Editorial to the second edition

The second edition is dedicated to fifty years of tapes. We offer the picture and the story that explain why tape had some importance in someone’s life at a given time.

Let me think. Let me think about a time long ago, a time before scripture was invented. Let’s say we are in Persia at the court of an emperor. The empire has borders, cities, citizens. A military campaign has brought troops to the Bosporus. Nobody knows that the stretch of water that divides one land mass from another is the border between one continent and an other. Okay, in comes the cassette tape, but not yet, hold on. First there is a messenger that has to travel five thousand miles to ask if everything is prepared for the arrival of the emperor. The message should be short of course. The runner has to remember it all way through.

Let me think again. We go back in time when there is scripture, clay tablets, scrolls. It would be safer, though, if the messenger could actually remember the message. In come different techniques to remember the lines. After all, this newer age messenger already stands in a tradition. Who knows the skills and the profession were passed on from one generation to an other.

Now forget the messenger and remember the techniques. (This is a side note). Should I explain more or point out to you that from these techniques of how to remember and eventually recite a text, it is a very short step to prose, poetry, theatre and singer/songwriters?

Right.

Back to the messenger that got invented fifty years ago by Lou Ottens: the cassette tape which was as big as a packet of cigarettes. From its invention in 1963 onwards the cassette tape turned out to be a perfect messenger.

In staalzine number 2 we have collected some pictures of cassettes and the stories that come with it.

The Making of Via del Latte

Packaging was one of the unique selling points of Trumpett Tapes. The Trumpett marketing department realized from the beginning that just a cassette in a plastic box was not enough to draw the attention of potential buyers in a music shop, even if it was a shop specialized in cassettes only. We have put a lot of effort in design, strange packages and all kind of extras.

The first cassette of Doxa Sinistra was arguably the highlight in the Trumpett packaging history, a cassette packed in a milk carton. Via del Latte means Milky Way, but because a large Milky Way chocolate bar wraparound was too expensive we settled for the idea of a milk carton. But how did we manage to get a cassette in there?

We started off writing letters to packaging companies specialized in milk cartons. Amongst them was Elopak, an international company with a Dutch office in Terneuzen and a plant nearby Roosendaal. As you can see from the letter projected on the screen

it took some effort to get in contact, but in June 1982 we were invited to come to the local milk factory of Heiloo, the Melco (later called Horna, and then taken over by Campina. The factory is closed now) where an account manager of Elopak picked up two of our employees to drive them all the way to Roosendaal.

There we got our first disappointment, the half litre cartons in which we had planned to pack the cassettes were a no go. Because of the enormous heat that is necessary to seal the milk cartons, the cassettes would surely melt down and stick to the inside of the carton forever.The plant was crowded by some of the ugliest specimen of the blue collar working class who were very curious about our appearance. Specially for us, they stopped one of the conveyor belts and made it ready for packaging the cassettes. About 150 pieces were carefully put in an open carton and then sealed by a heating device. We also got about 100 flat milk cartons for self-packaging purposes (I wonder if anyone ever managed to get these sealed at home).

The second disappointment was that the account manager didn’t bring our employees back to Heiloo, but dropped them off at the train station of Dordrecht. There they stood, with a lot of huge boxes full of 1 litre milk cartons, just at peak hour in the Randstad. It was a train trip through hell dragging those boxes in and out of trains through crowds of commuters that wanted to go home as fast as possible. A wonder that they reached Heiloo without any harm.

We later sent a copy of Via Del Latte in a milk carton to Elopak and on July 14 1982 we have received a letter from Mr. Dijkstra, the marketing manager of Elopak The Netherlands. He was delighted that his company had been able to help us with the original concept of putting a cassette in a Pure-Pak carton. They didn’t want to see any money and hoped that the release was not only a musical success but also a commercial one.

The 150 milk cartons were indeed sold out in a couple of weeks and after that buyers got a cassette with only a flat carton until these items were also out of stock. Kubus Kassettes from Leiden did a reissue on cassette some years later (also from other Trumpett cassettes). Via de Latte is nowadays available on CD-R and on LP through Enfant Terrible.

Fifty Years of Tape

There is this story of a young man who went to the library, took some tapes home, of whatever content, and used the empty space to fill it with noise. Then he brought the tapes back to the library. No idea if those tapes still exist.

There is also the story of four tapes that went to the Moon and came back again. Their content is a collection of reports by the astronauts. The four tapes are on display in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. Those are my favourite tapes. – Rinus Van Alebeek

I had been using cassettes since about 1973 to record and listen to music and that was good since it gave me a freedom from the radio. However when I started recording and distributing my own music on cassettes in 1993 they took on a different meaning to me. They allowed me to connect with like minded audio artists all over the world. It was an incredible and exciting exchange medium. I don’t know if I would have come as far as I have as an audio artist without the cassette tape. The photo shows three of the first tapes I received in trade for my own tapes. I’m not quite sure if they are the very first three but 60 Cycle Hum was one of my first contacts and is a good representation. – Dave Fuglewicz

My first self-released cassette. Composed and recorded between 1980 and 1982. All done (tape manipulation, recording, ‘mastering’…) with two small radio-cassette players. I think I did around thirty-forty copies of this one. – Francisco Lopez

During the late 1980s – early 1990s, I traded cassettes with artist Dan Fröberg. We filled blank C-90 tapes with favourites from our respective vinyl record collections, and decorated insert and cases. Obscurities and rarities in different genres like psychedelia, musique concrete, avant-garde, ‘real people’ music, outrageously and whimsically strange, or just plain bizarre. This was before there were music blogs. The picture shows the cassettes I got from Dan during that period. – Anders Östberg

