TapeSNotRecords
From The Secret History of the Cedar Valley
Joe asked me to write some stuff about TapeSNotRecords, so I'll give it a try.
Previous to my involvement in Clipper Gore and Ragman Records, I made a go at attending Iowa State University as a Music Composition major. On a fateful trip to the Co-Op Records location in Ames, I picked up a zine that looked interesting, and it was in that zine, specifically an interview with the guy who ran Chaotic Noise Productions and the band Rectal Pus, that I became aware of a burgeoning tape-label scene that was going on nationwide, largely focused around home-recorded noisecore, grindcore, and experimental noise and power electronics styles, and largely propagated by sending cassette tapes through the mail.
I'm not sure if Jeremy Spaulding and I had already hatched the TapeSNotRecords scene before this while in high school, but I do remember him being involved in the first TapeSNotRecords release, "Explosion" by Gok. Gok was largely invented out of recordings that my high school friend Seth Thomson and I had made. I invented the band name out of what I perceived most people's reactions to Gok's music would be: "Gee, okay."
After reading the Rectal Pus interview, which I found hilarious and intriguing, I contacted Chaotic Noise Productions to order a Rectal Pus tape and see what else they were doing. I received cassettes of not only Rectal Pus, but also a hardcore band called Suppression and an experimental "lo-tech industrial" band called Expendable Citizen, and a bunch of little photocopied slips of paper with advertisements on them for other tape labels. This was how artists/labels of the tape-label scene advertised their wares, apparently, and typically tapes were sold for two or three dollars or trade for other music. I wrote to a couple others that sounded interesting, such as Wheelchair Full Of Old Men Records and Sonic Disorder, and pretty soon I was hooked.
I decided to try promoting Gok and other musical ideas I had at the time through this scene. I submitted a Gok song, "Just A Phase," for the Chaotic Noise Records compilation "Audio Terrorism." Pretty soon, I had fans, most of them other noise-tape artists. In particular I remember Steveggs from the band Pile Of Eggs and label Egg Scab Radio, based out of a city in the vicinity of Clevelend, OH. I continued to assemble Gok albums from old tapes, and recording new matierla on my own as Ozob, a nickname that Seth Thomson had coined for me when we were in school together at East High in Waterloo one day. That name came about because Seth had a habit of calling me "Bozo," but on one particular day we had a running gag of saying words backwards and "Ozob" just stuck somehow. I had started using it as my online name on internet BBSes such as ISCA BBS and various IRC channels when I went to ISU in 1993.
This involvement in the noise tape scene, plus enrolling in the ISU course "Intro To Music Technology" gave birth to my other solo project Flight Attendants, which was ostensibly trying to make industrial/noise music using lo-tech equipment such as analog synths, guitar effects pedals, and tape players in lieu of samplers.
I continued TapeSNotRecords and my involvement in the tape scene for some years after quitting ISU and moving back to Waterloo, and began utilizing the outlet of the "local artists" consignment at Cedar Falls' Co-Op Records. I had gotten along well with management and employees at Co-Op (Especially Old Man Curtis) since high school so they were quite accommodating. I would occasionally call up Steveggs on the phone at random times to shoot the shit. I released more Gok and Flight Attendants tapes through that channel, as well as a collaboration with Jeremy Spaulding called Mother Theresa's Vibrator (MTV for short). Flight Attendants tracks appeared on a couple other tape compilations I submitted them to, such as "Shroud" by Zyon Records.
It was through dial-up BBS contacts as well as the TapeSNotRecords releases I sold at Co-Op that I ended up meeting Joe Riehle, and that event led to the formation of No Consensus and Ragman Records.
-chuck hoffman--
