HR163 - Various Artists - Danish Pastry - C100 — 1989
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SIDE A:
Aeroflot : Skinny World/Known Unto God Anoxia Cerebri : Tortured Mythology Hellbent Majority Cats Cradle : In The Greenhouse Clone Cult : Sonata Cockpit Music : Tip-Top Cyclon Anti Cyclon : Watch The Wall Deep Sea Divers : Humpty Dumpty Dub Tractor : Well You Needn’t Én Hülm : The End Foss / Høeg / Schneidermann / Skeel : Clean It Out Ginnungagab : Sibone Global Guaranty Orchestra : Danish Pastry Hunk Ai : Insekter Kim G : Bonus Track Linda Lovelace Fanclub : Yankee Go Homo Little Brian & The Dogs : The Golden Anniversary |
SIDE B:
Master Fatman & His Freedomfighters : CC Rider Nina & Frederik : My Mind Is Going Peter Peter : S.O.D. Picnic : Dilemma Ramton : Quotidian Stress Tart Robin & Bad Men : Mine Tanker Er Sloppy Wrenchbody : Decompose Slængs : Plotter Symphony Of Futuristic Times : Space Terminator Ted : Ted El Arab To Hoveder : A Speeding Car At 110 Trash Taxi : Ghosthouse TS Høeg / V. Olsson : Random Opera Tzarina Q Cut : Tzarina & Tzar-Tan U Turn I Turn : Lets Call It A Day Vigoroso : Obloquy ..,- : Meet The Presidents |
Introduction by Jerry Kranitz
Danish Pastry compiles a whopping 32 artists/bands from Denmark. Though exclusively Danish, it is not technically part of the Harsh Reality ‘Country’ series, in which label head Chris Phinney solicited contributions from the hometaper community. In this case, Harsh Reality label fan Jan Dorph Walløe compiled the tape for release. And what an assortment it is! Jan put a lot of work into this tape and will tell the story of how it came to be. He provides fascinating insight as a case study of assembling a pre-internet compilation and doing so from a ‘fan’ perspective, as well as shedding light on the Danish scene that he experienced. BIG thanks to Jan for his efforts!
Article by Jan Dorph Walløe
I had been buying tapes from Harsh Realty since August 1988. Chris asked if I could make a Danish compilation for his label, and though I had no background in music production I was willing to try. I often went to concerts at a place in Copenhagen called Huset (The House), which had a scene called Barbue (French for ‘brill’) featuring upcoming local (and international) acts plus experimental bands. Some brief background on Huset and Barbue (auto-translated from the Huset web site and Wikipedia):
“The house has existed since 1970 when it was handed over by the Municipality of Copenhagen to a group of ‘hippies’ and artists who, under the title ‘Projekt Hus’, had ambitions to create a cultural meeting place for the young. Born out of the 1970s commitment to new forms of democratization, Huset has from the start been a place where the users themselves jointly created and organized the activities. Barbue (1984-94) was a rock club on the first floor of Huset in Magstræde in Copenhagen.”
I went to Huset often, mostly to see foreign bands. I didn't care so much about the Danish scene until I did this compilation. So I went and talked to their booker, Henrik Føhns, who later became a well-known radio journalist. Henrik gave me a huge list of phone numbers of people that had been sending them demos. So that was my entry point.
It was a difficult but fun process. I had to acquire two high quality cassette decks which were expensive back then. One of them was kindly gifted to me by some random guy, whom I never met before or since, when he heard about my project. The other one, a TEAC, I bought new. They were not alike, with one running a fraction faster than the other. This worked out well because sound on the master tape got slightly sped up and I was able to squeeze in a bit more music. When after some months I had made the final picks for the compilation I needed to decide which order to present them. After some experimentation I decided on a simple alphabetical order.
I knew a guy who had access to a professional studio and was willing to help me get some time. This was helpful since some of the submissions I received were on reel-to-reel tape that I otherwise had no way of transferring. He was able to make a finished professional master tape for me on a big studio reel. But when I listened to the cassette dub of that, it was all wrong - the levels, the timing - everything. So I chose to go back to my home solution so I could control it better. I recorded the master on a TDK MA-110, but there was even less space on the SA-100s that I was using for the Danish self-released edition. So I had to practically do away with pauses between tracks, which made the exact timing and levels even more critical.