International Sound Communication Compilation – Volume Number 15 2 x C90 cassette (Man’s Hate Productions, U.K.)
The cassette “that changed my life”, started my journey into the worldwide music/culture underworld. I am still travelin’…! Released 1987/88 offers an incredible amount of unheard international creations, from soft folk songs to extreme noise attacks, starts with my track!!
.. came with addresses, got in touch, was connected …! – Lord Litter

Pinata Party was my first try at mail collaborating in 1986-7. This was a highly autobiographical work that featured my own 3 kids and home tapers Dino DiMuro, Ken Clinger, James Hill, Mark Hanley and others. This became a two cassette tape set and was packaged inside a homemade faux pinata with materials I took from the vegetable dept where I worked – Don Campau

This is the first cassette-album I did. It was 1981 and we were 15 years old classmates, who just had discovered the opportunity to produce a real “album” by the most minimal means. Our group was baptised “Meadow Meal” (after the song by Faust). Our album “Can’t Murder my Muffins” was a kind of dadaist statement, but complete with cover-artwork, credits, lyrics and even a label: Carrot Tapes. No real overdubbing (just some odd ping-pong), no effect units at all! We were especially proud, that our recordings were in stereo! We sold it for 5 Deutsche Mark (approx. $ 2,50) per copy. The much better known cassette “Eat” from 1987 is a kind of remix-project,using some of the best tracks from this one and two follow-ups. – Guido Erfen

The tape that made me aware that it was possible to do your own music at home even if it wasn’t hardcore punk. Dino DiMuro’s 1986 classic “SNOUTBURGER”. – Russ Stedman

Tape: Soundtrack for 1972 film produced by (aged-13) Goff & Bill Magoon (MAGOFF INCORPORATED). Creating soundtrack required Magoon to cue Goff to read each line of Longfellow’s “Midnight Ride” poem as it was reenacted onscreen in lo-fi, dadaesque, splendor (“wait…NOW!”). Audience: 8th Grade Classroom, dumbstruck. Teacher: Mrs. Poier shocked, appreciative.
I made a label on the tape itself from construction paper, a newspaper cutout, ink, and glue. Sadly, the film no longer exists — too many runs through too many disfunctional projectors. – Charles Goff III

I had once a communist propaganda tape with the marxian economics lecture. It was in ’80, it was Jaruzelski’s time. I was 12 years old boy in little polish town, and it was really cold in Brodnica (a small town in the north east of Poland, near Mazury – the huge country of lakes), and yes, it was a martial law in Poland, and it was my first cassette tape. Imagine that there were only few vinyls in my home town. I remember: “The Wall”, Mothers of Invention live album and some Grateful Dead albums (what a company!). So I copied Pink Floyd music from the vinyl to it. And after I hated Floyds, I used it to record my own lo-fi recordings, until to complete decay of sound. This tape is lost now, but I still have Esther Phillips’ cassette with my home made sounds. – Darek Brzostek

Cassette had metal body with illegal/stolen from military USSR plant typeIV chrome BASF tape in it. Always different time length, as they were made by hands and a pencil. When you are tired of rolling, put tape in body.
None of “Made in Japan” cassette players could play it without being broken on fifth minute. Only heavy black metal recorders, probably produced at the same plant where tanks were assembled. – Dmytru Fedorenko

….no picture, alas…

I recorded this cassette by a Walkman in Morocco in December, 1988. I was traveling from Marrakesh, through a desert area to Fez, and the final destination was Tangier. It sounds like most of sounds were recorded on a bus trip. You hear arab music and news broadcasting floating in the noises of motor vehicle, conversations of passengers etc. This is one of three tapes I made on my visit to Morocco. However, I lost one of those and another one broke a long time ago. This is the only one that survived until now. – Aki Onda

This cassette with the title “LSD report”, unlike “Music to take acid by”, was not music that you should listen to while being on acid, but more like music made about acid. Thus the “report” title. It contained interviews with Tim Leary as well as all kinds of psychedelic music from the 60s. – Moritz Reichelt

This double cassette of Segovia’s guitar music takes me back to the beginning of my musical life as a classical guitarist. As a cassette it’s exciting in itself – as a double, even more so. With its sturdy box and extensive foldout sleeve notes it becomes a historical document. – James Wyness

Cannot think of it as a lapse or a slip anymore. And even less as a shortage of paper. Heart of Saturday Nigh. There was not much of nearness with the saturday’s hearts of a small town in the south of Poland. Except maybe with the heart of this CD-rip. – Michal Libera

A woman came into the Generator in 1989 and handed this cassette to me. I don’t know her name or the name of her project, but it is a beautiful and mysterious object. I suspect this is the only cassette she made and I feel honored to own it. – Ken Montgomery

In summer 1982 I went to London for the first time in my life and bought myself a walkman. Back in my hometown I ordered various industrial music tapes from the mailorder company 235, based in Bonn, Germany. Video Rideo was one of them. I remember well the fragrance of the cover of the tape which was mysterious and now after 32 years I realized the fragrance is still there. The music including treated voices, analog synths, distorted guitars, feedbacks, was rough and fragile at the same time. That summer in 1982 I often went for a walk in my hometown with my walkman on listening to Video Rideo. Listening to this music on the street was weird and very special. – Dieter Mauson

