Frantically downloading Rodd Keith song-poems and in-house corporate musicals.

The old WFMU blog, Beware of the Blog, has not been updated since 2015, but we've continued to keep all the pages accessible to the public. Our host Typepad is now going out of business (let this be a lesson as to how unsafe "the cloud" is), and all blog pages will disappear on September 30. (1/2)

I'm getting blackmailed over this old photograph by a professional partner from the tape label music business. Look, if my love for German rock band BAP offends you, it's not my problem. I have nothing to hide.

When we say to just incorporate your mistakes into the music, we don’t mean when you play a wrong note. You should never play wrong notes. We mean momentary lapses of judgement, ill-considered life decisions, impulsive acts of selfishness and fundamental misunderstandings about how the world works.

Music that I listen to and immediately like is fine. That’s a decent experience and it’s ok. But it’s so much better when I listen to music and don’t like it at first but then, only after repeat listenings and thinking about it, coming to like it later. That’s the much better thing.

If you look intently at the little window on a cassette while it’s playing, you will sometimes see a tiny demon in there, smiling, enjoying the music, but also clawing mischievously at the tape, causing noise and artefacts. That’s why they put the window there.

Love it when I can feel the music in my microplastics.

As the *true artist* that I am, I make music only to please myself, not to please others. This is probably why we still have some copies of The Gateway Tape available for you to purchase. Available at @strategictaper.bsky.social's Bandcamp: strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/the-ga... 😵‍💫

Learning by Listening 9, Dr Peter J Woods, “Learning to Make Noise…” is on this month’s Tabs Out Educational Cassette Symposium. Tune in if you like learning stuff.

People say there are no new ideas in music but I literally just came up with one for an ABBA Theme Park, probably in Sweden, or maybe Belgium, so let’s stop being so negative about the future of this artform.

Music trivia: Daryl Dragon from The Captain and Tennille wasn’t actually a captain by profession, ie he wouldn’t legally be allowed to pilot any kind of large seagoing vessel. He was called “The Captain” because he wore captain’s hats, which I guess civilians are allowed to do under maritime law.

My best tip for discovering music is don’t listen to it. That takes way too much time. As long as you are aware of the music, that counts as a discovery, so using AI to compile tables of music you can quickly scan, ideally on a 3-monitor setup, is likely the most efficient music discovery method.

The unspoken hierarchy… Mail-order-only label > Warner Bros/Universal/Sony > PRETEND TAPE LABEL > Vinyl label > Tape label > merch desk CDRs > digital label > soundcloud bro > spotify serf 💣

You sound like a greasy replicated non-red book CDR being played by a semi conductor diode laser with faulty anti-vibration mounts that’s all out of temporary memory buffer

I just sat through 40 minutes of jazzy hold music trying to make an appointment at the doctor and it occurred to me that if they got one of those musicians to stop playing the hold music for a few minutes and help answer the phones, the who medical practice would run more smoothly.

Ways to get your own tape label: -Inherit a tape label from your parents -Do a master’s degree in cassette management -Get hired as a head cleaner & work your way up -Get demoted from running a CD label -Find an old tape deck -Buy an existing tape label for 9 billion € -Start a pretend tape label

We like to think of cassette players as the next step forward from iPhones. Instead of “apps” in your phone, which can perform limited tasks, with cassette decks, you can load “tapes”, and these have a much more sophisticated, often life-changing, depth of functionality.

If the future, refrigerators will run totally silent. They’ll have refined the technology so that there’s no whirring noise from the compressor. But humans will find this unsettling and will assume that the fridge isn’t working, so companies will build synthesizers into the fridges so they drone.

There’s this famous music with a repetitive, looping structure and with each iteration of the loop, there’s a bit less there, like more and more is decayed away, and it has to do with some disturbing to event, the way it evokes this sombre, eerie sense of loss, but I can’t remember what it’s called…

Most people understand that recorded music developed out of pasta. Like eg tape was first influenced by pappardelle (reel-to-reel) and later fettuccine (cassette) or records took the idea of a round shape with grooves from rigatoni and instead of sauces, you put music on them, which is like a sauce.

Here is your free access to The Gateway Tape, the latest Phirnis release on @strategictaper.bsky.social - resolve one of these on Bandcamp and enjoy a glitched-out Sunday. 🙏 vzzs-7cjz eu38-kk45 5sgz-79zd

People used to say, “you sound like a broken record”. Nowadays they go “you sound like a TC Electronic Ditto looper pedal”

Exactly like EDM DJs, right wing influencers all have their goofy Special Thing to help them stand out from the crowd, eg like one might always have a bird that sits on his shoulder or one might be called Bobby Bolognese and be from New Jersey.

