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Chris Phinney has a long and varied homemade music/cassette culture history. From zinester, to local Memphis, Tennessee scenester, to homemade recording artist, Harsh Reality Music label head, and well beyond Earth’s orbit, Phinney’s contributions to the dawn of post-punk home recording and networking beg documentation.
I am excited about working with Chris and Hal on the Harsh Reality Music historical web site that will be housed at haltapes.com. Hal started the site with a label discography:
http://www.haltapes.com/harsh-reality-music.html 
A personal side note is that my introduction to both artists was through a review submission of their 1997 Homemade Alien Music Volume 2: Ancient Astronauts collaboration. In 2000, Chris sent me a copy of the CD for review in Aural Innovations, and the cover art and accompanying comic book immediately grabbed my attention. Here is the review I published in the online edition of Aural Innovations (issue #13, October 2000).
Little did I know at the time that this set of space exploratory music was only the beginning of what would be a glorious tsunami of submissions that would find me well steeped in both Chris and Hal’s experimental, electronic, space, noise, cut-up worlds for years to come.
Our approach (so far…)
I am listening to and making detailed track notes for every tape in the catalog. I’m in my element here… My love of deep dive, total immersion into music and writing about it is what drove my passion for running the Aural Innovations web zine for 18 years. We started with the first ten tapes in the catalog. Check out the Harsh Reality discography and you will see that Hal has the first several releases, including the first of Chris’ ‘bands’ - Pungent Odor and several Skoptzies tapes - digitized and available to stream. 
ad for the first four Harsh Reality Music label releases, from Malice fanzine issue #9
I sent my track notes to Chris, whose memory of these early 1980s efforts needed jogging. With the cobwebs (more or less) cleared, I called Chris on December 5, 2018, and we took a two hour stroll down Harsh Reality memory lane. We discussed his publication of the Malice fanzine, each of the first ten tapes in the catalog, and his efforts to inspire, provoke, and promote a local punk/experimental music scene in Memphis.
Talking to Chris was fascinating.
Chris (and Mike Honeycutt’s) publication and local/ international promotion of Malice, their efforts to promote both local and national touring punk acts in Memphis, and Chris’ international networking/trading/collaborating efforts with Harsh Reality straddle and intertwine with the punk and cassette culture histories that unfolded throughout the 1980s. 
cover of Malice #1, 1982
CHRIS:
“We started Malice with Bob X and Xno. They were both cartoonists. Mike Honeycutt wrote some stuff and I wrote some stuff. When we started the zine it was a mutual thing. We had artwork from all over the place. We wanted it to be comics, and reviews, live stuff and photos. And we paid for it with ads. As we got closer to the end everyone pretty much kind of quit. The last issue, number 9, I did all by myself. I was talking to Honeycutt and we said, you know, why are we reviewing all these other people’s stuff when we could be doing our own stuff, even though we don’t have the gear to do so? Basically we got burned out on the publishing. So I started a label and started recording with no gear hardly at all.” 
Chris Phinney and Richard Martin, early 1980s
The Harsh Reality label released tapes by an exciting array of international artists, including a country specific series of compilations. But beginning with the first Harsh Reality tapes was of particular interest to me because of the very first recorded experiments by Chris and some of his Memphis cohorts. It’s crucial to understand that despite the range of international artists on the label, there was always a local Memphis element, featuring numerous bands and collaborations by a group of musicians that Zan Hoffman dubbed ‘The Memphis Mafia’.
When I was introduced to Chris’ music in 2000, he was already a seasoned home recording artist and knew his way around synths and keys.
But listening to the first recording under his Mental Anguish moniker aka — HR001: Better Pull That Plug — was a shock and awe experience. The young artist noodling at home and exploring the possibilities features a fun glom of banging on objects, primitive percussion, power tools, ranting vocals, and even some organ and acoustic guitar. All were recorded real time with an Akai 4-track open reel-to-reel. 
CHRIS:
“The organ was an organ that my dad had. It was an electronic organ that you plug in. And of course I had an acoustic guitar. A Spanish flamenco. And everything else was basically trash can lids, sheet metal, horseshoes. I was just trying to make my own stuff and see what would happen. It was all pretty much just improv really. Mostly real time, recording as you’re playing it.” 
The rest of the first ten releases include collaborations with Mike Honeycutt (Non Religious Sect), Richard Martin (Macroglossia), the Pungent Odor and Skoptzies tapes, another Mental Anguish set, and Chris’ first experience with releasing music by an international artist (Konstruktivists - Psyko-Genetika 2).