In the eighties I learned a lot about DIY. It was also the period I started to like Christmas music. To combine the two I started my own cassettelabel: Noel. My first release, Oscar’s Xmas Carols, went through Ding Dong Tapes. I did not earn anything. For my second cassette I did everything myself, from the sleeve to the distribution. But the packaging was too expensive so I lost money. This is my third (and last) release. I kept everything low budget. The inlay is a nice stencil/leaflet. The result made me very happy and I did not lose any money (nor did I win any.) – Oscar Smit

This is the third independent cassette I ever bought, following ‘From Brussels With Love’ (which was great, and has since been released on CD),and local punk band (music I was interested in for two minutes, and turned on to all things experimental for a life time). There was a review of this in Vinyl 2, and send out money to get it. It has everything from post punk to electronics. I still play this a lot, albeit on my Ipod. – Frans de Waard

In reportage in Kabul, Afghanistan, heading towards the city centre in a taxi. Despite the diffuse fear I hold into myself everyday since I arrived, I suddenly notice the beautiful song playing in the old speakers. Unable to catch the name of the singer, I offer to buy the tape to the taxi driver,in hope that it holds forgotten Persian songs. – Julie Rousse

On my way to the post office one day I was singing a new wave song “my baby does her hairdo long” when this double cassette from my friend Agog arrived in my box. – Zan Hoffman

Dear Rinus, enclosed you can find some images of audiotape covers and audiotape inlets of Die Tödliche Doris. You can choose, which you like most. I can’t decide, which I prefer. – Wolfgang Müller

I actually remember nothing about how or when I received this tape and have not heard it in years. But it has stuck out in mind for the oddness/originality (and of course a certain non-originality). – Al Margolis

INSANE MUSIC FOR INSANE PEOPLE VOL. 1 C60 1981 Belgium INSANE MUSIC SANDWICH RECORDS SR13 pseudo product 4 second human attempt

This is a compilation of tracks of various projects of, by, and related to Alain Neffe. The first Insane Music compilation was a great inspiration for my early recordings with Debbie Jaffe under the name Viscera. We purchased this cassette from Aeon Distribution of Fort Collins, Colorado, and we later distributed it through our Cause And Effect Distribution Service. Unfortunately my copy of this tape broke immediately after I had the wisdom to digitize it for archival purposes! – Hal McGee

Radical Positive by blackhumour – Before he did years worth of deliberately boring releases in order to alienate his fans, and free himself from his following, blackhumour released in 1986 the double cassette Radical Positive. On one of the tapes was a 60 minute piece called “Peace In Our Time.” In an age where far too many lifted sex sounds from porn tapes, with “Peace In Our Time” blackhumour actually recorded actual friends having actual sex. Love making, not exploration was his point. It made for a very interesting listening experience. It was as beautiful as it was raw. The piece was later reissued as a CD in 1993, but the original mix on the cassette is surprisingly more graceful. – GX Jupitter-Larsen

“My Heart Sing Is Nature” was a song I wrote in the late 80s. The rhythm track was done using recorded ping pong balls, and the sound was as close as I could get to my ideal Holger Hiller sound at the time. Soon thereafter, “My Heart Sing…” was released on the cassette compilation “And The Trees Are Waiting” by a small cassette label in Frankfurt.

One Day I got a Letter from a girl, in which she expressed how much she liked that particular tune on the compilation. For a year or so we became pen-pals, sending each other cassette tapes with music and chatter. Eventually we met in person.

Today, twenty years later, we’re still a happy couple. – Achim Treu

In the early days of the “tape network” era (late Seventies-early Eighties) it was not uncommon to exchange cassettes with unknown musicians that would quickly rise to fame.It is an early demo cassette that I received from Richard H. Kirk, ca. 1979, with tracks that would in part appear in the early singles and in the first album (“Mix-Up”) of Cabaret Voltaire. I learned later that Richard only made 20-30 hand-made copies of this tape. It’s a great memory; it started a postal friendship and, a couple of years later, the whole CV trio (with girlfriends) visited me in Forte dei Marmi, where I lived, in their first Italian vacation. – Vittore Baroni

An old friend, Tom Winter, with whom I no longer have contact as he has moved on to holier ground, assembled the audio and designed the cover for the VEC AUDIO EXCHANGE PROJECT cassette number 10 titled PYTHAGORAS’ BUDGERIGAR. I didn’t have to do any other work than select the cassettes from the archive. ‘Budgie’ is a favourite compilation. – Rod Summers

When the idea for the co-release of this tape was dropped by my friend Yannis Iasonidis during a truly difficult time for me, a time during which I found the chance to look back to mistakes I had done the recent years but also a process I found myself into of reorganizing things and trying to find the meaning in my activities which I had almost lost for quite some time… so no matter that is a new release, music whose soul evokes moods that drive me backwards (harsh dept, perverse series, absurd, e.a.) and inwards (noise-below) with a lust for new explorations & adventures! – Nicolas Malevitsis

first find of the fall of chrome project – Claudio Rocchetti

I like going to the flea market in my city, Valparaiso, and find old tapes. There is a special one that reminded me of the 80s when I played atari cassette as a child. I was struck by their bizarre cover art and bought it. I use it for performances, you can hear magnetic data sounds while the program is loading. – Fernando Godoy

