LO-FI ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE 1986-1990

I've already written plenty about the significance of cassette culture in my life on this blog in light of the recent tape revival. Hopefully some of you have learned something so far. Now sit back while I finally tell my favorite tape culture tale of all... one which burst out of its shell (so to speak) and into the streets.

The story begins with one homemade cassette demo and one meeting with William Berger. It was February 1986 and he'd just started a new radio program on WFMU called Lo-Fi, a half-hour show consisting entirely of home-recorded music submitted by listeners to his regular program. Bill was not the first WFMU DJ to play listener submissions on the station's airwaves. I'd been submitting my own tapes to the likes of Pat Duncan and Irwin Chusid for two years by the time Lo-Fi was launched. But Bill was the first DJ to shine a spotlight on the phenomenon of locally produced cassette recordings, and five minutes into the premiere episode I knew immediately I wanted in.

As fate would have it I went to the station's studios one Thursday night to visit Pat and Irwin, and lo and behold, Bill was there too. Wasting no time, I immediately introduced myself to him and found he was already aware of my existence. And it just so happened that earlier that day I'd been doing some recording in my basement, a fuzzy cover version of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn," and had brought the tape along with me to listen to in my car.  Bill was sold on it from the very first notes and immediately copied the new track onto one of his own cassettes. The next night, he began Lo-Fi with my cover of "Autobahn," then immediately came on mic and said he was originally planning to close the show with my number, but had ultimately decided it was too good to make listeners wait that long to hear it. Somehow I knew right there and then that Bill would become a friend for life. I'm confident I wasn't the only one who would come to feel that way about him in the months that followed.

Over the course of the next two years, the seeds for a wild and truly wonderful scene were planted largely through the Lo-Fi program. Bill had a very keen ear for talent and soon his show was regularly spotlighting the likes of select fellow home-tapers like Phoaming Edison, Particle Steve, Schooly Descartes, Jolly Ramey, Jet Screamer, the Modern Day Carpetbaggers, Bill's fellow DJ and dear friend Terry Folger, and Azalia Snail. Those first three acts also performed collectively as Fly Ashtray, and the last of these fine folks was the one who ultimately pitched the idea to Bill of a live "Lo-Fi Night" featuring performances by many of the show's talents. By that time Bill, Terry and I had all done our share of snooping and scouting around the east side, and were more than ready to give the idea a go.

The night of February 10, 1988, at a dive on First Avenue known as the Lismar Lounge, was one of the most memorable nights in the lives of every last person involved in it, myself included, and as far as I'm concerned, the official start of The Scene. Bill and Terry opened the show as Bad Jack and the Rope Trick, playing the Lo-Fi Theme as their first number, and Jet Screamer and all of Fly Ashtray's side projects did their thing, as did Jolly Ramey, the wonderful duo of Madi and Steve winning me over instantly both as musicians and friends. Somewhere in the midst of all this, I donned a gold-lame vest my mother had sewn for me, and bravely took the stage myself not knowing how my performance would play out. I ended up playing the cheesy Bobby Sherman and Peter Frampton covers that were my forte back then to a crowd of fellow Lo-Fi-ers who responded with nothing short of sheer adoration from start to finish. In the course of that night at the Lismar, many new friendships were forged and many mutual admiration societies came full circle. It was the kind of magic night you just knew would become the birth of something special.

A week or two later I went to see Fly Ashtray at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ, and the band members instantly took to making me feel like a superstar. I admit I was a bit slower in feeling the same admiration for Fly Ashtray's music that they felt for mine, as I was, quite frankly, unimpressed with their first single "The Day I Turned Into Jim Morrison." But my fondness for the music of their various side projects convinced me that their work as a collective unit would soon grow on me. Which it sure did, to the point where their debut album "Clumps Takes A Ride" instantly became, and still remains to this day, one of my all-time favorite records not only from The Scene but all of rock & roll in general. James Kavoussi, a.k.a. Phoaming Edison, in addition to being a core member of Fly Ashtray, also ran the 16-track Toxic Shock recording studio on lower Broadway just off Houston Street, and James and Mike Anzalone a.k.a. Particle Steve, were soon jamming with none other than Bill Berger himself in another band they christened Uncle Wiggly. This band came into its own very quickly, led by the charge that was Bill's incredible guitar work, notable for its inventiveness as well as the fact that he played a right-handed vintage Telecaster left-handed without reversing the strings, Dick Dale-style.