And this is just the tip of a 338 tape iceberg. Interviewing Chris by phone about the first ten releases went really well, so I think we’ll continue to attack these in chunks. We allowed the discussions to be sufficiently free-form that all kinds of interesting and important historical bits crept in. I imagine the discussions will always be more detailed when it comes to the local releases that Chris and his mafia cohorts collaborated on. And, indeed, I see the local Memphis component as being a story in itself. Stay tuned for further updates…
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 The Collected Symphonies of Dr. Chadbourne (1985) Editor's Note: Thanks to Jerry Kranitz for hosting this article by OP Magazine writer Robin James, who was also the creator of the Cassette Mythos project in the 1980s. Click on the tape covers below to go to the discography page for that album on Eugene Chadbourne's website. Jerry Kranitz: A few months ago I agreed to host the sizable collection of cassette tapes that Robin James could no longer store himself. Like a kid in a candy shop I spent the following weeks pouring through the treasure trove of globe spanning goodies from the 1980s-90s. One of the last boxes turned out to be dominated by an enormous number of Eugene Chadbourne homemade cassettes from the 1980s. I was so bowled over that I emailed Robin with the Subject line: "Chadbourne MANIA!!" Which led to the following article by Robin... Eugene Chadbourne, The Guitar Wildman by Robin James At KAOS, the radio station where I was doing some volunteer work in the early 1980s, an album arrived, entitled There'll Be No Tears Tonight. It has a very strange album cover, a black and white sort of a collage, it looks very inexpensive to produce which becomes a never ending tale in itself. The cover is a photograph showing a pudgy grinning young man wearing glasses, holding a guitar and sitting on his bed, and there are various collage elements randomly scattered about. This guy pioneered a whole huge revolution in self production. He started as a child prodigy, turning on his fans by being an adorable child with a monster in his hands, the guitar towers over what you think you see. He is fast and thrillingly sloppy but you can usually recognize what he is imitating from real life hits, if you can't recognize it, it must be original sound art. He would appear to be a young common garden variety boring normal lumpy looser with a sloppy grin and Clark Kent glasses. No, not Clark Kent, more like an anthropomorphic toad from The Wind in the Willows, wearing round spectacles. The main thing is that he just takes that guitar and tears it up, he does things that nobody should ever do. That is a guitar wildman. Besides the usual strings and fingers thing there is percussive squeaking made by his nervous sweaty hands on the back of the guitar, there is slapping and whacking the top of the guitar, there is bashing the neck and twisting the head. Twisting the tuning pegs and spazzing out on the pickguard, sliding various objects up and down the strings. Sticking things in the strings or pushing various small objects into the f-holes for added percussion  image above from You Are in Bear Country, 1985, as pictured on Eugene Chadbourne's website But why stop at the guitar? Take that humbucker out of the guitar and duct tape it to various unlikely household objects, the birdcage, which can also be worn on your head. The electric plunger. How far can this go? The Rake. Let that sit in your mind for a minute. You can't get Freddy Krueger's hand with its deadly steel fingers, but you can get a garden rake with its rattling tines, it’s right there in the garage, waiting innocently for autumn or spring cleaning. Under the Eugene Chadbourne influence that sleeping garden tool comes to life and threatens the entire planet.  photo by Jerry Kranitz Perhaps the most disturbing road tale was of the electric dog skull, which seemed to have a powerful hold on Kramer. They would keep it in canvas and secured in an old cooler, you can hear more about this strange musical instrument in their own words in the song "The Secret of the Cooler." This next part I am going to tell you here is not on any song that I know of. The last time the old dog skull was seen was during a tour in New York City. The gear was locked in the van overnight, in the morning the van's window glass was found broken, the cooler had been tossed around and the skull was missing. The glass was found not on the inside of the van indicating that someone broke in and went into the van after it, but on the outside, lying on the street. It broke itself out.  Biker Music from SE Cambodia, 1985 — with Robin James on turntables — includes the song "Secret of the Cooler" Norm has always been a big fan of music but certainly not a professional wheeler-dealer. He did come upon the same album in the radio station library, and was gobsmacked. Somehow he heard that Eugene was now touring with a new band, Shockabilly, and he had to do something. But what? He is more of a madrigal and hurdy-gurdy type fellow, specializing in recorders and lutes and what elite classical music fans at the radio station call "Early Music," so what was he doing at the 4th Ave Tav? Because of Norm, Shockabilly first played in Olympia at the Tav. And because the band needed someplace to spend the night, they came to our house (Norm said that he had no room at his place, so he asked us to put them up, a house of five or six college students), so they slept in the living room on the floor. I was up in my room where I had spent the entire evening pondering my place in the variances of the universe, from deep within a tasty cloud. They came in from the show, gear safely locked in the van with the windows intact, and the team of Eugene, Kramer and Licht were eagerly seeking a place to crash. I had my light off hoping that nobody would notice me, but somehow from the darkness of the stairwell I hear the voice of Eugene Chadbourne calling out, asking for me by name. "Robin James, come out. Robin James, come down here." Me? Why would a visiting superhero of strange music with actual albums in the radio station library ask for me? Now I