University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Media elaboration in underground music

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Media elaboration in underground music

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Content MEDIA ELABORATION IN UNDERGROUND MUSIC

by

Jessica D. Scott

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Jessica D. Scott
ii
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Holly Willis, Tim Page, and Sasha Anawalt for their
incredibly supportive and nuturing direction throughout this project. Many thanks to my
dad for the lunch breaks and my mom for ridding me of my em dash addiction—I really
appreciate it. I must also recognize the profoundly generous contribution of the
Annenberg Fellowsip from the University of Southern Califonia, which fully enabled my
research.

iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii

List of Figures iii

Abstract iv

An Introduction to Looking Down 1
Introduction Endnotes 3

Chapter 1: Some Groups Have More Say 4
Chapter 1 Endnotes 8

Chapter 2: Going Underground 9
Chapter 2 Endnotes 14

Chapter 3: Pulling Punk 15
Chapter 3 Endnotes 20

Chapter 4: Dada’s Babies 22
Chapter 4 Endnotes 24

Chapter 5: De Certeau Makes Do and Strategizes 25
Chapter 5 Endnotes 31

Chapter 6: Media Elaboration in Cassettes Labels
WZRD MNTN with Kyle Crawford 32
Really Coastal with Jonathan Isaac 36

Chapter 7: Media Elaborations in Online Video ‘Zines
Debunk Punk with Vim Crony 42
Videothing with Michael Reich 50
MondoVision with Jon Shade 54
Chapter 7 Endnotes 61

Chapter 8: Flip the Side 62
Chapter 8 Endnotes 64

iv

Bibliography 65

Appendix A: Foster’s Theory of the Neo-Avant-Garde 67
Appendix B: De Certeau’s Le Perroque 68
Appendices Endnotes 69
v
List of Figures

Figure 1: Wizard MNTN Website Image 32
Figure 2: Really Coastal Website Image 35
Figure 3: Debunk Punk Workstation Photo by Author 42
Figure 4: Videothing Website Image 50
Figure 5: MondoVision Flyer Image by Kevin McCarthy 54
Figure 6: Beat Happening Flyer Image By Calvin Johnson 62

vi
Abstract
Underground music communities surrounding punk music have shown
fascinating and creative ways of absorbing technology and media. In examining some
specific case studies, we begin to see viable alternatives for documenting and
disseminating art. The two primary examples I will explore are contemporary cassette
tape labels and mini documentaries called Online Video ‘Zines (OVZs), whose episodes
are issued on the Internet like a copy of a magazine. Recent shifts toward the invisible
digital format mix with cassette culture and ‘zine trading networks and present new
ways of looking at media. Music subcultures have a long history of borrowing,
appropriating, and pulling apart objects, music, and technology in order to best serve
their expression. Punk music champions clunky, outmoded cassettes and cut-and-pasted
Online Video ‘Zines in the same way it ripped t-shirts and punctured faces with safety
pins; expanding meaning beyond their intended or original uses. The result is a media
elaboration by subcultures as they pull technology and art together in oder to better tell
their story.
1
An Introduction to Looking Down
The media has fumbled in its transition to the Internet. Will new lit up computer
screens pop like sheets of inky newsprint paper? Will the blinking ads and embedded
video enhance the story or distract the reader? Will more information lead to more
knowledge? The difficulties inherent in fully absorbing new technology has created an
echo chamber among scholars and journalists, explored by audiences similar to
themselves: conventional, dominant, mainstream, linear. How are we using the fruits of
our collective human labor? We need a fresh look at environments not usually explored
when considering technology and journalism; possibly, there is something to learn from
looking underground.
Underground music communities like those surrounding punk music, have
changed the way many people think about money, music, fashion, media, and
technology. Not surprisingly then, music subcultures have manifested creative ways for
using media and technology, old and new. The two primary examples I will explore are
contemporary cassette tape labels and mini documentaries called Online Video ‘Zines
(OVZs), whose episodes are issued on the Internet like a copy of a magazine. Specifically,
I will look at how the cassette tape labels WZRD MNTN and Really Coastal use the
Internet to transform the cassette into a viable format long after its technological
heyday. I will also outline how the emerging network of OVZs, specifically, MondoVision,
Debunk Punk, and Videothing, further explores creative uses of media and technology. I
2
conclude with some conversations with these five creative entities. These dialogues
articulate ideas for using media to document and disseminate art. While these are select
samples, they are indicative of how a generation primarily brought up on a digital
breakfast looks at the useful attributes of all media, sometimes dated and always home-
made, easy to learn, and cheap. These technologies are cut-and-pasted, expanding
beyond their intended or original uses, resulting in a media elaboration.
1
Cassettes and
OVZs interestingly illustrate this new way of exploring media and technology.
3
Introduction Endnotes

1
Hal Foster, Return of the Real (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), 1-34. In Foster’s crucial
chapter, “Who’s Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?” he describes the successful appropriation of new artists
as “critically elaborating” the previous work. This is a great phrase and idea, totally analogous to my use of
“media elaboration.”
4
Chapter 1: Some Groups Have More Say
Most people wouldn’t instantly think of the cassette tape or the walkman when
conjuring up cutting edge technology. But their economical and simple functionality has
inspired hundreds of people to harness its sheer immediacy and manifest an
underground network of musicians.
2
Not surprisingly then, cassettes mix up what we
consider to be good, effective technology. Online Video ‘Zines (OVZs) also show ways of
borrowing and reusing certain qualities of different mediums. Critically examining and
elaborating magazines, film, videos, and music presents new ideas for using technology.
But, before delving into these unique reuses of media, we need to explore why there is
a need for reuse at all.
The term subculture assumes an underground location in relation to a dominant
culture. With such a dominant culture comes a “dominant discourse,”
3
or the main way
of talking about the main things that interest the main group of people. A pop music
concert aired on television shows how a predominant style of music marries with a
predominant medium. British Sociologist Dick Hebdige concisely describes the sweeping
power of this authority as having “access to the means by which ideas are disseminated
in our society…”
4
He goes on to make the point that this level of access “is not the same
for all classes. Some groups have more say, more opportunity to make the rules, to
organize meaning…”
5
The issue of class in part explains how people respond differently
to technology. The television station parades its pop with the same entitlement as it
5
does its access to the airwaves. Its access to money magically appears in the same way
its pop concert footage does; out of thin air without any connection to the churning
system underneath it that makes it possible. Those people without an appetite for the
pop idol or the television set become subject to “a fundamental tension between those
in power and those condemned to subordinate positions…”
6
Dominant media imposes a
bland variety of connections between people and art. Cassettes labels and OVZs, in sum,
work to push art beyond this dull boundary.
It is crucial to stress that the use of class in this context is better applied to a
group or a subculture, rather than a specific individual. In other words, punk kids within
a music subculture are using cassettes because of their collective lack of access to major
labels and cable TV broadcasts. It would do little more than trip around contradictions
and exceptions to bring in a jury session on the class-status of each individual running a
cassette label or making an OVZ. However, if we examine the collective portrait of a
community scurrying around under the radar, we see an obsessive preference for an
outsider, atypical medium such as the cassette. The palm-sized, square plastic case of
the cassette and its miniature spools of magnetic tape were originally invented for
dictation rather than music.
7
Cassettes are still available in some retail stores and the
carmaker Lexus included a cassette player in its 2005 Lexus ES 330 model.
8
However,
the cassette is undeniably sinking—it hit its circulation peak as the United States’
preferred medium over twenty years ago. More recently, its sales have dropped to a
deteriorating 0.05% of music sales.
9
Still, Ceci Moss’ recent article on “101 Cassette
6
Labels” documents active tape-only labels pouring like kerosene on suspicions that the
medium isn’t quite done serving its artistic purpose, and has perhaps engendered an
entirely new expressive function.
OVZs join video with ‘zines to create a documentary-like episode posted online.
Despite being a relatively new combination of technology, almost a dozen OVZs from
around the world are posting new episodes regularly.
10
Further, cassettes and OVZs
similarly inhabit a community inspired by punk and its splintering subcategories like
post-punk to art-punk, indie-pop, noise, hardcore, garage, and a hundred other
monikers basically subscribing to a common do-it-yourself credo.
11
Although definitions
of “punk” are wide-ranging and often subject to individual experience, for our purposes
we will limit the term to this concept of do-it-yourself production and distribution that is
independent and relatively small-scale.
12
Class issues become art issues, which explains
why an entire musical culture is left outside the dominant conversation and, therefore,
chooses to reject it completely.
Hebdige explains why a whole group of people reject big record contracts and
instead focus on alternative means for getting their music played. Media studies writer
Matthew Fuller extensively researched the underground culture of pirate radio stations
in London. Pirate radio stations are musical and/or political and basically avoid legal
operating permits, fees, or standards. Instead, they seize the airwaves as a way of
directly reaching listeners and often broadcast from mobile locations in order to avoid
7
the authorities.
13
Fuller’s research found several parallels in the kind of intentional
creative use of technology in a community without voice. He calls this cultural
absorption a “construction of technologized voices.”
14
This research parallels the
outmoded cassette and the mixing of media in OVZs. Class and access issues demand
that a minority construct new rules, new access, and new opportunities for getting
music out into the world.
8
Chapter 1 Endnotes

2
Ceci Moss, weblog post “101 Cassette Labels,” Rhizome Blog, posted August 19, 2009,
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2868 (accessed August 20, 2009).
3
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 15.
4
Ibid., 14.
5
Ibid., 14.
6
Ibid., 132.
7
Frank Daniels, “A History of Beatles Cassettes” Beatles Cassette Tape-ography,
http://www.friktech.com/btls/tapes/k7.htm.
8
Lexus Official Website, “Lexus ES 330,” http://www.lexus.com.
9
Courtney Harding, “Tape Echo: Specialty Labels Keep Cassettes Alive,” Billboard Magazine, October 11,
2008, 19.
10
While a firm number of OVZs is hard to tackle, many have pages on MySpace where they link one
another. This network along with “related videos” compiled by Vimeo.com and Youtube.com are good
ways for these OVZ makers to connect and propagate.
11
This doesn’t necessarily mean that these genre titles are exclusively associated with independent label
or do-it-yourself, punk philosophies. Many groups playing these musical styles have been absorbed by
mainstream, corporate music production and distribution. Groups often cross back and forth between
these two worlds and record labels sometimes evolve or devolve into major or independent business
styles. But the vast majority of sub-cultural activity, fan-bases, and ephemera surrounding these styles of
music mentioned above are associated with do-it-yourself, punk philosophies.
12
A good start for tackling the broad definition of Punk begins with Michael Azerad’s Our Band Could Be
Your Life and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming.
13
For more information see the Radio Free Berkeley website: [http://www.freeradio.org], which has a
How-to guide for starting your own.
14
Matthew Fuller, Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005), 7.
9
Chapter 2: Going Underground
The cassette label WZRD MNTN’s roster largely includes punk and garage music
recorded on analog equipment in practice studios, bedrooms, and other improbable
places.
15
Bands like the Superstitions, Ty Segall, and The Traditional Fools whip out
messy, fast paced garage punk, distorting into gratingly high frequencies, obscured with
lavish layers of reverb. The sleeve art is often scrawled out like a mid-Math class doodle,
usually lacking the credits, names, and date standard of major-label releases.
16

