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71-500: The Go Team was founded in 1985. As Vail described: The Go Team was about process. Sometimes we'd deliberately leave stuff out to incite participation in the listener. Donna Parker Pop , our first K release, featured all instrumentals but included the statement 'Make up your own words and sing along' - and people did. We recorded with some of those people later. . . . On the one hand we were trying to demystify music and encourage people to play songs in public -- if they wanted to. On

142-491: A USB connector for use with a removable USB drive , slots for various flash memory media such as SD , MMC , SmartMedia , and Memory Stick , or even a CD drive capable of reading MP3s directly from a CD, thus allowing for a relatively cheap and large music storage to be carried and played back at full volume. Starting in mid-2010, there are new lines of boomboxes that use Bluetooth technology known as Stereo Bluetooth, or A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). They use

213-412: A minidisc player/recorder, or a (typically black-and-white) television screen , although the basic radio/cassette models have historically been by far the most popular. The boombox quickly became associated with urban society, particularly black and Hispanic youth. The wide use of boomboxes in urban communities led to the boombox being coined a "ghetto blaster", a nickname which was soon used as part of

284-1081: A 12-volt sealed lead-acid battery , or can be a portable enclosure for a car audio head unit. Audio quality and feature sets vary widely, with high-end models providing features and sound comparable to some home stereo systems. Most models offer volume , tone and balance (left/right) controls. More sophisticated models may feature dual cassette decks (often featuring high-speed dubbing , or sometimes even digitally controlled servo cassette mechanics), separate bass and treble level controls, five- or ten-band graphic equalizers , Dolby noise reduction , analog or LED sound level ( VU ) meters or even VFD, larger speakers , 'soft-touch' tape deck controls, multiple shortwave (SW) band reception with fine tuning, digital tuner with PLL ( phase-locked loop ), automatic song search functions for cassettes, line and/or phono inputs and outputs, microphone inputs, loudness switches , and detachable speakers, full function infrared remote control. A handful of models even featured an integrated record turntable , an 8-track tape player,

355-475: A CD player compatible with CD-R and CD-RW , which allows the user to carry their own music compilations on a higher fidelity medium. Many also permit iPod and similar devices to be plugged into them through one or more auxiliary ports. Some also support formats such as MP3 and WMA . Some models, typically higher-end, are able to display metadata such as title, artist, album (known as " ID3 tag " on MP3 specifically), file name, and parent folder or file path, on

426-659: A backlash against the boombox and hip hop culture. The character Radio Raheem in Spike Lee 's drama film Do the Right Thing (1989) personifies the connotations associated with "ghetto blasters" and is a prominent example of the boombox's use by urban youth in American media. Cities began banning boomboxes from public places, and they became less acceptable on city streets as time progressed. The boombox became intrinsically linked to hip hop culture and, as Fab Five Freddy puts it,

497-416: A carrying handle. Beginning in the mid-1990s, a CD player was often included. Sound is delivered through an amplifier and two or more integrated loudspeakers . A boombox is a device typically capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music (usually cassette tapes or CDs usually at a high volume). Many models are also capable of recording onto cassette tapes from radio and other sources. In

568-440: A cassette by Japanese noise artist Aube that came attached to a blue plastic ashtray in the shape of a fish. EEtapes of Belgium's 1995 release of This Window's Extraction 2 was packaged with an X-ray of a broken limb. The Barry Douglas Lamb album Ludi Funebres presented the cassette case in a tin, the tin filled with earth and the earth covered with leaves. Walls Of Genius went to great lengths, spray-painting abstract art on

639-401: A compilation of difficult music , a 21-track selection of work by British cassette-culture artists. The record was compiled by Dave Henderson, the cassette-culture reviewer for Sounds at the start of the 1980s. Henderson followed this with a sequel, Three Minute Symphony , another double LP, which threw the net wider to include European and US artists. The interested reader is referred to