know it was really all about the tasty cloud, but at the time I was lead to believe that he really cared about me and wanted to explain that a few bar fights were no big deal, people often fight when he plays, and I had nothing to fear so come on down and meet the band and oh yeah, bring some of that you-know-what so they can properly relax after a hard day's night. That is how it began. In the years to come I made a tradition of making them pancakes with strawberries for breakfast, and still they would return for more. Eugene wrote a song about me, commemorating the time we all went out to dinner after a show. "Robin James yer gonna die, for taking me to the Rib Eye." I still get emotional about that one. We did a radio interview, me interviewing the great one. I had no idea of what to ask him as I was, well, to be fair, we both were pretty far gone on the tasty cloud. He knew what to do, he started shrieking in his "Wife of Jesse Helms" voice (her name was Dorothy Helms, God rest her soul) which completely put me over the edge and strangled any possible hope for my part of the clever banter and live broadcast dialog we were there to accomplish. That was an interview that will live on far after I am forgotten. You are reading this, so it is mostly completely true. Shockabilly came to the Op conference in 1984, the conference was promoted as a melding of international independent music culture type folks, where mingling musicians would talk shop and in the evenings entertain each other for free (they paid to get into the conference, but we did charge the public to come to these evening shows), just to make it democratic and fair and square it was promoted as an act of pure love, nobody performing would get paid. We had to pay something like $25 for gas and whatnot to get Shockabilly to come and play after their Seattle performance, the funds of which was taken from the conference's evening concert door ticket sales. I got yelled at for that one but the crowd loved it, mostly. Around midnight the tenant in the adjacent apartment above the stage who was trying to get some sleep before an early morning work shift came down for the fifth time to reason with us, and said in an outdoor voice that he had already called the police, so please pack up and get the hell out so he can get started with his sleeping. I gently broke it to the Shockabilly as they took the stage that the police were coming and please don't let anybody get hurt. That added lots of atmosphere to their perspective that night. They loved it! The police never came during the performance or while the band was in the house, but the band kept a secret watch out. The audience had no idea of the pending bloodbath when the SWAT team would take the house and kill everyone, but we few knew. It was at that show that Eugene introduced his new Batman-influenced concept, Rakeman, using his improvised electric deflowered garden Frankenstein crowd pleaser/sonic torture device. Some of the women in the audience thought he was saying Rape Man. That was awkward. There was the time I had Chad booked in the fabulous Rainbow in Olympia, and as we were finishing our dinner just before showtime he asked me what kind of equipment there was at the venue. It was at that moment that I realized there was no amplifier and it was my job to get one. So I somehow got something together from a guy who looked like someone I knew who I saw on the street, he was carrying an amp, a Fender Reverb, and I somehow talked him into letting us use it for the show. I had to find some cables to connect some things together, but it worked well enough for a guitar wildman. The crescendo performance of my career as an amateur musical booking agent was "People Want Everything" a performance that invited local musicians to bring their stuff and join in. On the same spot that very night Dr. Chadbourne whipped up a libretto based on the musician roster, plus a score that was distributed to the participating musicians present, if you want to call it a score. It was more of a very crude map than a traditional music paper type staff with notes and all that formal stuff, it appeared to be a bunch of stick figures and arrows, with drawings of the instruments to be featured at any given moment as the performance progressed. A famous local jazz singer sang the libretto (thanks Connie Bunyer!). There were congas and fiddles and DJs with turntables for scratching, and a string quartet (a real one, they later became locally famous for their classical concertos) there were jazz musicians and folk musicians and rock musicians and flutes and tambourines and tangerines and flying zebras. The night before in that venue was a poorly attended performance of Fecal Matter, where the trio otherwise known as Nirvana (before Dave Grohl and the fame) performed giggling and wrapped in plastic, lying doggo right there on the very same stage floor. I knew this would be a hot one-of-a-kind once-in-a-lifetime type of a musical... no, a Cultural Experience, so I borrowed a fancy half-track recorder for the event. For those who do not know or would otherwise not have any chance of remembering, a half-track is different from a common quarter track recorder, which was at the time the most popular reel to reel tape recorder available for fancy looking low-budget consumer use. A half track is a professional recording device used to create master mixes in a big pants non-amateur recording studio. These devices are quite expensive. With a quarter track for efficiency you can record a spool of stereo signal, flip it over and go again, getting so much more out of your tape investment. That was not my intention, I was looking for the half track super double quality and was looking forward to using a razor blade and splicing tape to create the most incredible audio document of the event, for all of eternity to marvel at. My place in history was now secured because of this plan. If you have a quarter track recording the sound goes both ways on the spool and there is no way to cut the tape because you would lose the recorded signal on the reverse tracks. I was not able to operate the half track because I was busy managing the event. A half track tape recorder operates exactly like a quarter track, but you would never flip it over because that would be foolish, it would ruin both recordings. I keep harping on the "never flip it over" part for a reason, you can probably guess why. After the show my friend proudly showed me how he saved me a fortune in spite of my detailed specific instructions, because he did not need to use the second or third reel of tape I provided him to use when the first spool was finished recording. That was my last time producing a performance, but my story goes on. I saw Dr. Chadbourne playing at the Magic Stick in Detroit, a pool hall with a sound stage at one end. This was later in his career, when he started showing his latest crown of wizened white hair, and instead of winging it as he usually does, this time he had music stands set up so he would not flub any of the lyrics. He played and sang magnificently of course.  