Conversely, look at the equations of success used for a major label release: hit songs,
gold records, top music, “Top 40” above everything else, all leading toward an assumed
climax of quality. Music like that on WZRD MNTN rejects these competitive rituals with
their unpolished cassette tapes which challenge the message and the medium. By hand
dubbing one hundred tapes, WZRD MNTN documents a music purged from society’s
larger conversation. Likewise, the OVZ also becomes a key for unlocking a secret
language beyond sound—I am stepping off the technological bobsled because it doesn’t
speak to my music, my friends, or my media.
By breaking free and nose-diving under the Top 40 mold, punk subculture
operates like any other community; active, engaged connections are formed between
people, places, technology, and art. Cassettes and OVZs explore the possibilities left
unimproved, undeveloped, or devolved despite the endless parade of new products
such as wallet-sized, personal digital music players like iPods. This recalls cultural media
10
theorist Marshall McLuhan, who brilliantly sensed the fragmented future of media and
technology and thought it would reflect the culture which uses it. A hand-made drawing
around a mass-produced object like the blank tape is the exact sort of marrying of
media and individualism McLuhan eyed long before the cassette was even commercially
available.
17

A sense of active engagement runs through these examples of cassettes and
OVZs and the subculture which sells, buys, trades, loans, dubs, posts, and links both
products. Really Coastal’s Jonathan Isaac describes how important it was to get his
tapes sold at the Los Angeles music shop/venue, Echo Curio. “There are places where
being cassette-only is a cultural thing, like at Echo Curio.”
18
Isaac’s tapes are displayed
alongside other homemade cassettes and perused by people in the know and totally
unaware of cassette culture. Venues like Echo Curio are seen all across towns and cities
where cassettes and OVZs thrive. Needles and Pens in San Francisco similarly sells art,
tapes, ‘zines, and clothing while hosting live music and art openings. Isaac recognizes
how these hubs connect a vast constellation of tapes and records, bands, consumers,
and fans to form a community on- and offline.
OVZs evolve out of a history of engaged underground support networks similar
to cassette culture. OVZs pull features which have already proven successful for
documenting and disseminating music through ‘zine culture. ‘Zines are often
photocopied and stapled pamphlets containing some or all of the following: interviews,
11
testimonials, advice columns, essays, rants, art reviews, fiction writing, drawings,
paintings, photographs, instructions, histories, diaries, and everything else imaginably
contained on flat paper. They are usually printed in limited numbers and hand
assembled, like miniature magazines. The ‘zine pulls from the active, tried-and-true
strategies which blossomed in 1960s-70s American alternative press culture. Alternative
presses outstandingly blended graphic art with liberal culture theory and youth
movements. They used their small paper pamphlets like communal day-planners,
announcing happenings and protests, or circulating newsworthy items to the Left. This
do-it-ourselves ethos was then allowed to flourish in the micro-break up of left-wing
movements during the ‘80s with the Xerox copier.
19
In punk subculture alone,
thousands of ‘zines were laid out and stapled across the bedroom floors of the world;
one bedroom floor talked to another bedroom floor, using the ‘zine superhighway of
the postal service. Sprawling networks broadcasted the aforementioned interviews and
rants, et al. and ‘zine culture flourished.
As ‘zine cultures sowed its seed it became the cornerstone for entire subcultures
and scenes in underground music. The classic indie-pop publication Chickfactor included
music reviews, venue listings, booking information, tour dates, and mail-order record
addresses. Independent record labels could link up entire networks of like-minded
bands and their fans through ‘zines. Artist and journalist Brendan Fowler recalls this kind
of all-encompassing effect within the ‘90s noise music ‘zine Bananafish: “…In the noise
world, Banana Fish came out once a year and always came with a CD compilation.”
20

12
This poly-medium effort, comparable to the example of Echo Curio, encouraged its
readers to go head first into the world of noise music with this how-to diagram. A
reader’s interest in an article could him lead to a handful of related noise bands, their
labels, going out to shows, meeting like-minded noise fans and ideally forming a new
noise band, ‘zine, venue, or label. The diagram of sorts became inclusively instructional,
meant to speedily replicate the fruits of a blossoming music scene.
OVZs continue in this spirit of community engagement and media
resourcefulness. MondoVision recognizes the tried and true qualities of ‘zine culture as a
way of making more than just a video. MondoVision co-creator Jon Shade explains, “…I
love paper ‘zines. But it just seems like it’s 2009, we have all this technology and as soon
as I’m done editing an episode, it can be on the Internet ten minutes later.” His “‘zine” is
an episode rather than issue, and it’s posted on the Internet rather than obtained
through bookshops or mail-order. But MondoVision still follows the basic documentary
strategies used by ‘zines by showing a broad portrait of the punk community in order to
most effectively convey what’s happening in music today. OVZs whittle down
information into spurts which are limited, direct, and cheap, much like how the ‘zine
pulled and elaborated on the magazine format. OVZs also reduce the bulky, expensive
production of film and salvage the visual and audio assets. The OVZ stitches back
together the distilled video and ‘zine, patching together their format and technology
into a sort of Frankenstein-like body with only the best attributes for documenting
underground music scenes.
13
MondoVision episodes have similarly exhibited bands from Watsonville,
California and Eastern Europe, or a collectively-run all-ages venue in San Francisco to
engage with technology in ways that foster participatory, engaged uses of media.
21
At
least one hundred active independent cassette tape labels are accessible online and
there are nearly a dozen OVZs with regular episodes coming out.
22
It will be exciting to
see how OVZs develop and continue, or evolve beyond, their ‘zine culture roots.
14
Chapter 2 Endnotes

15
Garage describes a number of genres sometimes sounding completely opposite depending on a
particular time period or culture. The style of garage on many WZRD MNTN releases recalls the raucous,
1960s-derived sound of rock and roll played quickly with standard, but raw-sounding pop hooks. The
recording style is very much home-recorded quality, with frequencies hitting in the red and often
distorting. Archetypical ‘60s groups include the Seeds and the Sonics, while resurrection bands like Thee
Headcoats have put out records since the ‘80s, and the Black Lips and the Oh-Sees have re-popularized
the style in the last half of the ‘00s. For more information see the semi-biannual garage-rock publication,
Ugly Things, 3707 Fifth Avenue #145, San Diego, California, 92103, United States, or http://www.ugly-
things.com.
16
Kyle Crawford, “WZRD MNTN Releases/Webstore,” WZRD MNTN, http://www.wizardmountain.org.
See: WZRD MNTN releases by The Superstitions (2010), Ty Segall (2009), The Traditional Fools, and Dance
Player for particularly good examples of this style described above.
17
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage (New York, New York: Bantam
Books, 1967).
18
See: Jonathan Isaac’s interview in the chapter “Really Coastal with Jonathan Isaac.” Echo Curio is a
venue/art space/music store in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Echo Curio does
sell a variety of music formats including CD-Rs and vinyl records, but it is a primary retail location for
independent label cassette tapes as well.
19
Stephen Perkins, “Counterculture and the Underground Press,” Zines, E-Zines, Fanzines: The Book of
Zines: Directory, http://www.zinebook.com/resource/perkins/perkins3.html.
20
Brendan Fowler interview conducted by the author on September 18, 2009 at Fowler’s art studio in Los
Angeles, California.
21
See: Jon Shade’s interview in the chapter “MondoVision with Jon Shade” for more information.
22
Ceci Moss, weblog post “101 Cassette Labels,” Rhizome Blog, posted August 19, 2009,
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2868 (accessed August 20, 2009).
15
Chapter 3: Pulling Punk
We now see how cassettes and OVZs elaborate on technology in order to
actively engage with the punk community. These case studies are especially conducive
to punk because punk culture similarly pulls apart and manipulates music, fashion,
objects, and ideas. Through MondoVision, Debunk Punk, WZRD MNTN, et al, we see how
punk typifies the conflicting twins of media and music. Hebdige uses early punk fashion
to reveal the concept of elaborating media and pulling from ideas associated with
objects, technology, and music. For example, the safety pin, meant for fastening clothes,
is punctured through the face by punks in the late ‘70s. The ripped nylons and shredded
shirts meant to be well past their expiration, are revered and flaunted for their
authenticity and opposition to conventional style. “…The challenge to hegemony which
subcultures represent is not issued directly by them. Rather, it is expressed obliquely, in
style,” asserts Hebdige.
23
Punk kids running the streets of London with safety pins in
their noses didn’t invent the safety pin, but they did fasten it to an object entirely
unconsidered by the makers. The expression was then explicitly shocking because punks
were crassly altering the previous associations of the safety pin. Hebdige declares that
these are not just styles and should be considered “mutations and extensions of existing
codes rather than the ‘pure’ expression of creative drives, and above all else they should
be seen as meaningful mutations.”
24
The punks were ripping apart the institutional
16
prescription for the object and stitching it back up all over their flesh. This is a great
example of intentionally ridiculous mutilation as fashion.
Punk has a rebelliously mimetic quality; it borrowed and absorbed from a
multitude of other subcultures excluded from the mainstream. Early British punk
clothes, attitudes, and music appropriated Jamaican reggae culture among other genres.
Jamaicans and reggae music were also in direct conflict with resource dispersal due to
its brutal colonial hangover.
25

The punks talked about Britain’s crisis in much the same way was as roots reggae
artists dwelt on the decline of Babylon. Both Punk and Reggae in Britain were
rooted in the city and in city experience…Both groups were ‘rejected by society’
and discriminated against on the ground of their appearance and beliefs.
26

Though a small segment of punks also took up racist politics, most of the
originators identified the music with a wider social struggle. Popular punk groups like
The Clash wore Jamaican-style army fatigues
27
and covered Jamaican rock-steady hits,
such as Junior Murvin’s classic “Police and Thieves,” and The Rulers’ “Wrong ‘Em Boyo,”
and wrote original songs overtly appropriating Jamaican slang such as “Rudie Can’t
Fail”.
28
American punk fashion pulled from musical precursors like glam rock
29
and rebel
front men such as Iggy Pop. It also reflected the lifestyle of its seedy New York City
origins, as heroin addiction and prostitution were commonplace in the Bowery
neighborhood from which punk sprang.
30
Early punk groups like The Ramones and
Richard Hell’s ripped white t-shirts and ragged jeans were borrowed from the uptown
male hustlers. Music historian Jon Savage describes how Richard Hell (of The
17
Heartbreakers, Television, and The Voidoids) connected rebel fashion with outsider
music: “Hell had also worked out a visual package to go with the chopped musical style:
large fifties shades, leather jackets, torn T-shirts and short, ragamuffin hair.”
31
This was
a distinctly raw American overdose to the fading hippie experimentation of the ‘60s—
back to the basics of black leather and bad attitudes.
32

