Cracker Jack Kid - Art Strike Mantra

Cracker Jack Kid ( Chuck Welch ) sent out these cassettes through the mail art network back in the late 80's as part of the infamous Mail Art Strike. The idea was that participants added their mantra or whatever they wanted basically to the end of the tape and sent it on to the next person until the tape was full and the last person sent it back to Chuck to copy and send copies to all participants - at least I think that was the idea. I made my own copy just in case this one got lost or for some reason I never got one. A compilation did eventually turn up along with documentation of the project. Hear part of it HERE.

Keith Bates & Roger Radio - Smoke In My Hands

Collaborative effort by two stalwarts of the mail art scene back in the 80's and 90's. Roger Radio ( Stevens ) who lives in Hove is also a poet, musician, educator, artist and all round good fellow. Keith Bates hails from Manchester, known as the Eclectic Hermit he is a musician and maker of fonts amongst other things. The other side of the cassette is a song by "Two 4th year girls - recorded at school " . Hear side one HERE.

Alvaro - Strong As A Bull

Alvaro "The Chilean With The Singing Nose " sent this back in the late 80's or early 90's ( no date on cassette ) from Squeaky Shoes Records in Germany. Just the one song - nothing the other side as far as I remember. Hear it HERE. His Discogs blurb says - Alvaro Peña-Rojas Real Name: Álvaro Ernesto Peña-Rojas Profile: Piano player, singer, and composer born in Valparaíso, Chile in 1943. Known as "the Chilean with the singing nose," he has released several singles with various Chilean rock bands in the early 70's ("The Challengers" and "The Boomerangs") before travelling to London in 1974 (due to exile from the Pinochet Regime), where he met Joe Strummer and formed The 101'ers. He now lives in Germany.

The New Improved Jook Savages - Radical Militant Vegetarians In Naziland

From Holy FunkRecords in San Anselmo in California. Made in 1992. Hear the first couple of tracks HERE.

David Zack and Snowwhite Jung - Add This To Your Lentils..

Long time mail artists and networkers Dave Zack and Snowwhite ( Susan Young ) sent this poor quality SONNI tape back in the early 90's. basically just Dave playing the guitar and chewing the fat about this and that with interjections from Snopes. Hear part of it HERE...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... "Tape is typical of Zack's ramblings and guitar plucking. I have tapes of ramblings and cello scrapings which are similar. The audio quality hasn't improved over the years so sorry for your ears. Keep that sturdy sack handy!
Zack was one of the first mail artists I contacted when I joined the network in 1980. He was very prolific with his letters which were also long and rambling and sometimes took up several sides of A4 and included photo copies of letters to other people on his network and spidery pen and ink drawings. The tapes arrived at intervals and always on very cheap cassettes like the one depicted. Sonni indeed!

"David was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1938 and received his Canadian landed immigrant status in 1970. He died in Texas, in 1995.

He studied at the University of Chicago and Cambridge University and taught at the University of Puerto Rico, San Francisco State College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Saskatchewan in Regina.

David is known for initiating the Nut Art movement in the late 60s in San Francisco together with Roy DeForest, Maija Peeples, Clayton Bailey, David Gilhooly and others. He became involved with mail-art in the early 70s and became one of its leading figures. He devoted the rest of his life to 'correspondense-art', and invented the Monty Cantsin Open-Pop-Star project together with Maris Kundzins and Istvan Kantor. David also got involved with Neoism in the early 1980s.

David took part in countless mail-art exhibitions around the world. He was also a professional art writer/critic with articles appearing in many publications in the 1960s and 1970s.

A retrospective of his work entitled: DAVID ZACK: Wizard?! Perturber?! Possessed! Letters and other works of a correspondence artist will open at The New Gallery in Calgary, on October 10, 2008, collected, designed and produced by Istvan Kantor."

Ona Doddle - Shop Til You Drop

Ona was a friend of another home taper and mail art practioner O. Jason I think and they lived in the Midlands in the UK during the 80's when I presume this tape was made ( no info on the cassette ). One side is Shop Til You Drop and the other Electric Gift Ideas. Hear a short section of the first side HERE.

VEC Audio - Auricle in G

VEC Audio ( Rod Summers ) in the Netherlands sent this out in 1982 to collaborators and participants in his VEC Audio Exhange. HERE are several tracks from side Two which features such folk as Bria Burgess, fomt, carel lanters & deiderick van kleef and ruedi schill.