Chicken on the Way, 1983 — photo by Jerry Kranitz One of his contributions to cassette culture was his innovative way of using his own household trash in his packaging. The envelopes that his utility bills come in, for example, turn up as paper cassette covers, with photocopied titles and strange crude artwork plastered on the outside. He has a special label name exclusively for his cassette-only releases, Parachute Recordings. One of his strangest items available for sale to the general public was in the form of a gigantic joint, almost three feet long. It was just his trash cleverly rolled into the classic pre-roll form with pointy tamped ends, smoking it would obviously be fatal as it’s all paper from the trash, not hash for the bash.  My New Life Vol. 1, 1987 — photo by Kranitz Quality is never an issue, it’s all about quantity. To Eugene it’s more important to get that product out and start on the next one rather than agonizing over production details and proper remastering and all that nonsense. He was able to record an evening's performance and have a supply of fully packaged releases with artwork and playlist, housed in his special covers, ready for sale to fans by that same night's dawn. Looking at his discography on Discogs.com he has over 348 CD type releases credited to his name, this includes collaborations, solo works, contributions to anthologies, and so forth, a busy guy. I personally collected 57 Parachute releases, but he never gave me any cassettes for free until that performance in Detroit where he did give me one (the first one as Camper Van Chadbourne which features "Evil Filthy Preacher" one of my faves in his Country-Protest ou-ver-ah), I had to buy all the rest and they were expensive. I wonder if I can get any consideration? Not the right kind of consideration, I fear.  Dinosaur on the Way, 1984 — photo by Kranitz  Greetings all... My book - "Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age" - is in the formatting stage and targeted for publication by Vinyl-on-Demand late first quarter 2019. I'm working on selecting photos and need assistance with my chapter on Creative Packaging... Do any of you 1980s artists/networkers have any tapes from the 80s that were packaged in artistic/creative ways? The crazier the better. These must be PRE-1992. If anyone is willing/able to send me high quality jpg images of such cassette albums I would be eternally grateful. I need these fairly quickly. Please email me if you can help.  Here are a few examples of some of the more 'out there' imaginative cassettes from 1980s Op magazine reviews... Robin Rose (ex synth player for Urban Verbs) sent in a piece called Reliquary that was inspired by the catastrophic Air Florida plane crash into the Potomac River in January 1982. The ‘fossilized’ cassette came mounted on a silk-screened board and the tape contains some quietly spooky sounds (a reliquary is a compartment for keeping religious or sacred objects). Packaging of the Issue Award will have to be divided among the following two (group) entries. (First): Trance Port Tapes’ latest 2 releases both come wrapped in folded cardboard sleeves beautifully silkscreened in silver. The other half of the Outstanding Packaging trophy goes to PPP in France for the white polystyrene medical specimen beaker (? – my best guess) that cylindrically encased their Assemble Generale #4 international compilation. Mark Murrell easily walks off with the Best Packaging honors this issue for sending in his letter on a 7-foot-long, 1/2 inch wide strip of paper wound into a scotch tape dispenser. The cassette, letter, poster, envelope, and everything were painted with beautiful airbrushed textures, a real impressive piece – shame I couldn’t frame and hang it. Dangling Ganglion it’s called and contains some very rich audio collage work with clever musical ideas added. Altogether a heady experience. Peter Cathum, Gum (cassette): “Peter’s second cassette release, packaging by Christopher Grace. The cassette comes in a box with various titled photos relating to the pieces and a special listening device (assembly required). This tape is more complex both in composition and packaging than Cathum’s first release. The amazing use of sounds and instruments creates a very atmospherically conceptual piece. One gets the feeling that they have lived for one day as Peter Cathum. The Young Schitzophrenics, AMOL OBOL 1#: “An interesting packaging job on this one. The cassette was totally wrapped in electrical tape, making it a very dicey job getting the tape off without cutting it in half. As for the tape itself – The first fifteen minutes sound like a metal foundry running at full tilt, complete with foghorns. This crashes well into clichéd shortwave radio static and then back to the foundry this time running at a much lower speed. A great tape to watch T.V. with.”  
Facebook is great. I love it. A handful of holdouts notwithstanding, nearly everyone I care to communicate with is on Facebook. My family is there, but it’s my friends from the music network I communicate with through social media. Five minutes before I started writing this article I saw a post by a band I’ve followed for years with a link to order their new album and I was off to the races. In that regard it is quick, reliable, and efficient.