Musically and conceptually, punk pulled from the radicalized social implications
of message-meets-music articulated by ‘60s rock and roll. Although punk fiercely
rejected hippie-culture, it was able to do so through mimicking their concept of music as
a popular social force. This was also associated with the political position of folk and
bluegrass styles, as well as the authenticity of real life experience via the blues.
33
Punk,
too, is a narrative of those denied a dominant voice. Punk absorbed a multitude of styles
and emulated a hodge-podge of different rebellious attributes.
34
It also critically
elaborated fashion, music, and art, shredding everything apart in order to yank out the
strongest elements. Again, this is essentially the same concept of pulling, borrowing,
salvaging, and reusing employed by cassettes and OVZs; mimicking mediums to tell the
story of the music they hear.
While Hebdige focuses on punk fashion styles, it is easy to apply his ideas to
technology. Kyle Crawford of the cassette label WZRD MNTN describes a similar
ridiculous reuse of the cassette in 2010, which he calls “absurd”.
35
In the same way a
subculture is defined by its rejection of the mainstream, the cassette’s absurdity is
18
defined by its mere existence as a viable medium. The “humble object” like the cassette,
or the safety pin, quickly becomes absurd and in turn full of new meaning, “pregnant
with significance.”
36
Cassette labels such as WZRD MNTN and OVZs like Debunk Punk
aren’t just working as mediums; they become critical elaborations and signals, or what
Stuart Hall calls “connotative codes,”
37
calling out to communicate with like-minded
people. The safety pin, the cassette tape, the video camera, the self-photocopied
smallpress of ‘zines, and the Internet are all used to describe their world.
Of course, punks aren’t the only ones moving underground. Jazz music also has a
history of carving out narrower passages in order to advance new styles of music. Early
jazz, which embodied an experience of post-slavery African-Americans through music,
was felt by some black musicians to be co-opted by white audiences by World War II. As
a result, they “deliberately sought to restrict white identification by producing a jazz
which was difficult to listen to and even more difficult to imitate,” thus the birth of be-
bop, free jazz, spiritual jazz styles, et cetera.
38
A segment of brilliant black jazz musicians
were therefore attempting to accentuate the conflict and the violent chaos in
negotiating power, resources, creativity, and carving out a hole only they could fit in.
The music was similarly conflicted and chaotic, presumably less likely to be chosen by
white casual listeners.
39
By narrowing their already narrow access and burrowing
underground, they redefined the dominant culture’s relationship with their music. Jazz,
through its explosion of styles defined musically, politically, and spiritually, also
established a new kind of audience who was ready to do more than dance.
19
Cassettes can especially be seen as a similar tool for burrowing deeper down the
narrow path. Cassette labels exist knowing their medium and its audience are tiny,
purposeful communities which consciously understand the implications of the
technology as a “sophisticated audience”.
40
It isn’t a coincidence that most people don’t
own cassette players anymore. Let’s entertain Stuart Hall’s assertion that the
mainstream assumes dominance over art and technology not by force but rather by
“winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both
legitimate and natural.”
41
Underground? What underground? Cassettes? What cassette
player? What will you even play your little protest on? As the old technology becomes
outmoded, so too does the message, the culture, and the music—or is this the point
when it actually gains a new meaning? Technology evolves, yes, and the quality of sound
was begging for the aural improvement found in digital recording. “Even if someone
doesn’t have a cassette player I’ll just give them a tape anyway,” says Crawford.
Crawford insists on pulling the cassette with us into a future obsessed with leaving it
behind, and so the tape re-enters a conversation. The larger documenting role of the
label and its intelligent use of old technology challenge the dominant idea of linear
progress.
There can be power in limitations, too. A limited number of people interested in
your music, limited access for obtaining it, and a limited responsibility to do anything
but explore your music and your voice. A lot of cassette labels, including WZRD MNTN
and Really Coastal, limit pressings to one hundred tapes. That’s a lot of privacy.
20
Crawford describes the tape as a rejected medium carrying rejected music “for a bunch
of rejects.”
42
The cassette’s invalid technology acts as a narrower, exerting a creative
pressure on its exchange until it becomes an artistic economy.
21
Chapter 3 Endnotes

23
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 17.
24
Ibid., 131.
25
Ibid., 28, 132.
26
Dick Hebdige, Cut ‘N’ Mix (London, England: Routledge, 1987), 96.
27
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 29.
28
“Police and Thieves” appears on The Clash’s self-titled record originally released in the UK during 1977
on CBS Records. “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” and “Revolution Rock” were both written by Jamaican songwriters,
Clive Alphonso, and Jackie Edwards and Danny Ray, respectively, and appeared on the Clash’s
groundbreaking London Calling record released in 1979 on CBS Records in the UK (the same year of the
former record’s US release on Epic Records).
29
Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again (London, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2005), 87.
Archetypical glam bands like Roxy Music and David Bowie exhibited a “flamboyant, future-retro image
[and] inspired the posthippie generation to glam up and dance,” complete with glitter, “green fur jackets
and high-heel shoes” on boys and girls alike.
30
Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, (New York, New York: St.
Martin’s Press), 90. CBGB was a bar in the Bowery district of New York City, a “bum zone—on the upper
floors of the club was a flophouse…”
31
Ibid., 89.
32
See: The pioneering New York punk group, The Ramones’ song, “53
rd
and 3
rd
”in which it is widely
speculated that Dee Dee Ramone is singing about his hustling days, “53rd and 3
rd
/Standing on the
street/53rd and 3
rd
/I'm tryin' to turn a trick/Then I took out my razor blade/Then I did what God
forbade/Now the cops are after me/But I proved that I'm no sissy.” Dee Dee, the rest of the Ramones, and
Richard Hell notably took on the prostitute-look of ripped white t-shirts and ragged blue jeans to
epitomize the “street rock” look of early New York City Punk. “53
rd
and 3
rd
” appeared on the Ramones’
debut, self-titled record release in the US on Sire Records in 1976.
33
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 27.
34
Hebdige also discusses ‘60s British behavioral theories seeking to explain how subcultures transformed
from being class-based phenomena to being youth-based, in the UK post-World War II. If class is “gone”
and the youth turns to alternative subcultures instead, then this might significantly explain the mass
absorption of subculture in the U.S. It might be fair to describe the U.S.’s absorption of subcultures as
much more extreme and variant as our population size mandates. An example: Nikki Sudden from the
fairly obscure late ‘70s UK post-punk band, the Swell Maps, passed away a couple years ago with an
22

obituary in the British Guardian [See: “Nikki Sudden: Post-Punk Pioneer, he formed the Swell Maps” April
3, 2006 by Garth Cartwright,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/apr/03/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1]. An American
counterpart would not likely find his or her way into the L.A. Times. D. Boon of the comparably seminal
San Pedro, California punk band, The Minutemen, for example died unexpectedly after his girlfriend fell
asleep at the wheel and crashed the tour van December 23, 1985. There was no mention in the Times’.
[See: Michael Azerad, Our Band Could Be Your Life (New York, New York: Back Bay Books, 2001)].
This articulation might serve to replace class (as the elephant in the room). Subculture wasn’t the “new
class” and it isn’t limited to the youth. I suspect, as I think Hebdige does too, that reorienting class to
equal youth-spending is just another hyper-capitalistic interpretation of culture (who has the money and
how can we get it?). But we can see a definite break in class and the family unit within that structure
(class after all being largely defined by familial goods—home ownership, et cetera). Did the sheer
eruption of gender roles via second-wave feminism similarly rip apart social exercises as war had? These
questions and more emerge from exploring the historical context of Punk, subculture, and underground
music.
35
See: Kyle Crawford’s interview in the chapter “WZRD MNTN with Kyle Crawford” for more information.
36
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 18.
37
Ibid., 14.
38
Ibid., 47.
39
See: the cult film “Magic Sun” by Phill Nibloch made in 1966, featuring Sun Ra. Part music performance,
part B-movie grade plot, this film conducts an incredibly frank discussion on the relationship between race
and jazz music. The depth and illustration of the conversation illuminates early transitions into overtly
political messages in jazz and artists becoming activists.
40
Ian Angus, Primal Scenes of Communication (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press,
2000), 117.
41
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 16.
42
See: Kyle Crawford’s interview in the chapter “WZRD MNTN with Kyle Crawford” for more information.
23
Chapter 4: Dada’s Babies
Of course, music subcultures aren’t the only ones with a knack for artistic reuse.
We see this quite literally re/constructed in twentieth century collage. Collage is a
particularly good example because it explores ideas about the avant-garde versus neo-
avant-garde. Art theorist and critic Hal Foster argues that the emergence of a new
avant-garde was necessary because the old school became a part of the very
“institution” it sought to rebel against. The new wave (or, neo-avant-garde) borrowed
language and techniques and created a whole new movement which was even more
sharply critical and specific to their own problems in their own art. The Dada Movement
of the 1910s was considered to be the most radical European avant-garde group
because it “no longer criticizes schools that preceded it, but criticizes art as an
institution.”
43
Collage effectively explored ideas in politics and consumerism during the
first wave of this movement and then again later in the neo-avant-garde of the 1960s
and ‘70s. The new wave of collage pushed the medium beyond its material reference as
a collective movement and further into new realms of expression. English artist Linder
Sterling used collage in the ‘70s to piece together literal, feminist-informed
representations of women through gender roles, domesticity, and pornography. Her
most recognizable pieces show a topless woman with an iron for a head. Or a retro-
looking man and woman engaged in sex, their genitals replaced with vacuums.
44
Her
collage becomes a reused medium with reused objects, critically elaborated to reflect
24
the experience of working- and middleclass English women whose bodies are defined by
their housekeeping skills.
Grab this scrutinizing eye towards the institution and now point it towards the
object-based world of art through technology. The concept of the institution can be
loosely defined as a dominant use. How have objects themselves, once used to create
art, turned into pillars of convention? Or, how do the projected uses of paint, sculpture,
film, video, and cassettes all react and mutate into entirely new ways of transforming?
Each medium is elaborated, be it into feminist critiques or OVZs.
25
Chapter 4 Endnotes

