Chrome Germs
 Max Gudmunson

My dad was the one who got me into tapes. In the living room we had an armoire which was stockpiled with them. Some were commercial releases, and these I remember being the worst. Luckily for me, over the years he had dubbed about a hundred tapes with delta blues records, classical music and a better crop of mainstream artists from the 70s than existed in his LP collection. The blues tapes in particular were yellowed and brittle. Listening to them on any player required extreme caution; playing one in the car stereo resulted in severe warbling followed by the tape spewing its contents into the playback gears. Sometimes I would forsake the car system for a trusty boombox and listen to Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt or Leadbelly, fluttering, drowned in ancient hiss and record static. Bob Dylan occasionally made a cameo if my dad was present. John Fahey was the one we really bonded over. For years, whenever our family ate a Chinese dinner, dad would pull out one specific tape of Cantonese string ensembles. Cassette was the "go-to" medium in our house; not always the ideal for fidelity but the only one that thrived in any situation.
While I'm working on another longer piece (I'll only say it's vaguely about tape dropping), here are some stories about my favorite tapes from high school:

 1. Selections from "Dry Lungs IV" Compilation (Subterranean Records, 1989)  / The Meteors "Teenagers from Outer Space" (Ace Records, 1989)
One summer during high school I worked at a garden nursery with a guy named Michael Kerkes who had been a DJ in San Francisco in the late 80s / early 90s. He put me up on a ton of music from that era, including some noise artists who I assumed were "industrial." I'm pretty sure that was the first time I heard Whitehouse, and I hated it. He was a longtime fan of the Cramps, and since I had a passing interest in them he lent me this great CD by the Meteors, another Psychobilly (is that word really used anymore?) group I had never heard of. It blew away anything else I had heard in that genre, which is kind of a dead end anyway, but there you have it. The songs were either about monsters, vampires, outer space or zombies and delivered in gruff Cockney accents. The "Dry Lungs" compilation included some great tracks from Dissecting Table, Helene Sage and Francis Gorge, The Gerogerigegege and Controlled Bleeding, which sound better than ever now that the tape has practically disintegrated.

 2. Land of the Loops "Straight Out of Milner" (Slabco, 1995?)
Alan Sutherland released several tapes on the Seattle based Slabco label before "Bundle of Joy" became a hit (in the Northwest, at least). At one point a Land of the Loops track was used in a Miller beer commercial, and Washingtonians were either proud or disgusted (I heard the man opted to get paid in product). I wouldn't say "Straight Out of Milner" sounds dated, because it leaves me with the same feeling as it did more than a decade ago: a goofy-as-fuck anything goes vibe, backwards Jabba the Hut samples and Casio melodies over scatterbrained, offbeat Akai sequencing and liberal use of the same 20 breakbeats that most rap producers wouldn't have touched even by 1995. Most DJs wouldn't have dared to play this in a hiphop set, but it made regular rotation in my car. In its wide vision and limited technological prowess, "Straight Out of Milner" shows an unassuming indie rock guy reinventing sample based music for his own end. In doing so, he comes closer to capturing the wonder and imagination of Grandmaster Flash's early mixes than many "professional" DJs and producers.

 3. V/A "How I Learned to Hate" (No label, 1997 ?)
Jeff Andersen (of defunct Seattle hardcore band Carmenzito) compiled this around the period we had a radio show together at my high school in Purdy, WA. The insert included shrunken photocopied logos of almost every band on the list, which is impressive even for a teenager with too much time on his hands. The title pretty much says it all, but just for kicks here's the track listing:
1-2: Cease and Desist "Strapped," "Dead Black and Blue"
3-4: No Class "National Anthem," "Hypocrisy"
5-6: Botch "Third Party in a Tragedy," "Contraction"
7-8: Whipped "Bank Party," "King Good Sincerity," "Oasis of Shit"
9: Meatminder "Green Envy"
10: Moral Crux "Teenage Atrocity"
11: The Rickets "Hatefuck"
12: Whorehouse of Representatives "Prepare to Fight"
13: The Mukilteo Fairies "Contention"
15: Defiance "Kept Docile"
16: Insult to Injury "Long Pork"
17-19: Subhumans "Subvert City," "No," "Zyklon B Movie"
20-21: Nausea "Hear Nothing, See Nothing," "Ain't No Feeble Bastard"
22-24: Toxic Narcotic "Fuck You," "Drink," ?
25-28: Whorehouse of Representatives "Society's Trap," "Blinded by Darkness," "Fuck Authority," "Brainwashed"
29-30: Not My Son "Twelve," "Close My Eyes"
31: Submission Hold "Predisposed to Oppose"
32: U.N. "Man's Preservation"
34: Screwjack "Worst Laid Plans"
35: Brainsick "Us and Them"
36: John Q. Fascist "Stand By Me"
38: Blue Collar "World Wide Anti-Clique"
39: Humpy "You're A Joke"
40: TchKung! "Born in a Barn"
41-42: Crass "Mother Earth," "White Punks on Hope"
44: Murder City Devils "Tell You Brother"

 4. Cut Chemist "Rare Equations" (mid 90s?)
Cut Chemist produced a slew of tape-only mixes in his mid 90s post-Unity Committee, pre-Jurassic 5 days which dissolved into legend as quickly as they appeared. Being a typical latecomer, I only ever had a second generation copy of this without so much as a photocopied insert. Thankfully, the track list was intact. I wore out this copy, made a second dub, wore that out too. At first I was inspired to track down all of the original singles; I got less than halfway (a few years later) before I gave up on collecting funk altogether. "Rare Equations" puts most sample source mixes to shame, not including the later "Brainfreeze" sessions with DJ Shadow. The names aren't too obscure- Donald Byrd, Jimmy Smith, The Meters, The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band- although most of the songs are. No secrets, just good taste and adept mixing with a few record geek phone calls to Biz Markie thrown in for good measure. According to Discogs, someone "reissued" it on double CD in 2002 with a suspicious lack of information, so copies might still be floating around somewhere.

Once again, thanks to Brian Miller, the rest of the CG staff and all the labels and tape enthusiasts for sending me stuff to review. Have a great new year.

-Max