Facebook is great for news and keeping tabs on what people are up to. And it’s something of a necessary evil in that I HAVE to be on Facebook because far too many of my friends from the network will only communicate through the social media platform. They will not check their email, they will not announce new releases via email distro lists, and even if they still have web sites they will post immediately to Facebook but they won’t update their web site. Facebook does not facilitate and can in no way be relied on for detailed topic specific discussion and exchange of ideas. Sure, there are newsgroups, like the ‘1980s-1990s Cassette Culture Archives’ group. But they consist of miscellaneous postings and discussion is limited to ‘Comments’, resulting in an ongoing stream of posts that aren’t organized in any helpful way. So how, in the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, name-yer-poison social media era, can meaningful online community be created among those with shared interests? Hal McGee is hell bent on doing so with the online reboot of his Electronic Cottage magazine that published six issues in the 1990s. And he’s got a head start with the 42 (currently counted ‘Personal Pages’) participants who are hometaper networking veterans. Participants are encouraged to write articles and share information through the EC web site. But Hal is also engaging the community with projects like the new Electronic Cottage Compilation 004. Hal stated his intent for the compilation in his call for contributions: — To create a stronger connection among EC community members! — And to promote Electronic Cottage to the outside world! As Hal said in the compilation announcement: “I think that this is a perfect way for all of us here at EC to get to know each other better and to make new connections with our friends here!” Hal elaborated on this to me in a personal communication: “Another purpose of the compilation is to stimulate more community projects. So far most people are still reporting and commenting and writing about their interests and projects outside the site. In the future I’d like to see that change.” Electronic Cottage Compilation 004 notably emphasizes the collective effort by crediting the set to the ‘Electronic Cottage Community’ rather than the usual ‘Various Artists’. 34 EC contributors sent in recordings of 2 minutes or less, making for a cracking set of experimental audio fun. It’s a hotbed of creativity and an excellent introduction to the EC world for both the contributors and the uninitiated. So join me as I take a tour this collective effort…
Ditlev Buster’s singer-songwriter styled guitar and space-synth is a welcoming opener. I love the lyrics: “Welcome to the Electronic Cottage compilation. It’s a great great CD. We also have a web site. You can go online to see. But don’t sit at your computer for too long. Or you’ll go blind.”
Frank lays down a cool, quirkily jazzy groove as he attempts to, but doesn’t quite specify, how he would like to be remembered. {AN} EeL has an awesome title with “The Quaker’s Staff & The Dutch Oven”, alternately babbling baby talk and scat/opera singing amidst a combination of light piano recital, telephones ringing in harmony, and electronic atmospherics. Thomas Park cranks out a noisy yet flowing soundscape tour. Juan Angel Italiano’s contribution features spoken word (Spanish) and various howling and chanting recorded voices along with ambience and lightly tribal free-improv. Another fun track title is Jack Hz’s “Don’s Refrigerator Makes The Best Cottage Cheese”, which is a somber soundtrack with retro-futuro space electronics. Shaun Robert creates hauntingly mesmerizing space-ambience and cosmic sound exploration. Don Campau follows with an equally awesome bit of mind-bending and acid laced space excursion. I love Rafael González’s choppy clang-clang robot grooves and static drenched blasts. Walls Of Genius lay down a steady guitar, bass and bells/percussion groove that sets the stage for zany vocalizations as only the WOG morons can produce. Swami Loopynanda (aka Charles Rice Goff III) rocks out with Frippery snake guitar, ploddy guitar plucking, light ambience, and vocals that remind me of a Cream song! [Editor’s Note: I am glad to know that I am not the only person who thinks it is reminiscent of Cream! How about “I Feel Free”?] John M. Bennett voices a nifty Dadaist spoken word piece. Ken Montgomery treats us to scratching strings and an interesting collage of recorded voices that builds in atmospheric intensity. Eduardo GOZNE creates a very cool space and drone ambient piece. Lord Litter takes the piss out of instructional recordings with his good fun recording techniques. Phillip Klampe travels the cosmos with a clever bit of percolating space-ambience and experimental sound manipulation. Yet another fun title comes from Dylan Houser with his “Stop-Motion Zombie Frycooks On The Moon”, which consists of an interesting conglomeration of experimental sounds. Ditto for osvaldo cibils, who morphs and mixes electronic bubbles, phases, scratches, whirs and blasts. I like Chris Phinney’s percussion that has a Sun Ra Nubians Of Plutonia cosmic tribal feel. Jim Barker creates a cool collage work with voices, instruments and field recordings. Lumen K goes awesomely spaced out freeeeeky with his “A Shaman Prays For Hal McGee”. I love the combination of alien electronics, voice samples and droning chant. Aimee Grace Naworal contributes a lovely, dissonantly melodic stringed ditty. Adam Naworal rocks out with a slab of freeform bashing bass jamming (I think it’s bass?) and oscillating effects. Seiei Jack offers a frenetic crowd sample and alien effects collage. I enjoyed the combination of steady palpitation and cosmic drift on Jen Sandwich’s melodic, floating space excursion. The “Electro Acoustic Cottage Visitation” title