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KEEP YOUR CASSETTES! ESSAY & ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW PENLAND The other day I was invited to a ‘90s party; everyone came costumed in flannel, overalls with one strap left hanging and JNCOs. The playlist was what you heard on radio stations with names like The Edge (which would eventually, of course, change its name to Kiss) and The End (which wouldn’t change its name but would gradually evolve from playing Soundgarden to playing Limp Bizkit). It doesn’t really matter where you were during that era, of course; if you were an adolescent in the early-to-mid-’90s, you still probably know what I’m talking about. Infinity Broadcasting lived up to its name, posting clone stations in nearly every conceivable regional area. On an eighth grade class trip to the Outer Banks, I was shocked to realize that the radio stations in that area sounded exactly like the radio stations where I was from, near Charlotte, right down to the station names, DJ chatter and voice-overs. A year later, reading a music magazine, I figured out the meaning of the term “heavy rotation.” Besides the proliferation of sound-alike radio stations, the 1990s saw two other major evolutionary events in music. The first was that the compact disc (aided by an “independent entity”– created by major record labels in 1983 – called the Compact Disc Group which spent millions on marketing) triumphed in its nearly decade-long war of attrition with both the vinyl album and audiocassette and became the dominant medium for sound recordings. This made Sony and other companies extremely happy; cool people now had to buy CD players by the millions to listen to the songs they discovered on MTV. And when they re-released the old Beatles and Three Dog Night albums in the new supposedly indestructible format, the Baby Boomers jumped on board, too, repurchasing albums they already had on vinyl. The second event was the Moving Picture Expert Group’s third version of an audio layer compression format called MPEG-1. MP3, as it came to be known, made it possible to encode sound recordings with minimal data loss (at least, data loss which is not noticeable). (Normally, recordings made with Hemi-Sync and other neurosonic technologies often lose their effect when run through MP3 compression.) Soon, nearly everyone was creating and trading MP3 sound files, thanks to what might be called the third major evolutionary event in 1990s music: the emergence of a government-sanctioned and corporate-financed Internet, which included the construction of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of e-mail. A brief aside about the development of the Internet: some of you may remember Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). They were run by someone in your local area, and were essentially a digital, interactive counterpart to what zines were in the early ‘90s print world. You got online, talked to a small (but ever-growing) cadre of intelligent and computer-literate people, traded files and got phone numbers to other BBSes. Corporations sold the computers and modems (although a diehard contingent built their own), but after that it was up to you. Individuals wrote the programs, set up the systems and created the games. It was possible to have privacy and autonomy. The golden days of inform a t i o n anarchy, if you will. I must tell you that as m u c h as I enjoy being able to access the information and files I want with greater speed, the emergence of DSL s c a r e s the hell out of me. If the Cheney-Ashcroft administration were to pass some law regu- 12 IN/AUDIBLE fall 2004 lating and/or controlling the gateways of Internet (and believe me, they’re trying), it would only be possible to rebuild the organic, autonomous networks of the early ‘90s if dial-up modems haven’t gone the way of the dinosaur. We have relinquished so much of our individual control and involvement over digital networks to corporations, most of us would have no clue how to go about Doing It Ourselves again. Also, the DSL-in-everyhome initiative which President Bush has proposed would completely cripple large portions of shortwave and ham radio bands, as has been discovered in Japan, which has totally scrapped the idea. If you want to help yourself find more independent media, you owe yourself a shortwave radio. But I digress. Back to your average college dorm room, circa 1999, where incoming freshmen were drowning their anxieties over Y2K by circulating “Hi! My Name Is (Slim Shady)” acapellas backed with AC/ DC riffs. The emergence of MP3s led the major record labels to experience conniption fits bordering on Tourette’s Syndrome, but all the file-ripping and trading which was going on did have one record labelfriendly consequence; it erased the one remaining advantage most people saw in audiocassettes, namely, that you could duplicate and mix the songs in any order you wanted, and it was possible for people to easily create their own. The digital takeover has been so complete that when I attempted to circulate a tape I had made about a year ago, I found that many of the independent people I was most interested in sending it to simply didn’t have access to a tape player. Not only did they not own one,