Meanwhile, Jet Screamer and I had become fast friends and were soon playing shared bills together up and down the Lower East Side, meeting a transplanted San Franciscan calling herself Jennifer Blowdryer at the first of these shows, which had been booked by John S. Hall of King Missile, a few years (and lineups) before their big hit "Detachable Penis." Ms. Blowdryer quickly booked Jet and myself into the legendary east side artist's space ABC No Rio, on Memorial Day Weekend 1988. Neither of us knew until we showed up to play that she had also booked a third act that night, an all-girl trio we'd never heard of before. I did my thing, Jet did his, and then... the Gamma Rays took over. We were totally unprepared for what happened next: by the time Sari, Julie and Lisa were finished, every heart in the place had melted into one big collective puddle on the floor. They were that good. So good, in fact, that when word got around they were playing a private party later that same night, we all followed them over there, and swooned over them in unison a second time.

And so the summer of 1988 came and went, much too slowly and traumatically for some. (I'll just say I was, thankfully, not in town the night of the Tompkins Square Park riot and move quite forward from there.) Labor Day Weekend, apart from feeling like a positively relieving end to that dark summer, was notable for not one, but two firsts, beginning with the inaugural edition of Wildgirl's Go-Go-Rama in Coney Island, the first of many, and a much smaller affair than the Go-Go-Ramas which followed. It was Wildgirl's idea to have me open the show with a short set, but neither she nor I gave any thought to the possibility that a team of teenage local wiseacres would show up expecting sleaze and react with extreme displeasure when I strutted onstage instead. I braved these hecklers for 20 minutes and then made way for the dancers, most of whom were friends and fellow scenesters, and all of whom my detractors didn't like either. It was still a fun night, though.

The following Monday saw the other historical event of that Labor Day Weekend, the live debut of the Gamma Rays' newly annexed rhythm section as part of Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park, consisting of a Japanese drummer named Osamu... and a glamorous, bass and cello playing virtuoso named Ursula. It wasn't long before she became, most unquestionably, the band's heartthrob, and I know for a fact I wasn't the only guy in The Scene with a big-time crush on her. The addition of Ursula proved the band's turning point, the move which took their sound and style to the heights the original trio's performances had promised, and beyond. Osamu, who also did some session work with Jolly Ramey, soon vanished (into thin air, or back to Japan?), whereupon the girls replaced him with another, more ferocious drummer (also of Oriental descent) named Genji, and with that move, the girls officially became a live powerhouse. Soon I was going to every Gamma Rays gig there was and screaming out "GAMMA RAYS RULE!" loudly between songs for all to hear. And indeed, they did.

By now, with all of the abovementioned bands and artists involved, we definitely had a scene going, one with boundless creativity and talent behind it, and for me the icing on the cake came in the autumn of 1988 when it was suggested that Jet Screamer and I might make for a good musical partnership. With a November gig with the Gamma Rays looming, we decided to jam together a couple of times and found they were right. Thusly, that gig became the first live performance of Living Guitars, coming at the end of our usual solo sets with just four songs and three rehearsals holding it together. It went well enough that we decided to keep it going, and did so for almost a year and a half. I tossed out the Frampton and Bobby Sherman covers and moved in a more serious artistic direction at that point, and to this day I remain very proud of the music I made with Jet, some of the best stuff either of us ever did.

And so, 1988 ended and 1989 -- in my view, the banner year for The Scene -- began. It was a time when we all truly lived for our weekends together. And it was all too easy to forget by this point that this thing we called ours had all started with a weekly cassette culture radio show hosted by a bright DJ with sharp instincts as to which pieces fit together. Now it had a life of its own, practically independent of Lo-Fi and now even including a few artists who had never submitted a single tape to the show. Besides the Gamma Rays, this latter subdivision also included their friend Skinny Vinny, whom Jennifer Blowdryer was fond of referring to as "The Electric Black Donovan," and who played one of the best live shows I ever saw when he opened for Fly Ashtray at the Pyramid Club in Jume 1988. He also released a great self-produced single in '89 called "Open Heart Love," with its immortal chorus "Open your hearts and nostrils to love."

I was now a WFMU DJ myself, doing sporadic late night fill-ins and playing all the local bands on every show I did, with impassioned pleas urging listeners to support The Scene. I was also hanging out regularly on Saturday evenings before shows with Madi and Steve of Jolly Ramey, taking in her rock & roll fashion tips and his love of "Sinatra Saturdays" on WOR radio. Meanwhile, Bill Berger kept on playing our music on his show, bringing bands in to play live and and jamming with James and Mike in Uncle Wiggly. And he helped start yet another band with another contributor to Lo-Fi, this time acting as drummer for a lovely Virginia-bred gal named Linda Hagood, who made her own charming music under the name of Smack Dab. We played gigs at CBGB, ABC No Rio, the Pyramid and the Lismar Lounge, to name a few, but our favorite place to play was the Lizard's Tail, a loft space run by two very lovely European immigrants, Terry Dineen and Jean Francois and located in south Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in what was then a very seedy area of town.