nails Shatter Wax’s contribution, with wildly bubbling and whizzing electronics, strumming guitar, radio effects and more. John Wiggins’ piece is a quietly subtle, experimental sound and object/instrument manipulation. Dave Fuglewicz specializes in space exploration and treats us to a micro tour of darkly symphonic majesty. Jeff Central’s contribution brings to mind a stripped down Kraftwerk tune with voice and effects collage layered over the top. Francesco Aprile surprised me with what sounds like a 1960s fun-with-tape experimental psychedelic radiophonic freakout. W.A. Davison assaulted me with his start/stop sound sample collage fun, with bashing noise blasts and a brain paralyzing drone pulse. Hal McGee creates his trademark experimental collage with day-in-the-life-of-Hal narrative. Hal Harmon is pure punishment with his sonic assault space-industrial blast. David Nadeau closes the set with a fun bit of carnivalesque whimsy. In an email exchange Hal McGee told me: “To me the most important thing about the hometaper scene is the people, not the things, not the music art objects they produce.” I responded that for me it’s about the people AND what they produce. But then I went on to describe the projects I’ve worked on with him, and how nearly all the new music I keep up with anymore is by artists I’ve communicated with for many years and… I realized we were probably saying the same thing. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m in a groove checking the EC web site at least every couple days looking to see what’s new. I will watch its progress with anticipation, and be mindful of participation… Brick Through The Window: An Oral History Of Punk Rock, New Wave And Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984 by Steven Nodine, Eric Beaumont, Clancy Carroll, and David Luhrssen (Brickboys 2017) -- review by Jerry Kranitz History can only be fully told when its many parts and pieces are identified, analyzed as individual components, and, ultimately, tied together for a larger understanding. My favorite music magazine is Ugly Things, which was launched in the early 1980s as a homemade zine and now publishes two 150+ page issues a year. Subtitled Wild Sounds From Past Dimensions, the magazine focuses on Beat, garage rock, psychedelic, and good old rock ‘n’ roll bands from the 1950s 70s, with occasional forays into the 1980s.  What I love most about Ugly Things is the incredibly detailed interviews. The writers will track down obscure bands, often 60s groups who may have only had one single released, and publish 10-15 page interviews. The historical value of these interviews is the moment-in-time pictures they paint of local music scenes, as well as the insight they provide into the artists’ management and record company experiences. Brick Through The Window: An Oral History Of Punk Rock, New Wave And Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984 is like reading a 600+ page single topic issue of Ugly Things. The ‘Oral History’ of the title is exactly how the book is structured. The four authors conducted detailed interviews with Milwaukee music scene participants from the era and organized quotes into an impressively organized and absorbing tale of one city’s experiences, contributions to the larger punk historical record, and the lasting influence on its participants. If you liked the format of Neil Taylor’s Rough Trade history, this is very similar. http://brickthroughthewindow.com/  I became interested in the book after reading a review in… Ugly Things! And my purchase decision was locked in after cassette culture-Uddersounds-F/i-Vocokesh veteran Richard Franecki told me he had been interviewed by the authors. I am by no means a walking encyclopedia of bands. I’ll be fascinated by an Ugly Things interview, but beyond listening to the subject on YouTube, may not necessarily remember them. My attraction to all these stories is the way in which they come together to shape an understanding of the “Hows” and “Whys” of history. The entire book paints a picture of an enthusiastic and mutually supportive local scene, well steeped in the DIY ethic. Musician and radio DJ David Gunkel recounts a classic punk era DIY approach to everything: “You had bands with absolute crap equipment, but they made it work. You had drummers using everything from cardboard boxes to trashcans. You had lead singers who simply did not fit the profile of frontman, yet they got up on a crappy excuse for a stage and belted out lyrics, even if the crap PA system couldn’t provide enough output for anyone to hear him or her.” Gunkel also describes what he calls DIY nightclubs and cassette production that will resonate with EC readers: “Like the Lincoln Arcade shows we did with the Laytons, the Shemps and the Honest Disgrace, where band members took turns booking the event, running the door and tending bar. A mere 25 cents for a beer cup and all-you-can-drink beer. What the fuck were we thinking? And you had basement recording studios churning out low-fi gems on cassette tape, and kitchen-table makeshift art departments producing the Letraset posters that decorated the street corners and facades of vacant buildings. No one knew shit, but that did not stop us.” Entire chapters are devoted to Milwaukee punk clubs Zak’s and Starship. Co-author Clancy Carroll, explains how those two clubs, from 1977-82 were key facilitators for local bands. In 2001 Carroll was involved in the compilation of the History in 3 Chords 2-CD compilation, which was intended to represent this period in Milwaukee punk history: “The beginning of punk rock in Milwaukee to the end of the Starship in ’82. The golden era, if you will, at least how Scott Krueger, Jeff Menz and I defined it when we put together that compilation. Most of the songs on there I remembered just from hearing in the clubs.”  