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Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape" (UNC Press, 2023)
00:55:20
An interview with Marc Masters
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- [00:01]
Bradley Morgan
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:03]
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- [01:24]
Mark Masters
welcome to the New Books Network
- [01:27]
Bradley Morgan
Hello. Welcome to New Books and Music, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Bradley Morgan and I am joined today by my guest, Mark Masters. Mark is a music journalist whose work has appeared in Pitchfork, Bandcamp, NPR Music, and Rolling Stone, and he is also the author of no Wave. Mark's latest book is High the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape and is published by the University of North Carolina Press. Mark, thanks so much for joining me today.
- [01:52]
Mark Masters
Oh, thanks so much for having me and looking forward to it.
- [01:55]
Bradley Morgan
So to get things started, could you share with us what your book is about?
- [01:59]
Mark Masters
Sure. So it's a kind of a combination technological and cultural history of the cassette tape, but leaning more toward the cultural history. I do talk about the history of how the tape was formed as a technical, logical advance and how it came out of other recording technologies and what it meant in terms of that technology. But then most of the book is focused on how it influenced the culture, especially the world of music, the way musicians used it to get around kind of official channels, the way people used it to kind of get around the music industry and control music the way they wanted to and just kind of all the kind of cultural things that changed because the cassette and are still changing and the fact that it is still around, even though it seemed to have died at one point, it stuck around long enough that it's got a little bit of resurgence now where people are seeing again the value that it has that no other formats do really.
- [02:54]
Bradley Morgan
So your book offers a really fascinating look into this, what you call like the democratizing power of the cassette tape. And I, I do really want to talk about that. But first I want to get into the history and you open your book describing that the cassette tape has always been dangerous. And this all begins with an ad campaign that home taping is killing music. Could you tell us about that campaign?
- [03:14]
Mark Masters
Sure. So this was one that the British phonographic industry did an advertising campaign where they literally said home taping is killing music and put a little cassette with a skull and crossbones around it and also put at the bottom and it's illegal. Which wasn't really true. It was kind of a nebulous gray area whether it was illegal to take a record from your friend and make a copy of it onto a tape and keep it for yourself. But yeah, the industry really free. The music industry really freaked out at first about blank tapes, thinking that people were going to be able to be sharing their music and not paying for it, and tried to essentially shame people into not doing that. They also tried other things like taxing blank tapes and making laws against home taping. Although that was a little ludicrous because the police weren't going to go in your house and catch you taping a record. But that kind of made it dangerous to them and also gave it a cachet. I mean, I think most people who, especially music fans who looked at that ad probably thought that's pretty cool. I'd like to do that if the industry doesn't want me to do it. So it helped give the cassette kind of this underground feel. This kind of, I don't, I don't know, anti establishment kind of feel that the cassette had. And that was a really important part of the cassette's growth both early on and into the. So it was invented in the early 60s and really into the 70s and 80s is when it caught on as a format for people to share music and listen and control me. The way they got to listen to music take their music with them, which hadn't really been possible before because there were no formats small enough or portable enough or cheap enough really. So yeah, so that, that, that, that response from the industry is something you see again with when Napster came Along they, they tend to kind of freak out over these things. And in the case of the cassette, I think that they. It was an over freak out. I don't think that they really lost the money they claim they lost. And I think it actually helped circulate music a lot wider and, and to a lot more people and, and ultimately was a good thing for everybody involved, basically.
- [05:08]
Bradley Morgan
You're absolutely right about that. And that leads to my next question because you mentioned taxes and regulations and the basis of those initiatives were claimed that tape was that taping was theft. And you write that the cassette represented an upending of the hierarchy between producers and consumers. And ultimately we're talking about gatekeeping. So could you tell us more about that dynamic?
- [05:28]
Mark Masters
Yeah, so that, that hit on both sides of the industry really. So the side, from the consumer side, I mean until cassette tapes came along, you really were subject to whatever was on a record that you bought or whatever you heard on the radio that was programmed. There were reel to reel tapes and bigger, bulkier, more expensive formats before cassettes came along. But it wasn't really a practical thing for most people to be able to use those to tape records or make mixtapes and things like that. So the ability to sort of control your own music, which is something we all take for granted for now, like we all think of ourselves as we. I only listen to what I want to listen to. But that wasn't the case before cassettes came along and that wasn't what the industry necessarily wanted. They wanted you to listen to what they were offering and pay for it. And so that was a big part of the anti establishment part of the cassette on that side. The other side is that a lot of musicians realized, even though Lou Ottens, who invented the cassette in the early 60s, the compact cassette is what it was called. It became the format that everybody associates with cassette tape. He didn't necessarily think it was high quality enough for music. He assumed it was going to be used for like voice recording and reporting, taking notes, things like that. But a lot of musicians, especially into the 70s and 80s were like, if this is cheap and easy and I can record my own music, I don't really care that it's not the highest quality in the world. I want to get my music out there. I don't have the money. I'm not. I haven't been sort of bankrolled or sponsored by any labels or any g. Like you say, gatekeepers in the industry. So I don't really care that this doesn't sound so great. I want it, I just want to use it to get my music out there. And I can dub, dub, I can record my own music onto it, I can make my own copies, I can send it out to people. It's cheap to do that too. So that was another way that you could create this kind of second ecosystem for music that didn't have to go through expensive studios, didn't have to go through sending out demos and getting signed to labels and then being subject to these labels owning your music and not giving you much royalties. And you know, all that, all the kind of complications there were just kind of wiped away by the fact that the cassette made it so much easier and cheaper to do all this.
- [07:33]
Bradley Morgan
What's, what's also interesting, and is especially interesting when you consider how the industry has changed from, you know, several decades ago cassettes to streaming now and how we access music, was that this anti taping argument that the industry put out was to frame this debate as a matter of common sense. So what exactly does that mean to common sense to the general consuming public?
- [07:55]
Mark Masters
Common sense? You mean in terms of the fact that they were losing money for, from taping or.