The cassette I could remember is my first solo album, recorded on the 31st of December, 1999. It was a spontaneous decision to start the recording process at my home studio on the 2d floor of Prospekt Vernadskogo, 59 in Moscow. It took about few hours to finish it, just shortly before the new year party with my family on the 10th floor in the same building. My daughter Sonja (she was 12 on that time) also took part at this recording. Her voice was sampled for one of the tracks of the album.
Next year the album has been released on cassette by Moscow based label “Insofar Vapor Bulk”. The label was organized by local enthusiast and collector of experimental music Dennis Danchenko. The album got the name “Pa koket” (in Swedish it means something like “at the kitchen”). Being an art designer, Dennis did very nice and original artwork for the cassette. And still this cassette is the only one tape album of my solo works, and one of the most favorite in my discography. – Alexei Borisov

This one, purchased among others, ~15 years ago, switched me to another level of attitude to tape network so I started my own label with even better neat provocations. It startled me. – Dennis Danchenko

78 Hoeren – Mama Fume Le Pipe De Papa… Uche, Uche (1989) Wrapped in black leather – condom included. “Mama fume le pipe…” was the soundtrack of Summer 1989. An adolescent wet dream to its very core, a post-Pixies art-punk-pop universe of transvestites and freaks. With illustrious titles such as “No Sperm Today” or “Godverdomme, Blief Toch Van Mien Brommer”. My all-time cassette favorite! -Edwin Brienen

A compilation k7, made by a teacher of my first gf. He did some real effort in collecting the finest industrial music. It came with a written text about the history, which got burned before I had the chance to read it. It fed my curiosity until today! – Kim Laugs

The reason why these two cassettes TECHNOLOGY and ENDOMETRIO, of the years 1980/1981 are to be considered as the watershed between the two periods, the most radical technological and biological-meditative. Although currently the originals are no longer in my possession, I keep the memory equally inherent in a genuine and meaningful experimentation that belongs to my darkest youth. – MB

I remember when I was a kid, music was to me related only to the religious sphere. In my family everybody was very deep into the catholic faith, in that very old Italian mood. Also I had a priest in my family, an old uncle living with us. He had plenty of tapes and vinyls with some sort of christian speeches, christian music, and stuff. Yes, I listened to sounds coming out from my tv and radio, but I didn’t recognize them as music, but as senseless sound and noise. This is one of two tapes I saved from the rapacious hands of time! – Michele Mazzani

This cassette tape contains the voice of my father, recorded during a garden party at my grand-mother’s house in 1977, one year before he committed suicide. This tape is the oldest and most precious in my collection. – Joke Lanz

1994, I’m 15 years old. I enter a cinema to see Eraserhead without knowing anything about the film or the director. Went out esthetically shocked, that was the first time I’ve heard sounds like this. Then I found a VHS recorded from the TV, ripped the entire movie on an audio tape, titled it “ambient noise” and listened to it hundreds of times. This is my first ever industrial ambient drone tape, those who know my ambient work can understand it all began there. – Tzii

Snapshot Radio was a monthly three-hour radio program hosted by Rich Jensen and myself on KAOS-FM, Olympia, Washington. We played only homemade recordings of “real life” – no music, nothing made in a studio. Just people walking, talking, and listening to the world. Eventually it became a cassette zine. – Steve Peters

1984 veröffentlichte ich die erste Kassettenproduktion „Leider Nur Im Wohnzimmer“ auf meinem Label „die ind“. die ind“ stand für die independent, die Industrie oder die Indianer. Am Anfang war alles sehr regional ausgelegt, bis zu dem Tag, als ich eine Monochrome Bleu Kassette an das Objekt Magazin nach Eureka, Kalifornien schickte. Von da an war die Kassette nicht mehr bloß Tonträger, sondern „die ind“ Teil von „cassette culture“.

Am meisten liebte ich Compilations. Regional veröffentlichte ich den „Fadi Sampler Linz“, international den „Tape Report“. Der Tape Report hob musikalische Schätze, vernetzte Tape-Wahnsinnige weltweit und von da an crashte Couches weltweit und „die Welt“ bei mir. Ab da hätte Die Ind „die Welt“ heißen müssen. – Wolfgang Dorninger

I had the pleasure of meeting these folks back in 86, when they came to DC for a percussion instrument convention. Apparently they were involved with a maker and seller of such items. They discussed their manner of making music… setting up four microphones in a room, laying various instruments on the floor, drinking a few beers and then seeing what would happen. Recording sessions were overlaid on top of sessions to produce the result. Its music stripped of all musicality, and to this day still sounds pretty far out. – Jeff Surak

John de Pagter (1963) bundelde een selectie van zijn serene geïmproviseerde composities van melodieuze minimale elektronica onder de alias Zimbo op zijn invloedrijke album Cat, dat mondiaal goed werd ontvangen. Voor die eerste uitgave richtte John op 8 juli 1984 zijn muzieklabel Zimbo Tapes op, dat in totaal 35 unieke en opzienbarende cassettealbums van voornamelijk Nederlandse artiesten uitbracht.

