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Marc Masters “High Bias” Book Conversation
On October 27 at 6 p.m., join me for a conversation with music critic Marc Masters about his new book, High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape, out now on UNC Press. We’ll be in conversation at Partners & Son, a great independent underground comics shop and & art gallery in South Philly.
I’m so excited to spend the evening discussing his fantastic new book and getting to know from his perspective what makes the cassette tape an enduring, evocative medium for so many.
October 27, 2023 @ 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM UTC-5
Free & open to the public. Book signing to follow.
About High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape
The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don’t like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities. This entertaining book charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for “killing music,” the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn’t control. For so many, tapes meant freedom—to create, to invent, to connect.
Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today’s labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.
Marc Masters is a music journalist whose work has appeared on NPR and in the Washington Post, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Bandcamp Daily. He is author of No Wave. Learn more about Marc, his book, and upcoming events at highbiasbook.com.