43
Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis, Minnesota: The University of Minnesota Press,
1983), 22.
44
Linder Sterling, Works 1976-2006 (Zurich, Switzerland: JRP-Ringier Publishing, 2006).
26
Chapter 5: De Certeau Makes Do and Strategizes
Technological progress prompts the question: What good is the newest or the
latest anything without updating our attitude and approach? There has been little
incentive for truly creative uses for new media. French philosopher, Michel de Certeau,
puts forth some ideas helpful for understanding this much needed critical elaboration of
our new technology. Although writing in the ‘70s, de Certeau’s broad notion of
vocabularies describes how these subcultures reorient cassettes, ‘zines, video, and the
Internet, which become a broad language, or a vocabulary, articulating music and
culture. Used in new creative ways like WZRD MNTN and MondoVision, technology
becomes a million different ways to promote culture left outside of the dominant
dialogue. De Certeau argues for liberating objects like safety pins, OVZs, and cassette
tapes, and using them to articulate more promising expressions like music. De Certeau
inspires an examination of whether the user is engaging with new technology any
differently than he would be with the old technology. Is popping a CD into a player and
passively absorbing music a more advanced use of technology than popping in a
cassette? If one reuses the cassette to instead say something about his music, his
attitude, or his position outside dominant music, then is something altogether more
exciting erupting from technology beyond the object itself? This is de Certeau’s idea of
making do—how we see a multitude of ways in which people naturally, instinctively
make technology entirely theirs.
27
By handing someone a CD, all you’ve done is delivered some music, which is
nice, but this says nothing besides put this data into your computer. Instead, in handing
over a cassette the information is doubled; the music also carries a sensitivity towards
consumerism, art, and technology. Now you’re touching the music, the recorded body
of the song, in all of its outmoded, clunky, analog glory. Perhaps sentimentally, the
medium becomes an art object itself through its irrational coin-sized spindles rolling
around the dancing magnetic tape. A mix tape is easily manipulated and molded into
the vision of the artist, chopping off songs and attaching them to others, dubbing them
backwards, or fading out and panning volume within a track. The song credits are readily
given or not given by the maker; he may choose a plain white sleeve or a carefully
constructed list of each featured song. The tape is not subject to the inanimate will of a
computer program like iTunes, for example; exerting a hard-lined robotic insistence that
you sit through a fifteen minute long silent intro just to devour the end of the data file,
or song.
45
The mix tape and the small cassette label engage with the tape’s pliability as it
similarly bends access, class, and art.
WZRD MNTN’s Crawford identifies with this double inflection of the medium and
the music. If we substitute media for language, we see how these little twists in using
tape become accents of technology. Subculture utters “music” with a cassette or an
OVZ, but the accent, or way of creatively exchanging, defines its tongue. These two
pronunciations come to represent a “double inflection,” moving art and technology
beyond the role of passive consumption.
46
The cassette tape becomes indicative of a
28
whole way of life, a subculture chasing down the tape because it still works for
elaborating media.
The Internet plays a huge role in strategizing how to get cassettes and OVZs out
to the public cheaply, easily, and quickly. WZRD MNTN, Really Coastal, and scores of
other cassette-only labels advertise, document, sell, and trade their tapes online
through personal websites or music sites, and create crossing networks on cassette-
culture websites.
47
MondoVision, Videothing, and Debunk Punk each use the quick,
accessible, and cheap properties of hosting websites like YouTube and Vimeo. A social
networking site or blog acts like a vendor for the hosting site, a corner store for linking
and embedding fresh OVZ episodes or new cassettes. Debunk Punk and MondoVision,
for instance, have created “channels” on these hosting sites where you can tune in and
watch all the episodes at once, literally linking into their entire sprawling worlds where
huge amounts of footage are stored and displayed. Like the international constellation
of ‘zines hand-assembled across hundreds of bedroom floors, the laptops of the world
similarly rest on the desks of millions. OVZs are a worthwhile extension of this because
they actively engage technology with a historically connected underground community.
The Internet provides a strategy whereby labels and artists with limited resources can
not only present their work but also begin to develop the fabric of community.
48

A WZRD MNTN tape illustrates the mutual economy of the Internet and art. The
Internet helps artists strategize outside the dominant music label world.
49
Carrying the
29
sounds of lubricated distribution via a powerful music industry is different than fifty
handmade cassettes given away for free at a show. The ways these cassettes are
disseminated becomes a way of artistically spreading art. Both cassettes and OVZs are
essentially given away. Tapes are sometimes sold at cost, operating on a break-even
business plan or exchanged through trade. Trading is particularly effective because it
expands an initial investment. For example, buying a tape and putting original music on
it is then turned into a kind of serial propagator of culture, exponentially increasing tape
circulation through the incentive of obtaining all kinds of homemade tapes just by
getting one out in the mix.
By stretching its physical existence beyond a one-time exchange, the tape with
its continuously revolving spindles elongates its life by jumping around a whole network
of boom boxes, walkmans, and car stereos beyond the original listener. It isn’t just what
someone consumes, but how they consume. Is it traded, is it limited to cost, and is it
reflective of a community or a culture also associated with an artistic or visual style?
After it is acquired, is it re-tradable, re-recordable, re-linkable? Essentially, does its
lifespan reject the destiny of a trash bin? These answers get complicated and
consumerism becomes a part of de Certeau’s notion of strategy.
50
Consumerism is more
than just picking and choosing what to buy. Through cassette labels we can see
powerful modes of informing and sharing between the label, artist, consumer, and even
beyond these defined relationships.
30
Likewise, OVZs are downloaded, re-posted, linked, emailed, incorporated onto
other websites, and identified with online profiles; they are living in many different
places, watched by many different people, all simultaneously. As noted previously,
Debunk Punk has a channel on YouTube as its venue for posting episodes. In fact,
Debunk Punk doesn’t even have its own website, and that isn’t for lack of technical skill.
Instead, creator Vim Crony acknowledges the somewhat futile personal website; he
wants his own channel, “like a real show.”
51
OVZ episodes can be taken in through a
variety of online outlets, channels like Crony’s or websites like MondoVision’s which is
visually sparse and limited to posting only episodes. It’s “not meant to be really dealt
with,” says creator, Jon Shade. After the initial investment, the video is dispersed to two
people or two million people for the same price. In this way, the Internet has
ingeniously understood the economy of artistic exchange and subverted the cost-
equals-object mold. De Certeau helps to cast a wide net over the OVZ example and
hopefully suggest even newer, unexplored ways for elaborating media. This is yet
another exciting new way cassettes and OVZs use technology and the Internet for
existing communities long denied a voice.
Underground music is a response. It isn’t isolated from dominant culture; rather
it’s in constant friction with it. Having been left outside the conversation of the majority,
a small but efficient minority reuses language, symbols, technology, and media in order
to actively engage with and document their music, their world. Throughout this essay
De Certeau has shown us the arbitrary nature of technology itself, while Hebdige has
31
described the power of it if used intentionally. The following interviews are not meant
to be supplementary; instead they are central to illustrating the problems and successes
of this friction and frontiers in media elaboration.
32
Chapter 5 Endnotes

45
Nicholas Rombes, A Cultural Dictionary of Punk 1974-1982 (New York, New York: Continuum
International Publishing, 2009), 52. Ironically, the cassette was originally seen as exhibiting an “invisible
movement” now more commonly associated with digital formats. Indeed, it was the original “end of the
idea of music as circular…”
46
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 18.
47
Recommended cassette website: The Tape Trade Center, http://ttc.gnarf.org/whatisttc.shtml.
48
See the websites of the cassette and OVZs used throughout this paper for additional information and
specific bands/dates/locations on their releases and episodes: WZRD MNTN:
http://www.wizardmountain.org, Really Coastal: http://www.reallycoastal.com, MondoVision:
http://MondoVision.tv, Debunk Punk: http://www.youtube.com/user/vimcrony, and Videothing:
http://www.Videothing.com.
49
See: Ty Segall’s “Horn the Unicorn” released by WZRD MNTN in 2009.
50
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, California: University of California Press,
1984), 38.
51
See Vim Crony’s interview in the chapter “Debunk Punk with Vim Crony” for more information.
33
Chapter 6: Media Elaboration in Independent Cassette Labels

Figure 1: Wizard MNTN Website Image. Ty Segall’s “Horn the Unicorn” released on WZRD MNTN in 2009.
A recent release, spread out in its separate parts: Xeroxed hand-drawn sleeve art and individually
stenciled tape. And that’s just the outside.

WZRD MNTN with Kyle Crawford
San Francisco, California, November 2009,
and Los Angeles, California, February 2010.

With an emphasis on the “absurdity” and “ridiculousness” of cassette releases,
WZRD MNTN accesses the logic of the time period dictating the overall
significance of using tapes. The first WZRD MNTN tape came out of a live music
recording in 2007 that was promptly duplicated one hundred times and given out
at punk shows in San Francisco. With the relative success of breaking even, Kyle
Crawford was able to recycle the original funds into another release, and
another, and another…sometimes breaking the mold of tape-only boundaries by
including comic zines by bands, vinyl versions, and future plans for Mp3
download coupons. Crawford discusses the reason for immersing in the “absurd”
cassette and how it changed the way he looks at the music industry at large.
Releases include: The Superstitions, Culture Kids, Grass Widow, Rank/Xerox, The
Traditional Fools, Ty Segall, Dance Player, Filthmongers, and Dicktown Boys.
34

How many tapes do you put out a year?
Each release is between 100-200 tapes, anywhere from five to ten releases a year.
We’re really lucky—I don’t lose sleep over WZRD MNTN tapes. It’s not just a hobby
because I’m really stoked about the music. But I don’t have press packages for new
releases. You know, the smaller the better. I like to put out bands that are just starting
out. Right now, I’m doing The Baths’ tape. They’re going to use it as a demo to get a
vinyl version out.
Jonathan from Really Coastal is pretty anti-CD-R as far as his releases go. He is
committed to the primacy of the cassette format. I know you’ve talked about adding
an Mp3 download code to WZRD MNTN tapes, where someone can also get a free
digital version of the cassette online. Do you see this as compromising the cassette, or
in conflict with the distance cassette culture keeps from digital formats?
I don’t really set limitations in my life. With WZRD MNTN, there are no rules really.
They’re tapes and they’re fun. The less rules the less pressure. It is a cultural thing to do
tapes, but not exclusively. I think of it in terms of it being also be cool to make people
happy. By having an Mp3 download, it makes [the music] so much more convenient. I
have an iPod. I love tapes. But I don’t want to carry them around. So, it’s a nice little
bonus.
How long does it take from the time you get in touch with a band to putting a cassette
in their hands?
Once they give me the music, if I’m hand-dubbing the tapes myself and spray painting all
the art, it takes about two weeks. With pro-dubbing [at a professional dubbing plant],
they will screen print everything and it takes about two weeks, too.
How much does it cost to put out one tape?
For one tape, it takes about a $1.00. Shipping is $1.30. And PayPal [an online proxy for
exchanging money between individuals and companies] takes $0.30 from the sale. I
probably make $1.00 off the tape, but I give so many away that I don’t make anything.
Why tapes?
35
[Laughs.] OK, let me think. Well, I’ve loved tapes since I was in high school. There’s a
sentimental thing; mix tapes for friends and girlfriends, and then getting them back. I
was then aware of tapes and how easy it was. And then I found out how cheap it was to
buy them in bulk. It’s a low-stress way to put out my friends’ music. It’s a good way to
have a little tiny record label. Everyone wants that a record label, I think. And, it’s kind
of sweet. It’s so low risk that you can put out bands that don’t have their shit together
and still need something out there. It’s absurd. And because it’s absurd it frees you up
creatively do whatever you want with them.
How did you become aware of how cheap they were in bulk, and that you could
somewhat mass produce them?
Me and my friend Seth had this terrible band called, Pink Beards. He knew how to put
out tapes because he’d put out a Charlie and the Moonhearts cassette. So then when I’d
moved up to San Francisco and wanted to record The Traditional Fools, we just set up in
a basement with microphones and recorded. And that was their first release.
So, there is this element of being involved in steps 1-10. There’s this convergence of
the steps that are normally very isolated from one another in a release, where step 1
is done by the band, step 7 is done by the manager, and step 4 is done by the
engineer. It becomes the same fluid motion, which is very absent from mainstream
music.
A mainstream band like Vampire Weekend could never do a cassette because they need
to sign forms for other people to release music. I like being excited about the
community and being involved in every aspect.
Would you ever put out any other kind of music radically different to punk?
Yeah, that Dance Party tape is like R & B and Hip Hop—it’s my old boss and his weird,
sample-y, ‘80s thing. I’m trying to get Dave [from The Traditional Fools] to do an all-
instrumental surf tape. I almost put out this live poetry reading by a friend.
I knew this guy with an experimental music label who “released” one of those netty
pots used for cleaning out your sinuses with salt water. He bought the little pots and
packaged them up and advertised them alongside vinyl records and CDs for sale. It
had a catalog number and everything; I really loved that idea of just having his label
sell everything he was into, be it netty pots or Japanese noise…
36
The Dicktown Boys tape had a comic book, too. My friend Moses and I are putting
together a field recording all our favorite things in San Francisco.
Why is does it feel cooler to mix media like tapes, comics, Mp3s, netty pots?
I keep going back to this “what would make me and other people happier?” thing. [That
answer] depends because it could be doing a tape with music that wouldn’t need
anything else to go with it. But I like how people are putting more effort into things and
without working your ass off, in the way that you would want to work.
It’s funny because that is an awkward statement. It is difficult to articulate joy and
work in the same sentence.
WZRD MNTN is work. It is work but it doesn’t feel like it because it’s fun. Like being in a
band or drawing a picture you want to draw. But I won’t ever make a living off do this.
I’m beginning to think that having a job is the secret success with having a label.
Everyone I know with a job can afford to be a bit more generous and transparent in
how they operate.
I don’t want to end up hating what I do because I need the money.
It’s this allergic reaction that creativity has sometimes to pressure and structure, like
how going to art school can make people hate making art. Has putting out tapes
changed the way you look at a big beast like the record industry?
Honestly, part of me feels sorry for [the record industry]. It can’t be very fun. I don’t
really think about them that much, though. It’s just like two different worlds.
I understand why it feels like that, but it’s funny because you’re both putting out
music essentially. But in the end it’s like one of you might as well be making oranges
or umbrellas.
And I don’t think I’m like “sticking it to the man” or anything, or trying to take over.
WZRD MNTN made me realize you can put out any music you want. You should have the
freedom to put whatever you want; it doesn’t have to be 5,000 records. You can put out
100 tapes, and a band could start to do well and be successful. [The industry] is
borderline evil, but it doesn’t matter to me.
37
There is an element of “indie” still meaning independent. Without limiting it to
semantics, it still indicates a whole way of life to a lot of people. Did you get into doing
cassettes or listening to punk first? Or was it kind of an inseparable experience?
I was listening to punk first. But it was very short after that when I realized you could
put out whatever you want. But I’m not a crazy punk rocker; I love Paul Simon as much
as The Buzzcocks. Well…maybe not.