Tussen 29-9-1980 wn. 18-2-1981 vond in het Amsterdamse jongerencentrum Oktopus op de woensdagavond de legendariese konsertserie ULTRA plaats; ideologies-avantgarde-audiovisueel -experimenteel-elektronies waren de kernwoorden. Elk konsert werd op de Revox A77 opgenomen en uiteindelijk in augustus 1981, na gedegen selectie, verscheen van elke band één of meerdere nummers op de ULTRA kassette op LeBel PeRiod, het kassettelabel van Mark Tegefoss. In 2012 verscheen in het kader van de ULTRA reveival hetzelfde materiaal op CD in samenwerking tussen LeBel PeRiod en Big Lebowski De kassettes zijn niet meer verkrijgbaar, maar de CD versie is te bestellen hiermee een uniek dokument van een unieke periode in de popgeschiedenis voor komende generaties te hebben veilig gesteld.- Mark Honingh

Bloody But Chic” is the second volume of the “Home-made Music For Home-Made People” cassettes, devoted to short (not longer than 2 minutes) tracks of experimental music. I had played noisy/industrial music for years and I deeply enjoyed making harsh noise and unbearable sounds, mostly to express my aggressivity and despair. … A sort of cheap psychotherapy.
In fact, I was also interested by the work of other musicians who had the same approach, but usually, I was bored after listening to 5 minutes of any industrial music (including mine)!!!
This is why I decided to make a compilation with very short tracks and I sent invitations to my contacts. I asked them to add humour to their sound cocktail and to be inventive.
I really received a lot of tracks and I made a sharp selection.
Regarding the title, “Bloody But Chic” seemed to fit perfectly with the concept. I used black-painted cassettes and a fold-out cover sleeve, and I put my bloody fingerprints on both. I used really thick red paint and get traces on my hands for one full week.
The advertisement text was “An international compilation with 2 minutes tracks. A non-boring conception of experimental and industrial sound – Contains humour – Alain Neffe

It would be impossible to single out one particular album from the many excellent works I heard throughout my years running the Music & Elsewhere tape label (1987-2003), so I will choose the actual cassettes we used for our releases instead, catalogue number hand-added by paint-pen. Those were the days. – Mick Magic

I have been just amazed that today, there is again people who released cassettes in an industrial mode.6 cassettes X 250 copies = 1500 cassettes. Being an incredible producer of artisanal cassettes 30 years ago.(about 3000 copies) I would never thought that these cassettes would be re released under their original audio support 30 years later, today + using industrial duplicators, real printing and not xerox style as when I made it in the 80’s. The fact that such release exist again, The old but compact, real, analogue, magnetic thing sure for the very few people who kept their decks safe + in USA, ultra Apple technologic Iphone Country is to me an amazing fact!- Ruelgo Neuf

Lost and Found

This cassette is the oldest ‘found cassette’ I still have in an archive of some 400 recordings.

This cassette was found in early 1987 in Liverpool, a city at that point rife with industrial decay and unemployment, race riots, a chronic housing shortage and growing drug problem. This tape came from an‘unofficial’ car boot sale, one of several held on bombsites around the perimiter of the city. People (many of whom where real characters and who ended up recognizing me on my weekly visits) sold anything and everything out the backs of cars or on blankets on the ground, for pence.

Those markets ceased to exist more than two decades ago, and urban regeneration and even gentrification has since taken hold. The city has become a more stable and less interesting place, in the same way the exciting if unpredictable cassette format has been overtaken by sleek digital formats.

The sight of this cassette takes me on a mental time-journey to a whole other place, and its content was similarly unexpected. A pre-recorded release by Welsh prog rockers Man with tell-tale sellotape over the cassette spine, and containing a hissy, taped phone call between two lovers, one with a local accent and a germanic-sounding girl in Brazil. Conversing in English yet neither seeming to understand the other. It’s the sort of found recording I like, raising unanswered (and probably unanswerable) questions: what was the ‘important information’ he mentioned? What were the backgrounds of those involved in that call, and what happened subsequently? Where are they now? Over to you. – Ben Roberts

I’m in a city that is not my own, need to find tapes for a project and somehow can’t find any. Flea markets only have more recent obsolescences,cellphones chargers and digital cameras, or antiques, not much of the disconforting junk in between.
Then I find this box of cheap generic blank tapes, each wrapped in clear plastic like pretzels or tissues. must come from that short period between mass commodity and total irrelevance. I buy it and avoid questions as to why. – Anne-F Jacques

Editorial

A short editorial to explain the appearance of StaalZine in the world of the digitized word.

There was no need or urgency to start it. The massive new staalplaat site gave us the possibility to load it with a zine. Editors in charge will be Guillaume Siffert and yours truly, Rinus van Alebeek. Over the last years both of us have spent some of our time setting up exhibitions or shows. We both run a small label, which in fact is curating audible space. From this background, and from a lot more backgrounds the StaalZine will take its shape.

In the first issue we present four articles. Michal Libera from Warsaw writes three letters and talks about Thatcher, Berlin, Cardew, grants and neighbours. Rod Summers from Maastricht receives several parcels per week. He describes one of those days and what he found on his door mat. Phill Harding from Brighton, shows that the twitter network is more then a place to deposit your digital flyers, and has made a composition out of tweets, that evoke experiences with sound. A long article about the first years of Staalplaat, in which I conducted interviews with mail art veterans Vittore Baroni and Rod Summers will shine some light on the question how the humble cassette has revolutionized the idea of producing and spreading music.

The Early Years

The image on the virtual front page of the very first digital issue of staalzine, shows the very first staalplaat shop in a not so very first squat in Amsterdam in the year 1982.

At that time the squat movement in the Dutch capital was probably at its creative and political peak.

In the following years the movement got destroyed and the occupied houses cleared. The people who lived within the system had to return to live within ‘The System.’ To many of them it resulted in a socio-cultural Diaspora, because they lost their galleries, their tools, their studio’s and their social network. During the nineties Amsterdam was thoroughly rebuilt and redesigned: poverty disappeared and the rich and new rich moved in. Nowadays the Dutch capital is a very uncomplicated town, beautiful as ever, with a great range of restaurants and clubs and bars and beautiful young people who smile all the time and have a good time living there. It seems ‘The System’ was right to kick those stubborn punks out of the city centre.