- [08:00]
Bradley Morgan
Yeah. How exactly did the industry try to translate that messaging?
- [08:03]
Mark Masters
Yeah, yeah, I mean, mostly threats, unfortunately. That's kind of their response a lot of time is to threaten people and try to make people feel guilty for doing this. And the weird thing is that they never, they never linked it to the artist as much as they probably should have if they'd done that a little bit more. There were few campaigns where artists were involved in saying, please don't tape our music, we live off this music. And that's a fair enough argument. I can understand that. But most of the time the industry was just like, you're, you're not doing what we want you to do. And you know, some of them did say this was just common sense. Why would anyone buy a blank tape except for to record an album? And you know, the claims that maybe they're using them for other reasons, like audio letters or documentation field recording, things like that, even though those are substantial claims, I do understand the sort of common sense aspect of most people were using them to tape records and things like that. I think that the part that wasn't so much common sense that the industry wanted people to kind of skip over is the fact that that doesn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, maybe they lose one record sale, but maybe they get a fan who goes to the show or buys the next record that comes out or tells 10 other people about this artist in a way that's much more powerful than if someone sees an ad in a magazine or something. And ultimately, you know, the cassettes help create music, music communities and music fans. And that's what the industry should have wanted all along rather than, we lost, you know, 100 sales because 100 people take the record.
- [09:24]
Bradley Morgan
There's also a similar argument happening now about streaming. Like, it's like, it's okay to stream the artist, but if you like the artist, like, go buy their album. Like, I see. I see that as like a very direct parallel and that. That's interesting. And it makes me want to ask about one of the artists you talk about in the book in that regard is Bow Wow Wow. Can you tell us about the significance of that tape?
- [09:44]
Mark Masters
Yeah. So they made a. I think what was considered the first cassette single or possibly the first one very. One of the earlier ones, earliest ones that had a song on it that was about how. I mean, the lyrics explicitly said, I don't buy records anymore. I tape them for my friends, essentially, was what it was saying in the lyrics. And, you know, the. What's. The record company kind of figured that out. They sort of stopped promoting the single because that was exactly the opposite of what the message they were trying to get out there. But, you know, it was also. It was kind of cool to see an artist saying, this is okay. You know, this is. And that that would translate itself later into artists who were okay with people taping their shows and stuff, realizing that, you know, the last thing we need to do is go after our fans for, For. For doing something that is about sharing our music and about enjoying our music.
- [10:31]
Bradley Morgan
Yeah, the going after the fans, I think of Metallica and the Napster days and, you know, I see quotes of Paul McCartney in recent years and said, you know, if we would have had that available to us, we would have done the same thing. So.
- [10:41]
Mark Masters
Right. Yeah. I mean, I do think that your. Your comparison to. To Spotify and to streaming and stuff is an interesting one. I mean, I think it's a natural one to make, but it's also a little different because the, the industry's figured out how to get its. Its control over that stuff, whereas they never, you know, they couldn't come into your house and control what music you taped onto a tape. They can control what music you can hear on Spotify and, you know, the playlists and the algorithms and all that stuff. There's a little bit more of they've sunk their teeth into that than they ever did. With taping.
- [11:08]
Bradley Morgan
Absolutely. It's grow, it's just expanding all these, you know, hydra heads of just problematic industry issues.
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Mark Masters
Right, right, totally.
- [11:16]
Bradley Morgan
So your book also goes into the history of audio recording, which I think was a lot of fantastic context, beginning with wire recording and then the introduction of the cassette tape as we know today. What made cassettes so successful when they were introduced?
- [11:30]
Mark Masters
Well, a number of different things. So Lou Otten, so I mentioned before, who was at Philips in the Netherlands, his team came up with the compact cassette, which up until then there had been many things that were similar to it, nothing exactly like it, but you know, so magnetic recording started and eventually developed into reel to reel tapes, which were bulky and hard to use and, and fragile too. The tape's just out in the open. So people kind of figured out we need to house it in something. But in order to have a high quality tape, you needed a lot of tape and a thick tape and a big tape. And so, you know, some people did make cassettes that big, but it's sort of that kind of that there's no portability in that, that part. It's, it's making it less fragile, but it's still, it doesn't become a format you can carry around. And that was Lou Otten's goal. He even sort of carved out a little piece of wood and put in his pocket trying to imagine what would it be like if I made a cassette this size, would I take it around with me and things like that. So his combination of, of other people's kind of advances in making smaller cassettes that could still sound good and, and housing things in a cassette, he put that all together into the compact cassette. And so number one, it was pretty smart of him to figure out that all the things that, that people probably would want out of it, to put them into one object, but really the thing that actually made it really blow up is that Sony came to them and said, we really like your cassette. We want to start making things like this. And Philips was like, well, here's how much it costs. And they're like, well, if you're going to make us pay for it, we'll probably just figure one out on our own. So Philips said, okay, you can have the license. As long as you go by our exact standards, you can have this for free. And Sony started making tapes. Tons of other companies started making tapes and that established it as a, as the format that people would use. There were definitely things that could have been the format other than what Philips had made. Sort of like The VHS Beta thing and all, you know, eventually something has to spark everybody using the same thing. And Philips figured that out pretty early on.
- [13:24]
Bradley Morgan
What were some of the criticisms or limitations of cassette tapes as compared to other formats like vinyl or cd?
- [13:32]
Mark Masters
Primarily audio quality. You know, most people early on, especially anybody who was kind of a professional or an audiophile, thought the cassettes were kind of this cheap lo fi, not a, not a optimal way to listen to music, that you were missing out on things. Plus it wasn't only kind of low quality just in terms of the fidelity, but like there were weird anomalies with cassettes like hiss and bleed through. If you taped a album over a tape that already had music on it, you might still hear some of the music. All these kind of weird anomalies. So people, you know, more audio oriented people had problems with that early on. Other than that, I mean, I think it was relatively celebrated as a format. I think most people like the fact the idea that it was a portable music format was a big deal. And I think most people were on board with that kind of aspect of it. And eventually not only did, I mean, the tapes got better and better quality too. They did eventually get to a point where you could get a high quality blank tape and tape a record on it and it would sound quite good. But it's always kind of had that stigma of it's sort of the, the cheap lo fi, the, the kind of poor man's audio format which a lot of people like that about it actually, because it's, you know, because audio file culture is not always the most welcoming culture in the world. So whereas cassette tape was, you know.
