Marc Masters > Quotes

“In the early 1970s in New York, a new sound percolated at dances in discotheques, parties in parks, and “jams” in underground spots only findable through word of mouth. The common catalyst was the DJ, who spun continuous musical collages with two turntables, a mixer, and a microphone. One particularly innovative DJ, a Jamaican immigrant born Clive Campbell but known as Kool Herc, took small, potent bites of rhythm from records and repeated them by cutting back and forth between two turntables playing the same LP. His “breakbeat” style caught on, and soon more DJs adapted it to their own methods of mixing and matching records on the fly. The resulting sound was called hip-hop, and it spread quickly.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“In the technical lingo of cassette tapes, “high bias” means high quality. The higher the bias, the better the sound. The story of the cassette tape has bias, too. Every person who encounters a tape adds something to that story, whether by listening to it, recording over it, or passing it on. That’s why this story is still going—because every cassette tape offers a chance to do something new. If a record sucks, it sucks. If a tape sucks, you can put something better on it. —Mike Haley, Tabs Out cassette podcast”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“Toxic Tunes was filled with songs by weird punk bands I had read about in high school but never actually heard. Where I grew up, it took an hour to drive to the closest record store, and that store certainly wouldn’t have sold anything that was on this mixtape. Just the group names and song titles by themselves sounded illicit. Dead Kennedys, the Meatmen, Butthole Surfers. “Too Drunk to Fuck,” “Tooling for Anus,” “Bar-B-Q Pope.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“In 1966, Philips introduced the 22RL962, a player/recorder that contained a cassette deck, a radio, and a speaker. It could plug into a wall or run on batteries, meaning it was portable, though too big for pockets. The 22RL962 seems like a logical enough step in the development of cassette machines, but two specific features helped its success grow in ensuing decades. First was the size of the speaker, larger than any on previous players. Its power meant this wasn’t just a portable tape player; it was almost like taking your sound system out of your house and into the world. Second, it could record audio directly from radio to cassette tape, a process that had often required multiple machines and connecting cords.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“Helped by all these changes and improvements, the popularity of cassette tapes continued to rise. By the mid-1970s, Philips had produced a million cassette recorders and 50 million cassettes. In the early 1970s in the United States, vinyl album sales topped cassette sales by almost twentyfold; by 1981, that factor was just around two. Only a year later, cassettes overtook LPs in sales, something the New York Times described as “the climax of a Cinderella story in which the lowly triumph against all odds.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“Island Records started a program called One-Plus-One in which they sold cassettes with one side of prerecorded music and another side blank, so consumers could use the second half for taping. “The public wants to home tape,” said Island vice president Herb Corsack. “We can’t fight it.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“Still, the Walkman’s impact was primarily due to the cassette tape. After all, portable radios with earpieces already existed, and few treated those as life altering or society destroying. The Walkman was revolutionary because it was personal, just like cassette tapes. You were no longer bound to what songs came on the radio or an album; whatever you wanted to hear could be put on one small object fixed to your clothes. The Walkman was like a new appendage, and it helped turn music listening from a pastime into an act of self-definition.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

“For example, a BPI proposal would have increased the cost of a blank tape by 100 percent—generating £70 million to £80 million in revenue per year—yet it wouldn’t be treated like a mechanical royalty in which much of the money goes to the artist. Instead, the proposal earmarked 40 percent of tax revenues for the record companies themselves.”
― Marc Masters, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape