From: The Cassette Mythos, Autonomedia 1990
In 1984, I began my own teensy cassette label, Space and Time Tapes, in response to a number of ideas that had been percolating in my teensy brain for some time. I had created hours of original tape recordings over a period of more than ten years. I passionately love making tape recordings. I passionately enjoy listening to many of my own tape recordings, as egomaniacal as that may sound.
How much money have you wasted over the years buying records that were really shitty and boring? I realized that a lot of music generally available is very boring, bad, bland, derivative, and simply not very musical. I decided that instead of wasting a goodly portion of my meager income on records that often turned out to be horrible, I could better invest my money in creating my own recordings of myself. I also discovered that writing, performing, and recording music is a lot more fun than simply being a passive listener all the time.
Another thing that mildly bugged me was that in the previous several years I had released a couple of records through a record company, as well as had my music released on a number of compilation albums, without ever seeing a penny of artist royalties or publishing monies. My records are not million-sellers, but it still bothered me that record companies, record distributors, and record stores were receiving moohlah on sound recordings which I had invented, while I didn't see shit--and in fact had to invest much time, money, and energy on these record projects while I was always living one paycheck away from vagrancy. Being poor is very beautiful!
I figured that if people are willing to fork over cash for product with my stupid name on it, then I should goddamn well create and market some product myself in order to help keep the wolves from the door. The groovy tape recordings which I could conceivably package and sell were such treasures as:
-- Live tapes of my avant-garde jazz/rock band The Ugly Janitors of America, a pathetically unpopular L.A. band who deserve better.
-- Atmospheric synthesizer tapes that I recorded in high school, in college, and on my own with a variety of musical friends.
-- Prank phone call tapes that I recorded when I was a teenager and which seem to be fairly popular due to their stupidity, which appeals to the low-brow mentality of public taste.
-- Demo recordings of my original compositions recorded in actual recording studios. Very few good quality recordings of my material exist, as I have never in my life possessed enough money to buy much studio time. A tragic loss for Western Civilization.
I assembled a six-cassette catalog of material, designed little xerox covers for them--some in color, some in black and white--and wrote a short, descriptive, one-page catalog which I sent out to everyone I knew. I dubbed cassettes one at a time in real time and sent promo copies to places like Op for review. I got virtually all my orders on the basis of reviews from alternative music magazines. I never buy ad space in any magazine anywhere, as I am always too broke. I rely on reviews to generate orders.
At one point I had three working cassette decks, so I could dub two cassettes at a time, or even three cassettes if I dubbed off a reel tape. Now I have only one cassette deck and one reel machine that are functional, necessitating the temporary removal of two titles from the Space and Time Tapes catalog until the time that I have $120 in cash to buy another tape deck for cassette-to-cassette dubbing. I may never in my life have $120 in cash at one time to purchase a luxury like a tape deck, as no one will hire me to do anything other than low-paying menial work, as I am such a stupid, worthless, lazy, unkempt, loser/failure/criminal who has the audacity to create music tapes in my spare time and expect to sell them to a world that worships crap and mediocrity. Being poor is beautiful!
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