- [14:50]
Bradley Morgan
Well, I appreciate you going through that context of the history and the technology behind it. So, you know, it's really important to kind of understand, you know, how it influences culture in music. And so, you know, we'll let, let's get into that because your book explores how the advancements intake in tape technology, you know, to increase the sound quality. You write that it transcended commercial popularity to the point that it actually changed the way people made and consumed music. And you discussed this in a variety of different, with a variety of different genres like punk, indie and underground metal. And we don't have time to go through all of them. But I did want to talk about one particular area since last year was its golden anniversary. Could you share how the cassette tape played a role in the development of hip hop?
- [15:33]
Mark Masters
Sure. So hip hop started as a DJ format before people were even rapping at all. DJs were mixing records together and finding what they called break beats, Little parts of songs that they could repeat and go back and forth between other songs. And it was also a social party atmosphere, literally a party music. So DJs would play these mixes at parties. And that was the creative form before it became rap, basically. So all these parties were happening specifically around New York, and people wanted to hear them. And not everybody could go to everyone. They were happening almost every night. So the only way you could kind of keep up with it is to get a recording of it. And so cassettes came into that right at the right time, where people were bringing cassette recorders to shows or even plugging into the board sometimes and taping and then spreading the tapes around. And then the DJs eventually figured out, hey, if these are popular, why don't. Why am I not making them and selling them? So a lot of DJs, like Grandmaster Flash was able to sell his cassettes for like, I don't know, 50 bucks a pop sometimes to. To keep them to the more unique ones that he wasn't distributing a ton of, but then also shared a bunch of them all over the place. And not only did it make for a sort of a sustaining situation for some of the DJs, but it really spread the music between them as well as the fans. So you'd have situations where a DJ comes up with a new break beat, and a couple days later he goes to a party and sees the other DJ using it and realize he probably heard it on a tape of that show. And so the style just evolved so quickly. And outside of normal channels, there weren't records coming out that were hip hop records at this point. This was just a sort of underground culture. Yeah, that's basically. Sorry, go ahead.
- [17:14]
Bradley Morgan
Oh, no, no, no. That was. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was going to ask you about some of these pioneers who kind of changed that trajectory of. Of hip hop. You know, you certainly mentioned Kid Capri. I like to, you know, talk about him as. As well as DJ Screw. Because these are just people within. Only within. Like, I feel like the last few years, maybe even a few decade, are finally getting, like, the recognition that they deserve now that hip hop is a major cultural phenomenon. So can you talk about the development of that through the work that they were doing?
- [17:44]
Mark Masters
Sure, yeah. I mean, the cool thing was there's these. All these micro stages in New York, you know, like Grandmaster Flash is kind of at the beginning and DJ Hollywood and a coup. Other people who were the first ones to Think of making tapes and selling them. Then Kid Capri comes along and he. He makes it his own little business almost. He's selling tapes on the street all the time. He's. He. Grandmaster Flash did this too, but Kid Capri did it more, I think, was making DJ mixes at home to get to sell to people. And they're all kind of making these DJ mixes specifically for individuals, sometimes drug dealers, sometimes just big fans that they can make a lot of money off of. And as they're doing this, they're changing the style of, you know, it's a competitive format, not only in the fact that they want to sell their own tapes, but the fact that they want to keep advancing the form, come up with new break beats, come up with new mixes. So all of these guys. And then eventually some of them end up having radio shows where they're doing the live mixing, which. And then those get taped and passed around too. So it's. It slowly becomes a more popular format because of all this. These guys making these different advances. Brucey B is another one who was doing these rooftop parties where he would do a pretty novel mixes that people would share and things like that. And then, you know, I. I wasn't able to cover the. The wide swath of this. I mean, it happened some in the Bay Area, it happened some in la. I mostly focused on New York because that's where it really germinated. But then also DJ Screw in Houston, there was a huge scene of tape trading with DJs in Houston. And he specifically is significant because he came up with a completely new style. Basically, the simple way of putting it is he slowed records down as he mixed them, which gave them this. This kind of weird woozy feel that's perfect for tape because tape itself has kind of that weird lo fi woozy feel. And he got to the point where he was selling them out of his house. I mean, people were showing up and lining up at his house to sell. He ended up having to open a store because police were assuming he was a drug dealer with all these lines of people outside of his house. But in terms of advancing the form, that's just another sort of advancement, a style that was created and again with him. He wouldn't have been able to get it around if it weren't for cassette tapes. And. And it kept moving from there. I mean, it changed to the Clues, relatively famous for this too, but that weirdly, in the 90s and late 80s, the. The whole concept of rap mixtape changed to the point where they were more about Promoting songs than they were about showing DJ mixes. And a lot of the guys, Kid Capri and Grandmaster Flash and stuff, kind of moved on away from that because of it, if that makes sense.
- [20:11]
Bradley Morgan
No, it makes absolutely sense. And at, at the heart of what all of this is is that it's. There's a developing of a community in that. And you get a lot of kind of unique, you know, unique iterations of the art form in that community, whether it's, you know, skits or shout outs on mixtapes. Because there's a. There's a, A lot of things that you can do with tapes other than music. And there's a lot of ways in which it can influence the culture as well. And outside of music, you talk about a lot of different communities that connected through cassettes. And there's this, there's this thing you write about called mail art, which has a rich history even before cassette tapes. And you profile a tape art named Stanley Bowa. Could you talk to us a little bit about male art when it comes to tapes and, and, and his. And his role in that?
