Rich here. No doubt many of you longtime followers of this blog know that its original focus was the cassette culture of the 1980's, which was a time when the emergence of 4-track cassette recorders made it possible for DIY musicians to record their music at home while being able to mix and overdub multiple instrumental and vocal tracks.
Some background: Of course, being recorded on cassette tapes meant that the fidelity and sound quality was fairly low, but those primitive 4-track recorders proved to be a great workshop for teaching musicians how to arrange and record their music. And the resulting explosion of lo-fi home recorded music gave birth to a whole new musical underground as musicians gave out their tapes to their friends and fans and traded them with other home-tapers, fanzines were created that devoted themselves to reviewing the 100's of new recordings that were floating around, and left-of-the-dial radio stations were broadcasting the best tapes from the cassette culture.
That's where I got my start as an indie musician in the early '80s, and despite the fact that the technology available to home recording artists these days is much more sophisticated, I still work and record with several of the artists I originally met and traded our primitive tapes with 30-40 years ago.
One of the earliest cassette culture artists I met back in the day continues to be one of its most prolific -- Christopher Zajkowski, an extremely talented musician who channels all the best influences of the Sixties and releases his home-recorded masterpieces under the name THE SQUIRES OF THE SUBTERRAIN. In most cases, Chris writes and plays all the instruments and sings all the vocals, as he does on "Evil Head," which is a great pop song from his 2008 collection, "Feel the Sun." And recorded in Analog!
