquely insightful when he sticks to the subject at hand.

[JB · Rating 3 out of 5]

A frustrating book, simultaneously full of deep fascinating recollection/reflection and brimming with writing so jumbled it cries out for an editor. I presume Carducci had SOME readers but I also know he published this himself, and it reads that way. Dozens of pages of epigraphs about Los Angeles, which I skipped after the first few. Random selections of Naomi Peterson's letters and diary entries at the end. All of this gives the book the feeling he wrote it to try and put everything about Naomi's memory in one place.

That would have been fine were this also not a memoir about SST which, as Carducci himself describes it, is far more of a bro-heavy sausage party frat-house (or cop-shop) vibe than I expected from a cultural outlet dedicated to providing alternatives. Sure, there were women in the mix, but Carducci makes everyone else sound like such a bunch of shitty bro dudes in a way that retroactively removed some of the nuance from the music I grew up with. I always thought there was a lot more ironic distance in Black Flag lyrics about women than maybe there actually was.

And god, do I ever not want to hear Carducci's sophomoric ponderances about Women, what women are, how they are, what challenges they face. He makes a valiant effort to push himself beyond the frathouse creep vibe he describes dominating SST but it still falls embarrassingly short. Especially when he goes out of his way to quote conservative culture warriors like David Frum and Caitlin Flanagan on gender. Blech.

I enjoyed Jim Ruland's SST history Corporate Rock Sucks, and I expected this to be on par as I'd always heard good things about Carducci as a writer. I didn't really see that on display here: he frequently introduces characters without introducing them at all, alludes to events he hasn't described, and treats the reader like one of the SST hangers-on who should know all this shit already. I don't know what that's like to read if you DO know all this shit, but I don't, and that made it tedious. But he also routinely starts paragraphs in one direction before veering dramatically toward another subject--the kind of simple writing error you're supposed to catch on a re-read and solve by breaking the graf up. For someone whose entire life goal was writing, he's presenting a book here that doesn't feel carefully written at all, but hurried, and ultimately unconcerned with the reader understanding it. Sure, he's writing about music that was equally unconcerned with listeners' understanding, but the perplexing aspects here are the simple facts. I was glad to learn what I did out of this book, but it took me a while to get through it as I only enjoyed reading it sometimes.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving tribute to punk rock photographer, Naomi Petersen, and an elegy of sorts for the many people who cycled through SST's inner circle during the 1980s. An elegy is the perfect format for a consideration of punk because if you can look back at the time in your life when punk rock totally teargassed your senses and rearranged your priorities, for better or worse but probably worse, and not feel a profound sense of loss for the people and places--never mind the music--that are gone and lost forever, you were never really there.

[Ilka Erren Pardinas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just started this book. So far is scratching an itch I didn't even know I had. For me this is part "memory lane" part "get educated" about people and places I know but never made all the connections between them. During this messed up COVID19 moment in history it feels satisfying to at least read about music scenes, band, records and such that mean a lot to me. Joe Carducci is of course the ultimate insider / story teller. Recommended reading for any punks, wanna be punks, has beens or gonna be-s.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely beautiful, heartbreakingly sad book. Carducci's memories of such a crucial time in American underground music, as well as his reminiscences of one of that era's greatest photographers, combine in one of the best books about punk rock I think I've ever read.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing could have used more polish, but overall, superbly done.

[Jeff Buddle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe Carducci's "Enter Naomi" is ostensibly a eulogy for SST's house photog, Naomi Peterson, who was one of the unlikely females able to withstand the rigidity and sexism in Gregg Ginn's fifedom. However, half of this book is about SST, which in itself was about 3/4 Black Flag. In other words, this book takes on a lot in just over 200 pages.

Carducci is an obsessive documentarian. Using his own recollections and those of his compatriots, he effectively depicts the manic world of SST at its peak when Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, and Husker Du were playing and recording some of the best music of all time. Ginn was a demanding sort and everybody paid the price. Carducci, and a few others, caught up in this storm wish they had treated Naomi better.

Despite the short shrift they gave her at the time, Naomi Petersen turned into quite the photographer and her pix of SST bands (and other 80s hardcore luminaries) are among the best we now have. She wasn't leading an easy life though. This was L.A. in the late 70s and early 80s. Carducci reminds us that a dark undercurrent thrived there. By this time, Manson and his crew had wiped out whatever good vibrations that remained from the 60s.

The L.A. scene at the time was one of broken homes and kids left to their own devices. Punk was an escape hatch for most kids who didn't fit in, who desperately sought their own identity. The Germs, X, and Black Flag were among those dealing with the true (dark) L.A. Naomi both lived in this world and documented it.

I have no idea what to make of this book. It was compelling and boring at the same time. I learned much about the SST bands. Carducci obviously loved Naomi, and it comes across. Reading the book, you might fall in love with her too.

[MacDara Conroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As others have noted, this is as much a personal reminiscence of Joe Carducci's time at SST Records and the people and bands he worked with there, as it is about his and others' memories of the admired and much missed scene photographer Naomi Petersen. Sometimes even more so, as Naomi's story at times gets lost amid all the other things going on... it is after death as it was in her life, in a manner of speaking, as Carducci does make plain his regret over her got getting all of her dues, even if ultimately her demise was of her own making. But that's weirdly appropriate, as SST became an entity that grew bigger than the people who ran it and seemingly subsumed everyone involved. Some, like Carducci, got out early; owner Greg Ginn is still dealing with the aftermath, all these years later; while others, like Naomi, were left walking wounded. I hope she would appreciate Carducci's telling of her story in the context of the greater 'Legend of SST', especially since she played such a significant role in creating that legend. If only she, and those around her, really knew.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific book about a peripheral female player in the over testosteroned-Southern Cali hardcore scene in the eighties. The protagonist, Naomi, gets caught up in this scene and eventually becomes band photographer for Black Flag and SST Records (well known hardcore music/punk record label). Carducci does an expert job of keeping it Naomi's story even as a slew of really colorful, more well known characters (Henry Rollins, etc.) appear often. It's been a while since I read this, but definitely very highly recommended for anyone who listens/ever listened to punk or hardcore music.

[Mrnotarides notarides · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book that is part biography, part musical history, and party sociological treatise. The book is about Naomi Peterson who was a photographer of punk bands in the 1980's and 1990" and SST Records the legendary punk record label with bands like Black Flag, Husker Du, and the Minutemen. I really enjoyed how Carducci blended Naomi's story with the story of SST. The overall theme of the book is that every thing great comes at a sacrifice.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most insightful and knowledgeable authors regarding 80's LA punk and music in general.

[Mills College Library]

781.66 C268e 2007