The squatters and other assorted peripheral youth continued their lives and disappeared in the demographic statistics; some disappeared in the gutters of dope defined streets. What remained were the stories, of bombs during the Queens coronation or burning trams during the riots. What remained also were the typical bars with their wooden floors where the stories of those days were told. The memories reached younger ears, and they reached the ears of Mr. van Gelderen, director of Lebowski Publishers.

Apparently the time was right to look back on a period that resulted in the definite break-through of DIY in Dutch subculture. When old days are the only thing that old friends have in common, skeletons will fall out of cupboards and ghosts will visit dreams; what you get is a mixture of emotional turmoil, laughter, beer and tears, but the next day it is ‘back to normal.’ The old friends that the publisher got together were in a position that allowed them to convert those nostalgic thoughts. Books got written. And when the books appeared in the shops, the next step was to organize media attention. The old DIY-ethics got used as a strategic weapon. Some of the young ones who had been very active back then, now, being old ones, occupied important positions. What happened next, could be compared to a revolution in a country full of anarchists and men in uniform. You storm the governmental palace and you occupy the radio and television stations. Then you tell everyone, and hopla, a new order is installed.

The flag that got designed carried the words ULTRA. They were very lucky that the hard core football supporters in the Netherlands didn’t call themselves ULTRAS as in neighbouring countries. So, that domain was still available. It proved to be a brand, not only easy to pick up by the press, but it got backed up as well by a very lively period in the history of Dutch sub-culture, a musical genre defined by that name, and – very important – contemporary bands who were directly inspired by the ULTRA movement.

The governmental palaces that got stormed were the venues in various cities, and the radio and television stations that got occupied didn’t need to be occupied because some Ultra’s and their associates already worked for newspaper, radio or television. Once the word was spread, enthusiasm got generated and the evenings sold out. Time will tell if the little storm that took the Netherlands in the first months of the year 2012, will have carried seeds to fertile soil.

The book –ULTRA- appeared with a one-issue-only remake of the magazine VINYL, that was another product of the squatters laboratory of thoughts. Ex- staalplaater Frans de Waard, who through his Vital Weekly has established himself as an authority within the world of non-academic contemporary music, was asked to write about ‘the re-birth of the cassette.’ Some interesting points are made by Frans. He wonders why cassette releases nowadays have less extravagant appearances as thirty years ago, when sponges, pyramids, bathroom tiles or soup cans were used. I will try to find an explanation later on in this article.

The book ULTRA is written by Harold Schellinx. Some of you might know him as the devoted chronicler of everything happening off-screen in our wonderful world of sounds, of which he reports in his SoundBlog. He describes how Geert Jan Hobijn got his “PLATO! STAALPLAAT! EUREKA!” moment on a beach in Greece, and decided to start a shop that would sell second hand records. The space for the shop got found by opening a door by force. A table got carried inside, a cardboard box with records, a pipe tobacco case for the money, and there it was: Staalplaat. On the door the hand painted sign: ‘open/dicht.’ An article in Vinyl, written by Harold, brought Geert Jan a second illumination, that turned out to be decisive for Staalplaat’s future. In true DIY-no copyright style he read the article not in the magazine but on a photocopy of it.

The ‘Cassettes in the Netherlands’ special listed all the Dutch cassette labels and some of their releases. Harold notes in his book that cassette labels existed everywhere in the Netherlands, in places as big as Achthuizen, Heiloo, Laren, Losser, Asten, Hengelo, Terneuzen or Zevenkerken, but of course also in Rotterdam, ‘s Gravenhage or Amsterdam. Geert Jan decided to contact every single one of them. He noticed that the (home made) cassette as a medium was snubbed by the regular ‘alternative’ record stores. Nobody would sell them; the cassette was a real outcast, a squatter of the music industry. Staalplaat became a shop with a lot of cassette releases on sale. In the process Staalplaat also decided to release music on tape. To distinguish the label from the shop the name Staaltape was used.

In Berlin, almost thirty years later, Geert Jan and I have had quite a few talks during our ‘drink runs’. That’s how the three-mile-ride from the Flughafenstrasse in Neukölln to the liquor shop in the Graefestrasse in Kreuzberg and back was called. During one of our ‘runs’ he mentioned Vittore Baroni’s Trax label. Baroni’s art work and packaging were a very important point of inspiration to him in those early years of Staaltape.

Since I had always been fascinated how such a big exchange system of cassettes, now known as the Cassette Culture, had come into being, and with their network had anticipated the internet, I decided to contact Vittore. The first question I asked him was based on Frans de Waard’s observation that today’s packaging is less eccentric. Because Vittore can write very well in English I publish his answer here. In case you are reading this article with some sounds running in the background, I strongly suggest to change tape or track list before you proceed.

“I have a limited knowledge of the cassette “renaissance” of the last decade, I do receive the odd (promo) cassette but I am not actively involved in a network of exchanges like I was in the Eighties, so probably a lot has passed over my head. Anyway, generally speaking, the covers of musical products always reflect the visual culture of their age, so it’s no wonder that today’s cassettes are rather different from the old ones. I have seen recent cassette packages influenced (for example) by the Fort Thunder aesthetics (colourful pseudo-naive mutant comics), which is cool, or by cold ultra-minimalist computer art. The main difference between yesterday and today is that we used to create our graphics with Xerox, scissors and glue, while now most designs are computer-generated, with quite a different range of technical possibilities.”

