Wednesday, February 10, 2021

1980's & 90's TAPE TRADING CORRESPONDENCE

I still have a big box of correspondence from my 80's and 90's tape trading days, and not long ago, I pulled out a few interesting letters I got from all over the world. A common thing was to write a letter on the back of a flyer or some other odd piece of paper! The letter below from Chris Phinney was written on the back of this advert for MENTAL ANGUISH!
 
This letter cracks me up! I emailed it to Chris a while back, and he still remembered it!

It was explained to me that this letter from Egg & Anvil was stamped by the guy's wife. I never could figure it out, I guessed she either hated the tape I sent him, or it was just her own form of artwork. Either way, it was interesting, but a little difficult to read!

This was a submissions letter from Mike Tetrault for the multitude of his compilation tapes a person could be a part of if they so chose. Was there any topic not covered? It doesn't look like it!

Many letters were short and to the point like this one from Brian of The Lie Detectors.

People not only knew how to write back then, but many people made up their own style like this letter from Danielle in New Zealand.

When you didn't even know you had any fans, nothing was better than getting fan mail from somebody like mia hermana chiquita Geneveva in Bulgaria!!

Since most people don't even know how to write in cursive these days at all, I'll bet almost any amount of money that you don't know anybody who has handwriting like Ken Clinger!

At one point, I actually sent some of our tapes to real record companies like Geffen. I was totally surprised to even get a response, much less a cordial one like this!

4 comments:

  1. Funny how a lot of this type and handwriting conjures up memories in my head.

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  2. Not too funny Bryan, since you've been entrenched up to your neck in this from the beginning. Thanks!

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  3. Whoa! A personal letter from Geffen Records making a recommendation to you! That's awesome. I never had any response from a major label, not even a form letter.

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  4. In all my years making music & sending it out, I have never gotten so much as a yawn from a major label. Then again, Geffen could hear "Genius" when you sent your tape to 'em.

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