It was all about the local Milwaukee scene. As musician Kevn Kinney explains, “These were great times to be young and hungry. What I learned most was: if you want to create, create. It doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't have to be approved. Technique can be learned. Sharing and being part of the community should not only be welcomed but absolute.” The sharing and community minded aesthetic truly was local. In fact, Richard Franecki is the only interviewee who touches on the global network and OP magazine. When I asked him in an email exchange if he and F/i were somehow outliers he replied, “I was probably the ONLY one in Milwaukee who got into the network as extensively as I did. Everyone else in the 'scene' pretty much went the conventional route. Sort of like Chrome/Helios Creed and Damon Edge doing studio stuff at the expense of live gigs. We were sort of the same way, with EARLY F/i in particular. So YES, we were really into a whole other 'universe' than the rest of the musicians here in town. The result is that we developed a national reputation while other musicians became local celebrities, but were little known outside the Milwaukee area." This comment drew my attention to the many pages devoted to Milwaukee psychedelic revivalists Plasticland, who intentionally cast their net as widely beyond Milwaukee as possible and enjoyed a measure of success. And it’s a hoot reading about how the Violent Femmes, probably the era’s most successful Milwaukee band, had been ubiquitous street buskers. One of my favorite chapters is the one about WMSE, the Milwaukee School of Engineering radio station, whose freeform format included a heavy local focus. DJ Tom Crawford explains how local bands were always a predominant part of WMSE’s programming: “One of the people that took it to a level to make it an open door policy, Pete Christensen, was our station’s morning show host. Pete always said to bands, If I’m on the air, come on down. Don’t call me. If I’m on the air, you come on down. Bring your records, your cassettes; I don’t care. I’ll play them.” And I love Crawford’s description of how, “We were getting so much local music in that we took an old two-drawer wooden file cabinet and we converted it into a local music dropbox, right where you walked in the door. You pulled open the top drawer, you’d put your cassette in, you’d close the drawer and it’d drop into the box.” I checked the WMSE web site and they’ve currently got shows in their schedule with titles like Industrial Noise Core and Why My Head Hurts. WMSE listener Jeff Hamilton shares a memory that struck a chord with me: “Before I left for school, I would put a 120-minute cassette tape in and hit record. Couldn’t wait to get home and hear what I caught. Angry Samoans followed by the Grateful Dead, followed by MX-80 Sound, followed by The Shag meant I had found a station that knew my tastes before I even knew!” When I lived in Atlanta, Georgia from 1981-87, I was a devout WREK (Georgia Institute of Technology) listener. I still have several of what I labeled ‘WREK Rock’ cassettes, where I stuck in a blank and just hit record. They are all gems that I still listen to from time to time. Some are theme shows and others are as free-wheeling diverse as Hamilton describes. I just checked the WREK web site and my beloved Destroy All Music show from the early 80s is STILL in the schedule! Despite the 1964-1984 of the title, the lion’s share of the story is told from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. And the book is light on the Noise portion of the title (unless by ‘noise’ they mean ‘racket’). I asked Richard Franecki about this and the lack of F/i mention, to which he replied: “The extreme experimental 'noise' scene was a little scene within the broader scene, and not everyone is into stuff like that. The same ten people showed up for all our shows! And we all got to know each other better. Boy Dirt Car in particular. Eric Lunde and Darren Brown were/are great guys, and we REALLY supported each other, doing shows and appearances, resulting in the split LP on RRR in 1986. The reason F/i is not mentioned more is the fact that F/i reached a peak AFTER the time period the book deals with. We were a noise band (pre-drums) during the era the book deals with.” I single this out more as a point of personal interest and something that will be notable to EC readers. In any event, Brick Through The Window is a fun and riveting read that does a great job of showcasing this era in Milwaukee punk history through the eyes and memories of its participants (or some subset of them?). The History in 3 Chords compilation (linked above) is chock full of bands featured in the book. I also highly recommend the MKE Punk web site, which houses free downloads of bands from the era and is where the History in 3 Chords download lives. Another cool punk compilation on the site is America's Dairyland from 1983. Finally, F/i fans may be interested in free downloads of Richard Franecki’s pre-F/i punk band, The Shemps. 
The only previous appearance that I’m aware of Belgian guitarist Daniel Malempré’s M.A.L. was on the first volume of Alain Neffe’s Insane Music For Insane People compilation in 1981. Malempré also collaborated with Neffe in Subject and was in the first lineup (1973-74) of Neffe’s German Kosmiche in Belgium band, Kosmose. In 2015 the Sub Rosa label released a fantastic 2-CD/LP set of archival Kosmose live recordings from 1973-78, kosmic music from the black country, including detailed historical notes from Neffe.
Sub Rosa has now released My 16 Little Planets, a set of M.A.L. tracks recorded by Malempré from 1972-76. The package doesn’t include the multi-page booklet the Kosmose set was stacked with, but the story in the notes makes a remarkable claim that adds a touch of tabloid journalism to this review.