“Not all the cassettes of the Eighties anyway were extremely creative (if I open the cassette-drawers in my archive, there were the dull ones too!), many producers used standard size covers and cassette boxes, but there were also a few small enterprises here and there that stood out because of their weird and inventive packages, influencing others to pursue similar alternatives to the simple and “boring” cassette. The cassette producers of the early Eighties, maybe for the first time in the history of popular music, realized that they could try to change not just the musical trends and styles of their era but also the ways in which the sound pieces were conceived (introducing collaborations at distance many years before Internet), recorded and distributed (in total independence). It was a big step forward in all possible ways, like a smart younger brother of the early self-produced punk records (smart because cassettes, unlike vinyl, could be recycled if you didn’t like the content!).”

“This small revolution in music had its own visual appeal, and it helped for it the fact that many cassette producers were also into comics, mail art or other forms of alternative art: Illusion Production in France, for example, was run by active (comics) artists and produced wonderful zines, serigraphies, postcards, etc. to go along with the cassettes. One of the three founders of TRAX, Massimo Giacon, was a budding comics artist and today is a well respected artist and designer. Rock and comics are closely connected and this fact is reflected in many cassette releases of the time, but there were also different “schools”: the packages of Industrial/experimental tapes (even Touch started out this way) were more influenced by political Dada, Situationism, B-movies, radical performance art, etc.”

“My impression is that, purely for their young age, many cassette-makers of today have a limited first-hand knowledge of the old tape labels (it’s a different thing to see/hear those cassettes on a collector’s website), so there is a tendency to unwittingly replicate old ideas. And if the packages are not so wild and elaborate as they used to be, this is probably due also to the fact that postal rates today are much more expensive that thirty years ago, “physical” sales are generally dwindling and it would be rather costly to produce and mail out cassettes attached to large size magazines or in heavy wooden boxes (like those wonderful items in the German No Edition catalogue).”

I also asked Rod Summers. With his VEC AUDIO EXCHANGE he has been at the core of the Cassette Culture since the mid Seventies. He states: “Ever developing technology offers huge creative advantages to the audio artist but perhaps these advances are to the detriment (= damage, harm, disadvantage – translative note by Rinus) of the necessary creative invention that was required by more simple technical facility of tape editing/cassette production.”

The obvious is often left out when something gets explained. Vittore Baroni hints at it when he says “there were also a few small enterprises here and there that stood out because of their weird and inventive packages, influencing others to pursue similar alternatives to the simple and “boring” cassette.”

The answer to Frans de Waard’s question is hidden in this quote. One needs to visualize it, and look into moments in life. A living room with paper, cardboard, paint, silk, cans, nylon pants, wigs, rubber ducks, noses and gloves, bird cages, answering machines, hagelslag, spilled coffee, sugar and milk, parts of a destroyed piano, old teabags, or a radio that has undergone vivisection, books, diary’s, seeds, well just have a look around in the part of your apartment that is stuffed with things you have always wanted to throw away, but were afraid to do so: that is the material you need for packing up that cassette. With the result of such work in hand, feelings of curiosity, pride, vulnerability and revolt meet in the heart and soul of the maker. The cassette and its weird package arrive on the table of someone who should listen to it. The first reaction is in the way the person with the cassette in his hands looks at its creator. There is also an other way through which the result gets judged. The cassette will be send to someone. That someone will send a cassette in return, equally different and weird in packaging. From that point on the ‘pursuing of similar alternatives to the simple and “boring” cassette’ will result in great art work. But it comes from one-to-one contact, either via mail or in person that this carousel of inventiveness will spin the makers round and round, right round.

Now that I was on it, I also asked Vittore and Rod if they knew when the postal cassette-exchange of weird and not so weird home made music started. Both pointed to William Furlong’s ‘AUDIO ARTS.’ A short glance at wiki’s, (I only wish I had the complete Encyclopaedia Britannica to consult) (But then again I doubt that Furlong has made it to the Pantheon of British culture) told me that William Furlong interviewed artists such as Joseph Beuys, Buckminster Fuller and Gerhard Richter and recorded it directly onto a cassette. The tape got copied, packed and distributed: a portable radio programme… an Audiozine! AUDIO ARTS started in 1973 and lasted until 2006(!) After this discovery I fell silent for weeks and walked the streets lost in thoughts.

One day I watched a movie from the seventies, maybe late sixties, something with spies. A cassette had a prominent part in the plot. The tape was used for secret messages. Then I had my “EUREKA” moment.

All those young people who exchanged cassettes with their weird home grown music on it grew up in the sixties. That was the time when television made its first appearance in households. The images were still in black and white. Programmes were not shown around the clock. The television was very much a thing owned by parents. It was also very much a thing that connected to another world. To a kid it held some mysteries, and something forbidden. I must have seen loads of cassettes and (reel-to-reel) recorders being used for recording or playing secret messages in various movies and detective series, the most famous one ‘Mission Impossible’ that started with the insertion of a cassette in a tape player. The message got played and ended with “This tape will autodestruct five seconds after the end of the message.” Then white smoke curled up from the recorder. Without realizing it, we grew up with the cassette as an icon for a taboo.

I remembered something else, a friend who lived a few houses away, a son of Polish immigrants, was a member of the Bazooka Club. I knew that this heavy-weight bubble gum that allowed you to blow enormous bubbles, and chew like a real ‘yank’, promoted their Bazooka Club at the back of the three-screen comic strip that was part of the wrapper. Bazooka would send Bazooka Things, what, I cannot remember anymore, but it came also with a small magazine that held addresses of other members of the Bazooka club to whom you could become a pen pal.

