Robin James was instrumental in cassette culture’s formative years. His reviews in the Castanets column in OP Magazine focused on cassettes and was a hub in the development of the artist network that grew around it, establishing a place people around the world who were making recordings apart from any kind of music industry could find a kind of self-perpetuated distribution network.
Once OP’s final issue was published, James went on to publish a series of contact newsletters which became his Cassette Mythos project and ended in a book encapsulating the scene.
I met very few cassette culturists in person, but Robin stopped by a couple times when passing through Salt Lake. An excellent article about all of this can be found on the Brainvoyager website.
Robin sent a few issues of the early Cassette Mythos newsletter to GAJOOB. These were large, 36×48 2-sided sheets filled with underground music contacts. Looking through it today, I see lots of people who established an enduring legacy of creative work.
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