9.9.13: So Bad It’s Good – The Art Of Doing It Poorly
Some cassette packaging is bad. Just god fucking awful. But a select few, an elite squadron of zoinkers, make that shit so so sooooooo bad that it’s actually good. Somehow these turkeys manage to cross the border into dreggs-ville, floor the escalator, and make their way into a zone built just for them. A land where pixelated stickers are applied askew on twice-recycled Norelco cases just so. Where spray paint and Mod Podge are spat on discarded cassettes from the local library. Not because they are in a rush to get their release out into the world. No, no. It’s something else all together. It’s as if the part of the brain that tells a typical person “Yo, don’t use that poorly Photoshopped picture of Anthony Kiedis windsurfing, you can totally tell it’s not him” has been replaced with spray paint fumes and empty cases of Pepsi Jazz. These Sharpie and duct tape champions just must see the world differently. Shit like having uniform cassettes for a release is meaningless to them. Like a real estate agent trying to unload a crumbling shack as a “rustic fixer-upper with a cozy attitude” these noisers see cracked cases as “gently used cassette sweaters”, and I think they believe it in their core. It must be truly freeing, this nihilistic acceptance. It’s not bad, it’s brilliant. Here are three labels that do it so wrong it’s right.
American Tapes is a primo example. Started in the early-90’s by John Olson, AT’s discography is now hovering around the 1,000 release mark. It should be noted that some of the “releases” aren’t your standard “release” (ie: AM-900, a party that was held on April 23, 2011) but the lion’s share are cassettes. The early stuff was more mixed media projects than tapes, with materials like lacquer, plumbing tubes, dowels, caulk, toy train tracks, wood, and staples congealed together in a syrupy assemblage. Olson has evolved or devolved (depending on your mood) his style into what can only be described as truly American Tapeian. Shit is thrown together. Usually in heavily spray painted and flimsy boxes, polycases sealed with a random fragment of tape, an 11″x17″ poster with hyper-hued face collages folded into 4″x4″ squares, and re-purposed books-on-tape with a stray marker scrawl. Where the fuck is this dude gripping all of these books-on-tape from by the way?!? Thousands. He’s dubbed THOUSANDS of them. Where are they coming from?!? Anyway, even though all of the above sounds sorta negative, somehow it isn’t. I never get the feeling that Olson doesn’t give a fuck when he’s assembling a batch. I actually think he’s giving several fucks. Probably more fucks than the sleek as a mink coat pro-dubbed/pro-printed/shrink wrapped tape slingers give. That’s somewhat proven by the dumpster load of American Tape worship labels out there (you know who you are), but they never hit the nail square on the head. A random norm may see a stack of cassettes from American (FWI: despite the plethora of artist names, it’s probably Olson in some form) and declare that anyone could do that. If that’s the case, I haven’t seen it proven. And mugs have attempted for sure.
One of my favorite examples of Olson’s so bad/so good sensibilities is AM666: Sixes “666” 3xC26. Three tapes float around in a full size box like beer tabs inside a spent Coors can. The box is a knock off Raisin Bran, dusted with red, white, and blue spray paint. Enough to obscure the box, but light enough that you can still scope some of the nutritional facts. There is a postage stamp sized American Tapes logo pasted on the corner with another black & white photocopy that takes up about 70% of the box front. My favorite part; there was still fucking cereal in the box. Not two scoops, but like I said, it was a bo-bo brand. Not the real deal. Sometimes I just hold this thing in silence and laugh, knowing the results are totally what Olson envisioned in his dome. ‘Tis a thing that brings me much joy.
Out in Ohio is another straight up whacky crew that can’t be left out of this; Fairchild Tapes run by the Moth Cock brethren Doug Gent and Pat Modugno. There is some serious space casery going down with these dudes, and their output, in the most perfect ways. When chaps like this attempt to live the lavish cassette-life, they fail. They fail hard. Let’s face it, you can’t wake up at 3PM, eat some Skittles you found inside your NES, and then problem solve with NAC over the telephone about ink coverage and bleeds. But when they just ease back in a stained up La-Z-Boy and do what the little green dude that lives in their shirt pocket tells them to do, it’s gold. The majority of Fairchild tapes I own are either dubbed on prison cassettes with a dot of black ink on one side (I have no clue what that indicates??) or on some Recoton Ultra Flow cassettes from god knows when/where. A featured goof for me is a copy of the F.T.17: Godfrey “Scratched Oakley’s” tape where the label is sorta half torn off. As if Doug or Pat pursued a peel off that didn’t quite work out, followed by a “fuck it” declaration in unison. Then wrote F, a GIANT period, T, NO period, the number one, and I guess the number seven? Yeah, I suppose that could be a seven. Slap a sticker with a collage made on Paintbrush via Windows 3.1 on the cover, another sticker haphazardly inside for good measure, and top it off with a third hand-cut circle sticker on the case. NOT the part where it opens to persuade it to stay close. No, sir. It’s gonna go on the side opposite of that. Just because. Top it all off with oddly cut Jcards, spines that juuuuust don’t go far enough or juuuuust go a bit to far, rando price tags on cases and you got something that mom is most definitely going to hang up on the fridge. She don’t care if the sky is green and the dog has three legs. She loves you. She’ll always love you.
Last, but for the love of all you hold dear in this world, not least. MT5 Tapes. Stationed in Baltimore, MD as a kid brother to MT6 Records, MT5 does something that is very special. Some people try to make “bad” looking art in hopes of replicating an Angelfire webpage they did 15 years ago. Chasing that metaphorical dragon, ready to crop and invert an image on the fly. But to spawn images and cases this atrocious, to do this poor of a job, you gotta be born with it, baby. We all want to dunk from the foul line, 
but if you’re not Michael Jordan, it probably ain’t gonna happen. Same goes for New Age Hillbilly, the moniker of MT5’s CEO. His line is decently foul as well, so leave the dunking from it to him. Sure, you may hobble together a black and white picture of Elmo and some monkeys, cut it blindfolded, use packing tape to affix it to a CD slip case. But you had to think about it. You had to WANT it. MT5 just did it. It was like breathing or huffing glue to him. Natural as a rainbow.
Some people will never forget the moment they saw their newborn baby’s face for the first time, or where they were on 9/11. I’ll never forget first seeing the Palm Trees Cassette Duo / Legless split (MT5 0002-2008). Dave brought it over to play on Episode #6, giving a warning before letting it loose. The cover, another sticker (zoinkers love stickers), was too much to handle. The simple labels on the Jcard had Sharpie covering whatever word was before “Tapes 2008”. The insert bared the handwriting of several different humans, each using a different writing utensil. It become clearer with each passing second that this shit was high art. Or at least art that you made because you’re constantly… Whats the word? On the drugs.
I think the one unifying aspect of American, Fairchild, and MT5 Tapes, and why I accept their “bad” as “good”, is consistency. Like a hamster gripping a food pellet, every time they push the button the same thing comes out. They are fully aware of what’s going on here and are comfortable in their own skin, even if it’s coated with poorly placed stickers and paint splatter. I don’t want tapes that are garbage because the people making them are assholes that think it doesn’t matter. I want tapes that are garbage because the people making them are incredible and know it shouldn’t.
ARTIST: 
Other than the first Unguent release all Refulgent titles are available to grip. At least they are at the moment I am typing this. Things change though, man. That’s the way the world works. So 
