We’ve come a long way since the first audio cassette, but a lot of underground indie artists are still breaking through the crowded sound barrier that is the modern music industry by using similar appraoches as the earliest multi-track recording artists did. Through the lens of musician and sound designer Dino DiMuro who’s lived through it all, we revisit the early days of audio recording and indie cassette labels with today’s guest feature.

Cassette Underground: The First Indie Revolution
Written by: Dino DiMuro

As an independent musician, I feel very fortunate to have experienced two entirely separate indie music “revolutions.”

We know where we stand now, with CDRs, MP3’s, streaming services and playlists, but there was a time when being an unsigned or underground artist was very different.

Though the Phillips audio cassette format was invented in 1962, it didn’t come into wide use until the end of that decade. If you recorded at home or work, you’d generally use a reel to reel tape machine. My first tape recorder had tiny 3” reels of tape and each side ran about 7 minutes. I was a sound freak from an early age and loved taping family parties, TV show theme songs and eventually my own music (though it would be a long while before that music actually contained notes and chords!)

For anyone who dealt with the spaghetti strands of sound tape, the cassette was an immediate and huge improvement. The standard length was C-60 (30 minutes per side) and generally the tape stayed within the cassette housing; If it came out, you wound it back with a pencil.

“Multi-tracking, even at the cassette level, was a game changer.”

– Dino DiMuro

Fast Forward was a new feature I’d never seen on a reel machine. Rewind and Fast Forward speeds were lightning fast. And for machines basically invented for voice memos, phone calls or meetings, the fidelity was quite good.

It wasn’t long before I (and many of my peers, unknown to me) began pretending these cassettes were actually albums that we put out on our own labels. My tape label was called Phantom Soil, featuring artists like myself and my best friend John (The Berth Band), my visiting nephews, and my cousin with the filthy mouth (those were my Comedy albums). Through the early 1970’s I made a couple hundred of these cassette albums, but I was basically alone with these tapes after my best friend and partner moved away.

Then as the 80’s approached, two things happened: the stereo cassette became mainstream and Teac invented the 4-track cassette Portastudio.

Though I always loved cassettes, I never kidded myself that they were anything but a stopgap format, but while riding in a friend’s car he played me a label-released stereo cassette that blew me away. It seemed as clear and full as a vinyl record without all the annoying clicks and pops that only seemed to be getting worse. The Portastudio suddenly allowed home tapers with limited funds the ability to overdub four tracks or even more if you were clever. Before this, the only way to overdub for most of us was to record something on one machine then play it back while singing or jamming along into a second machine. Multi-tracking, even at the cassette level, was a game changer.

Now, I myself never got a Portastudio because I’d always dreamed of owning a professional 1/4” Teac 4-track recorder. It was over $1000 in 1983 and it took me forever to afford it. But as a result my fidelity was even better than the Portastudio. I began to professionally edit my albums and dub them onto C-45 tapes, then xeroxed primitive covers and gave them out to friends. I also learned there were local stations that played independent artists late at night; My first airplay was on a show called “Funny Rock, God Knows” hosted by Brent Wilcox. One night Wilcox made a pitch for a new magazine called “OPtion” which was taking over from a music & arts zine called OP which was closing shop. I immediately became a charter subscriber.

When the first issue arrived, I was shocked and amazed to discover reviews, listings and ads for a huge number of cassette artists. I thought I’d been the only one doing this, but then realized it would have been impossible for such artists NOT to exist. And they were all over the world! Though some wanted $5 for a tape, most were willing to trade for your own cassettes. Once you wrote to one artist, you’d usually get a free mailing list with other artists willing to trade while your name got added to yet more mailing lists. Suddenly you were part of the Cassette Underground, or The Mail Music Network.

Now, I’m actually compressing the amount of time all this took. We’re talking about a world before cell phones and the internet, before digital files or CDRs. Vinyl was still the professional format of choice with CDs just barely starting. Your only maps with which to navigate these indie music networks were zines and mailing lists.

The network was not an instantly accessible place to be. There were factions which were openly hostile to each other. Noise artists often had problems with pop artists. Mail Art people didn’t always like Cassette People. Some music was vinyl only. Artists who charged for music didn’t like people asking for trades. Some zine reviewers had axes to grind and actively kept certain artists locked out. OPtion blackballed Daniel Johnston and Lisa Suckdog and eventually even me! But even at the most benign level there were groups of music friends who already knew each other and it wasn’t easy to get accepted, just like the in-groups in high school.

Though I was lucky and made some lifelong friends with my very first letters of inquiry, it took me forever to break out of my small circle and I drove my new pals nuts with the number of tapes I pushed on them. Somehow I had the idea that reviewing for OPtion magazine might open new avenues to explore and that’s exactly what happened. People saw my name in print and began sending me unsolicited tapes. I’d pick up some of the rejected cassettes at the OPtion office and write to those people. Eventually my plan worked too well as I became overwhelmed and eventually burned out on tape reviewing.

Now I’d like to walk you through just what it meant to be an indie musician in those days compared to now.

When I began planning an album, I’d start with conceptual ideas using a black ballpoint in one of my many college-ruled notebooks. I’d sketch cover ideas and some rough directions (use lots of acoustics, try a new keyboard, etc). Meanwhile I had stereo cassettes of song demos I recorded live into my tape deck. Eventually I’d make a mixtape of the best demos and learn them for recording onto the 4-track.