Figure 2: Really Coastal Website Image

Really Coastal with Jonathan Isaac
Los Angeles, California, January 2010.

Jonathan Isaac runs the Los Angeles-based cassette label, Really Coastal, from
top to bottom. The label’s roster consists mostly of his friends from around
Historic Filipino town or his own recorded music. The cassettes are hand dubbed
and the sleeves each designed by Isaac, as well. I knew he and I were kindred
music collectors when he subscribed to keeping releases “in print” for as long as
humanly possible. For running a cassette label, Isaac has a pretty healthy notion
of promoting music for all. Isaac also discusses his allergy to CD-Rs, his belief that
technology should be more than a “conduit” for digital files, and the ticking time
bomb that is depleted blank tape supply. Releases include: Bird Names, Theo
Angell, Antique Brothers, Lateral Hyetography, Nuclear Power Pants, and
Sentimental Journey.
38
Tell me about how and when you got started doing Really Coastal?

I started Really Coastal in June 2008. I was living in Historic Filipino Town [in Los
Angeles] and wanted a way to release my own/other people's music, and to design the
album art. Cassette was a way to do it that sounded good, and it made money less of an
issue. Money is still an issue.

Yeah, the feasible economics is really an attractive part of this. Are all your tapes
basically sold at-cost or traded then?

It's break-even, though tapes cost about $1.25 each to make—which shows all the
numerous costs involved in running a label—even a tape label (mailing supplies,
promotion, website, etc.).

I really like your website; it's organized very clearly and simply. How has the Internet
helped what you're doing? How has it factored into the cost or the savings, or....?

Well, I do trade. But I try to sell as many as I can wholesale and retail, because that
supports the label and keeps things going.

Once you get distribution stuff oiled up, it goes so much faster and people aren't as
skeptical about ordering a decent sized batch…

The Internet certainly helps a lot. I have a song player button, which allows people to
hear a [digital version] song per release. Before the Internet, this would not have been
possible. I would have had to rely on radio for people to hear the music before they
bought the release.

Yeah, the basic-level advantages are amazing—something that would have essentially
taken weeks or months is happening in seconds. You bring up a really great point
about being able to access an applicable audience...what are some the disadvantages?
Do you sense any sort of dilution with the avalanche of music sites online? Or is the
cassette world still small enough to pilot....

Well, the cassette underground is still not very far from where it was in the 1980s: as a
way for noise/experimental bands to release short-run releases inexpensively, with an
eye towards design and packaging. Generally, when a band starts as a part of the
underground, they are doing so because they can't play shows at the big venues
because of the style/substance of their music. Today this is not always the case, as there
are bands like No Age, Best Coast, and Wavves who are quite mainstream sounding and
release a cassette as a way to get the “hype machine” going, because of the limited
39
nature of cassettes. I will repress the cassette if it sells out; the height of my life would
not be a Really Coastal tape on EBay for $100...

I really agree with your notion of keeping stuff in-print. It's a really bizarre little
Internet-age light speed "collecting" muscle reaction that's tensed up in the limited-
to-50 world—with vinyl and cassettes. But let me back up; the nature of the sound or
the substance being the inspiration for taking a cassette route...let's tease this out a
bit. How does the physical technology of the cassette reflect this?

A lot of cassette enthusiasts blindly buy from labels they "trust," without even hearing
the music. This is because the label is known for their "curatorial" spirit, (i.e. for
releasing music of a certain sound/ambiance). If the cassette enthusiast waits more than
a day after the label update, the cassette might be gone.

Right, the curatorial aspect is a great, very piercing point that many cassette devotees
tend to ignore. So, three things are happening in this scenario, (1) the label curates a
sound, a seal-of-approval essentially, (2) the community/consumer is the perfect size,
a close fit with the supply and demand, and (3) the cost of the tape is within the
margin of error, (i.e. realistic to take a chance on blindly from the position of the
producer and the consumer).

I think within the next 5 years you will not be able to have cassettes professionally
manufactured anymore, and then the whole supply-demand matrix will be out of
control.

Having said that, I hear a plant in LA is starting to make Flexi discs [paper-thin vinyl
format common in magazines through the 1980s] again. So maybe it will evolve into a
“where there’s a will there’s a way” situation? Can you talk about the literal quality of
the tape itself maybe? Isn't this why technology moved into to digital formats? And
what about digital recording (the way a lot of bands go nowadays) transferred onto
the cassette format, as a good number of current bands do now?

Cassettes get caught up and break. They are not as durable as vinyl. They melt in the
sun. They start to warp. I have old tapes that won't play on certain players, but play on
other players. A CD is not really much better; it gets scratched and will skip. Regarding
digital recordings on tape—I really can't hear the difference. I know this isn't the right
thing to say to the purists, but I can't...

I spoke with Kyle from WZRD MNTN and he was thinking about having free mp3
downloads come with his tape releases. Have you thought about that (I know you've
40
done a digital song-sample on your website)? What would be the point (although I see
his)? Would you ever do a CD release?

All the cassettes I've released have been "cassette-only" as far as my own label goes.
The point in including free mp3s for the release is to increase the field of the release on
to digital players. It also, in effect, makes the cassette more of an art object, an obsolete
format, something to stand up on a bookshelf and look at. These releases are cassette-
only so that people actually have to listen to the cassette to hear the music. Sure,
people rip the cassettes on websites, and this is cool. I would never release a CD or a
CD-R; this is a tape-only label.

So you’re getting to a good elephant in the room, the cassette as an art object...talk
about that. I want to ask something really open, like, why is it an art object?

It's an art object because it's an obsolete, non-mainstream format. The players are all
old and decaying. If I put out an 8-track tape; most people who buy it would just end up
looking at it.

Sure. I guess I also meant, why is it more to you than a way to disseminate sounds?
What does it say?

It says that there is something about that format that is not in "new" formats,
something that people have not forgotten and can never be replaced.

Do you see ever see an end then for the cassette? Is that inevitable? Do you get the
feeling you're racing against time?

It's tragic, but there is also the comedic aspect to it. It's like..."you're releasing that, on
cassette?!" And the sight of the cassette itself is almost ridiculous in itself nowadays,
with technology having "progressed" so much. It has a laugh-track included with it. Until
someone leaves it in the sun and it melts, it's endlessly funny.

Do you see a kind, “gotcha!”-quality in it? In the face of the huge commercial push to
identify technology with art (i.e. the IPod), here you are slopping up this mess...

It's disconnected from its time. Even the tapes themselves, before I get them, they are
sitting in a warehouse after being manufactured years ago. I don't even know if they
make blank tapes for professional duplication anymore; all of the duplication that
happens today might be from old supplies?

41
That's really interesting. It’s like really sucking them out of the past, literally. And it’s
holding the supply to its promise, even without the demand. So, time period is key.
Would you have done a cassette label in 1985?

Time period is key, because technology has moved on to different formats, and other
forgotten formats. Having a tape label in the ‘80s would have included a different
landscape. It wouldn’t have been a "subculture" type thing, because tapes were the
most widely bought format in 1987. It wouldn’t have been about releasing "music that
the major labels won't release," i.e. noisy releases, experimental non-mainstream
releases. And it wouldn’t have been a punk thing. The cassette would have been less of
an art object because the format was in circulation, it was the format. Today, having a
cassette label is being exogenously political, in that major labels do not release tapes,
they've disappeared from the mainstream. The last car to include a tape player was in
the early '00s. This exogenous aspect makes the tape disconnected from the media
landscape of this time, makes it comedic, and makes it subversive.

You bring up an interesting assumption—I find myself also asserting that bands are
putting out tapes/independent music because major labels "won't do it”. But when
you break this concept down today, it's sort of leap-frogging the circumstances, those
bands aren't first trying out at the majors. And actually it’s often an irrelevant idea
because there’s such a mix of radio-ready bands doing tapes, and a lot of majors will
put out weird stuff if they can co-opt the accessible aspect of it.

And if people really wanted to take the tape revolution to the next level, it would take a
band like Sonic Youth doing a cassette-only release of their next album—not throwaway
material like live recordings, et cetera, but really having it as the only format for hearing
the music.

With cassettes and the bands who realistically entertain their primacy, there's a
purposeful intent in there that often gets glossed over. Do you think the bands you've
released will stay cassette-only? What are your feelings on that?

CD-Rs and cassettes have been interchangeable regarding the economics of short-run,
small releases. Really Coastal bands like Antique Brothers, Metal Rouge, and Warm
Climate have all put out CD-Rs in addition to cassettes. The CD-R has different capacities
than the cassette; it is more about being a conduit for an Mp3 that can be placed on
digital players. Being cassette-only is really quite ridiculous today and it's not for
everyone. There is something to be said about finding something with the capacities you
like and sticking to it, until it is literally impossible.

42
What about the non-Internet aspect of distribution and community? For instance,
your website has a list of locations like [the L.A.-based art space and music shop] Echo
Curio, which carries your tapes. How does this kind of physical connection absorb in
the overall culture of doing a cassette-only label? Also, give me a rough estimate of
how many hours a week you put into a release when there's a tape coming out?

There are places where being cassette-only is a cultural thing, like at Echo Curio. But
Echo Curio is also involved in CD-R culture too, so the cassette is more of a political thing
in that it’s non-mainstream, and less specific to a medium of choice. I design the
cassette imprinting, and I send off the masters to the tape company and fill out the
paperwork. The main time draw (other than obsessing about the album art) is mailing
the releases.

