From punk to platforms
The future echoes of user-generated content found in Fast Forward cassette magazine and Melbourne’s DIY ‘cassette culture’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.38003Keywords:
punk, post-punk, cassette culture, DIY ethos, prosumption, Melbourne post-punk, Fast Forward cassette magazineAbstract
In this article I examine Melbourne’s Fast Forward cassette magazine (1980–1982), in order to develop a new theoretical analysis on the significance of cassette tape technology with regard to ‘do-it-yourself’ (‘DIY’) music cultures and neoliberal consumption. Fast Forward was a magazine in the form of a cassette tape, the brainchild of Melbourne music enthusiasts Bruce Milne, Andrew Maine and Michael Trudgeon. It featured new music, audio interviews as well as discussion somewhat like a recorded radio programme. The magazine was a significant proponent of the decentralized, international ‘cassette culture’ that developed in independent music during the 1980s. Recent literature regarding the digital economy considers how rather than mass producing and selling cultural content such as records, major entertainment companies today increasingly sell access to platforms through which content is shared, via subscription or through advertising. I argue that cassette culture offered an early pre-digital instance of this new paradigm shift of consumption, with Melbourne’s Fast Forward cassette magazine being a globally influential proponent of this new attitude towards music media’s participatory potential.
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Butler, Rex. 2004. ‘Introduction’. In What Is Appropriation?: An Anthology of Writings on Australian Art in the 1980s and 1990s, 2nd edn, ed. Rex Butler, 13–46. Brisbane: IMA Publishing.
De Kosnik, Abigail. 2013. ‘Fandom as Free Labor’. In Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, ed Trebor Scholz, 187–212. New York: Routledge.
Dolcourt, Jessica. 2019. ‘RIP, iTunes: This is what happens to your Apple music now’. Online at https://www.cnet.com/how-to/rip-itunes-heres-what-happens-to-your-music-now/ (accessed 29 June 2019).
Drew, Rob. 2014. ‘New Technologies and the Business of Music: Lessons from the 1980s Home Taping Hearings’. Popular Music and Society 37/3: 253–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2013.764613
du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay and Keith Negus. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: SAGE Publications.
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. 2003. ‘Constituents of a Theory of the Media’. In The New Media Reader, ed. Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 259–76. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press [German edn 1970].
Fast Forward 1–13. 1980–1982. Eds. Andrew Maine, Bruce Milne and Michael Trudgeon. Melbourne: Fast Forward.
Foster, John. 1992. ‘Op, “Castanets”, and the Cassette Revolution’. In Cassette Mythos, ed. Robin James, 52. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
Green, Clinton. 2011. ‘The Australian Cassette Underground: A Historical Overview’. Online at http://livingarchive.doncampau.com/feature_articles/history-of-australian-underground-by-clinton-green (accessed 8 January 2018).
Gruger, William. 2013. ‘51 Million and Counting: YouTube Star Ali Brustofski Works to Jump from Covers to Success with Her Own Songs’. Billboard 125/26: 26.
Harper, Adam. 2014. ‘Lo-Fi Aesthetics in Popular Music Discourse’. PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
Hesketh, Rollo. 2013. ‘A.A. Phillips and the “Cultural Cringe”: Creating an “Australian Tradition”’. Meanjin 72/3. Online at https://meanjin.com.au/essays/a-a-phillips-and-the-icultural-cringei-creating-an-iaustralian-traditioni/ (accessed 4 January 2018).
Huhtamo, Erkki, and Jussi Parikka. 2011. ‘Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology’. In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, ed. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, 1–21. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
K. 2017. ‘About K’. Online at https://krecs.com/pages/about (accessed 26 April 2019).
Leonard, Marion. 1998. ‘Paper Planes: Travelling the New Grrrl Geographies’. In Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture, ed. Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine, 101–118. London and New York: Routledge.
Mandl, Dave. 1992. ‘The Death of the Demo Tape (at Last)’. In Cassette Mythos, ed. Robin James, 48–50. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Manuel, Peter. 1993. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Martin, Adrian. 2004. ‘Before and After Art & Text’. In What Is Appropriation?: An Anthology of Writings on Australian Art in the 1980s & 1990s, 2nd edn, ed. Rex Butler, 107–118. Brisbane: IMA Publications.
McCosker, Maddelin, and Kirrin McKechnie. 2017. ‘Brisbane Singer Lands Music Deal with YouTube Cover of Down Under’. Online at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-22/brisbane-woman-sabrina-schultz-you-tube-down-under-music-video/8827980 (accessed 25 December 2017).
McRobbie, Angela. 2005. ‘Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket’. In The Subcultures Reader, 2nd edn, ed. Ken Gelder, 132–39. Oxon: Routledge.
—2016. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Moon, Tony. 1977. Sideburns 1. United Kingdom: self-published.
Schaefer, René. 2011. ‘Fast Forward: A Pre-Internet Story’. Mess + Noise, 18 September 2011. Online at https://web.archive.org/web/20170915153256/http://messandnoise.com/features/4331535 (accessed 28 October 2019).
Sconce, Jeffrey. 2000. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Strauss, Neil. 1992. ‘Putting the Net over Networking’. In Cassette Mythos, ed. Robin James, 130–32. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
Thornton, Sarah. 1996. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Walker, Clinton. 1982. Inner City Sound. Glebe, NSW: Wild & Wooley.
—2015. ‘Fanzines (1970s)’. Online at http://www.clintonwalker.com.au/fanzines-1970s.html (accessed 31 January 2016).
Wark, McKenzie. 2004. A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Published
2019-12-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Davis, J. (2019). From punk to platforms: The future echoes of user-generated content found in Fast Forward cassette magazine and Melbourne’s DIY ‘cassette culture’. Perfect Beat, 19(2), 122-141. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.38003