The comraderie between all of us manifested itself not only in the sharing of gigs, but in the things that happened at these gigs: Terry Folger rewrote "Bennie and the Jets" as "Ray Zinnbrann and Jet" and played it at ABC as a tribute to Living Guitars. Uncle Wiggly named a bouncy instrumental tune of theirs "Living Guitars" as well, and once played a set consisting entirely of cleverly-arranged interpretations of songs by the other bands in The Scene. Bill ended a solo performance by inviting me up to duet with him on an acapella version of Gene Pitney's "Town Without Pity." Terry secured fill-in slots on WFMU and then invited us all to come to the station and play live on the air. He soon formed a band called Van Gelder, with two childhood friends, and debuted it live on WFMU on July 4, 1989. I became their drummer by accident and managed to stick around for about a month and a half and another gig. Man, there was all sorts of fun to be had.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, someone did the math and figured out that if 14 bands threw in 200 bucks each, we could release a vinyl LP compilation. James gave us all free studio time at his Toxic Shock studio and we recorded in the summer and early fall of '89. With tracks by Fly Ashtray, Uncle Wiggly, Living Guitars, the Gamma Rays, Jolly Ramey, Smack Dab and many others, The Phoaming Edison Tapes was finally released in the spring of 1990. Despite our best efforts, it sank without a trace, garnering just two reviews, one in New York Press, one in Option, both negative. Stray copies of this comp can be found on Discogs and Ebay; it's worth picking up and treasuring as the one definitive document of the times I've just described.

The Scene was never quite the same again after the album came out. Its failure to gain attention wasn't the only factor. By then, drugs and internal conflicts were taking their toll on our brotherly and sisterly bonds, and with the breakup of Living Guitars I drifted off into other artistic circles and underground music scenes. It was a sad and all-too-quick end to an all-too-short peak period for us. But the times we all had together were some of the absolute happiest times of my life. It all started with a few cassettes... and became a real live scene. Y'know, kinda like what tapes are starting these days.

BILLY SYNDROME, 1963-2017

photos by andre grossman

I write this piece with a very heavy heart for many reasons. Already this year sucks worse than last year for me, and the ongoing onslaught of rock and roll passages has really hit too close to home this time.

William Ogilvie passed away on January 11th, 2017, aged 53. To many of you reading these words, he was known as Billy Syndrome. To say this man was the consummate rock and roll renegade is an extreme understatement. If the story of his life were written in book form, it would be one of the juiciest reads in rock history, believe me. Over the course of his life, Billy would both create and witness rock history. His first band, a hardcore punk group called the Pricks, featured a man by the name of Rick Rubin on guitar. The same year they formed, 1981, Billy witnessed the infamous Public Image Ltd. "riot show" at the Ritz -- just one of literally thousands of concerts he attended over the years. By the mid '80s he'd caught the home recording bug, forming Porcelain God with his best friend James Sherry, a/k/a Evil Jim Friendly, and by 1987 the two of them were tearing up the lower east side of NYC together.

It was in mid-1988 that Billy first appeared on my radar. At that time, the antifolk scene was forming, comprised of a group of young, like-minded folks forging a new sound fusing '60s folk with modern punk. Banned from famous westside folk clubs like Cafe Wha and Folk City for being too raw, they found the less sophisticated east side far more welcoming and set up shop there. Many of them were, in my honest opinion, not much better than the more polished modern folk acts uptown, though I did eventually come to appreciate the likes of Roger Manning and Paleface and a few others. But Billy Syndrome completely transcended the very definition of antifolk the very second he first walked through its door. No one brought more punky swagger to it than him, and when I first stumbled across him at an antifolk fest in July '88, his performance stood out like a sore thumb accordingly. I took immediate note of him and vowed to investigate him further.

A few months later I dropped by the studios of WFMU radio and my dear pal William Berger was waiting for me excitedly. He had a new song cued up that he just couldn't wait to play for me. It was "Have You Seen The Cows," from a compilation of antifolk acts called "White Trash." And the artist was none other than Billy Syndrome. What a watershed moment it was! Totally unlike anything we'd ever heard before, it sounded like some slice of alien hardcore beamed down from Mars, led by those raving lunatic vocals of Billy's I'd soon grow quite fond of. Even as one who was used to strange music by then, this was heavy stuff to me.