I spent many months fiddling with these small details trying to get the perfect master. Today I am not really sure if I produced two master tapes, one for my own edition, and one for Harsh Reality, or if I dubbed my own edition (one-by-one in real speed at home) and then sent the same master tape to Chris. I think the former, since I still have an excellent sounding master tape here somewhere. I think I mailed the master to Chris in a big box with some actual Danish pastry, plus the cover template for the U.S. edition, which I wasn’t too happy with and soon changed to color pictures of Danish pastry from the finest patisseur in town (at the airport, actually).
There had been a big punk/wave scene in Copenhagen back in the day, which I had been a part of but not in any active way. I was not a musician and only had a friend or two who was. By 1988-89, it was more like a post-postpunk scene, and nothing new and revolutionary had replaced what happened 10 years earlier. For me, the new big thing was the international cassette network and the myriad of artists it spawned. I had only recently discovered and immersed myself in this network, mostly through the music section of the mammoth zine-review zine Factsheet 5.
While conducting my search for this compilation I hoped to uncover a similar underground of undiscovered original talent here. Well, for the most part I didn't. What I found was that an actual k7-based scene had indeed existed here, but that was back in the early 1980s. When most of the bands failed to get much recognition or sales this way, they gave up. There were several small experimental music tape labels, like the one run by Gry Records, by far the best punk/wave music shop in Copenhagen. They also sold cassettes from those other labels, but I never saw them when I went record shopping there. You had to be in the know as they were more or less hidden under the counter. Anyway, that scene didn't really exist anymore and all the stalwarts from back then, some of whom did participate in my compilation, had become deeply discouraged with cassettes. What I also found was that only a very few of the artists I surveyed knew or cared about the new wave of international k7 labels (which I would date from mid-1980s on). So I actually gifted out a lot of my favorite new k7 releases to many of them for inspiration - something I came to regret, as it later dawned on me that it wasn’t really appreciated.
About the bands on the tape…
Aeroflot is a synth-prog journey of a rather epic caliber. It’s a long but fitting opener. These guys (a 5-piece) were very ambitious and demanding, both of themselves, and of me, asking many questions. I sent them a k7 by the Israeli tape-collage artist Paradox (Eli Talgam) to lighten them up a bit, and in return received a phone call from their leader who was absolutely furious. He considered my gift a huge insult and threatened to pull out of the comp. It took a lot of effort to calm him down. I needed the track since the comp was almost finished by then. It was strange since they had recorded some joking, improvised rap music on the other side of the track they submitted, but evidently had a very narrow definition of what music should or could be. They released a tape and appeared on another Danish compilation a couple years later but disappeared after that. I think the Discogs entry from 2020 is by another Aeroflot.
Anoxia Cerebri is a guy named Danny Lund who had self-released a k7 a year earlier. I liked this guy. I thought he had the right attitude, noodling at home with various gear. I also liked that he made an original track for the compilation. And that's about all I know about him. He told me Anoxia Cerebri means lack of oxygen to the brain.
I don't remember anything about Cats Cradle. They can't spell, or it would have been Cat’s Cradle in proper English. Probably named after the Kurt Vonnegut novel, which I liked. I should mention that Cats Cradle also appeared on another Danish comp around the same time titled Klima (climate), along with many of the other artists on my comp. In fact, only one of them is not on it, which shows how small the scene here was.
Nothing comes to mind about Clone Cult. As far as I know they only ever appeared on this compilation.
Cockpit Music is one of the grand old bands from the early DIY 1980s. It’s sort of a twin band to Global Guaranty Orchestra. Both are (more or less) led by Peter Ole Jørgensen, a real stalwart of the Danish scene and still going strong in experimental/jazz-oriented/percussive lineups. This is the kind of music that runs like a nerve through the Danish music scene and also through this compilation, though I would rather have avoided it. In this sense, the comp is like a view back through the 1980s, whereas I would have preferred it to be more forward-looking. Cockpit Music is also an original track for this compilation.