710-603: A reasonable sound at home. Electronic instruments, such as drum machines and synthesizers, became more compact and inexpensive. Therefore, it became increasingly feasible to construct home-recording studios, giving rise to the phenomenon of the " home tapers ". The recording and production qualities of much cassette-culture music means that it can often be described as lo-fi . Particularly in North America, college radio played an important role, with stations broadcasting regular cassette-only radio shows that showcased and promoted

781-557: A serious art-form. In terms of broader developments, the Cold War and the nuclear arms-race were still a reality. In both the UK and the USA the political Right assumed power in the form of the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan . In the UK this was accompanied by a widespread culture of opposition and dissent, often informed by radical Left ideology . The cassette-culture scene emerged in,

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852-449: A turning point for the boombox in popular culture. The rise of the Walkman and other advanced electronics eliminated the need to carry around such large and heavy audio equipment, and boomboxes quickly disappeared from the streets. As boombox enthusiast Lyle Owerko puts it, "Towards the end of any culture, you have the second or third generation that steps into the culture, which is so far from

923-663: Is Thrilling Music" ( Record Collector , 462, January 2017). Memoirs written by people involved in the UK cassette scene include Permanent Transience (2015), by Bendle of the band The Door and the Window, and The Luxury of Dreams: An Autobiography (2017), by Mark Automaton of the band The Instant Automatons. European artists involved in the cassette scene include: Esplendor Geométrico (Spain), Die Tödliche Doris (Germany), Maurizio Bianchi /M.B. (Italy), Ptôse (France), Absolute Body Control (Belgium), Clair Obscur (France), Non Toxique Lost (Germany), Giancarlo Toniutti (Italy). Two of

994-639: Is a coinage that post-dates the scene itself. "Cassette scene" was a contemporary term. In the United Kingdom cassette culture was at its peak in what is known as the post-punk period, 1978–1984. UK cassette culture was championed by marginal musicians and performers such as Tronics , the Instant Automatons, Storm Bugs , Sean T. Wright , the insane picnic , the Cleaners from Venus , Nocturnal Emissions and Final Program , anarcho-punk groups such as

1065-497: The Discogs database, and other databases, in great numbers. Cassette-culture releases can now fetch high prices (See Tim Naylor's articles for Record Collector , mentioned above). On 1 January 2018 Frank Bull of Vinyl On Demand Records launched Tape-Mag.com , a vast online database of cassette-culture and related material. Material, audio and visual, relating to the cassette culture of the 1970s and 1980s has become widely available on

1136-493: The NME acknowledged the band Tronics for releasing in 1980 the first independent cassette album, entitled Tronics , to be nationally distributed. In the UK fanzines covering cassette culture included John Balance 's Stabmental . Tim Naylor of Record Collector magazine has published articles in the 2000s on the cassette culture of the '70s/'80s, including "C30, C60, C90, C21!" ( Record Collector , 393, September 2011) and "Home Taping

1207-441: The alternative or underground music scene during the postpunk period. Cassette culture received something of a mainstream boost when acknowledged by the major music press. The New Musical Express ( NME ), Melody Maker and Sounds , the three main weekly music papers of the time in the UK, launched "cassette culture" columns, in which new releases would be briefly reviewed and ordering information given. In September 1982

1278-421: The segment display itself or a separate character row. The simplest way to connect an older boombox to an MP3 player is to use a cassette adapter , which interfaces an MP3 player's output directly to the cassette player's heads. The 'Line In' (also known as 'Aux In') can be used if the boombox has one. Some modern boombox designs provide other connections for MP3 (and sometimes other digital formats) such as

1349-445: The 1980s scene. Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016), directed by Zack Taylor, George Petzold and Seth Smoot, is a 90-minute documentary which, as the title indicates, takes a broader view of the cassette format and its history and features the inventor of the cassette tape Lou Ottens . It examines nostalgia for the format and its return as a medium for contemporary independent musicians. In 2020 American author Jerry Kranitz published