Needless to say, I started attending Syndrome gigs whenever I could after that. In the process I found an even newer scene forming in a seedy little Brooklyn neighborhood called Williamsburg. Its hub was a loft turned performance space in a shady part of the 'hood called the Lizard's Tail, run by a European immigrant husband-and-wife artistic duo named Terry Dineen and Jean Francois. Berger and I caught a solo performance of Billy's there one weekend and quickly found he was even more out there onstage than he was on vinyl. Well, the next thing I knew, my own musical duo, Living Guitars, were booked to open for Billy the next time he played there! I was quite humbled to say the least. That night, Billy watched our entire set with rapt attention, then approached us as we walked offstage and said, "You guys were really great, man. You want some acid?" I politely declined his offer, but my partner Jet accepted, which caused me a bit of worry a couple of hours later when he and I found ourselves at a rooftop party after the show. I still remember keeping a very close eye on Jet the rest of the night, in case he suddenly thought he was Superman!

Billy and I were now officially a mutual admiration society, and over time it would turn into a full-fledged friendship. It really wasn't until about late '91 or so that I started to really get to know him personally. By then I was doing quite a bit of hanging out in Williamsburg, first at the Lizard's Tail, then at a bar on the East River waterfront called the Right Bank, which would quicky take over as Billy's home away from home when the Tail closed in '90. Billy's motto at that time was "You either know or you don't." This motto perfectly applied to early '90s Williamsburg, at that time still a seedy neighborhood in the best of gritty NYC traditions, untouched by the hand of gentrification. Artists and bands held illegal punk concerts and "acid house" techno raves in the abandoned warehouses on the waterfront and sometimes right on the waterfront itself, and Billy and his friends were a big part of that scene. And only those truly in the know at the time knew what was happening in Williamsburg, unlike every Tom, Dick and Harry today.

I moved in with Evil Jim for awhile in late '91 and Billy lived right across Fort Greene Park from us, visiting regularly. It was then that our friendship really took hold, over many evenings of beers, bowls, and listening to and raving about music. Billy absorbed popular culture llke a sponge, holding the Grateful Dead, Public Enemy, and the Ramones in equally high regard, and was always buying the cool new albums the day they came out and giving me verbal reviews of each one. One day I went to visit him and he played me something I'd never heard before, a live version of "Listen to the Band" by the Monkees that ended in an extended noise jam, and I almost died. Billy knew lots of things I didn't and delighted in sharing them. In '93, we went on a tour of the midwest together as bandmates in the Thundering Lizards, and when we heard the phrase "finders keepers" from somewhere or other one day, we both immediately started singing the obscure Beach Boys song of the same name. We were both eccentric to the core, and he was a true kindred spirit.

Shortly after he and Evil Jim finally settled in Williamsburg, Billy launched his own record label, Slutfish. This label's primary purpose was to release records by, you guessed it, Billy Syndrome. I don't know where the hell he found the money to do it (he sometimes claimed it was because he'd put himself on a diet consisting almost entirely of Kraft Dinner and cheap beer), but for awhile in the mid-90s it seemed like he had a new single out every time you turned around. Often on colored vinyl, always pressed in the smallest of quantities, and distributed almost exclusively around Williamsburg by Billy himself, those Slutfish sides are all rarer than your average Misfits singles today. He also released several vinyl albums and full-length CDs under his own name and with projects like the JFK Jr. Royal Airforce and Mummies of the Insane. They reveal a wealth of indescribable insanities of every stripe, rolling punk, psych, folk, r&b, hiphop, and noise into one big fat blunt and topping it off with his unhinged persona and otherworldly world vision.

At his best, in songs like "Fish in the Rain" and "No Power," he was so catchy he had you singing along. Sometimes, admittedly, he could be indulgent and downright unlistenable. But he was always interesting no matter what he was doing. This hit-or-miss quality applied to Billy's live shows as well, but even at his worst, you couldn't take your eyes off him onstage. To me he was the single most unsung outsider music legend there ever was. (Irwin Chusid, please take note.) Billy was also a very talented artist as well as musician, doing all the artwork for his releases himself, and I still have fond memories of laughing till I cried binge-reading the entire series of issues of his ultra-rare mid-80s underground comic book Puss The Cat, perhaps the funniest comic book series I've ever read in my life. (Seriously, someone needs to get them online in PDF form. Now.)