A place like Echo Curio is a really subtle blend of several navigations in subculture—to
go see a band play, to buy an immobile format (like a tape) of that experience, and see
all the art associated with such a spectacle, via the shop…

Yeah, it certainly takes lots of time. It's draining. If it weren't so funny, I wouldn't do it!
43
Chapter 7: Critical Elaboration in Online Videozines

Figure 3: Debunk Punk Workstation Photo by Author. Episodes to-be: remote controls, RCA cables, and
mini-DAT tapes are shown chaotically strewn across Vim Crony’s bedroom editing-station.

DEBUNK PUNK with Vim Crony
Long Beach, California, October 2009.

Music video-maker, former art school student, and OVZ creator, Vim Crony of
Long Beach, California is an incredibly busy guy. Crony began making OVZs in
2006 with The Gaze as a student at the California Institute for the Arts. Crony has
about fifteen episodes of Debunk Punk since 2008 under his belt (and scores more
all over his desk waiting to be edited), each feature a band you probably never
knew existed. That’s because Crony likes his bands baby fresh, with only a
handful of shows to claim and nothing to prove or public-relations to rely on.
Debunk Punk’s talk show-like format brings guests on the “show” and sets up live
performances where the group plays a few songs. One difference between Crony
and Letterman is that Crony is simply unafraid of awkwardness and skimp
editing. The results are often all too realistic conversations; tangential and
hilarious, yet totally determined to convey the natural portrait of a band. Crony,
nurtured at California College of the Arts, is also continually questioning the
familiar structure of a “show” and the role he plays as host. Whether he’s
blasting the unending feedback of a guitar amp or taping himself doodling in
fast-forward, Debunk Punk renegotiates what it means to make an OVZ in a way
44
that effectively documents Punk. Appearing bands include: XYX, New Bloods,
Static, Realicide, Ima Gymnist, Shearing Pinks, Mutators, Fast Forward, the
Observers, and Knight Rider, among others.
Compared to MondoVision, or other videozines that travel around, your stuff is
stationary. Do you do that consciously? It feels very one-on-one.
Definitely. The purpose is to interact, to talk with the people—I love the music—but it’s
more about the one-on-one experience. I try to stay as aware as possible. Debunk Punk
is just me, even if there’s another camera, so I try to purposefully be in the shot.
I noticed that.
I want all of us to be a part of the experience, not just me behind the camera.
So it’s like having or developing an image, and being more engaging as a character. It
has this variety show, or Letterman-esque feel to it.
Yeah, the variety show was the intent—and I want to go in that direction even more.
You’re probably the first to know this, but I want to make this into a kind of trilogy. The
Gaze had a bigger studio at Cal Arts, and Debunk Punk is smaller, more intimate. I want
to do a third one that’s much more variety-like, and have the viewer and the production
parts involve other people.
More like a channel?
Like a real show. Right now it’s just like this experience. In a way I’m kind of just doing it
for me.
Would you do this third stage simultaneously, or would you stop doing Debunk Punk?
I don’t know.
Could you do the third stage still as Debunk Punk?
Yeah. There are aspects of Debunk Punk that are like trial versions of what the third
stage would be. Those episodes with me drawing…friends say I should do a Dear Abby,
love letter thing, but punk-style.
So it moved into Debunk Punk from the first stage because you had less access to a
studio?
45
Right, I did a lot of the later shows in front of a punk house nearby, The Hickey House.
While I was there I shot about thirty episodes, but there are only ten released so far.
How were these pulling from film, or from video—as far as whittling down their
abilities to tell stories? The drawing episodes seemed like an explicit, broader
connection to art. Do you see it connecting to other forms or mediums?
A part of Debunk Punk is revealing new avenues and mediums that are, in a sense, punk
rock. There are others that I haven’t really tapped into yet, too.
This is another one of those obvious things but, why do you see Debunk Punk as being
punk? You couldn’t really do this catering to mainstream music—how does punk
speak to what you’re doing?
It’s radical in that I do whatever I want to do. To not be obligated to center on
something that’s popular necessarily. It’s totally transforming reality—it’s changing
perspective on people’s outlook on ideas, and the means to bring out those ideas.
52

How would you describe that place you’re rejecting? What’s wrong with other media?
I don’t see a complete right or wrong; I just don’t see a balance in mainstream media.
And the bands you bring on Debunk Punk are the antithesis to that world, also.
I want the band that has three songs and just played their first show.
So there’s an amateur quality—not in a negative way, but your videozine also has that
feel. I see these objects as reflecting the same aspects of the medium, continually...
Right, but they can’t suck though. I honestly like good music.
Have you ever rejected anybody from being?
Oh yeah.
What do you like that other videozines are doing, or what are you critical of?
The main thing for me is which bands are on [other OVZs]. It’s usually the same bands
that get interviewed all the time.
In the indie world…
46
Yeah, Lightening Bolt, Japanther—all cool stuff, but there are a lot more people out
there too. I don’t like the guy or girl behind the camera thing. And I don’t like the quick
cutaway—“here’s something really funny and…cut!” And “here’s a band for ten
seconds” and a short interview. I like the long documentation of the band playing. And
then we sit around for a while and talk. But mainly, I hate not being able to see who is
interviewing.
You want a narrator, context…
Yeah, it seems sneaky or something.
And what do you admire?
MondoVision and Videothing both have a real style to what they are doing, in editing
and visually…
Yeah I think Kevin [McCarthy], who helps with MondoVision, does a lot of the flyers
and ink drawings for that videozine. He really defines their aesthetic.
They have a very strong graphic component. I like to draw, but I can’t bring that kind of
style to it.
How do you see it relating to variety shows, or television formats?
The whole idea for a lot of things that I do, most of my art, is pulling from other things
and remixing in order to create new things. I’m not really concerned with making
something totally original, because I do that when I pull from other stuff.
The ways in which you are pulling…
I just want to break everything down. The use of language on the show, or how I film a
band, how I dialogue, or the questions I ask—the whole aesthetic of the show.
Give me an example of breaking down.
Everything is extremely is minimal, as far as the space…
It’s not sloppy. It feels very purposeful; the details have intention—only exactly what
you want in the shot.
That’s just me! Look at this room—very neat. It’s my own issue.
47
It feels very methodical.
Yes, very—this gets me in trouble at work!
Tell me about the language—do you write a script out for the introduction?
No.
Do you really edit it?
The interviews are pretty much what were taped. In the intros, I’m adlibbing, so it’s
about 80% of what was taped. I’m very interested in that aspect of video, or cinema—
that I’m able to create a reality, a reality where I’m charismatic. [Laughs]
Is there then an aspect of professionalism involved?
Yes, totally. I met with someone today and was talking about making it have a more talk
show look--coming in with a suit and tie, but then put on a punk vest with patches and
studs over it.
A blending—or a punk take on that structured format. Is there an element of
seriousness? Why do that?
I’m focused. There is a reason to why I am doing the things I am doing. Going back to
that transforming reality idea.
Why do video? Why not a paper ‘zine?
The power of cinema or video is unrivalled. The power to transform the thought
process, or perception is an incredible tool. It’s all very subtle. I mean, I’ve read ‘zines
that really change how I view everything around me—but video is just thirty frames-per-
second flying at you. It’s really well thought out.
I have a note written here, about the feedback episode—where you just played
feedback on an amplifier for about ten minutes and stare into the camera. Do you
want to talk about that? It struck me as very Warholian—a pointlessness, but also
establishing a boundary that this is yours.
Well, because I could.
48
Right, but it’s also establishing that this isn’t just a straight news show, or
documentary—there’s an artistic way you’re pulling this off…it straddles this
news/entertainment/and art…
For sure. There was a realization that I could do that. I wanted other people to realize
they could do that also.
But do what exactly—not just the feedback…
It’s bombarding your mind, your eyes, your ears.
It’s not non-sense—there are so many different in-points you could come at what you
were trying to do with that.
Anti-sense? I just made that up.
It sort of speaks to that quick, MTV editing style we were talking about—rejecting
that.
There’s a connection to that, sure.
I was thinking about that Ian Svenious/Vice TV show where he attempts this same sort
of interview/seriousness with bands thing…
I was doing mine way before! [Laughs]
Right, well I wouldn’t even compare the two. He’s not Letterman obviously, but it’s
Vice TV, it’s not remotely underground—it’s somewhere in the middle. He’s taking a
different angle, but he would never do something like that with the feedback. He has a
definite, strict structure. So, do you see Debunk Punk as borrowing from that? Or
reusing that kind of interview television format?
It’s definitely borrowing, but it’s utilizing that format to a greater or different extent to
what’s it’s already been doing. You know it’s hard to articulate, but it’s like that
question: why haven’t you done this with that format? Why doesn’t Letterman put a
guitar next to speaker and make feedback? There are so many things that I want to
challenge and change—as far as the medium itself, the ideas that it’s putting out …
That is a really good question. People working in underground music are always taking
for granted that they won’t do that, or exist in an underground because Letterman will
never do that. That question seems really obvious to a whole subculture.
49
Even in videozines being made, there are still rules that people do not break.
Like what?
Sexuality and gender—I’ve read a lot more on those issues in ‘zines than in videozines. I
think it can be taken a lot further…
What do you mean—like girls not usually making videozines?
For sure, that’s a good point.
Although, I’ve felt that there is a fair amount of representation—girls in bands that are
featured, at least with Debunk Punk and MondoVision. But it seems that there are a
lot more girls in punk music than in other styles or scenes.
Right.
What about the economics of it—wouldn’t it be cool if we lived in a society where you
could make money off Debunk Punk?
Yeah, right!
How many hours does one episode take? Like a work week—if it was your job?
Shooting, booking, and everything—probably a full week.
I was asking a friend with a cassette tape label if he would want to get paid a living
from his releases. You know like what if something crazy happened where U2 wanted
to do a cassette—and he said, no.
Maybe not U2, but like R.E.M. or something—someone who doesn’t suck! Anybody who
is doing this, or doing anything punk, with their whole heart, and producing something
that people want to see—why not get paid? I do freelance video work for bands, I make
them videos and get paid—or at least until recently.
Where does it go?
My stomach?
No, I mean, where does the work go?
50
Oh [laughs]—they post them and stuff [on the Internet]. It’s funny, now that I’m out of
school—after high school, I lived in Bakersfield…oh God, now this sounding like “and
then…after high school, I lived in Bakersfield…”
[Laughs] No, it’s OK…I want the story!
That was a great point in my life—I did a lot of video, learning the medium. I’ve been
shooting bands since I was about 14. But after high school I really stepped up my game
on learning shooting, editing—everything.
Just bands?
Yeah, and going on tours with bands.
Who did you go on tour with?
The Pine, one of my favorite bands, ever. I was getting paid, even though I had a full-
time job, too. Then I went to school and it was the same sort of thing—getting loans and
grants—that whole environment. But now, the economy just sucks.
All you do is freelancing now?
Yeah. Bands will come to me and I’ll go to them.

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Figure 4: Videothing Website Image

VIDEOTHING with Michael Reich
Hollywood, California, November 2009.