I had a system of bouncing my 4-tracks to a digital stereo mix on VHS tape using pulse code modulation which I’d then record back onto the 4-track for more overdubs. I could build 10 or even 12 tracks if I was careful. Then I’d mix down to a stereo master and edit the master with a safety razor on a metal splicing block. My friends would dub their albums from cassette masters, but I preferred to go from 1/4” tape to cassette; Anything to keep the sound as clean as possible.

For the cover I began with black and white drawings xeroxed on colored paper, using an IBM Selectric at work for credits. Kinkos Copiers was a big deal for indie artists and some people had ways of re-setting the number of copies so they could pay less (I never did this!). When color xerox became affordable, I cut and pasted various images with scissors for my covers or had a friend do it for me. My final cassette “Gower Street” was the only tape I paid to have professionally designed, duplicated and printed.

Tape done, I’d get out my cassette-sized mailing envelopes, stamps and stapler, plus my mailing list of friends. My initial mailing was about 20. Each recipient would get a short letter along with the tape (it was bad form to send just a tape with no letter) plus my latest xeroxed label catalogue. Generally you’d make a new catalogue with every new release. This was actually a fun part of the process, as you could add snippets of reviews to your listings or redesign your catalog pages in different ways. They also worked as a kind of newsletter. Music catalogues were some of the favorite things I got in the mail and I’ve kept most of them.

Next came radio stations. I had a couple local stations that would gladly play a song from each new tape and from mailing lists I also had addresses of indie-friendly radio stations across the country and the world (the glorious WFMU still plays me sometimes!). Then came copies for zine reviews. Aside from OPtion (which many tapers found to be way too corporate), there were a wealth of cassette-friendly zines, though none lasted very long: Sound Choice, Electronic Cottage, Factsheet Five and Gajoob are just a few names out of many. I would find new zines by walking down Hollywood Boulevard at lunch to an international newsstand (remember those?) that carried lots of music zines and picking the best ones. Later I’d make that same walk to see if I got reviewed.

There were also a surprising number on legitimate rock magazines like Spin or Alternative Press that had indie review sections. My friend Jim Rite of Dimthingshine was a featured artist in Spin. Guitarist Jim Santo had a column in Alternative Press called Demorandum which reviewed cassettes and CDs with great respect for the struggling artists. I was also lucky to be featured in an issue of Keyboard, especially as I can’t really play!

Many home tapers had actual working bands and toured with Hollywood being an obvious stopping point. I met my earliest contact Al Perry when his band The Cattle performed at the famous Palomino. Many of the artists I read about in OPtion would play local venues like the Anti-Club and eventually my curiosity had me on a train up north to meet other hometapers like San Jose maverick Don Campau who was the linchpin of that original wave of home tapers. Some of the East Coast tapers actually had small conventions.

Through all this, it must be remembered that communication was by letter or telephone. I had many long phone calls and interviews with home tapers, including a couple with women artists for whom I had developed heavy crushes. Though I never actually did this, I wrote a song called “Phone Sex with Home Tapers” to describe the insularity of our scene.

In one of my newsletters at the time, I described my attempt to navigate what was called The Internet. For me that was America Online and a portal that led to the original text-only Internet with no pictures or hyperlinks. I remember musing that maybe someday all home tapers would be trading and communicating through this new medium, but my conclusion was that for now, “it’s not for me.”

Slowly, digital took over for analog. Home tapers had been saddened when the DAT format, the next logical step for cassettes, turned out to be difficult to work with and quick to break down. My first CD “The Simple Chance of Life” was professionally printed in 1995 and for my guest artists this was every bit as exciting as appearing on a vinyl record. It took a few more years for recordable CDs to become affordable, but once they arrived, the cassette was quickly abandoned. At last, every single copy from your Master would sound exactly as good as the original. Cassettes are still fun, but I can’t imagine that most artists would ever want to go back.

At this point in my story, my personal life went into a period of upheaval. Though I never totally stopped making music, it feels like I entered a black hole for about three or four years. By the time I emerged, the indie music community was a very different animal. Many of my contacts were retired from music, dead or missing. It took me a long time and several false starts to establish contacts with new indie musicians, most of whom are much younger than me. Ironically I took a page from my past and began reviewing again and amazingly it worked just as well as the first time! I finally feel like I’m back to something similar to that incredible time when making homemade music felt entirely new. I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been to experience all this in one lifetime.

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About the author:
Dino DiMuro is an independent musician and sound designer based in Los Angeles.
Dino has been self-producing CDs and cassettes since the mid-80’s. On many of these releases he plays most everything except the drums, and on recent albums has taken on percussionist duties as well.

Dino’s music has been described as “Walt Disney on Acid” and is most often compared to Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and They Might Be Giants. He also shows heavy classical, classic rock, country and folk influences.

Dino’s next CD “Machine” is set for release around April 2024.

Keep up with Dino online through the below channels:

• Link
• Bandcamp
• YouTube

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Now, we’re wondering:

Did you start recording your own cassettes the same way Dino did?
What’s the earliest medium you started recording on?
Did you ever start your own record label from home?
Where do you see the next big shfit in music heading from where we are today?

Let us know in the comments!