When the internet became part of our lives, Billy and I took to communicating via AOL Instant Messenger, and in the later years of our friendship we had dozens of long, insane online chats, some of which I still have the printed transcripts of. He was always hilarious and down to earth and happy to share his thoughts about current cultural and world events. We still saw each other sporadically at shows until I first moved to Florida in the summer of 2004. The following summer I went back home for a month, visiting as many friends as I could. I saw Billy three times that month, in the audience at a partial reunion of the MC5 in Central Park, and onstage as a member of Brian Wilson Shock Treatment and JFK Jr. Royal Airforce, those last two in the final week of my stay. We enjoyed some quality time together which I would ultimately be very thankful for. It would also be the last time I would see him in full health.

Not long after my return to Florida from that month back in NYC in late August '05, I received word that Billy had suffered a stroke just five days after I'd last seen him. He was in a coma for two weeks, eventually being transferred from Mount Sinai to the Park Terrace Care Center in Queens after regaining consciousness. The general lack of online info about Billy was frustrating as fuck, and ultimately led me back to NYC a couple months later to check up on him. I wound up moving back home for awhile the following year, in part to monitor Billy's progress and take it upon myself to create the online coverage on him no one else seemed willing to bother with. I began a series of news updates on the original version of this blog I'd spun off from my now-defunct Myspace profile, which attracted the attention of the publisher of the short lived antifolk fanzine Urban Folk, for whom I ultimately wrote a piece on Billy's plight, fleshed out with quotes from emails he had sent me about his condition.

Things were never the same for Billy after his stroke. He was paralyzed on one side, wheelchair-bound, and living on a meager disability pittance. The first time I visited him in the hospital I understood about every third word he said. He eventually regained his speech, though, and before long it became clear there was another big thing his stroke hadn't robbed him of -- his incredible personality and outlook on life. Once out of rehab, he had many caring friends willing to make sure he was back in the loop, wheeling him to Hawkwind and Brian Wilson concerts within weeks of his discharge. He still managed the occasional live appearance, and did a good job for awhile of continuing to keep in touch with me, though in the last couple of years of his life I began to hear less and less from him and began to worry more and more about him. Billy was not one to make others suffer through his pain and I truly believe only he himself knew the full extent of the pain he was in, because his persona never failed him. It could reasonably be argued that his misfortune only made him more determined to be who he was. Sadly, that determination could only carry him so far, but the fact that he survived another 11 years and 4 months is testament to his not wanting to give up the fight.

The story I have just told only scratches the surface of Billy Syndrome's life and what it was like to know him. He was truly one of the nicest guys I've ever known in my life, and perhaps even number one in that respect. Billy was humble, modest, wickedly funny, deeply spiritual, philosophical, positive, and just plain cool. Music was his religion from cradle to grave. He lived his life fearlessly and unapologetically, truly believing in his vision every step of the way, even post-stroke. On top of all that, he was the truest of New Yorkers, never leaving his city and even remaining in Williamsburg as it changed all around him. When I wrote about him for Urban Folk, I was quick to note that antifolk music was already firmly in the hands of the next generation, and made damn sure those newbies got the point in the course of one simple sentence which summed it all up in a nutshell: "Billy Syndrome was antifolk long before you were, and has taken its very definition to extremes you never will." Indeed I think that says it all.

Bill Ogilvie was a friend of mine. I consider myself truly fortunate that he was a part of my world. I know he is in a much more cosmic place now, and I take comfort in that and all of the amazing and incredible music he gave us. Thank you, Billy, for everything and more. See you on the other side, brother.

(Please feel free to share your memories of Billy Syndrome in the comments!)

CASSETTE CULTURE, 1977-2016 AND BEYOND!

Recording tape has always been a part of my life, right from when I was still in the cradle and my dad's reel-to-reel deck was capturing my baby voice. But when cassettes entered my world, I knew right away I'd found a friend for life. It began sometime around '73 or so, when my parents gifted me with my very first cassette player. It was one of those old Panasonic portables with the handle on the bottom and just one speaker on top. My first recordings were pretty much just me acting goofy, as I had yet to develop any real talent, but I quickly caught the tape bug just the same. Even before I could sing or play an instrument, though, I was trying to be musical. All of these initial attempts are now lost forever, but honestly, you wouldn't want to have heard them anyway.

It was through the big brother of an elementary school friend that I got my very first taste of the cassette culture we know and still embrace today. His name was Laszlo Papp and he was the very first punk rocker I ever met; name virtually any early punk band and chances are he saw them at CBGB or Max's Kansas City. Laszlo didn't have a record player, but he did have a tape deck, and would let me hang out with him on occasion, playing tapes for me the whole time. His collection of tapes was filled with original store-bought cassette releases by the likes of Sparks, Suzi Quatro, and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band -- a collection I would just die to have now -- plus homemade punk comps his friends had made him from which I would hear the Sex Pistols and the Clash for the first time.