1420-774: The 1990s, and modern designs are typically characterized by a rounded, curved appearance instead of sharp angles. However, the designs of the older models are a source of much interest among boombox enthusiasts and collectors, who frequently seek the larger feature-packed models that represented the cutting edge of portable music technology in their day. Today most boomboxes have replaced the cassette player with iPod docks to access MP3 technology, and some even come equipped with integrated or removable satellite radio tuners. Boombox designs vary greatly in size. Larger, more powerful units may require 10 or more size- D batteries , may measure more than 76 centimetres (30 in) in width, and can weigh more than 12 kilograms (26 lb). Some take

1491-506: The 1990s, in which a large number of amateur musicians outside the established music industry , usually recording in their homes and usually recording to cassette-tape devices, produced music, very often of a non-mainstream or alternative character, that was then duplicated on cassette in very limited quantities and distributed free or sold at low cost to others involved in the scene and those who followed it. Often, these cassette-only albums of original music were completely self-produced by

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1562-606: The 1990s, some boomboxes were available with MiniDisc recorders and players. Designed for portability, boomboxes can be powered by batteries as well as by line current. The boombox was introduced to the American market during the late 1970s. The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes; by the 1980s, some boomboxes had reached the size of a suitcase . Some larger boomboxes even contained vertically mounted record turntables . Most boomboxes were battery-operated, leading to extremely heavy, bulky boxes. The boombox quickly became associated with urban society in

1633-481: The 1990s. Although larger operators made use of commercial copying services, anybody who had access to copying equipment (such as the portable tape-to-tape cassette players that became common in the early 1980s) could release a tape, and publicize it in the network of fanzines and newsletters that served the scene, such as OP Magazine , Factsheet Five and Unsound . The cassette culture became an inexpensive and democratic way for artists to make available music that

1704-466: The 5-volume Rising from the Red Sand (see below) and the 15-volume International Sound Communication series. It was not uncommon for artists who had a vinyl contract to release on cassette compilations, or to continue to do cassette-only album releases (of live recordings, work-in-progress material, etc.) after they had started releasing records. The cassette scene was, in other words, an integrated part of

1775-613: The APF Brigade, The Crouches, The Apostles and Chumbawamba , and many of the purveyors of Industrial music , e.g. Throbbing Gristle , Cabaret Voltaire , and Clock DVA . Artists self-releasing would often copy their music in exchange for "a blank tape plus self-addressed envelope". But there also existed many small tape labels , such as Falling A Records , Sterile Records , Third Mind Records and Snatch Tapes , driven by enthusiasm rather than business principles, and in some cases consciously informed by anti-capitalist principles. There

1846-705: The Buck, E.F. Tapes, Mindkill, Happiest Tapes on Earth, Apraxia Music Research, and Sound of Pig (which released over 300 titles), From the Wheelchair to the Pulpit, Walls of Genius (which released over 30 titles, including their own, Architects Office and The Miracle), K Records , brown interior music. Artists such as PBK , Big City Orchestra , Alien Planetscapes, Don Campau, Ken Clinger, Dino DiMuro, Tom Furgas, The Haters , Zan Hoffman, If, Bwana , Hal McGee, Minóy , Dave Prescott, Dan Fioretti (who now identifies as female and goes by

1917-521: The Internet on platforms such as Bandcamp and Archive.org , and on social media. Since the Millennium there has also been a revival in the use of the cassette by independent artists, with the rise of partly or wholly tape-based labels such as Burger Records , POST/POP , Memorials of Distinction, Tuff Enuff Records , Truant Recordings, First Base Tapes and Gnar Tapes . In 2007 (12–26 May) an exhibition

1988-411: The Internet. Since 2000 there has been a revival of the use of the cassette tape for the release of independent music (very often in conjunction with digital release) and a new “cassette scene” has sprung up. Technological factors enabled the rise of cassette culture. Improvement in the recording quality of cassettes and the availability of sophisticated cassette decks, as well as stereo " boomboxes ", in