- [20:59]
Mark Masters
Sure, yeah. There was this, especially in the 80s, but a little bit before that too, there's this huge community of a. Basically an underground cassette art world of people making music, mostly experimental music, mostly noisy and, excuse me, unconventional sounds on tapes. And it folded into this thing you mentioned that it already existed called mail art, where people were creating art on either postcards or regular art and sending it to each other, but sort of single pieces, a very one to one kind of. It wasn't like somebody was making 20 paintings and sending them out. He'd send one to one person and maybe they'd send back art to them. And cassettes folded really easily into this scene because they're easy to mail, they're easy to make. They're also kind of art objects on their own. You could, you could decorate them as well as put different sounds on them. And then people started collaborating with them. They would send a tape with a little bit of music on it and someone else would add to it. And we go around in a circle sometimes and different artists would ask each other to contribute sounds to their work. And so Stanley Bowser, who you mentioned, who, who recorded as. I think it's pronounced Minnoy. I've never heard it pronounced out loud, but it's M, I, N, O, Y. He was kind of one of. Part of this underground, a big part of it, but also kind of reclusive, like a lot of the people in the scene were. He wasn't necessarily a outgoing social guy, but he found an outlet in mailing his tapes around to people and getting people to contribute to his cassettes. And I mean, hundreds and hundreds if almost impossible to find, to really catalog how many of these tapes he made. And he. And they're all really interesting to me at least they're all different. They're all make different sounds out of different things. I mean, he also. You would use the cassette technology as a way to make his music. So sometimes he would. The way he would kind of mix things would be where he would look, put the boombox that he was recording onto in the room. Maybe he'd move it around during the recording so that. So that became a tool of tool, an instrument in its own right in, in a way. And that I talk a little bit about in the, in this section about the book about other artists like him who ended up using cassettes as actual instruments, as actual part of their work to the point where some of them would put sounds on different cassettes and lay them all out and then, and then put them in and out of cassette players as that. That's kind of their composition. So anyway, this, it's a really interesting scene. There's so many people were involved in it and on such a. A small kind of one to one level. I mean, there were magazines where people would put ads in and say, I'm, I'm making this kind of music. Does anyone want to take trade tapes? And they find each other that way. There were a few, few sort of informal distributors, but it was a very one to one kind of thing in a way that people really met and made friends and bonded over the, the work they were doing almost completely to the conclusion of worrying about if anybody else heard it. They weren't making this music to try to sell it or to try to get hundreds of people interested in it. They were doing it to be part of this community and to trade tapes with each other, essentially.
- [23:47]
Bradley Morgan
And it's so interesting how how these different communities tend to. You know, I really like the autonomy that a lot of these communities have in terms of how exactly they have these sounds heard. I know mixtape culture can have a very particular community around it in terms of who can access it. And that's, you know, that's why a lot of mixtapes are not on Internet archives. How exactly do people outside of these communities find their way into. Into them if there happens to be just low circulation or kind of a resistance to, you know, Internet archiving and putting it out there?
- [24:30]
Mark Masters
Sure, you Mean, currently, like, if someone was interested in finding out more about this now, or how did people get involved in it back.
- [24:36]
Bradley Morgan
Well, even then, because, I mean, even before you have the Internet, and even before, people were, like, less connected. I mean, certainly I'm. I'm curious how that has kind of evolved and how communities manage to maintain themselves over time.
- [24:46]
Mark Masters
Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of it was through the. The magazines and fanzines that were writing about cassettes and writing about underground culture. They always seem to be either providing a space for people to put in what are essentially personal ads saying, I'm interested in cassettes. I have these cassettes. And also, like, I talk a little bit about this column in what was called OP Magazine that was called Cast the Nets, that only reviewed cassettes. But as the guy who wrote it, Graham Ingalls, mentioned, he wasn't even really reviewing them. He was basically giving information. He was saying, I got this cassette. Here's what it sounds like. Here's where you can get it from. Here's the person's address. Send them an envelope or whatever, if you want, if you're interested. And so it was really kind of more networking than it was criticism or. Or reporting. And I think that's the way a lot of people got into it. Many of the people I talked to first heard about the whole culture through either OP magazine or similar magazines like that. And then once, all you really ended up having to do was trade tapes with one or two people who are a little bit connected to the scene. And next thing you know, you're finding out about everybody you know, and a few of them like how McGee was a big figure. He had his own distribution. So if you found out about a tape from him, he'd also send you this long catalog full of other tapes. He ad things like that. So that. I think that's the main way people got. Got involved in it. The cool thing is that all kind of translated itself pretty seamlessly to the Internet. A lot of the people moved on to bulletin boards and Internet groups, and we're still kind of circulating things that way. And a lot of these old, older artists now have their music up on Band Camp or the Internet Archive has a lot of these old cassettes, which most of these artists are like, fine, please put it up there. I'm not doing this for Mutant for Money. I'm doing this to share it. So I'm happy if people take it down and listen to it that way. And it just keeps perpetuating the scene that way.
- [26:29]
Bradley Morgan
Another community, you Explore throughout your book are concert bootleggers. And the Grateful Dead is perhaps like the best example of a very active bootlegging community. Can you kind of tell us about how the bootlegging community began?