But what really aroused my curiosity was the one part of his collection devoted to a series of homemade tape albums by his own band, Chickenshit, who sang dirty songs with names like "Shovel That Shit," "Fags Are Fun," and "Fuckin' Jesus." They were really just a private joke band, true, but they were literally the very first lo-fi home tape project I ever heard of, and their aesthetic alone set off notions in my head that I could do one too. And so I formed my own little private joke band I dubbed the Occupants (a name inspired by that of the Residents) and started making my own little tape albums. The fact that I could neither play guitar yet nor knew any real musicians didn't stop me -- I just got my school pal Zoltan or sometimes even my two-year-old cousin Jamey (!!!) to bang on the family piano while I banged on a cheap guitar I'd picked up at a garage sale for two bits. Needless to say, we made Chickenshit sound like the Beatles. Still, it was through the Occupants that I ultimately picked up the home-recording habit for good.

All this time I was fully immersed in all things punk, and had started reading British-imported music zines like New Musical Express and Sounds to keep up with the latest sensations in my favorite genre. I vividly remember one particular issue of NME around 1980 or so which introduced a new classified column where musicians who recorded at home could advertise their homemade tape albums. Most of them could be obtained for little more than a blank tape and postage, and the majority of them seemed experimental in nature. I never went through the trouble of sending away to England for any of them, but I kinda wish I had now. It was clear to me, though, that something new was happening. People weren't just using tapes to tape albums they'd borrowed from their friends anymore -- they were now using them to make their own albums. Tapes in the '80s were a true precursor to both file sharing AND music streaming -- and I even stored a few computer programs on 'em!

All this was unfolding just as Sony introduced the Walkman and the ROIR cassette-only label emerged, the very first one of its kind. In 1982, at the height of hardcore punk, ROIR released the legendary Bad Brains tape, the one that would etch the very concept of the tape album in stone. I bought it the very week it came out and it blew my socks off. I absolutely wore out that sucker playing it to death right through my senior year of high school. From that point on, I began taking the musical end of the homemade tape albums I was creating for myself a bit more seriously. By then I'd learned enough chords to get started on that premise.

Hardcore also led to the emergence of college radio shows like Tim Sommer's "Noise The Show" on WNYU, and soon it became standard practice for underground radio to air lo-fi tape demos of all stripes. And when word started spreading that you didn't have to have your music professionally recorded to get it on the air anymore, the whole damn thing exploded. The format was available and affordable to anyone, and with the emergence of the dual dubbing deck around this time, tapes were easily duplicated and distributed -- a godsend to those who couldn't afford to put out vinyl. So I did just that. And so did thousands of others.

By 1984 my tapes were being played by Pat Duncan and Irwin Chusid on WFMU, and my music was finding an actual audience for the very first time. Me and my friends formed various punk projects and recorded improvised tape albums straight to cassette at a rehearsal studio in my hometown. Meanwhile, punk and metal had merged into thrash, and a worldwide, underground thrash tape trading community emerged in its wake, the absolute biggest one yet, fueled by the hundreds of thrash bands popping up in Slayer's wake. WMSC in Montclair, NJ, devoted entire shows to these demo tapes and I recorded and absorbed them just as I had followed anything to do with home taping since '77.

But the very best was still yet to come for me. For at the same time, yet another tape cult inspired by everything from psych to punk to modern indie rock was simmering. And yet another technological step forward had been taken -- namely, the 4-track portastudio, which took the quality of home recorded tapes up a notch. All of it was in place as 1986 arrived and William Berger launched Lo-Fi on WFMU. This weekly half-hour program was devoted entirely to tape culture and I was regularly featured on it throughout its existence. Mr. Berger's on-air invitations to listeners to send him tapes led to our discovery of several different artists whom we ultimately brought together and united into a live music scene in New York in the late '80s that literally took lo-fi out of the bedroom and into the street. (In my next post I will describe this particular scene in much greater detail.)

I was now making tape albums with names like "Trace the Psychosis" and "It's the Brann Man... and Don't You Forget It!" using a dual deck boombox with a mixing mic input, overdubbing and bouncing tracks back and forth between tapes. I was also working in the offices of an apparel company at this time, and by sneaking my hand-drawn j-card designs onto the copy machine when no one was looking, I was able to print them for free! Later on I acquired a Tascam 4-track portastudio and that's when I did my very best work, now available on my Bandcamp page for all to hear.

