Last updated March 23, 2008

Lo Finest is a program dedicated to the appreciation of homemade recordings that were made and distributed on cassette tapes during the 1980s and 90s, hosted by veteran home recording artist Charles Rice Goff III.

Thousands of sonic artists were cranking out cassettes all over the world during the 80s and 90s. The whole cassette explosion took place long before people had home computers, the internet, email, mp3s, and all that. People found out about hometapers by reading various publications that offered reviews of tapes, by listening to those rare radio broadcasts that would feature home tapes, by sending a letter to a contact address that had been printed on one of the many compilation cassettes that were created and distributed during this period, etc. Most hometapers were not approaching their craft as a means to achieving economic success, and this allowed for some incredibly free thinking endeavors to be realized. Trading tapes was common, offering a sort of sonic cultural exchange that had never really been possible before the age of inexpensive home recording technology.

You can contact Charles through his Taped Rugs website at: www.geocities.com/padukem. He asks listeners to please not send him old cassettes to play on this show, because he's got more than enough to work with already. However, he is very interested in any information that you would like to share about the cassette culture.

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Lo Finest Show #12: Phil Klampe Special (March 23, 2008)

This edition of Lo Finest is dedicated to Phil Klampe's project called Homogenized Terrestrials, focusing on recordings released from the mid-1980s - late 1990s. You can visit Phil's web site at: www.homogenizedterrestrials.com.

The set consists of selections from the following Homogenized Terrestrials cassettes:

Lo Finest Show #11: Cover Songs & Tributes (December 8, 2007)

This edition of Lo Finest will bring you a glimpse into how much fun home recording cassette artists had creating cover songs and tributes to their musical heroes during the 1980's and 90's.

Playlist

From "Milk Crate Madness" released by Taped Rugs:
[Track 24: 73:31-1:18:49] Freebird by Gerbil Bliss

Lo Finest Show #10: The Deprogramming Center (September 9, 2007)

For its 10th installment, Lo Finest offers up an actual on-air broadcast of the Deprogramming Center from June 15, 1997. The Deprogramming Center was a radio show devoted to home made recordings from around the world. It was broadcast every Sunday on KAW, a non-FCC licensed radio station which served the Lawrence, Kansas, community in 1997 and 1998. (US Government actions led to the station’s demise in 1998).

The program was widely enough publicized that every week the program’s host, Swami Loopynanda, would receive several tapes in the mail from artists from all over the world. It’s only been ten years since 1997, but the world of home recording has altered considerably since then. The US Census reported in 1997 that fewer than 50 percent of America’s households had a computer in them, and only about half of those were hooked up to the internet. There was no inexpensive method of recording CDs in 1997. Home-recorded cassettes were the main medium through which avant garde and experimental sound artists shared their works.

The program features the following songs in addition to some creative live backing sounds from Gerbil Bliss during its on-air announcements:

Playlist

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