- [26:42]
Mark Masters
Sure. Well, you know, bootlegging has. Has so many different possible meanings. There's the whole bootlegging of like sort of trading unofficial recordings, you know, demos and things like that, or even bootlegging official albums on. On sort of an underground market. That wasn't what cassettes were involved in so much. Cassettes were mostly involved in bootlegging, being recording live shows and, and sharing them and trading with people. And people had been doing this before. Cassettes came along with reel to reel decks. People went into Dead shows with reel to real decks. But it was. It was somewhat price prohibitive. It's expensive, it's hard, they're. They're hard to use. And also, how do you hide a reel to reel deck on the. Because most. Most venues were not happy with people taping recordings, concerts. So the cassette, the fact that it was so small and could be hidden and could be more surreptitious started kind of kick started, not really kickstarted, but accelerated the whole idea of going to shows and taping them and trading with people. And the Grateful Dead were one of the first bands to realize, even though they were a little resistant early on, they weren't the first ones to realize this is helping us. This is getting our music around especially. They went on a hiatus for a while and when they came back, they actually had more fans. And that was due to the fact that all these tapes of their shows were circulating. And so not only was that a good, good move on their part and a good way to develop a fan base. The tapes themselves were making a community. People who like to trade tapes and share tapes and make the tapes really connected over them. And, you know, people would get together and chain 10 tape decks together and all share each other's recordings that way. People would trade them across mail. There were also, much like the underground cassette scene, there were also many Grateful Dead zines and other kind of recording zines that would offer people space to offer their tapes. And most of them were very vigilant about, we don't want anyone buying these tapes or selling these tapes. This is just for our enjoyment. We're not trying to make money off the bands. We're not trying to take money from the bands. We're trying to just share things about these bands, especially like the Dead, who every show was different and so buying the Record isn't. Isn't enough for these people. They want to hear everything they're doing. And that translates to a lot of other kind of bands to. The Dead still have like, the strongest scene with that, but other bands since then, I've had that. Had this happen around them. And, and, and the great thing about it is it's all based down to individuals. I mean, I have a friend in the book who. Who's actually a good friend of mine who has like hundreds of Sun Ra tapes and did it in much the same way, although there's a much smaller community of Sun Raw bootleggers. But there's enough that he's been able to find, you know, hundreds of shows just through asking around and sending tapes to people and having them send him other tapes back and things like that.
- [29:21]
Bradley Morgan
The whole idea of the whole of the bootleg really kind of fascinates me because, you know, you see with the Dead, they. They've grown this culture and they're actively like, archiving all of these shows either through, like, their own recordings or fan recordings. And it's been interesting to see how bootlegging has kind of evolved. I follow a lot of, you know, Bob Dylan fans and, you know, you know, I saw him a couple times this weekend and, you know, he's one of those guys who has the yonder pouches when you go in. And so your phones are locked up everything now. But, like, the next morning I'll go on Twitter and I'll see that, like, so and so has got this recording of this show. And it's. It's completely fascinating to me. And I. And you know, I know that Dylan's people tend to do, you know, they do the bootleg series and they kind of release that. But you mentioned with the Dead that for that community, when that started, it was a way for their music to be heard. But it's, you know, you've got someone like Bruce Springsteen who by the time that he was releasing, you know, soundboard quality shows from all of his concerts, he was already like this super mega successful, like, legendary rock star. So I. It's been really fascinating to see the commoditization of bootlegs. And what effect does that have on the fan community that are trying to build archives out of that kind of commercial process?
- [30:34]
Mark Masters
Yeah, that's an interesting question. It is strange how. I mean, on the one hand, I do appreciate the fact that a lot of artists are sort of wanting to not necessarily take control, but sort of have a say in how this whole thing goes. There's a. You know, the band Fugazi from D.C. has a whole website that's just nothing but live, live shows. And a lot of those they source from fans who took cassettes into their shows. And it's not so much about not wanting the fans to do it anymore as it is sort of wanting to have a little bit of say and control as to how the whole thing happens. And I can totally appreciate that. At the same time, if any artist is getting into this thinking or any record label thinking, we're going to make official bootlegs and that's going to wipe out the whole idea of anybody wanting to go tape shows. That's never going to happen. People are still going to want to do this, even even though now it's with phones or portable recorders or. Because it's not just about I have this show that I want to hear. It's also about I have these friends who I want to listen to it with or who I want to send it to, and they'll send me one that I don't have. And. And it's really communities. That's why it works so well with the Internet too, is it's people connecting with each other, you know, because ultimately, the reason that I want to, if I'm a Bob Dylan fan, that I want to find out about other Bob Dylan fans isn't because I want to brag to them about my collection. Maybe that's part of it, but it's because I probably will get along with them if they're this into Bob Dylan as I am. So it's really about making friendships and relationships and building community stuff.
- [31:59]
Bradley Morgan
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Bradley Morgan
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Bradley Morgan
Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. It's really great to hear and I'm glad you brought it back to community because I think in one testament to the communal power of cassette tapes is the fact that there are rural communities where concerts tapes provide people as like a cultural lifeline to the bigger cities. I was actually just talking about this. My dad recently, where we grew. You know, I grew up in a lot of places where we didn't have, like, access, like big concerts and those just. That they didn't come through. So my music education had kind of, you know, developed differently. Can you kind of talk about that cultural lifeline that cassette tapes provided, you know, for people in. In more rural areas?
- [33:07]
Mark Masters
Yeah, I mean, it was a great thing for that, totally. I mean, on every level. On the level of, like, the underground artists we were talking about, a lot of these underground artists were not in cities and would not be hooking up with other artists in the places where they live. So this was the. For them to get into that kind of network. Also, just the fact that, like. I mean, this is kind of a simplistic one, but, like, I. I lived in a rural enough area that even the record store that I could go to, which was like a half hour away, it didn't have everything. The library had some things, but, you know, there were only so many records I could. Even if I had infinite money, I couldn't have bought everything I wanted. So cassettes were this way to. To sort of find out about music. Otherwise, that somebody I had met through the mail or maybe I'd met at camp in the summer or whatever could send me an album of. Of REM Because I'd heard about them and they. They're not in the record store, but they sound like a cool band. And so I was able to find out about them that way, so. And that really wouldn't have happened otherwise. Cassettes definitely made it. It made it easy, made it cheap, and it made it. I mean, the fact that you could drop one in the mail is just so such a. Like you say, it was a lifeline for a lot of people. And then bootleg circulating is the same way, definitely. In, like, in heavy metal, there were metal fans all over the world who had no way to find out about even the biggest. Even somebody as big as, like, Judas Priest or something. They're not gonna. They don't have access to it unless they're looking in the back of these metal fanzines where someone says, I'm a big Judas Priest fan, and I have 20 other shows, but I really would love to hear this other band that I don't know anything about. You know, can you send me that? And then suddenly stories of people in my book who are coming home every day to five tapes in the mail.
