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Cassettes

There were only about twelve formal Chinese Forehead songs.

Most were performed at one or another gig, some never made to the stage and were only performed in rehearsals.

However, there were a great many experiments and jams that were recorded, one-off things that might have served the basis for more formal material.

The recording and preservation process was, at best, haphazard. Many rehearsals and jam sessions were recorded on cassette, typically using whatever tape happened to be laying around. When the Teac 3440 4-track was used it was often the same: find some tape that didn't seem to have anything too important and re-use.

When open-reel tapes got full the tracks were curated: stuff that sounded interesting or promising was copied off to cassette.

Bottom line is that there was about zero quality control.

Tapes were given all sorts of ad-hoc names. Early rehearsal tapes were adorned with whatever band name we were using that day: Cobalt Men. People with Small Hands. The Logarithms.

Tapes that collected the various “studio” pieces were given more abstract names: Whistling Swans. 341 Slides. Skin Supplies for Men.

Many had no name at all; they were identifiable by odd scrawls and the different colors of multiple over-writing.

Some pieces ended up on more than one cassette. Tapes were typically created to collect recent work thought worth saving so they could be more easily listened to. It also meant that the source open-reel tape could be reused.

Some tapes were meant as “best of” collections by some vague standard.

Trying to organize all this in any meaningful way is impossible.

There's nothing to indicate dates.

No track listings.

Just colorful cassettes.

The Tapes

cassettes.txt · Last modified: 2014/08/28 12:42 (external edit)