The notes begin by acknowledging Manuel Göttsching’s (Ash Ra Tempel) 1975 released Inventions For Electric Guitar as a classic. Recorded using only an electric guitar and 4-track tape recorder, Göttsching created a guitar excursion unlike anything I had heard, even though I didn’t discover it until the early 1980s.
The explanation continues to describe why the album was so influential, before launching into a claim about how in 1974 the Ohr label had received a tape sent by M.A.L., “same design, same configuration, almost the same tracks.” In fact, it was sent to both Ohr and Virgin, with the A side labeled ‘M.A.L.’ and the B side labeled ‘Alain Neffe’. (I wonder what was on the Neffe side?) And then the blatant claim is made that “Malempré is the actual inventor of this technique, which Göttsching reproduced a few months later.” 
So… make of that what you will. I relate the story without opinion or judgment. In my upcoming book, Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age (to be published 2019 by Vinyl-on-Demand), I add an index with representative reviews, including the Insane Music For Insane People Vol. 1 compilation. Of the M.A.L. contribution, written prior to being aware of Malempré’s accusations, I said, “M.A.L. is a Daniel Malempré solo project and the two featured tracks (dated 1974) are intricately beautiful kosmiche guitar explorations. The first consists of gradually developing guitar patterns that would appeal to fans of Manual Göttsching, and the second has a meditative soundtrack feel with lusciously multi-layered guitar and melodic solos.”
That, of course, doesn’t in any way support the claim. Interestingly, what escaped me when I wrote that was that Malempré’s story goes back to the 1981 release of the compilation. I realize now that the track "Manuel Ist Unehrlich" translates to Manuel Is Dishonest. The grudge has persisted for decades.
Anyway, I mean no disrespect to Malempré’s concerns by now putting the controversial stuff aside. Instead I’ll focus on the content, which is a stunning, 16 track, 76 minute set of deep space kosmiche guitar exploration that is absolutely on the same playing field with what Göttsching accomplished on Inventions. The set consists of stretch out tracks and shorter pieces in the 1-4 minute range. I’ll focus on the longer tracks…
Deimos features 9 luscious minutes of multiple floating and trippily soloing layers of guitar, with a steady beat of gently rippling pulsations.
Elara alternates between guitars that sing like cosmic acid queen sirens and shimmering palpitations, before settling into a groove that brings to mind a blend of Ash Ra Tempel and Virgin era Tangerine Dream with beautiful swirly organ. The last two emotional minutes are hauntingly somber and among my favorite moments of the set.
Thor is pure cosmic angst, combining a Forbidden Planet mélange of sci-fi soundtrack effects with eerily playful kosmiche guitar and a commanding battery of low drone bass rumbling riffs.
Thethys is the surprise rocker of the set, though it’s an adventurously avant-kosmiche one. Malempré cranks out trippy rocking solos while bassist Maya maintains the rhythmic pulse, along with spaced out pipe organ by Alain Neffe.
But my hands down favorite of the set is the 15 minute epic Pandore, which is on par with the best of the album but spices up the proceedings with additional instrumentation. Malempré solos freely on guitar along with his now trademark atmospheric backing. But we've also got spacey melodic flute. Some of the segments sound like early Genesis with a heavy dose of space kosmiche influence. Clarinet and pipe organ are also credited, though the clarinet must be efx'd and absorbed because I couldn’t detect it. This piece nicely utilizes its length to develop a continually evolving parade of themes. Slowly churning drones and soundscapes intermesh with one another as they rotate, expand and contract. The guitar is ever present, some of which sounds like a heavily efx'd gliss style. The last minutes are like a harrowing ride through some of the darkest, most cavernously droning yet atmospherically drifting reaches of space. If any single track stands out for soaring into space and taking the listener with it, this baby is the one.
In summary, I’ll leave it to those who know the truth to settle any disputes. I am, however, curious about what was actually submitted to Ohr. The notes say that is was almost the same tracks as Inventions For Electric Guitar. That album consisted of three tracks clocking in at 17:45, 6:34, and 21:36, while this set has 16 of wildly varying lengths.
Regardless, the important thing is that these wonderful recordings have finally been made available. They also contribute to the larger Alain Neffe/Insane Music history, who Malempré endearingly credits in the notes.
For more information visit the Sub Rosa label. 
Here is a downloadable PDF of this article. The Bandcamp audio players are not included, but the PDF includes links to the tracks, so that you can listen. The YouTube player below is also not included.
Jerry's first post on EC was on April 20, 2018 in the now-defunct REVIEWS section
cassette review Le-Ultra Live Series Vol. One |
Jerry KranitzJerry Kranitz published Aural Innovations: The Global Source For Space Rock Exploration from 1998-2016. AI started as a printed zine (nine issues from 1998-2000) and then went online for the duration. The web site also included regularly broadcast editions of Aural Innovations Space Rock Radio. Archives
January 2019
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