2059-493: The London-based Writers Forum and the so-called British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s, writers such as: Allen Fisher , Bob Cobbing , Peter Finch , Lawrence Upton , cris cheek and Ulli McCarthy/Freer. The British sculptor William Furlong's Audio Arts , founded in 1973, was an arts magazine published on cassette and including sound art in addition to interviews with artists. The musical cassette scene

2130-721: The Noise Floor: Formative UK Electronica 1975-1984 (2016), Noise Reduction System: Formative European Electronica 1974-1984 (2017), and Third Noise Principle: Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984 (2019). In 2008 the Hyped To Death label released the CD Messthetics Greatest Hiss: Classics of the UK Cassette Culture DIY, 1979-1982 . Perhaps the most significant British compilation of cassette-culture music released at

2201-481: The United Kingdom synth-pop was in the ascendant and industrial and postindustrial music was the vanguard of musical experimentation. Many (though by no means all) cassette artists, in Europe and elsewhere, drew on this new avant-garde for their inspiration. Popular -music papers such as Sounds and NME in the UK were marked by a new type of journalism, which discussed music (perhaps sometimes over-earnestly) as

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2272-495: The United States, particularly African American and Latino youth. The wide use of boomboxes in urban communities led to the boombox being coined a " ghetto blaster ". Some cities petitioned for the banning of boomboxes from public places, and over time, they became less acceptable on city streets. The boombox became closely linked to American hip hop culture and was instrumental in the rise of hip hop music . The first boombox

2343-603: The artists the duo worked with. Billy "Boredom" Karren was one of the rotating musicians who played with The Go Team, and it was in this band that he and Vail played together for the first time, later collaborating in several other bands like Bikini Kill, The Frumpies, the upallnighters, and Spray Painted Love. They toured the West Coast as a two piece, adding Billy Karren for two U.S. tours. Tobi Vail went on to form Bikini Kill with Kathleen Hanna , Kathi Wilcox and occasional Go Team member, Billy Karren. Presently, she plays with

2414-478: The artists, but small companies or labels also flourished during the period, producing cassette-only releases in small runs, both single-artist albums and compilations by various artists (in a few cases these labels also released vinyl). Numerous artists who first emerged at this time remain active today, some of them now releasing through commercial companies , others continuing with the DIY ethic of self-releasing on CD and

2485-581: The band Spider and the Webs. Calvin Johnson currently records as a solo artist and with The Hive Dwellers, and continues to operate K Records. This article on a United States rock music band is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cassette culture The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground ) is the amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in

2556-406: The bass. A boombox, in its most basic form, is composed of two or more loudspeakers, an amplifier , a radio tuner , and a cassette and/or CD player component, all housed in a single plastic or metal case with a handle for portability. Most units can be powered by AC or DC cables or batteries . As boomboxes grew in popularity, they also became more complex in design and functionality. By

2627-426: The cassette labels, affixing hand-made "authentic" stickers, painting cassette boxes (the "white" cassette, 1984), creating one-of-a-kind pinup covers ( The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust , 1985) and issuing "Certificates of Genius" to anybody discriminating enough to purchase one of their titles. The interested reader is referred to Tape-Mag.com (see below). In the United Kingdom the cassette culture seemed to wane in

2698-468: The compact disc (CD) in the late 1980s led to the introduction of the CD player in standard boombox design. During the 1990s, boombox manufacturers began designing smaller, more compact boomboxes, which were often made out of plastic instead of metal as their counterparts from the previous decade had been. The rectangular, angular, chrome aesthetic of many 1980s models was frequently replaced with black plastic in

2769-707: The early 1970s and soon became popular there due to their compact size and impressive sound quality. The Japanese brands rapidly took over a large portion of the European boombox market and were often the first Japanese consumer electronics brands that a European household might purchase. In some cases, there were even Japanese boomboxes manufactured as O.E.M. for European brands. The Japanese innovated by creating different sizes, form factors, and technology, introducing such advances as stereo boomboxes, removable speakers, and built-in CD players. The boombox became popular in America during

