by Marc Masters (Music 780.255 Mas)
Remember cassettes? They seemed annoying at times, but they changed a lot of things about the way we experience and make music, too. High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape by Marc Masters takes thorough and wide-ranging look at how this humble playback medium has affected music listening and music-making since its invention. You can borrow this book from the Polley Music Library, and in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that it’s the first music book that I’ve actually been quoted in myself!
Masters starts High Bias with an overview of the technology
behind cassettes. It’s a short section, but thorough, and the tech developments
documented here created opportunities for the cultural shifts noted throughout
the rest of the book. Magnetic recording started with wire recording tech
around the beginning of the 20th century, which was followed by the application
of magnetic particles to paper backings and eventually plastic backings. These
technologies continued to advance through the 1930s, and by the 1950s, the
concept of storing magnetic tape or wire mediums within a cartridge or
“cassette” was becoming dominant, as it was easier for consumers to use. The cassette
tape as we know it, more properly called the “compact cassette,” was designed
at Phillips by Lou Ottens, and it was brought to the commercial market in 1963.
What made this format so popular, though, was simply Phillips’ decision to
waive royalties for using their cassette design. The ability for lots of
companies to make their own cassette players and tapes without being tied up in
royalties worked incredibly well, and it drove innovation across multiple
companies in the ensuing decades. It led to the “boom boxes” of the late 1970s,
and the portable headphone cassette units known best by the first of them to
come to market, the Sony Walkman, of the 1980s. The popularity of these
machines literally changed the sound of our streets. For musicians, there was
the development of the 4-track cassette recorder, finally allowing artists to
make their own recordings at home. They could distribute those recordings on
cassettes dubbed at home as well, allowing for the potential to side-step
record labels for the first time since the dawn of the recording era.
Subsequent chapters focus on
various different areas of culture that were significantly influenced by
cassettes. Chapter 2 largely focuses on hip-hop, which was dramatically
assisted in its early days by artists and fans being able to record live sets
on cassette, as well as the ability to circulate mixtapes among fans. We have
another recently published book called Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes that
takes a detailed look at this era, too, featuring lots of photos and interviews
with artists of the era, so if you read this section and want to go further,
I’d recommend that book. Masters also documents how cassettes helped to
distribute other new forms of music like house music, punk, indie rock, and new
forms of heavy metal that developed throughout the 1980s. For all of these
forms of music, mixtapes and demo tapes were a crucial element in popularizing
these styles. In many cases, tapes circulated among fans for years before bands
and artists signed “real” record deals. They both documented new styles of
music and helped them along simultaneously.
Some artists didn’t aspire to get
mainstream record deals, though, and Masters also looks at the underground
cassette culture of the 80s. These artists worked in various offshoots of
experimental music, from industrial to free improvisation to homemade
electronics to outsider pop and more, and throughout the 80s, they circulated
their work on cassette, mostly through the mail. This is the same era in which
mail art and zine culture were popular, and underground cassettes were another
element of the wild art one could find through the mail. Fans could order tapes
directly from artists, and many artists simply traded tapes among one another.
As mentioned earlier, this created a whole new kind of environment for enjoying
music—it existed essentially outside of the commercial market altogether, and
participants could develop a real sense of community, even if they were mostly
connected through international postal systems. In its way, 80s cassette
culture and mail art are a precursor to some forms of internet culture today,
in which people find friendship and community around shared interests
regardless of where they might live.
Then Masters looks at the community
around tape trading, which largely focuses on fans of the Grateful Dead
swapping copies of their favorite live show recordings. Tapes from other
artists occasionally find their way into tape trading circles, but the Dead
were the first band to actively support the notion of fans recording “bootlegs”
of their shows, setting up designated taping areas at most of their shows. It
proved to be a great business decision by the band—several generations of fans
grew up knowing that every Grateful Dead concert was very different from all of
the others as could be heard on all of these tapes, and this kept the band a
top-grossing touring act throughout their career, even when they rarely put out
new studio albums and had little chart or radio support.
Next, we explore international
music. The cassette format became very popular around the world for similar
reasons as underground music in the United States—it was cheap and easy to
duplicate. The format continues to be more commercially popular in other parts
of the world as well. As a result, song hunters from the West often travel to
other countries in search of rare, small-run cassettes featuring music unique
to areas of the Middle East, Africa, or India. Some of these
traveler/collectors subsequently started record labels to circulate their
discoveries in other parts of the world, and to archive them somewhat more
permanently. This is followed by a chapter about making mixtapes, which many
Generation X folks will likely relate to. Before digital playlists and before
mix CDs, the mixtape was the first medium in which the average person could
gather together their favorite songs, or songs focused on a particular theme
for themselves or as a gift. Many people went to great efforts to make these
tapes look as cool as they sounded, drawing their own art or making collages.
It was a whole fun thing that’s been somewhat lost to time!
The final chapter, “Tape’s Not
Dead,” looks at what the media sometimes calls the “Cassette Comeback.” In the
last couple of decades, cassettes have mostly disappeared from mass-market
commercial shelves, but in fact small groups of artists and labels have continued
to produce them in a mostly unbroken line going back to the 80s underground
cassette culture mentioned earlier. Things have changed in a few ways—many of
these tapes are now duplicated in small runs of 100 or so by small businesses,
the artwork tends to be more professional, and instead of zines and mail-order
catalogs, folks find these cassettes for sale on the internet through sites
like Bandcamp. But the spirit remains similar to the 80s scene, with an
emphasis on art and expression over commerce. This is the part of the book
where you’ll find a couple of quotes from yours truly.
Overall, this is a thorough and
wide-ranging look at how cassettes have affected music and culture since their
invention. Although the book has been published by an academic press
(University of North Carolina), the style is very fun and approachable,
emphasizing a friendly narrative style that incorporates lots of discussions
with people involved in the various branches of cassette culture. I’d recommend
this book to people with a wide range of musical interests—whatever style of
music you love, chances are that the cassette has been part of its story in
recent history!
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try Cassette Mythos edited by Robin James, Cassette Cultures: Past and Present of a Musical Icon by
John Komurki or Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes by Evan
Auerbach.)
( publisher’s official High
Bias web page ) | ( Marc Masters
on Pitchfork.com )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!
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