- [34:41]
Bradley Morgan
You know, I think one of the most fascinating parts of your book, and it's certainly a significant part. And, you know, I. And I'm glad you touch upon this Too, as part of your raising of the profile, the cassette tapes is that one of the impacts that tapes have outside the west is that they play a role in preserving cultural traditions which kind of goes back. You know, we talk, we kind of touched upon it a little bit on a micro level in terms of like our own, like American Western music culture. But when it comes to outside of the west, in other areas where there is let alone just accessibility, but even the inclination to record those, because that's play a powerful role on that. And you mentioned a lot of examples and one I wanted to ask you about was about a 400 year old dance music in Sri Lanka that saw a resurgence. Could you tell us about that?
- [35:36]
Mark Masters
So, yeah, so there's a dance music in Sri Lanka called, I'm not sure how to pronounce this, B A I L A baila. I think maybe it was, and this was a kind of a form of dance music that was kind of considered not appropriate for mainstream audiences or which, this is a story that happens a lot in these countries is there's a regional music that the powers that be, either the government or the sort of affiliated record labels or both will say no, we don't want, want this kind of low culture spreading around. So we're not going to put it on records and if we find it we're going to have people stop selling it. But that was really hard to do with cassettes. So this is a, an example of that. Apparently a lot of baila spread from taxi drivers playing it for their passengers, which was funny because that's similar way that hip hop happened too. Like a lot of car service people were playing hip hop mixtapes out of their car car stereos. And then there were these kind of cassette bars in Sri Lanka where people could go and pick up cassettes of this regional local dance style. And like I said, that's a really common story in a lot of these countries because the regional music, not only it was a live form of music, like either a dance music or a party music or a wedding music even that otherwise didn't have any kind of mainstream spread. Mostly because of suppression really. And before cassettes came along, what could you do? You could only just really hear it. Nobody had the money to press their own. Right. They didn't really have independent labels the way we had them here even in the early 50s or whatever. So once cassettes came along, suddenly anybody could do this. So it didn't even have to be somebody who had any music experience as long as you knew how to Press record on a tape player and press dub on it. After you'd made it, you could start spreading these around at kiosks and streets or you know, even selling them at the events like had happened with hip hop. So that became a way for music, these kind of music to spread that wouldn't have spread. I mean even from town to town they might not have heard this music. But then also a lot of it only still never made it to. Even if it got popular, the, the record companies were still not interested. So a lot of it never made it to vinyl. So a lot of these performances and recordings only exist on cassette and they become this kind of living archive of styles of music that otherwise probably would never get heard again.
- [37:55]
Bradley Morgan
I'm really glad that you kind of, you brought up suppression and the in and, and bringing that up because that, that is an important aspect of, of that culture and that preservation. And it boils down to a very specific thing that you write in your book. And it's where you describe the cassette tape as a way for a person to share their personality. And you write that the one to one quality of mixtapes makes them a perfect format for musical self expression. Now there's always like, you know, you think about the classic examples of mixtapes, you know, I like this person. I'm going to make something, you know, for them to express my feelings that, you know, right. That this Joni Mitchell song can tell. But what are the other ways in which someone can put their personality into a mixtape?
- [38:39]
Mark Masters
Yeah, there are a lot of different ways. I mean that is the kind of the cliche and it's an important one. I mean, I definitely think some romantic relationships were formed over mixtapes. It's kind of this interesting way of expressing yourself without expressing yourself directly, you know, expressing yourself through someone else's art. And it keeps it both kind of, it can be meaningful, but it can also be vague enough that you're not necessarily committing to one big thing or the other. The other person has to interpret why would they put this song on there? But yeah, there are a lot of other ways. I mean, I, I, one of my favorite interviews in the book that I did was this, this guy, Gene Booth, who a friend of a friend told me he used to love to make mixtapes and we talked about it and he, I don't think he ever once made a mixtape to try to woo a romantic partner. It was all about sharing music about and he felt like he was actually, because he's a very smart person and knew a lot of Music he felt like this was sort of performing this education purpose, almost like he would put music together that he thought that the person might have heard one but not the other, but he thought that this would lead them to liking the other. Or he would put together sort of these alternate histories of like, what if the, the Beatles had stayed together and the, and this. And you could make an album out of their best solo cuts or things like that. And kind of his ways of expressing sort of his musical theories almost as a, as a music fan. So that was another big way of using it. And then also sort of the, the, the idea of like expressing yourself through the music in terms of this is not necessarily I want you to like me because of this, but like if you're gonna like me, you're. You better like this kind of music because this is really what I listen to and this is a way for you to find out something about me that I can't necessarily tell you sort of directly in words.
- [40:14]
Bradley Morgan
You know, I read a book last year I found really fascinating by an author named Hugh Hodges who did a history of Thatcher's Britain through 20 different mixtapes. And there's like 400 songs across all these mixtapes. And it's incredibly fascinating because he talks about how you can just tell that history of like Thatcher's influence in, you know, 70s, 80s Britain just through the song titles alone. And I thought that was just so cool. It's really worth checking out.
- [40:39]
Mark Masters
Oh, I definitely will check that out.
- [40:41]
Bradley Morgan
Yeah. Hugh Hodges. Really cool. And I just like how you can kind of like just tell a history or tell a story or even just, you know, you know, you make tapes to, you know, try to attract somebody. What if you have like an anti attracting tape, like a Leave me alone tape? There's a versatility there, you know, which
- [40:59]
Mark Masters
is, I just think it's really super interesting that it's, it's, it's a medium, but it's not a, it's not a direct medium either. It has the ability to be almost direct. You could put a love song on a tape and it'd be pretty clear what you're doing. But then there's also ways that you can kind of collage things together and think, I don't know what this person's going to think based on this mixtape. And that's kind of interesting. Maybe they'll tell me something I didn't know about the music that I listen to. You know, they're, they're, or you know, just the idea of art being a way to communicate to somebody, and yet it's somebody else. Somebody else's words. It's kind of an interesting thing.