2840-487: The emergence of specialist labels, of which Vinyl On Demand is the best known, dedicated to reissuing on LP and CD material originally released on cassette. In October 2005 "cassette_culture [c_c]", an international electronic mailing list, was established on Yahoo! Groups for discussion "of all aspects of the DIY music scene, or cassette culture, of the late 1970s, 1980s, and into the 90s". Cassette releases have now been added to

2911-502: The extensive output of vinyl editions for collectors released since 2004 on the German company Vinyl On Demand Records and the many CD releases of US and UK DIY music of the late '70s to early '80s released by the US label Hyped To Death. Boombox A boombox is a transistorized portable music player featuring one or two cassette tape players /recorders and AM/FM radio, generally with

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2982-557: The highly illustrated book Cassette Culture: Homemade Music & The Creative Spirit In The Pre-Internet Age ( Vinyl On Demand ). There were many cassette artists outside the United Kingdom, the US and Europe. There was a very active scene in Japan, as can be seen from the list of contributors to the International Sound Communication series of compilations. The packaging of cassette releases, whilst sometimes amateurish,

3053-409: The late 1970s allowed "recordists" to record and duplicate high-quality copies of their music inexpensively. Bands did not need to go into expensive recording studios any longer. In addition, multi-track recording equipment was becoming affordable, portable and of fairly high quality in the early 1980s. Four-track cassette recorders developed by Tascam and Fostex allowed artists to record and get

3124-604: The late 1970s, with most then being produced by Panasonic , Sony , General Electric , and Marantz . It was immediately noticed by the urban adolescent community and soon developed a mass market, especially in large metropolitan centers such as New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. The earlier models were a hybrid that combined the booming sound of large in-home stereo systems and the portability of small portable cassette players ; they were typically small, black or silver, heavy, and capable of producing high volumes. The effective AM/FM tuner , standard in all early boomboxes,

3195-451: The mid-1970s. The cassette was used by fine artists and poets for the independent distribution of new work. An independent music scene based on the cassette burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s. “Cassette culture” is an international music scene that developed in the wake of punk in the second half of the 1970s and continued through into the first half of the 1980s (the " postpunk " period), and in some territories into

3266-472: The mid-1980s, many boomboxes included separate high and low frequency speakers and a second tape deck to allow the boombox to record both from the radio and from other pre-recorded cassettes. Equalizers, balance adjusters, Dolby noise reduction, and LED sound gauges were other later additions. In the mid-1980s, the boombox began to become a status symbol; the popularity among young urbanites caused increasing demand for extravagant boxes. The growing popularity of

3337-455: The more important cassette labels in Europe were Germany's Datenverarbeitung, run by Andreas Müller, and Belgium's Insane Music, run by Alain Neffe. Along with material recorded by himself in various configurations, Neffe curated and released numerous compilations featuring tracks sent to him from artists all over the world. In the US, cassette culture activity extended through the late 1980s and into

3408-406: The name Dreamgirl Stephanie Ashlyn), Jim Shelley , Suburban Campers, The Silly Pillows , Linda Smith , Saboteur, and hundreds of others, recorded albums available only on cassette throughout the late 1980s and well into the 1990s. The American cassette-culture scene has been quite well-served by documentary-makers, in contrast with the scenes in the UK and Europe. In 2009 Andrew Szava-Kovats, who

3479-415: The origination, it's the impression of what's real, but it's not the full definition of what's real. It's just cheesy." The Consumer Electronics Association reported that only 329,000 boombox units without CD players were shipped in the United States in 2003, compared to 20.4 million in 1986. Although many boomboxes had dual cassette decks and included dubbing, line, and radio recording capabilities,

