I feel like telling this utterly pointless story about myself. Ive always been interested in media. When I was a little kid, like many others, I would record music from the radio onto a cassette. Then I got a dual-cassette recorder, and could copy tapes along with radio. Experimentation came naturally, as I would try to record tapes and switch back and forth between radio (you couldnt do both without modifying the switch that alternated between radio and cassette, although I wouldnt learn about that until later). You *could* talk over the tape though. So I started doing talk shows with my friend John Miller. By the time I got to high school, zines were a thing. I cant imagine many people under 35, maybe 30, even knowing what that is. But in the 90s, they were a significant part of the counter-culture. I started my own, along with some friends who were doing theirs, and there was this kind of network all around. I had seen a bunch in record and clothes stores. There was one record store in Blackwood that I cant remember, which makes me sad, but they had stacks of local zines, along with Zipperhead and Tower Books, both on South Street. RIP. The zine thing was really cool because that got some traction. I had a PO Box for it and received both fan mail AND hate mail. I had dumped copies at the usual places, including the aforementioned, but I also wanted to try and hit places that werent the conventional anti-conformist haunts. And since I lived in Jersey, and spent an inordinate amount of time at the Deptford Mall (time split between drinking liters of coffee at the Merry Go Round cafe and the arcade), I started asking the record stores and some clothing stores if I could place my zine there. One store, and I cant remember what one, let me put copies in there, but when I came back some time later to put more down, the owner accosted me and banned me from the store for distributing anarchist propaganda. For the record, the name of the zine was Television Religion, and I mostly had random short stories and full transcriptions of Jello Biafra spoken word segments. Go figure. During that time, the early 90s, I never stopped experimenting with audio. At some point a fellow high school student gave me a dual cassette recorder that also had a record player. She was going to trash it, so I took it. On this one, if you slowly pressed down on play or record, it wouldnt just click in place, it would fade in/out playback, so you could actually mix audio together. All I did there was make mix tapes for Stephen with weird shit from the radio transitioning between industrial music, because this thing also had an audio-in jack, so I could also use my CD player as well as a micro-cassette recorder I would use to interview people about their genitalia, and JFKs inaugural speech that I was scratching on the record player. I made about a dozen tapes for his car - man I wish I had them now. Sadly, a lot of that DIY stuff went out the window when we got computers that could burn CDs for the CD players everyones cars started getting. Much less creativity then, because I just got in the habit of making playlists and burning them. In 2005, though, nearly a decade later, I was excited about podcasting, which was a tech nerd thing that most other people had no clue about. I suspected it might eventually become widely known, and it is, although I didnt see large media companies jumping in on it - I actually thought it would revitalize independent creative media. In some sense it has, but society now is all about branding and conglomeration, so I think it misses out on that great DIY spirit. But at least anyone can produce and publish themselves with that technology. I did it for years, and it was fun. I constantly scan for new and interesting podcasts to listen to, but the thing is, I can never find things that still gab me and get me excited the way those zines did so long ago. I havent thought deeply about why that is, though I do have a couple thoughts. Anyway, I felt like sharing that. Hopefully its better than a reposted meme or a lame political rant.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 15:41:44 +0000
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