OFF! My Message Board
The poster pulled me in. I was unaware of the punk supergroup, OFF!, until I came across this poster. (Sure, make fun of me for being out of it, I agree). Also, I'm excited to find out they do have a cassette of Free LSD available on Bandcamp.
If you scroll down the album's Bandcamp page, you will find the perfectly pink cassette of which (at the time of this posting) there are surprisingly still some left:
I had planned this post for a while and just now finally getting it up. Since then we have all experienced the passing of Steve Albini, making the Shellac/OFF! show in Chicago a somber one - or maybe there will be appreciatively joyful respect for still being around to see a killer live show.
Sadly there isn't a tape of the acclaimed new Shellac album. But you can always get some blanks and make one (something I plan to do). I feel like Steve would be cool with us bootlegging it.
Why have I done this to myself?: I started an old-school message board/forum for The Tape Player blog.
“Why?!” you wisely ask. Well, I miss old-school message boards.
You might be saying, “But Mike, there's Reddit, Discord, Facebook Groups, Instagram comments, etc, for that stuff now!”
You’re right, but it’s all kind of exhausting. We’re too spread out. Scrolling too much. At least I am.
I thought hanging out with and getting info from a like-minded cassette tape-playing music and analog-loving people would be nice. What better community to hang out with?
Social media only gives you want it wants you to see and then it goes away - message board stuff stays up and there is no algorithm involved. You see all the forum posts and they are searchable.
Maybe I will be alone on the board. That would suck, but at least I would have this idea out of my system (I have been thinking about doing it for years on other blogs I have).
But maybe it will be cool too. I hope you join me.
So I would like to thank you for opening this up. Enjoy your tapes this week and I’ll talk to you soon.
-Mike