they didn’t know anyone who owned one or have any idea how to get one short of going to the store and buying one. I am not a Luddite. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I simply do not believe it is a smart strategy, for musical diversity or political freedom, to become completely dependent on digital technology. I do not know of a way to reproduce CDs without the use, at some stage in the process, of a computer. I love computers. I do know, however, that computers are more intrinsically fragile than most of us like to admit. C o m p u t - ers are required by FCC regulations to accept all incoming i n t e r f e r - ence, even i n t e r f e r - ence which renders their components inoperable. The use of electromagnetic weaponry in the Gulf War, Part 2: Revenge of the Son proved the ability of modern armies to completely decimate modern communication systems. The U.S. Army knows how to use e-bombs and hackers. If certain forces in government had the desire, I believe they could render impossible 95% of the nonapproved use of computers within a matter of weeks. Yet people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, despite nearly constant attacks from the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world, have been able to create and disseminate messages globally, the same way they would have in 1986: on audiotape. This is not praise for the resiliency of Muslim extremists or CIA-agentsturned-power-hungry-fascists; it is an indication of the versatility, portability, usability, reproducibility and longevity of the audiocassette. I am not necessarily eschewing compact discs, nor prophesying an Orwellianly inevitable digital takeover in the years to come. I can’t, however, nor can anyone else, completely rule out the possibility of such an event. I simply believe that we have much more control and autonomy in our ability to record if we do not completely abandon the analog sound technologies which have worked so well for so long. The prevalence of computer keyboards and e-mail has not made us forget the technologies of handwriting and print; it is equally important that we keep physical alternatives to the digital emergence in the area of sound. It would be much harder for any totalitarian force to curtail the hand-to-hand distribution of audio- It is not a smart strategy, for musical diversity or political freedom, to become completely dependent on digital technology. c a s - s e t t e s than to simply pull the p l u g on the i n f r a - s t r u c - t u r e w h i c h makes MP3-sharing possible. It is much easier for a group of creative chemists to create chrome oxide tapes and plastic casings from recycled or found materials than it is for a group of people without computers or lasers to create or reproduce CDs. Don’t be paranoid, but be aware and prepared. Keep your cassette players. Keep some blank cassettes around. Circulate mixtapes among your friends and keep batteries in your handheld recorder. If the digital village continues to hum along beautifully, you will only be out a few dollars, and you’ll have something to show your grandkids one day. But if worse comes to worst, and the future implodes and you don’t have any way of recording independent music or storing the sound of your voice, you might really wish that you had. ANDREW PENLAND is a writer, painter and DJ who lives in a small town near Asheville. He was hired at WXYC in 2000 and now DJs a show on Free Radio Asheville. He recently released an album entitled Time Travel is Possible. His work can be experienced at www.creativegoals.com/andrewoctopus. SLEPT-ON continued from page 5. Y’all So Stupid – Van Full of 13 Pakistans (Rowdy, 1993) In one of the album’s many interludes, someone says that Y’all So Stupid reminds him of Black Sheep. That’s not a bad comparison, but I think of them more as Atlanta’s version of the Pharcyde, due to the dope beats, nimble rapping and a healthy dose of humor. Some members of the group later surfaced in the late ‘90s as Mass Influence. Godfather Don – Hazardous 14 (Select, 1991) The picture in the insert shows Godfather Don carrying a guitar case, but it’s not some kind of Mafioso posturing; he is actually a guitarist and an avid metal fan. But, aside from some noodling on the introductory track, this is straight up hip-hop, no gimmicks. In true 1991 style, Godfather Don spits rapid-fire lyrics over his self-produced up-tempo beats. After this album, he went on to hook up with Kool Keith for the Ultramagnetic MCs’ 1993 Four Horsemen album and the Cenobites project on Fondle ‘Em in 1996. He also released a string of insanely dope 12” singles on the Hydra label in the late ‘90s. Bushwackass – How Real Israel? 15(Pallas, 1994) I’m not even really that big of a fan of the gruff style of rapping (think Onyx or DMX), but these Brooklyn hard knocks get me so amped up I want to start breaking shit! They bring crazy energy like early Wu-Tang or M.O.P., and the beats slam. TODD ITO is a masters student in library science at UNC and has now been a DJ at WXYC for a full decade! IN/AUDIBLE fall 2004 13
Page 2 and 3: IN/AUDIBLE LETTER FROM THE EDITOR a
Page 4 and 5: 15 SLEPT ON HIP-HOP ALBUMS (That we
Page 6 and 7: I spent the summer in a basement in
Page 8 and 9: D. I . Y. F I N D I N G S : UNEARTH
Page 10 and 11: 10 IN/AUDIBLE fall 2004 SISTER POSS
Page 14 and 15: GET PSYCHED: emerging fl oral consc
Page 16 and 17: H I P - H O P : SO FRESH AND SO MAI
Page 18 and 19: T H E M OA N E R S P L AY RO C K Th
Page 20 and 21: WWW.WXYC.ORG DJ Tim Ross explores t
Page 22 and 23: WEBCASTING ANNIVERSARY EVENTS WXYC
Page 24 and 25: SOUL STORIES FROM N.C. An introduct
Page 26 and 27: and cola in June 2004, I met with t
Page 28 and 29: BLUES HISTORY LESSONS: BOOKS AND OT
Page 30 and 31: R E V I E W S Recent releases revie
Page 32 and 33: VARIOUS ARTISTS Dancehall Roots (Me
Page 34 and 35: WEBCASTING continued from page 23 M
Page 36 and 37: PROGRAMMING: COME HELL OR HIGH WATE
Page 38 and 39: TRIBUTE TO GO! ROOM FOUR: In a spri

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