Having given up making big budget music videos in Los Angeles and London,
Michael Reich created his own brand of documenting music through the OVZ,
Videothing. Reich is drawn to the ever-blurring lines between fact and fiction and
brings this strange blend to his work. Sometimes staged scenes of two people at
a concert fades into a live performance and then into an off-the-cuff interview.
His camera shots are often abstract or chopped up into a kinetic rush in the
middle of a conversation, as was his recent piece on the legendary Scottish
group, the Yummy Fur. Videothing’s distinct style has inspired other OVZ-makers
and established a sense of feeling the show, the band, and the interview as one
experience, breaking from the television show mold. Videothing therefore differs
greatly from the un-YouTube-able Debunk Punk; its content surges past the
screen like a shot of Attention Deficit Disorder verging on an epileptic fit.
Appearing bands include: No Age, Crystal Antlers, Animal Style, Soft Pack, Girls,
Nodzzz, Strange Boys, Yummy Fur, Mika Miko, and Dum Dum Girls, among
others.
52

Talk about the format—how did you come up with that? Do you see it as a show? Or
as a magazine? What other kinds of frameworks are you pulling from?
When I was first starting, I was working for the Echo and Spaceland [venues in Los
Angeles] and all they wanted was live stuff and interviews. So I tried to do that but make
it how I wanted…I always liked that really fast, kinetic style. It evolved—the beginning
[episodes] from three years ago are a bit more strict. Now, I veer off on tangents and
stuff. One influence I have is TV Party, with Glenn O’Brian, who was the head writer for
High Times in the ‘70s—he had a cable access show with Chris Stein from Blondie.
Videothing feels like something in between a variety show and a magazine. Tell me
how you see the format. When you say “veer off”—what do you mean?
I write an outline of a show, everything written out: “walking in sign—shots of sign—
duct tape on door…” but lately I’ve been doing less of that. I just go to the show and see
if some random person will hold the sign. Sometime people get it, and when they don’t
it’s almost even better. In the UK, it’s the opposite; people come up to you and want to
know what you’re doing with a camera.
That’s interesting; it’s probably less a privacy/paranoia, or property equals privacy
kind of mind set…
Yeah, it’s in their culture. Recently I toured with Girls, and shot at the home of [guitarist]
Jon Anderson’s mom in Bristol after the Dot to Dot Festival. Chris and Jon just started
playing acoustic guitars…two years ago I wouldn’t have known how to video tape that.
But now, I’m more into doing random stuff.
Well, that’s like a lot of art forms. It’s one thing to break off from a structure that you
know. It’s another to just be flailing around without knowledge, and you don’t know
where you’re coming from or where you’re going. So, would you call this a videozine?
Do you entertain that you’re borrowing from other well-tread media forms used for
music?
I saw it at one point as a videozine. I grew up in New York, and there was this dude, Sid
X who would always videotape punk shows. That’s how he made his living—bootlegging
this stuff and coming to a show and selling a tape to a kid. And you would buy it and see
yourself dancing! It was great. So I always saw Videothing as an extension of that.
53
As a documentarian role?
And Target Video, too—they were San Francisco-based. They shot that crazy video of
the Cramps at the mental institution. Recently they had a Target Video retrospective at
the Getty. I was blown away! I see Videothing as segueing from that.
You see it as documenting more than a music video, or an interview, but a broader
cultural kind of thing...
Yeah. Take Pitchfork—they’re more like music-worshippers.
Or, public relations-worshippers.
It’s like advertising. And when I first started, I was like “it’s about the bands!” and then I
quickly dropped that—as far as their promotional pieces. Now, I see that it isn’t about
the bands, it’s about everything around it—the band just happens to be a part of it.
Right, that’s a more evolved concept—taking it out of the product. So it has this real
documenting role, but do you feel like what you are doing is artistic?
It’s both. Documentaries are art—like look at Werner Herzog…
Right, documentaries are art, but you’re approaching video in this very nuanced way…
Lately, the line between documentary and fiction has become so blurred.
Like Spinal Tap? [Laughs]
Yeah! Or Anvil, too.
But that’s real. It’s two real people…
Right, but you can’t really believe it—a lot like when you watch American Movie.
Yeah, it’s so bleak—or the ridiculousness of everyone’s lives. Or like F is for Fake.
You can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake. Videothing is like that too—some is staged,
some is scripted. Target Video was just in the Getty; time turns things into art, in a way.
If you go into thinking its art, and not some promo-video, it gives it more legs.
Do you see Videothing as being punk? Or how is it working for you?
Like getting me work?
54
No, like creatively.
I got into video after I got into punk. So I always want to bring that to film and video. I
had done big budget music videos before Videothing, and I couldn’t figure out how to
bring punk into that then…
What wasn’t working for you when you were making big budget, blah blah blah kind
of stuff?
You’re not doing it for you. You’re just a hired gun—and the budgets now are so
miniscule it’s insulting.
You don’t make money off of Videothing?
No, every now and then.
Through advertising?
I sometimes make money, if a band is like, “cover this event”—South-By-Southwest or
something.
Like being sponsored. If you could get paid doing this stuff would you?
Oh, yeah. Videothing has been more of a job than any job I’ve ever had. I don’t want to
sell out, but I’m grooming dogs during the day right now.

55

Figure 5: MondoVision Flyer Image by Kevin McCarthy. This flyer for “Episode Two” shows how co-Creator
Kevin McCarthy’s signature style keeps MondoVision an aesthetic cut above the rest, on and off camera.
The strong graphic lines and font choice feel timeless, recalling elements of Futurism and ‘70s post-post
minimalism. The cryptic details trickling down the page insist on a patient examination, similar to how LP
covers became in the album-rock era of the late-‘60s and ‘70s. The “Episode Two” flyer is posted at shops
and given out all around town, just like the events this OVZ covers. It’s hot off the press and it’s only
available online.

MondoVision with Jon Shade
San Francisco, California, January 2010.

Jon Shade and Kevin McCarthy started MondoVision because they were bored of
the standard two-hour punk show videos complete with bad camera work and
worse sound quality. Both wrote blueprints for the episodes and interviewed
bands, while Shade focused on editing and McCarthy contributed elaborate
graphic art (see: “Episode Two” above) for the videos or used as flyers
announcing new episodes. MondoVision stands out for its ability to describe
more than just new sounds, bands, and performances, instead sprawling into the
world of unlikely all-ages venues, traveling around the Bay Area and across
Europe to find out how people across the world are using punk as a way to
connect with each other and make music. MondoVision often has half a dozen
friends contributing in varying degrees to each episode. Shade and McCarthy also
56
play in the post-punk group, Rank/Xerox, which has just self-released a seven-
inch record. These two components prove unique in the world of OVZ-makers and
the seamless, collective creativity is apparent in their content, camera-work,
editing, and ideas. The level of engagement stands out from the rest and
presents itself as a whole community existing outside the computer screen. I find
MondoVision more compelling and more inspiring than any other OVZ for this
reason. Appearing bands include: Nodzzz, Grass Widow, Needles, Young
Offenders, Parasites Go!, No School Fridays, Kurws, Wet Dog, XYX, Tuberculosis,
Traditional Fools, and Peligro Social, among others.

When did you start doing MondoVision and who was involved in the beginning?
It was about a year and half ago. Kevin [McCarthy] and I had talked about doing a
videozine. I like video, it seemed like something fun to do. Whoever is around me, or
whoever I’m living with ends up getting pulled into it, contributing to it.
Why didn’t you just do a video, or just a ‘zine? Why pull from multiple formats?
It’s more about using video than making a magazine. That’s why we call them “episode
one” instead of “issue one” because it’s modeled after cable access. I used to work for a
cable access company and I’m really into…
Wayne’s World?
Yeah, I’m really into Wayne’s World, basically. And I used to make video comps, of
hardcore [punk] bands. They were long and boring to watch because it was just music. I
started collaborating with people to come up with a better idea of how to make a more
entertaining punk video. That’s how MondoVision came about.
Let’s talk about format for a minute. Vim from Debunk Punk was talking about editing
a lot, and reacting to that MTV quick cut-away style by slowing things down,
elongating the content, doing a lengthy, tedious interview that was essentially, un-
YouTube-able. MondoVision is sort of a combination of these different styles…
Kevin and I talk about things a lot, how we’re representing stuff. Every episode is a
failure at attempting to cover something serious. But I still like how they turn out. We’re
not journalism, as much as we would like to strive for that. We’re too goofy.
57
But doesn’t it have a documentarian role? What do you see as being the difference
between those two methods?
It’s not just strict documenting.
It’s not neutral.
It’s artistic…in itself.
It is journalism in that it’s encapsulating this great little burp of culture.
The other thing about the MondoVision format is that we try to mix it up so it isn’t the
same every time. It hasn’t gotten as weird as I have wanted it to be.
Why? What stuff haven’t you tried?
They’ve been somewhat similar…we made those music videos of bands because after
you film a band playing live a couple of times, it gets pretty boring. It’s OK that every
episode is a failure as long as it is failing at being something totally different.
One similarity I see in people wanting to use cassettes and videozines is that they are
both easily manipulated. In terms of video-culture, what seems tried and true to you
about its tactics?
It’s got the best things I like about punk; people are doing it themselves, and doing it on
a very low level. They don’t have to rely on anyone else, do-it-yourself. And Xerox
machines are great, I love paper ‘zines. But it just seems like it’s 2009, we have all this
technology and as soon as I’m done editing an episode, it can be on the Internet ten
minutes later.
For free.
Yeah. Whereas with a record, you record it, you get it mastered, and then you get it
plated, and then you get it pressed, and then you get it out to the stores, and then you
get it to people like a year later. With the first one, we filmed two days before the
episode was out on the Internet. You could have gone to that show and then watched it
on a videozine a few days later.
How do you think the content you choose speaks to that immediacy?
58
We’re trying to keep it relevant, and not cover history. We aren’t doing retrospectives,
or research. Just what’s here and now.
That seems important in the context of both video and punk. They both seem to be
preoccupied at times with documenting the past.
We talked about how to make punk documentaries of the future obsolete. Have you
seen that documentary American Hardcore? It’s kind of disappointing to watch…
…For so many reasons.
It’s just all these old guys talking about the past and telling present people…
That nothing is happening now.
They literally say hardcore died in ’85.
And then the summer after it’s out they’re all touring—“oh, wait never mind, there’s
still a dollar in it?”
Target Video was rad.
I talked about that with Michael from Videothing.
We’d seen Videothing before we started MondoVision and it was an inspiration.
He and I were discussing how Target Video was in the Getty, and that transition into a
museum of modern art. Do you see MondoVision as having a relationship outside of
what you’re documenting? Like when you say you’re showing “stuff that’s relevant”—
to..?
…To people living in this place, during this time. We try to film punk shows outside of
the normal—shows at the landfill, or out somewhere with a generator. Kevin and I
talked about never having footage from a bar. We also talked about not covering punk
anymore. We started to feel silly.
I don’t think you should feel silly. But that’s kind of the big theme connecting all of
these things—they all have to do with underground music and usually within that,
punk. What other kind of content do you think would reflect what you’re trying to
convey?
59
Non-musical projects that people are doing, like when we covered [the all ages venue
and record shop in San Francisco] Thrillhouse. Or if someone was doing an art show,
we’d do that…it’s all centering around music though.
Let’s shift to the MondoVision aesthetic. I first became interested in MondoVision
because of Kevin’s drawings.
Yeah, he does all the drawings and the music.
It’s a really good example of merging these media forms like videos, zines, film,
literature, but then also this very tight, perfectly fitted visual art that Kevin
contributes. How do you think his stuff specifically speaks to the style of
MondoVision?
It’s really important to have the flyers. That way it isn’t just an Internet thing, you can go
pass them out to people…
Why is that important?
It’s like the physical Xeroxed ‘zine part of it.
It’s almost like an event; you see the MondoVision flyer up there on the wall at the
record store along with all these shows that are happening. His composition is very
collage-y, but it’s all ink. That cut and pasting of reality really reflects video, to me.
You should see him struggle—he always tries to for simple, graphic design, but…
But you can feel the tension in it. In the flyer of the second episode, it starts off at the
top very simply, and then by the bottom there are all these cryptic weird messages
and intricacies happening. He puts a lot of time into it. Do you want to talk about the
labor aspect of all of this? The idea that you’re not getting paid for this, how that
might reflect on issues of art and production…
The second episode only took two weeks and it was really easy. I like that we do it for
free because it makes it a lot more forgivable. Like, look we’re just goofing off.
So you see that exchange as having a legitimizing function?
We applied for a grant from Southern Exposure and we didn’t get it and I was kind of
glad. I was getting really stressed.
60
How do you see a totally different medium like WZRD MNTN that puts out a lot
similarly minded cassette releases, as contributing to what you’re doing?
MondoVision is like another project, like WZRD MNTN. All punks should have projects.
You should have a band, or a zine, or a label, everyone should be participating.
Punks are kind of prone to bitching, so it’s a good rule to get invested.
If you’re just going to a show for entertainment, it’s just not…
There’s a vacant absorbing that can feel disingenuous, or voyeuristic. Throughout this,
I’ve struggled to define what makes something mainstream, and that might be a really
solid tenet to draw the line with. Two ways you can credibly distinguish those worlds
is through a do-it-yourself ethos and participating rather than observing.
Not getting paid—it makes it easy for anyone to do MondoVision. It’s free, except for
maybe a $5 BART fare.
Because you already have the equipment.
Nowadays all computers come with some rudimentary editing software.
Altogether though, if you didn’t have a computer or a camera or anything, how much
would someone need for the base capital to start something like MondoVision?
Maybe $300. You can borrow all the computer/Internet kind of stuff.
The economy of an online videozine is interesting, too, because, like a performance, it
costs the same to put it on for one person as it does a hundred people, or a billion
people.
That’s what’s attractive to me about the Internet. I hate computers, but I like using
them. It’s important to take advantage of the resources we have now, and not get stuck
in the past. Back to why we didn’t do a print ‘zine—the Internet is what the Xerox
machine was for the ‘80s.
Even just harnessing the individual-sized media beginning in the ‘80s, in that book, Rip
It Up and Start Again, [Reynolds] talks about when the Walkman came out and how
insane that was –suddenly your life was a movie with music soundtrack all day long. It
takes a certain amount of hell to bring technology to that point of individual consumer
access, but once you do…people are able to do all kinds of amazing things, everything
61
just kind of jumps off. Going back to the Internet then, you’re using it basically for
dissemination.
Our website is not meant to be really dealt with, it’s just functioning to go watch an
episode and then hopefully turn off your computer.
Yeah in the Episode Two flyer we were discussing earlier, it says “turn on your
computer” at the top and then after all the information listed it says, “and then turn it
off.” I really liked that, it seemed so reasonable. How does [your band] Rank/Xerox fit
into this?
It’s the same thing. MondoVision started when I didn’t have anything else going on and
just had a normal job. I felt really lame. Honestly, with MondoVision, I would really like
someone to just take it over!
62
Chapter 7 Endnotes