By the early '90s bands of all styles were selling and giving away tapes. They were still the format of choice for low-budget musicians until around 1998. And then... the recordable CD arrived. And suddenly millions instantly traded cassettes for convenience. In a way I could understand it. I admit even I was guilty of it when I chose to release The Racing Brain of Ray Brazen on CD instead of tape. But I still used cassettes to record radio shows, conversations I was lucky to have with music legends like Los Dug Dugs, the Godz, and TV Toy, and ideas for new songs I was writing. I bought a portable player just like the first few I'd owned in my youth at a thrift store and took it on the road with me, capturing the vibes on tape in every state I passed through. For me, tapes were still the best and most convenient way to record. I hate doing multitrack recording on computers with a passion, but ultimately the complete breakdown of my 4-track portastudio made it necessary for awhile. (I really should try to get a new one on Ebay soon. I've got enough new material for a whole new tape album.)

There may have been a drop in tape releases for awhile when CD-Rs took over, but in the late part of the '00s I started to see tapes slowly start to make a comeback. Only a few artists released tapes at first, but over time and into the present decade, the numbers shot up again and with the establishment of Burger Tapes and its global influence, we are now more or less back to where we were thirty years ago. Whoda thunk?

When I was invited by my very dear friend Joshua Rogers of Illuminated Paths to compile some of my home recordings from the 1980s for my first cassette release in 20 years on his label, I just couldn't say no. The response it got, along with Josh's boundless enthusiasm for my music and for tape culture in general, now has me fully immersed in it all over again for the first time in just as long. I'm proud to report that today's tape generation is producing music that stands proudly with the tape music I heard 30 years ago. Here in central Florida, in addition to Illuminated Paths, there's also Godless America and Popnihil, three distinct tape labels releasing everything from garage punk to electronic to vaporwave and beyond. They're still as cheap to make as ever, and bands still charge an average of six bucks for 'em.

The tape revival has also got me bootlegging vintage tape albums I've had since the late '80s and early '90s to share with today's younger tapeheads, and paying more attention to tape stockpiles in thrift stores. I've found quite a few old sealed blank tapes in thrift shops and these should always be bought on sight (especially since you don't wanna know how much Walgreen's charges for 'em now). Some of the used ones I've found have revealed everything from old radio airchecks to wedding ceremonies to family holiday greetings. And now tapes are officially fun again, for me and for so many others, veterans and novices alike. As one who has pretty much bled recording tape for over 4 decades now and is positively and justifiably thrilled about the whole resurgence, all I can say is... tape on!

THIS IS THE GODZ' TRUTH: 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Part 1)

(This is a newly revised and expanded version of an article I originally wrote for my website THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE GODZ in 2003. It underwent an unpublished revision two years later that was to be featured in a booklet in a boxed set of the band's music which never saw full completion. The piece has undergone further changes since then and I am now proud and honored to present this greatly revised edition of my Godz bio to you here on the Brazenblog, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the recording session for the band's debut album, CONTACT HIGH WITH THE GODZ. Enjoy.)

On September 28, 1966, four young freaks from New York City entered A-1 Sound Studios with only a few very trashy acoustic instruments. They had just landed a recording contract with a New York-based record label on the sole basis of a audition in which they just banged on these cheap instruments and howled like feral cats in a streetfight. But this was no ordinary band, and they had signed with no ordinary label. And in just one single session's time, they would give birth to a whole new sound and style which has taken on many forms since then, but has come to be identified (by my old WFMU colleague Irwin Chusid) as "outsider music."

The Godz were at A-1 to record their debut album, Contact High, for Bernard Stollman's ESP Disk (ESP being an abbreviation of the "universal" Esperanto language, as opposed to "extra-sensory perception"). ESP was a pioneering independent label primarily devoted to documenting the avant-garde jazz explosion of that time (releasing several Albert Ayler and Sun Ra albums and introducing Pharoah Sanders, to name a few), and in a sense, the Godz' music was as close to free jazz as psychedelic. These days, weird bands and indie labels are a dime a dozen, and how many of them have that same underlying sincerity to them? But in 1966 the Godz, and ESP, were quite literally in a class by themselves.

The Godz existed at a time when rock music was just starting to become freaky, but they stood out among all the others as the absolute freakiest of them all. Many bands were beginning to experiment with strange sounds within song structures in the mid-1960s, but the Godz were experimenting with strange sounds as the songs themselves. The Godz deliberately stressed minimal instrumental ability in an effort to bring the raw expression of art to the forefront of their sound. Whether you could dig it or not depended upon how open your mind happened to be, either naturally or through the use of certain illicit drugs, but most often a combination of both. And you can't help but wonder how many folks bought into the serious, pensive looks of four lads looking just like any other group on the cover of Godz 2 in 1967, and took the record home, only to be shocked out of their unsuspecting minds when the strains of "Squeek" or "Crusade" hit their ears!

