Martin Newell war damals grad in seiner ersten Berühmtheitsphase, ich vertrieb seine Tapes hier in der Schweiz (kein Schwein interessierte sich natürlich dafür, ein paar Beat- und Psychedelic-Fans ausgenommen). Diese Geschichte werde ich dann später mal erzählen. Lest das Interview.

Weiter im Katalog: Eine ganz ungemein wichtige Debatte hahaha mit Veit F. Stauffer vom RecRec-Laden in Zürich über mein Schlachtross “Vinyl ist Scheisse, Tapes sind cool” – was ihn offenbar ziemlich auf die Palme getrieben hatte, verständlich, lebte er doch vom Vinyl-Verkauf der angesagtesten Independent-Künstler, und wenn nun einer kommt und sagt, das sei eigentlich politisch quasi schädlich, dann trifft das.

Eine Grafik von Joe Merenda, direkt auf Matritze gekratzt, ein Beitrag von Martin Schori über Tapes, von dem auch das Titelblatt stammt, ein Katalog mit den Beschreibungen von Dutzenden von Indie-Kassetten – ein tolles Heft, hat den Aufwand gelohnt.

Bad Compilation Tapes

Bad Compilation Tapes: still available, after 20 years, and they didn’t even raise their selling price!!!

The Cleaners From Venus

Martin Newell’s got a website? Can’t believe it, but it’s really all his, his english country gentleman style, have to check it out, will take an hour or two, probably. http://www.martinnewell.co.uk/

Third Mind Tapes

Third Mind Records seems to be out of business as well, I found their complete catalogue at discogs, of course: http://www.discogs.com/label/Third+Mind+Records. And here’s a history of the label: http://www.obsolete.com/convulsion/interviews/convulse/2.11.html

Solomonoff & Von Hoffmannstahl

Also found traces of Carola Von Hoffmannstahl, with whom we released the Great In Bed compilation (well, she released it, together with partner David Solomonoff, we collaborated with one track and got the rights to distribute it). http://www.homelandstupidity.us/author/mondoqt/. And this seems to be her personal homepage or something, very bizarre, will take some time: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~drs/index.html

Viscera, Jaffee & McGee

I’ve already posted the link to Hal McGee yesterday, but I will need more time to check out all of the stuff on his site. Sent him a mail asking if I can host Viscera’s Foreign Films on my blog, because he wants to delete it to free the space. What a coincidence, because I was thinking about a way to make this tape available again, I really like it. Maybe also for sentimental reasons, because it was one of the first US-productions that was licenced to Calypso Now for distribution. Well, and he replied immediately his OK! http://www.halmcgee.com/index.html

His partner Debbie Jaffee doesn’t seem to be around anymore, but I’ve found an exhaustive discography, at discogs, of course – seems to be THE database for indies of the 80s, will have to contribute more to it. http://www.discogs.com/artist/Debbie+Jaffe

Zan Hoffman

Also on Discogs I found out that I’m listed as an artist on a dozen titles released by crazy monster madman Zan Hoffman – I remember him as someone who wrote about once a week from the US about new collaborative projects, and it seems he’s turned out several hundreds of tapes, collaborating with everybody and their dog – have to check him out, he’s still on the scene, still crazy after all those years, how the saying goes. http://www.discogs.com/artist/Rudi+Tuscher and http://www.discogs.com/label/ZH27, also http://zanteson.blogspot.com/ and http://zh27.blogspot.com/, also http://zhcollab.blogspot.com/ and http://zhdate.blogspot.com/, even on myspace , here as well (http://www.archive.org/details/zh27) and finally at http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=132112. As Bob Dylan used to say: Oh, Mama, can this really be the end…. Louisville, Kentucky seems to be a good place for creative minds.

Miszellen

Ever wanted to know how the apartment of a die-hard Elvis fan looks like? I found a recording of the moment Radio Luxemburg announced his death, and just by chance one of those Elvis admirers had his video camera turned on. http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/the-king-is-dead-the-death-of-elvis-presley-as-announced-on-radio-luxembourg-by-tony-prince/2554320241

Can it be there’s a comeback of 80’s cassette culture? I keep on falling over labels who rerelease stuff on limited vinyl editions, like http://www.punk-disco.com/WSDP.htm, who for instance rerelease tapes by p16.d4 I distributed back then. They don’t seem to have a catalogue, but I found a list at http://www.discogs.com/label/Was+Soll+Das%3F+Schallplatten

Im Zusammenhang mit Swisspunk.ch bin ich übrigens noch auf diese Seite hier gestossen, noch nie gehört, wer hier wohl einkauft? Die Menge erschlägt mich jedenfalls. Swisspunks nächstes Projekt behandelt übrigens die 80er, das wird eine gute Sache, freue mich!

Mastertapes

Found a lot of master tapes in my boxes, like Years On Earth’s third tape Worlds In Collision, or Einstürzende Neubauten Architektur & Geisselnahme, both complete with some remaining original covers, so I have to think about how to release these last copies. Still on the lookout for the master of Nikki Sudden’s tape Beau Geste that he compiled especially for Calypso Now. Lots of great material still around, an estimated 100 master tapes, some from labels long gone, like Trance Port Tapes, where I bought a big box of covers back then, where I still have reel-to-reel high quality masters and dozens of covers, or Blacklight Braille, who sent me unreleased recordings for a Calypso Now release that sold maybe two copies, but are heavily sought after these days.. http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2008/09/blacklight-braille-carmarthenlp1988uk.html, http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2007/04/blacklight-braille-seachangecd1993uk.html, http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=97840218, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Ghazala. What to do with it? Will not be an easy decision.