3550-650: The other hand, we actually liked what we sounded like, and we hated most of the pro-sounding jam bands/shredding metal-punk bands that played parties in Olympia. We embraced chaos and rejected mastery. The Go Team released several cassettes and 9 singles on the independent label K Records . The records were often collaborations with other musicians and the musical style varied from single to single. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana , Billy Karren , The Legend! , David Nichols of The Cannanes , Donna Dresch of Team Dresch , Lois Maffeo , Rich Jensen, and Jeffery Kennedy were some of

3621-411: The portability and sound quality of boomboxes, but one of the most important features, especially to the youth market, was the bass . The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes. Regardless of the increasing weight and size, the devices continued to become larger to accommodate the increased bass output; newer boombox models had heavy metal casings to handle the vibrations from

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3692-526: The position once occupied by a cassette deck. Many models of this type of boombox include inputs for external video (such as television broadcasts) and outputs to connect the DVD player to a full-sized television. Some newer boomboxes, may also have DAB/DAB+ radio, internet radio, or network capabilities and various apps, like TuneIn, Spotify, MusicCast, DLNA, etc. Also they have Wi-Fi, Network RJ45 connection. However, this may limit their portability, as internet access

3763-458: The production of both music and graphics and, of course, the arrival of the World Wide Web. Successor underground and DIY scenes have naturally arisen to take its place, but they are no more to be identified with the cassette culture that arose in the late 1970s than the postpunk revival is to be identified with the original postpunk period. As with any other music scene, artists involved in

3834-474: The rise of recordable CDs, the decline of audio cassette technology, and the popularity of high-density MP3 players and smart phones have reduced the popularity of high-quality boomboxes to such an extent that it is difficult to find a new dual-decked stereo. Dubbing remains popular among audiophiles, bootleggers , and pirates , though most tasks are now accomplished through digital means or analog-to-digital conversion technology. Most modern boomboxes include

3905-410: The same frequency, limiting their overall quality. Although the sound quality of early cassette tape recordings was poor, improvements in technology and the introduction of stereo recording, chromium tapes, and Dolby noise reduction made hifi quality devices possible. Several European electronics brands, such as Grundig , also introduced similar devices. Boomboxes were soon also developed in Japan in

3976-455: The scene and others who followed it amassed, sometimes very substantial, collections of independent cassette music. The sense of cassette culture in all its diversity as, nevertheless, a coherent international musical subculture has been reinforced since 2000 by a major revival of interest in the cassette artists of the 1970s and 1980s and the reissue of much music on LP and CD for a small but enthusiastic market (see below). "Cassette culture"

4047-425: The second half of the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s the scene in the United States was also in decline, with the appearance of new technologies and methods of distribution: CD-Rs and the widespread arrival of the Internet, MP3s and file sharing . However, the early 2000s saw a major revival of interest in the cassette culture of the late 1970s and 1980s, with many obscure tapes being made available on music blogs and

4118-451: The time was the 5-cassette Rising from the Red Sand (1983), on Third Mind Records (one of the more notable cassette labels), which contained 45 pieces of music. For many years this landmark collection was kept available (on cassette) by RRRecords , and in 2013 it was released on vinyl by Vinyl On Demand Records. Although not reissued since 1989, mention should also be made of 1983's pioneering double-LP release The Elephant Table Album :

4189-488: The wireless Bluetooth technology to "stream" audio to the boombox from a compatible Bluetooth device, such as a mobile phone or Bluetooth MP3 player. An example of this is the JAMBOX, which is marketed as a "Smart Speaker" as it can also function as a speakerphone for voice calls in addition to being an audio playback device. Another modern variant is a DVD player/boombox with a top-loading CD/DVD drive and an LCD video screen in

4260-476: The work of home-recording artists. The cassette culture can be traced back to the early 1970s, when mail-artists and other artists and poets began making use of the cassette. Audio-art labels/publishers active in the early 1970s included Edition S-Press, Edition Amadulo and Black Box/Watershed. Balsam Flex was a London-based independent poetry-on-cassette label founded in 1972 by artist E.E. Vonna-Michell. It published work by experimental UK poets associated with