- [41:30]
Bradley Morgan
You know, Dylan and Tom Waits have, like a whole relationship where they just exchange tapes with each other.
- [41:35]
Mark Masters
I didn't know that. That's awesome.
- [41:37]
Bradley Morgan
Yeah, there's. There. I think you can find a couple of them. I've listened to some of them. There's one, I think. I think Dylan talks about it on Theme Time Radio Hour and plays a clip because I just. I think this is so kind of funny because a lot of people do think about just the cassette tape as music and.
- [41:52]
Mark Masters
Right.
- [41:53]
Bradley Morgan
Because of that, you know, the. The death of the cassette tape as a format has been predicted for a long time, but it has made a resurgence in recent years. And I wanted to get your. Your outlook on what's been behind that recent rise in popularity.
- [42:08]
Mark Masters
Sure, sure. Yeah. So the interesting thing is, at least in terms of. Of the kind of music I write about and I cover, is that there's been a little resurgence. And it's not so much on the level of like, mix tapes or blank tapes as it is on actual manufactured tapes. A lot of smaller labels are realizing if I want to have product, which most of them do because they're not necessarily big fans of streaming. Vinyl is just so expensive and even slow now to make that I have to invest so much in it. It's so hard to make your money back. Whereas cassettes, you can. You can get 50 cassettes made pretty quickly for like a few bucks each and, you know, make your money back pretty quickly, too, and get. And give your fans something to buy that's not just, you know, $0.01 from streaming it on Spotify or even just MP3s, which I'm. I'm into the idea of buying and downloading MP3s, but a lot of people want something a little bit more than that. A little more physical, a little bit more representation of I supported my. My. My favorite band or what if somebody I went to see and things. And so that's been kind of the resurgence. One of the kind of interesting stories about a resurgence is that more and more small labels are realizing that cassettes are a good way to go to be able to sell their music. And I think it's a double thing too, because I think it's a statement as well as a. As a pragmatic thing. I think a lot of these labels are like, I would rather you buy a tape for me than go listen to my music on. On streaming. And. And I Think if, if streaming hadn't come along and hadn't been such a big presence, I don't know that many of these labels would have turned to tapes. But I think they're doing it in a lot of ways as a way of saying, no, I'm not participating in that. I'm doing something different.
- [43:45]
Bradley Morgan
Did researching and writing about tapes change how you see other formats and how people listen to them? Them?
- [43:50]
Mark Masters
That's interesting. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, I'm kind of, even though I love tapes and I'll, I'll proselytize for them forever, I'm a little bit format agnostic overall. I like Vinyl, I like CDs. I, I even liked eight tracks at one point. I think every, the cool thing about all these formats is they all have strengths and weaknesses and none of them are perfect. None of them have everything you want and nothing you don't want. They all are a mixed bag in terms of. Yeah, I mean, I did. It has made me think a little bit more about vinyl, especially what I was just talking about in terms of the expense of it. I do, I still collect a lot of vinyl. I buy a lot of vinyl. But it does seem silly sometimes that I'm paying 25, 30 bucks for a record when I can get a tape for five bucks, ten bucks and enjoy it just as much. So the kind of, the variety of expense involved in all of them. I think about that a little differently now too. Weird thing that it did make me think about more is about CDRs and why those were never sort of the replacement for cassette, blank cassette tapes. They, there was a little bit of time, especially in some of the noise and experiment experimental music that I cover, where CDRs were kind of big, were a good, easy and good way for people to get their music out. But it never quite took the same role. And I think it's just because there's something less personalizable about it, less individualistic about CDRs. They still, they feel kind of like an office supply format more than cassettes do. And so they never really got that kind of cachet that cassettes have.
- [45:19]
Bradley Morgan
So rituals are a huge part of making tapes. And you open your book saying you spent a lot of time making tapes. What were some of your, your tape rituals going into that?
- [45:28]
Mark Masters
Yeah, that's interesting one. I mean, I, I, my biggest memory is when I first figured out you could even do it because I, I mean, this is when I was a kid in the early 80s, I had one of Those big stereos that had a record player and a tape player and a radio in it or whatever. And then I figured out if you, you know, on my own, even though I would have. Could have asked, somebody probably would have told me that I could take a chord and put another tape deck in and actually dub a tape to a tape. So that was the first thing that I really like to do, was just to dub tapes back and forth because I didn't know anybody else who could do it. And so my friends would give me their tapes and I'd be happy to make them copies and stuff. I also. A relatively common story. I'd also often take a small tape recorder and put it next to my clock radio and sort of remix the top 40. Like I'd listen to Casey Kasem's top 40, but I just record the songs that I liked so then I could listen to them over and over again because I didn't want to wait for the next week when his show was coming on again. So those were kind of my first experiences with it. In terms of rituals of making mixes. I was. I made a lot of mixes, but I, I was. I never really had. Even though I really totally love that people do this, where they make their own rules about, oh, a mixtape has to have this first and then this second or have this next to this or, you know, I, I love that. But I, for some reason, I never really gravitated toward that part of it. Most of the time for me it was just like, just want to get this music on as fast as I can and spread it around. It's funny, I. When I've been doing some book events for this, somebody asked me, well, did you have any short songs that were your kind of go to when you didn't have enough tape left at the end of a side to put a long song on? And I said, well, sometimes I just put, you know, put a long song and just continue it on the next side. And everybody went, ooh. Which I didn't realize was like, not a. Not a. Not an accepted rule among most mixtapers. But I found that out this, you know, this many years later that that wasn't the most popular thing to do in the world. So it's kind of. I love that. That kind of aspect of it.