Now the Godz' truth can be told: it was all sort of an accident. These guys never thought they would become a band when they first met. They were just good friends who happened to meet on the job in New York City. In a recent telephone conversation with this writer, Larry Kessler recalled to me how he met Jim McCarthy and Paul Thornton when they all took jobs in the 49th Street location of Sam Goody's, which may be the McDonald's of record stores today, but in the '60s and '70s was a serious music lover's emporium. It was while working at Goody's that Larry caught word of a more unique career opportunity: "Bernard Stollman needed a salesman for ESP and he told one of the guys who was doing stock work in the basement -- I guess this was in '65. And he told Jimmy about it, but he didn't want it because he wasn't really the salesman type. So he asked me if I wanted it and I said 'yeah, I'll go talk to the guy.' I talked to Bernard and we seemed to hit it off pretty good, so I started working for him." Larry would eventually work himself all the way up to ESP's general sales manager position.

All three had previous recording experience under their belts. Larry had released a single in 1961 called "Wonderful Days" under the alias of Obie Cricket, and Paul had two 45s of his own in 1964, "I'm No Rebel" (an answer record to "Hes a Rebel") and "Baby Be My Girl" (which was issued with two different B-sides, "Where's My Baby" and "Walk In Outer Space"). He and Jim were also members of the Dick Watson Five, who released one album, Baker Street, a rock interpretation of a Sherlock Holmes-themed Broadway musical. The two at first seemed content with their place in the NYC rock scene, until the fateful evening they ventured out to see an outrageous new local outfit calling themselves the Fugs. In a mid-90s interview with the fanzine 200 Lb. Underground, Jim recalled the lasting impression the Godz' future labelmates left on him: "The reality of their music caught me, and I thought, why am I fucking around singing other people's songs when I should be expressing my own feelings?"

Jim quit the Dick Watson Five right then and there, and so began the chain of events leading to the formation of his next band. Soon thereafter, his girlfriend dumped him and threw him out of the pad they'd been sharing, so he moved into Larry's apartment on East 11th Street for a short while. One day Paul came over to visit them, and the three gathered in Larry's living room to smoke a joint. What happened next was purely accidental, according to Jim: "There were all these percussive instruments lying around and out of total frustration, I got up and started shaking a tambourine or something like that, and that's how it all started. We all started to get up and make noise like a bunch of maniacs, expressing our frustration." It was an exhilarating moment for all three of them. But immediately afterward, Larry made a suggestion that had both Jim and Paul questioning his sanity: that the three audition this impromptu "band" for ESP. According to Jim, "He said 'Oh, Bernard Stollman would love this,' and I thought he was crazy!" But Larry was indeed serious, and went on to persuade ESP's art director, Jay Dillon, to round out the quartet, thus ensuring that John Sebastian could not claim the title of rock's only autoharp (psaltery) stylist.

Stollman remembered his first Godz encounter thusly: "They were all in my office, and Larry said 'Well, we're recording tomorrow.' I said, 'WE are recording?' 'Yeah,' he said, 'my group. The Godz.' I said, 'A group called the Godz?' 'Yeah. We're going into Herb Abramson's studio to record.' 'Who are the Godz?' 'Well, there's Jimmy over there, and there's Jay and me and Paul.' I said 'wow. Would you like me to hear it before you go record it in the studio?' 'Yeah,' he said, 'we're rehearsing at Natasha's tonight.' Natasha, my personal assistant! They were rehearsing at her apartment on the south side of Tompkins Square Park. So I went there, it was sweltering warm, it was hot, so we turned off the lights so it was cooler. And they did their song for me ("White Cat Heat"). I heard that, and that's all I had to hear. It was a ridiculous basis on which to give them a record session, but I couldn't say no. I figured, somehow they're into something. And I think it was because they were such rank individualists, that there was no danger of them doing anything conventional."

Larry claims his involvement in the Godz actually caused some friction with his new boss: "When Stollman found out I was in a band, he was really pissed at me personally, because I never told him I had anything to do with music, I had just told him I was a salesman. I was doing great as a salesman -- I got the Fugs' records into Korvettes and Alexander's (two now-defunct NY-metro-area department store giants of the time). I had long hair, I was freaky, and I was talking to people all over the country on the phone -- and I was doing a great job for him, he really liked me. But he wanted me to stay with ESP and not go off on the tangent of being a musician, 'cuz he knew how that was gonna end up."