52
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London, England: Routledge, 1979), 118. Hebdige
speaks on this point of transforming reality with regard to film and literature and the French Tel Quel
group, which “attempt to go beyond conventional theories of art (as mimesis, as representation, as a
transparent reflection of reality, etc.( and to introduce instead ‘the notion of art as ‘work’, as ‘practice’, as
a particular transformation of reality, a version of reality, an account of reality.’” This seems to parallel
Crony, whether he knows it or not, as he plunges into the thankless job of the artist albeit through
documentation. Crony’s commitment to artistically documenting art parallels the artist relationship with
transformation.
63
Chapter 8: Flip the Side

Figure 6: Beat Happening Flyer Image By Calvin Johnson. A flyer for a live show drawn by Calvin
Johnson, singer of the 1980s-‘90s Olympia, Washington band, Beat Happening, and founder of the
seminal independent label, K Records.

Johnson’s childlike stick-figure rendering of a smiling kitty adorned virtually
everything K made. In a funny way, it was a very punk rock gesture. “They drew
pictures of bunnies and kitties while everybody else was trying to do these slick
graphics or at least something professional,” says Northwest underground music
mainstay Steve Fisk. “Independent rock was struggling to look professional—the
Eighties had created this idea that good graphics were slick graphics. So Calvin
drawing everything and Xeroxing it or doing it really crude on Macintosh art, that
was just another way of being rude.” And the kitty cat fulfilled another function,
of taking punk rock ideas about inclusion seriously. “It’s very embracing,” [K
Records worker] Candice Pederson explains. “You allow people to not be scared
of something or feel like they have to pass some test to become a part of
something.”
Michael Azerad, “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” 2001.
53

64

The scrawl of a cartoon kitty riding a broomstick exerts a homemade innocence
encapsulating an entire world of shows, releases, and bands on Johnson’s K Records.
There is an immediately apparent feeling that the band has the time to draw the flyers
and contributes to every aspect of putting on a gig. The show itself will be held in a park
at 4 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon; this fact complements the sense of openness of
encouraging all ages to attend. It also permits the performance to be stumbled upon
accidentally by any curious passer-by. Hanging out might actually occur, instead of
paying money to a disconnected venue and promotional staff. Two thrillingly separate,
but cohesive worlds are encased within the mystery of the flyer and the event it will
produce: what will it feel like to go see this band in the park downtown? The same basic
drawing appears on the mail-order catalogs and record sleeves released by K. The
cartoon also implies that the pressings and ambitions are so small they might be
decorated by hand. K’s first single sleeve featured musical instruments individually
colored-in with a big red marker. The relationship between the band and the label, in
this case the same entity, might also reflect the approachability of their music, which is,
too, craftily self-taught. The flyer, the afternoon show, the record sleeve, and the music
captured by each vehicle read: small, home-made, individual, and ultimately yours for
the copying. The place your band plays, the way in which your show is advertised, and
the means for releasing your records, each become as sensitively considered as the
music your band plays. Ultimately, Johnson’s mediums are subject to creativity before
technology. Finally, the excitement builds and builds until you realize: even you can
draw a flying kitty cat.
65
Chapter 8 Endnotes

53
Michael Azerad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-
1991(New York, New York: Back Bay Books, 2001), 475. (Citation includes both image and text.)
66
Bibliography
Angus, Ian. Primal Scenes of Communication. Albany, New York: State University of New
York Press, 2000.
Azerad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie
Underground 1981-1991. New York, New York: Back Bay Books, 2001.
Beatles Cassette Tape-ography. “History of Beatles Cassettes by Frank Daniels.”
http://www.friktech.com/btls/tapes/k7.htm (accessed March 16, 2010).
Burger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis, Minnesota: The University of
Minnesota Press, 1984.
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, California: University of
California Press, 1984.
Foster, Hal. Return of the Real. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1984.
Fuller, Matthew. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005.
Harding, Courtney. “Tape Echo: Specialty Labels Keep Cassettes Alive.” Billboard
Magazine, October 11, 2008.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London, England: Routledge, 1979.
Hebdige, Dick. Cut ‘N’ Mix. London, England: Routledge, 1987.
Hegarty, Paul. “The Hallucinatory Life of Tape.” Culture Machine 9 (2007),
http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/82/67 (accessed October 2,
2009).
Lexus Official Website: “The Lexus ES 330.” http://www.lexus.com (accessed February
20, 2010).
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. New York, New
York: Bantam Books, 1967.
Reynolds, Simon. Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-84. London, England:
Penguin Books, Ltd, 2005.
Rhizome Blog: “101 Cassette Labels by Ceci Moss.” http://rhizome.org/editorial/2868
(accessed August 19, 2009).
67
Rombes, Nicholas. A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982. New York, New York:
Continuum International Publishing, 2009.
Savage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. New
York, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Sterling, Linder. Works 1976-2006. Zurich, Switzerland: JRP-Ringier Publishing, 2006.
Zines, E-Zines, and Fanzines: “Approaching the ‘80s Zine Scene: Counterculture and the
Underground Press by Stephen Perkins.”
http://www.zinebook.com/resource/perkins/perkins3.html (accessed November 1,
2009).
68
Appendix A:
Foster’s Theory of the Neo-Avant-Garde
Art theorist Hal Foster’s Return of the Real frames the large subject of the avant-garde’s
position within the history of Art by using three, and maybe four, stages: (1) consensus
on what is art, (2) the development of this notion’s quality and skill, like in Renaissance
painting for example, and (3) the emergence of the avant-garde to criticize the
institution of (1) and (2), as seen in Dada collage. And possibly (4), the emergence of a
neo-avant-garde as reusing these ideas to further critique the message, the medium, its
user, and the avant-garde itself. In (4) we basically see a collapsing of the
monumentality of (1), (2), and (3) as institutions. The re-examining of the institution was
the main preoccupation with the avant-garde. And as it slowly became an institution
itself, the neo avant-garde re-examined its very role as a forward-thinking group of
artists.
54

69
Appendix B:
De Certeau’s Le Perroque
Paul Hegarty’s article, “The Hallucinatory Life of Tape” emphasizes the importantly
outmoded status of the cassette in consumerism. He acknowledges that unprofitable at
best, or trade/at-cost business models a typical capitalistic rotation is totally
unworkable. The OVZ’s limitless viewings also pose an awkward shape to ideas of buying
and selling. Further, Crawford remarks that even if making a living from WZRD MNTN
became possible, he would choose not to. In the same way that he sees it being
impossible to exist within conventional art, music, and culture, tape as a “reject”
medium he also see it as an alternative to how things are bought and sold. This brings a
nice illustration to de Certeau’s understated utopian element of art, media, production,
and motivation. The utopian aspect of Crawford’s work outlines the ways in which
society does and doesn’t value art, does and doesn’t reward production, does and
doesn’t document culture. The German academic Peter Berger describes this artistic
labor as a “claim to a happiness society does not permit.”
55
How does our society insist
on equating low art and technology with the labor of love? De Certeau’s le perroque, or
productively messing around at work to benefit one’s self rather than the set task of an
employer, broadens to include cassettes and OVZs. To be messing around in the rigid
structure of work being defined as labor for payment—WZRD MNTN manipulates the
objective as the process and its product through documenting culture through
cassettes.
70
Appendices Endnotes

54
Hal Foster, Return of the Real (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), 9, 14. Hal Foster’s
stages are largely responding to Peter Burger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde, which outlines a similar critical
sequence. However, Foster’s reiteration is used in this paper because it lends itself more easily to my
specific case studies.
55
Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis, Minnesota: The University of Minnesota Press,
1984), 25.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Scott, Jessica D. (author)

Core Title Media elaboration in underground music

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Degree Conferral Date 2010-05

Publication Date 05/09/2010

Defense Date 04/01/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cassettes,de Certeau,Dick Hebdige,Jess,media,OAI-PMH Harvest,punk,Scott,tapes,underground music,videozines

Language English

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Advisor Anawalt, Sasha (committee chair), Page, Tim (committee member), Willis, Holly (committee member)

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