4331-515: Was "instrumental" in the rise of hip hop. Certain models like the JVC RC-M90 and the Sharp GF-777 were known as the boombox kings, having the power to drown out other ghetto blasters; they were frequently used in music battles. The Beastie Boys embraced the boombox as a signature, The Clash always had a boombox with them, and Schoolly D carried around a Conion C-100F in the UK. The 1990s were

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4402-484: Was also an aspect of the format in which a high degree of creativity and originality were displayed. For the most part packaging relied on standard plastic cases with a photocopied "J-card" insert, but some made more of an effort. Anusol by the A Band , released on the Chocolate Monk label, came packaged with a "suppository" unique to each copy – one of which was a used condom wrapped in tissue. The BWCD label released

4473-495: Was developed by the inventor of the audio compact cassette, Philips of the Netherlands . Their first 'Radiorecorder' was released in 1966. The Philips innovation was the first time that radio broadcasts could be recorded onto cassette tapes without the cables or microphones that previous stand-alone cassette tape recorders required. Recordings of radio were still subject to interferences from automobiles and other vehicles nearby with

4544-422: Was embedded in, this broader cultural landscape, enabled by new developments in electronic technology, and many of the artists shared a countercultural ethos in relation to the mainstream music of the time and towards contemporary society more broadly. The scene could not have existed before and the period of its flourishing gradually came to an end in the 1990s with the arrival of inexpensive digital technology for

4615-424: Was great diversity amongst such labels, some were entirely "bedroom based", utilizing domestic tape-copying technology, whilst others were more organized, functioning in a similar way to conventional record labels. Some also did vinyl releases, or later developed into vinyl labels. Many compilation albums were released, presenting samples of work from various artists. Two particularly ambitious compilation projects were

4686-531: Was held at Printed Matter in New York City devoted to current American cassette culture entitled "Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now." A number of compilations devoted to or including significant representation of cassette-culture music of the 1970s and 1980s have been released since the revival of interest in the scene. The most ambitious collection of material is a trilogy from Cherry Red Records , each release comprising four CDs of material: Close to

4757-423: Was in part an offshoot of this earlier activity. Participants engaged in extensive tape trading in addition to selling their products. Advertising was done through fanzines and the circulation of photocopied catalogues, etc. The scene was also strongly stimulated by the DIY ethic of punk , and, free of commercial considerations, encouraged musical eclecticism , diversity and experimentation. Whilst distribution

4828-399: Was involved in the US scene under the name Data-Bank-A , released a 60-minute documentary Grindstone Redux: A Documentary About 1980's Cassette Culture on the American cassette network, with contributions from many of those involved. In 2015 the independent filmmaker William Davenport released The Great American Cassette Masters , a 90-minute documentary interviewing many key US artists of

4899-575: Was mostly by mail, there were a few retail outlets that stocked independently produced cassette releases, such as (in the UK) Rough Trade and Falling A . The "cassette culture" is a historical phenomenon, primarily in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Following the anti-establishment shock of punk a very creative period followed in popular music, the postpunk period (as documented in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 , by Simon Reynolds ). In

4970-489: Was never likely to have mainstream appeal, and many found in the scene music that was more imaginative, challenging, beautiful, and groundbreaking than much of what was being released by the established music industry. In the United States, cassette culture was associated with DIY sound collage , riot grrrl , and punk music and blossomed across the country on cassette labels such as: Psyclones , Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine , Randy Greif 's Swinging Axe Productions, Pass

5041-418: Was the most popular feature of the early boombox up until the incorporation of input and output jacks into the boxes, which allowed for the coupling of devices such as microphones , turntables , and CD players . The development of audio jacks brought the boombox to the height of its popularity, and as its popularity rose, so did the level of innovation in the features included in the box. Consumers enjoyed

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