- [47:16]
Bradley Morgan
You know, that's an interesting thing that brought up about the short song thing. Do you think that kind of had an influence on, like, as CDs became more popular, like, like mid to late 90s, you know, artists were just like packing their CDs, like with as much music as they could to get the most of the format. Do you like see a connection between them?
- [47:34]
Mark Masters
That there is kind of a connection there? Yeah, I mean, I think that cassettes were the first format that, that people started thinking I don't have to just make 45 minutes of music. Especially you know, in lo fi and indie circles where people were making their own tapes and sending around, they did free them up to make much longer things. And I think when, when, when there's an 80 minute CD first came out, I think a lot of people, at least in indie music weren't, weren't all that freaked out by it because they've been doing that on the sets all along. And especially the cool thing about cassettes, which CDs didn't have as much was the fact that you, it's not that easy to jump around on a cassette. And so you kind of are committing yourself to listen. Most of the time you're listening to the whole thing. And so people took advantage of that. Not only the fact that it meant that, you know, people would listen to everything that's on it, but people made much more continuous kind of music. A lot of the artists I like, like, like Sebito and Guided by Voices would even do this. And a lot of people in the Shrimper label would, would, would think of their tape as more of like a continuous piece of work, even a collage, even if it was songs, because they were expecting. Most people are going to listen to this all the way through and, and I think it probably changed a little bit about how they made their music because of that.
- [48:41]
Bradley Morgan
You know, this is not necessarily a ritual, but it's an experience that I always kind of truly cherished when I was taping songs off the, off the radio. Because you'd always, you'd always miss the first couple seconds of a song that you really wanted to tape. So it was like rediscovering a song when you got to hear like the like intros like, you know, you know, walking, walking into a movie late. So that was always kind of like a fascinating kind of thing.
- [49:04]
Mark Masters
Yeah, that used to drive me crazy that the DJs would talk up until the, the, the singing would start as if the singing is the only important part of the song. Like I want to hear that beginning too. And I'd end up having mixes where the DJs voice is on there. And I'd start to remember the DJ's voice as part of the song almost. It's really weird the way that would work.
- [49:21]
Bradley Morgan
So let's talk about. Just for my last couple questions about putting together tapes.
- [49:25]
Mark Masters
Sure.
- [49:26]
Bradley Morgan
It's not often when a book comes with its own media tie in. And for your book celebrating cassette tapes, you actually put one together. Could you tell us about that tape?
- [49:34]
Mark Masters
Sure, sure. Well, initially my dream was like, man, if I could have a audio companion to this that sort of covers all the kind of music that's in the book, it would just be an interesting way to juxtapose it all. But then the rights issues to that would just be. Would take me years to get that. And I don't know if I'd have the money for it either. So it occurred to me that in my last chapter, I talk a lot of the current tape labels that I'm interested in that I think are doing interesting things with cassettes, both art wise and music wise. And so it occurred to me, well, I. A lot of these people I've written about before, I have somewhat relationships with them, at least on a journalistic level. Maybe I could ask each of them would they like to submit, give me a track from their catalog and we could put out a compilation with this so people can get a sense of what kind of music's happening on tape now and sell it as a tape. So that, you know, and luckily that idea worked. Everybody was pretty on board with it. All these people are so enthusiastic about tapes that they were psyched to be part of it. And. And it's. It's worked out great as a. As a thing. As a little bonus thing for people. I mean, a lot more people have. Have chosen that option to buy the tape and the book than I expected, which is great. And it comes with a download too. So if you don't have a tape player right now, you still get to listen to the music. And it's kind of a neat little object to go along with the book.
- [50:47]
Bradley Morgan
You know, I'm willing to bet that some of the people who bought that tape, that was probably their very like, very first cassette tape. And like, maybe for a couple of
- [50:53]
Mark Masters
them, I think it probably was. Yeah.
- [50:55]
Bradley Morgan
So that's a. That's a cool thing. And so to, you know, for my last question, you know, with that in mind, what is your advice for those looking to start a tape collection?
- [51:05]
Mark Masters
Oh, that's interesting. I mean, a lot of it sort of, as with everything, comes down to what kind of music you're interested in. But, you know, first of all, every goodwill and thrift store still has them. I just saw a Big stack of them in the Goodwill near me just yesterday. So there's. And those, you know, you. A dollar or two, two bucks. So that's a good way, especially if you're into older, really older music. That's a good way to find out about that. If you're interested in sort of your favorite artist that you've liked for a long time. A lot of them are starting to put out tapes again. But then ebay and Discogs always has good prices and good, good opportunities. People. Luckily, tapes have not drifted into the vinyl area where they, they go for tons of money. Even the rarer ones still don't go for a lot because people know it's kind of a fragile format and you can only expect so much, much money out of a tape. So those are places to start. And then there are, there are some decent amount of stores that are starting to, you know, bring them back in as, as a viable format to sell new and used. Pretty much every record store I know of, independent record store I know will have a few tapes in it. But then there's like, I, I profile jackknife tapes in Los Angeles, which also has records and CDs, but it has this gigantic rack of tapes as you walk in. And it's really cool. And they're all reasonably priced, they're all in good shape. So if you're anywhere near the. Try to go check them out. But there's, I think every major city has at least something like that now. So that's also another option.
- [52:27]
Bradley Morgan
You know, I don't own tapes and I, and I don't play tapes. But I've been really kind of fascinated with, with how I'm seeing more of tape culture since your book came out. I saw that We Are the World documentary and the opening of like they're making that tape. And I was like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's getting into, you know, the, the, the atmosphere a little bit more. So that's been kind of just fascinating to observe. And with that, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I really enjoyed your book. The history of it, the culture behind it was incredible and I think you should be very proud.
- [52:59]
Mark Masters
Oh, thanks so much. Well, I really appreciate you talking to me about it and really good questions and it was really fun to go back and forth on it.
- [53:05]
Bradley Morgan
My name is Bradley Morgan and you've been listening to new books and music with my guest Mark Masters. His latest book is High the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape and is published by the University of North Carolina Press.