If you’re making music and you accidentally play the wrong note, that’s not a mistake. That’s your body saying, “no, this is how the music should actually go,” and your body is always right. The only way you can make a mistake in music is if you intentionally play a note you don’t believe in.

Reasons to listen to music: -getting motivated for a sports event -advised to by an authority figure -being in a supermarket -joined a traditional dance troupe -spite -want to support Spotify’s AI weapons program -eavesdropping on neighbor’s party -self-betterment -guilt -trying to calm an angry pet

If you just saw the name, wouldn’t you think TPUSA was a North American toilet paper company?

Reasons to make music: -killing time before something more interesting happens -get to generate download codes -spite -trying to communicate with dolphins -spreading a sinister ideology -need hold music for company’s service line -woke -not good at podcasting -want to find out what a “flanger” is

A rare instance where the boys that host Tabs Out play my music and don't make fun of my graphic design skills. Instead, they make fun of me for not being a "real" doctor (despite MDs having less of a claim to the term than PhDs) and question the validity of the journals I publish in. Shameful.

EPISODE 210 cassettes from Final Heaven 🤢 Dreamcastle™ 🤢 VODE 🤢 G Lucas Crane 🤢 Tallulah Bankheist 🤢 Lars McCoy 🤢 Master Boot Record 🤢 Dr. Peter J Woods and more! www.tabsout.com

There are a lot of pop songs that are well known for people mishearing the lyrics, but the same thing happens with noise/experimental music. Here the listener often mishears a sound, believing it’s one sound, even upon multiple listens, when the sound actually sounds completely different.

[screenshot of people eating their own boogers on twitter]

When using a tape deck to play back music, you should keep your hands on the controls and your eyes on the rotation counter AT ALL TIMES.

I’m not a huge fan of cherry tomatoes. You can’t put them on a sandwich and sometimes they explode when you bite them, which can result in tomato pulp shooting out of your mouth in unpredictable directions.

I watched the movie The Apartment last night. Hadn’t seen it before! Hell of a picture. Nobody told me.

Between Sabrina Carpenter and the Estonian Eurovision entry, we are truly living in a golden age for songs about small coffee.

Just found out they’re making a 127 Hours sequel about a guy who tries to rewind a cassette tape with his finger and it gets stuck in the spool hole for 127 hours. I won’t spoil the ending.

I’m still embarrassed that humans brought back sea shanties a few years ago. All the other creatures, all the like birds and squirrels were just looking at us thinking “these fucking dorks” and you know they haven’t forgotten.

I don’t like it when people buy cassette tapes just to flush them down the toilet as a “statement”. It’s disrespectful to tape manufacturers and bad for fish/the environment.

I was at the Ajuntament trying to get a card that lets me access the town dump so I can get rid of some old stuff and while I was waiting I heard this great album on Tabs Out. ephem-aural.bandcamp.com/album/juilli...

As artists , I don’t think we should plagiarize the computers. We don’t like it when computers use AI to plagiarize us. So if we copy them, that looks hypocritical, which isn’t going to win us any arguments. And more importantly, fair’s fair. It has to work both ways.

In the waiting room at the dentist they are very quietly playing a slow, acoustic cover of Barbie Girl and the whole scene is just excellent.

We’re currently developing a cassette with a touchscreen that allows you to activate a record-protection function for one or both of the sides.

People sometimes ask me what to do if they find pseudoscorpions living in a cassette tape. Nothing. Pseudoscorpions have no venomous stinger so they can’t attack humans. However, they do attack dustmites and carpet beetle larva and you definitely don’t want those jerks setting up in your cassettes.

Friends do you have or know of a well written sync-licensing agreement to use for an independent documentary? nothing too complicated

I think we have to consider the Oasis vs Beatles rivalry finally decided. One band is still touring sold out stadiums with peak energy while the other is washed up basically doing nothing. TKO ding ding ding.

As a music consultant, I analyze bands that have two guitarists, run a few calculations and tell them how much more profitable they would be if they had one guitarist playing a 12-string.

anewlinerelated.bandcamp.com/album/crewe-... 4 tracks of new music. Understand that it’s a really crowded market and people are constantly skint so you can just have a listen with a cup of tea for free as well as having the option to buy. Any shares massively appreciated!

It would be nice to be able to pay/get paid for music without it being some shitty compromise with the devil.