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Cassette Mythos

Robin James (Editor)

4.42 · Rating details · 24 ratings · 4 reviews

Fiction. Essays, reports, art, stories, comics, and manifestoes from the citizens of the real music underground, where the cassette tape and the home studio have provoked a mass exodus into basements, bedrooms or garages around the world. These networkers, in conjunction with the Zine Culture and the International Postal System, manically produce, trade, and distribute the ...more

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Paperback, 192 pages

Published January 1st 1992 by Autonomedia

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Oct 17, 2020 Everett Darling rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

[•≈•]

This book is full of intelligent writing and it holds up to contemporary scrutiny, in spite of it being primarily about cassettes, the culture around cassettes, and its having been published in 1992. Theoretical essays and academic reports share book-space with drawings, adverts, and personal diary entries.
There are a couple of great essays on plagiarism and music-as-commodity, namely "Plunderphonics Or, Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative" by John Oswald; "No More Masterpieces Ma [•≈•]

This book is full of intelligent writing and it holds up to contemporary scrutiny, in spite of it being primarily about cassettes, the culture around cassettes, and its having been published in 1992. Theoretical essays and academic reports share book-space with drawings, adverts, and personal diary entries.
There are a couple of great essays on plagiarism and music-as-commodity, namely "Plunderphonics Or, Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative" by John Oswald; "No More Masterpieces Manifesto" by Karen Eliot; and "Necessity and Choice in Musical Forms: Concerning Musical and Technical Means and Political Needs" by Chris Cutler. The latter talks about the historical separation of composer and performer, which Cutler proposes was due to notation systems abstracting the comprehensive character of folk musics. This abstraction catered to the needs of the rising Bourgeoisie, who handled music as a commodity through establishing property rights, copyright law, and mass production of musical scores.
The happy end of course comes with the advent of recording, putting music back together again in its holistic form, uniting performer and composer. This holds weight in relation to notation, and at least in the underground where performer and composer are often the same person, but less so in relationship to the exploitation of music as a commodity. Recorded music has done nothing to quell that abstraction, if it is one anyway. The commodification of music/identity/culture which are all very much for sale is as alive as it was then.

I liked Michael Chocholak's essay called "Sonic Darwinism", which talks about underground music's power-plays, politics, and hypocrisy. "Noise Techniques" by Robin James gives actual tips on overdrive, mics, guitar manipulation.... There are 2 great essays by William Levy, an awesome underground writer. Side Note: I have a copy of Natural Jewboy which is an excellent collection of his writing, highly recommended. I also loved reading about the innovative tape-compositions and wildly creative apparatus' people created or produced (i.e. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's portable concrete music mixing studio; and Conrad Schnitzler's cassette concerts).

Less interesting are the pieces on 1980's/ early 90's cassette networks, extinct cassette labels, and specific tape-traders, though for historical purposes they have merit too, and that might be why other people are reading this book. They're all exceptionally well-written nonetheless.

There's just so much honesty and genius in this collection, I wanted to have a conversation with some writers, specifically wanting to hear their takes on the internet, spotify, bandcamp, etc..., contemporary issues facing musicians, underground culture.... I'm specifically interested right now in alternative music packaging methods and while it was cool to hear about Eugene Chandbourne's cassette stuffed in a dirty sock, or cassettes packaged in melted records requiring you to smash the shells to get at the cassettes, I'm curious about non-cassette packaging methods. With the advent of QR and download codes, packaging possibilities became almost infinite, but I haven't seen a lot of people doing that. Is packaging dead? I'd like to talk more/read more about this.

This is just a fantastic book, and an essential read for people engaged in the music underground. It's less of a nostalgia kick for punks/indie kids who grew up loving cassettes in the 80's and 90's, like Thurston Moore's coffee table book, and more of a book of ideas, resources, techniques, and general genius.

Recent and cool interview with editor of Cassette Mythos Robin James. http://livingarchive.doncampau.com/in... ...more

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Feb 10, 2011 Tentatively, Convenience rated it it was amazing

Shelves: author-tentatively-a-convenience, music

Robin James, the editor of "Cassette Mythos", definitely knew his shit. I wonder if most people have forgotten about this since Thurston Moore's "Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture" came out 13 yrs later. I hope not. Just the title of Moore's bk is an immediate give-away: "mix tapes" are the lowest common denominator language of the uncreative just as "bands" & "songs" are: cassettes conceived of as just a medium for putting together yr favorite SONGS by yr favorite BANDS - a consumer activit Robin James, the editor of "Cassette Mythos", definitely knew his shit. I wonder if most people have forgotten about this since Thurston Moore's "Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture" came out 13 yrs later. I hope not. Just the title of Moore's bk is an immediate give-away: "mix tapes" are the lowest common denominator language of the uncreative just as "bands" & "songs" are: cassettes conceived of as just a medium for putting together yr favorite SONGS by yr favorite BANDS - a consumer activity w/ barely any originality involved. "Cassette Mythos", on the other hand, is about the home taper scene that was ORIGINAL - the people who made their own music, made tape multiples b/c it was cheaper than making records since the tapes cd be made "on demand" (as is sd these days), packaged the tapes, & sent them out in trade to other like-minded people & to those not-totally-rare-in-the-1980s magazines that wd review them.

"Cassette Mythos" came w/ a CD &/or a K7. This was the 1st CD compilation I was on. I contributed 2 pieces: a short 4 track piece using conventional instruments & a long recording of clothes that I'd made entirely out of zippers bouncing around in a clothes dryer. [apparently, one can download a long mp3 version of this here: http://abmp3.com/download/3839424-dry...] This latter piece was, perhaps, 45 minutes long in its entirety but I selected a short excerpt from it for the editor(s) to use if so inclined. Much to my astonishment (& the consternation of at least some of the people rejected) they used a much longer selection. To me, it sounds like a Xenakis piece & it IS an example of stochastics in some way or another.

This bk, & the recording, really does represent, for me, some of the most creative work in the home taper underground. No mix tape consumerism here. These were the people who were making it happen: John Oswald, John Foster, Eugene Chadbourne, Annea Lockwood, Sue Ann Harkey, Qubais Reed Gazala, Gen Ken Montgomery, Al Margolis, John Trubee, Cyrnai, Mike Gunderloy (a human encyclopedia if there ever was one!), Karen Eliot, John Hudak, Miekal And, etc..

My own primary article is about my "Portable booed usic Busking Unit" - a suitcase containing a battery-powered CONCRETE MIXING studio that enabled me to do live electroacoustic guerrilla performances that used not only pre-made K7s (& other sound sources) for this purpose but ALSO K7s used as vaudeo thanks to the Fisher-Price PXL camcorder. [a sample of one of the latter can be witnessed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVqpSG...] ...more

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Oct 31, 2009 Chris rated it it was amazing

Shelves: i-own

A life-changer. Like discovering that an undiscovered tribe has been living in your midst your entire life. Eyes so open they can never again be closed.

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Jul 18, 2008 Steve rated it really liked it

As a one-time chronic cassette-compilation addict (making and collecting them), I really enjoyed this romance of a now-lost medium and its wonderful weirdos.

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