I dived a bit deeper in my memory. I saw strange periodicals, exclusively made for children, all of them had a little section ‘pen pal wanted/offered.’ It is a phenomena that slipped my mind completely, because I never felt attracted to it. But it must have been and maybe still is a wide spread habit.

Putting these two facts together, the cassette as an icon that held a taboo, and the habit of corresponding to unknown people, made me understand that – ten years later- it was a logical step for the home taper, to look for equal minded guests and start an exchange.

Vittore Baroni again: “Mail art – an underground network of free and open exchanges involving thousands of artists that bloomed in the Seventies – was very important for the rise of the tape network, as it provided a well tested working model. Many mail artists were involved not just in graphics but also in performance and audio works, so it was quite normal that they would exchange not just postcards and envelopes but also packages with audio cassettes or videotapes.”

And Rod Summers: “The cassette revolution came about because for the very first time a globally compatible ‘portable’ ‘post able’ audio medium was available to the masses. Another aspect, and probably an important one, over and above the global compatibility of cassettes, was the relative cheapness of a cassette recorder and cheap purchase price of cassettes and the postage costs thereof.”

In short, it happened because it was possible. But I also have the impression that it happened because a minority recognized the intrinsic fascination and the sense of mystery in cassette publications.

Landhorses

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Coffee by the window while the snow falls.

cross-legged on my bed, barefoot; no company but the settling birds, the waking moths, & venus glowing softly through my window.

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ground floor kitchen window:arythmetic-tic falling rain. Leaves shine with silvery drops. Snails look like precisely composed pieces of shit

So grey. So quiet.

I call seahorses just ëhorses’ and the brown, cloppity ones ëlandhorses’.

White butterfly close to the water, flickering with the light reflecting.

Rinnze kette beebee nnzkrr m¸¸

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We filled up the bird feeder & first on the scene were the pigeons, sniffing about our feet for dregs, the disaffected of the Bird world.

ìsilence, and the smallness of things.î

There is poetry in this gesture, buy white toilet paper at Aldi’s, walk home on the line between day and night, autumn leaves all around me.

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packing peacefully, listening to music from far away south, voices as of old. Rush hour!! hurry!:train leaves before my eyes.¥one more hour.

The quietness of the big grey. Car engines, dog barking, soft silver light enters the house.

ìWhat Have youdone with My kitenî I said, and The Man from Drugesquad said ìDony worey soney we have released itinto the wiledî

Me and a couple of pigeons waiting for the bus on a quiet Sunday morning. They look at me expectantly.

When my cat snores, it sounds like he’s squeezing an empty turkey baster.

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Sunday, silent sunday, the beauty of grey and nothingness, a balance between the day before and the day after. Horns will blow in distance.

I have the key for the lock of my bike: Rinus rides again.The lockmaker charged 17 euro for the operation. In my thoughts the key is golden.

Someone’s whispering about pizza just outside my door.

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Ducks cruising together, black, homing in on me, in the dark.

Hundreds of snails jostling each other out of the way in a hurry to get to the rain.

This downcast weather is good; my downcast eyes keep to the task.

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Shops will shut at 5pm tonight. Watched a truck take away the burnt cars, they look quite pretty, mottled and grey and crumpled.

Just read ëlooters’ as ëlobsters’.

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ìit is unbelievable what a shit we are inî

An armada of helicopters just flew over, followed by almost a full minute of sirensÖ that’s, uh, probably not good, right?

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Hot damn my hair is good.

Urban variation to loose your horse and walk the desert. My bicycle is locked, the key is broken, I walk and walk, and feel lonely and lost.

Secret agent nostalgia: Yesterday on my bicycle at Friedrichstrasse, the once corridor between East and West, a taxi door hit my knee, hard.

Just around noon.The first people sit at tables in the bars on Weserstrasse:the taste of ceremonial beers.Snow flakes fall like parachutes.

This morning a christmas tree fell from a window,a four floors flight.Somewhat melancholy,I imagine falling christmas trees all year through

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three american girls in icy weserstrasse, one of them with a pink cartoon-piggy like face, ready to scream ìOh my God, Oh my Godî any moment

Snowflakes fall peacefully, with an apropriate view I could sit at my window and stare for hours.Alternatively I’ll write something in Dutch

Small objects live on every surface in my house; they move around while I am away. Has anyone seen a white cassette with four monkeys on it?

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Nights are cold now. The olive tree has moved inside.

Why the fuck am I not Swiss?

ìthings to doî is a wonderful concept. I daydream for hours, see all the things done already. This morning a Japanese robot rang my doorbell.

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hallucinating after eating 4 giant cola bottles.

Is it normal for a cockerel to crow every 2 minutes all fucking day long?

I really want to go into the kitchen, but I can hear my housemate stabbing a ready meal with a fork, and farting , in there.

When my cat snores, it sounds like he’s squeezing an empty turkey baster.

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with thanks to the following authors, from whose twitter feeds all the material in this piece originates:

A L Bladon ‏@BecomingFish
Mr Wowser @wowser
James Lavender ‏@huity
Wil Wheaton @wilw
Rinus van Alebeek ‏@rinusnews
Robert Hope @Robhopesworld
Dumper @dmuper
Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe ‏@sarcastathon
cloud sparrow @ofthesparrows
kurt schwitters @kschwitters
John Kannenberg @JohnKannenberg