Cyclon Anti Cyclon (‘Danish art rock duo’, per Discogs) is somewhat of a supergroup. Per Buhl Acs and Tomas Ortved were both in some of the most important acts of the first Danish punk wave. Peter Bonde is more known as an important visual artist. I never met them. I only received a small reel-to-reel tape in the mail. The track is also on their LP from the year after, though this may be a different version. It has a dreamy, evocative quality. I really like this track.
I don't know much about Deep Sea Divers. I remember visiting the head guy who lived very close to me and liking him. I gave him a tape I’d just received from my (still) favorite band, Big City Orchestra. Later I met him and he told me he totally couldn't get into that one at all. I should have asked for it back, I’m still missing that one. I remember seeing a poster with an upcoming gig by them in Barbue and not going. Not my favorite track here either. But it has again that sense of foreboding that I cherished.
Dub Tractor was my old friend Anders Remmer. We went to school together and lived on the same street in a suburb to the north. But we only bonded around 1978 around the 9th grade when we one day found out we had the same weird and experimental tastes in music. It was so strange to discover we both had records by the Residents, and had both recently acquired the Miniatures LP (edited by Morgan-Fischer). A bit later he formed his art-rock band How Do I which saw consistent critical success. We drifted apart after high school (he was much more mature and academically inclined) but once again found ourselves living nearby in the big city. So I asked him for a track and he started his solo sampler-based project Dub Tractor for the occasion. I received a complete demo from him, all solid tracks, of which I chose this. He said the title was from a Thelonius Monk composition. I coupled it with an untitled snippet I found elsewhere on the tape, without his permission, so you might consider this a bonus track of sorts. Among his other projects, Dub Tractor has since released lots of stuff and is still going strong.
Not much to say about Én Hülm. It’s just a track I received in the mail one day from something called Fusion Records, together with the (very different) one from Little Brian & the Dogs. I don't remember what it sounds like but I'm sure it's pretty good. Én Hülm seems to have never released anything else, which is a pity.
Foss / Høeg / Schneidermann / Skeel is an experimental constellation of “big” names on the circuit here, but more known for other projects. They released an LP in 1987 from which this seems to be taken. I appear to have misspelled (or misread, sometimes they weren't very legible) the title. It’s supposed to be ‘Clear It Out’, not ‘Clean It Out’.
Ginnungagab is a band from Jutland that has labored for many years, at least until 2011, without gaining much recognition. As for their name: In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap (or, as here, Ginnungagab) is the primordial, magical void mentioned in three poems from the Poetic Edda and the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording of Norse cosmogony. [Wikipedia]. I guess this mythological basis informs their music to some extent. I always wanted to explore their sound world, and even got their Sibuna release, but never got around to listening to it. Maybe I prefer them to be considered impenetrable and mythically out of reach, in a land to the far north. Speaking of Sibuna, I think that is the true title of the piece here, which I (again) misspelled as Sibone (and to think that I would come to work as a proofreader at the EU just a short while later, yech!).
Global Guaranty Orchestra, like Cockpit Music, is another of P.O. Jørgens’ many free-jazz based projects, and almost as prolific and long-lived as that. When I decided on the name for the compilation, I wasn't aware they had just released their Different Stages in Different Lives LP with a same-titled ‘Danish Pastry’ track. So, with their permission, I got the title track from that. They told me to just take it from the record, which I did. I love this track. It has a crisp quality and acts sort of like the eye of the hurricane. Serendipity?
Hunk Ai, the second band from Jylland (or ‘the province’, as we arrogantly term most any place in Denmark out of Copenhagen). It’s the second prog(-ish) track to my ears, in this case, of the R.I.O. variety which I don’t know much about. It appears to be from their second LP which had not yet been released by then. It's shrilly and annoying, though in a satisfying way.
Kim G, or Kim G Hansen as he is known, is a soundman and producer (also for radio and TV). He also has been active as a musician in many concurrent projects. This track appears to be his only solo release. I remember being very happy with his two professionally well done contributions. I only met him once by chance a few years ago at a record shop. I promised to send him a copy of the comp as he had lost his own copy. I never got round to it, but I guess the Bandcamp version will remedy that. Also, I think it is a bit funny the track is called ‘bonus track’, as there are a few different varieties of that on here (and this isn't really one).
Linda Lovelace Fanclub were friends of Peter Peter. Like me, he loved everything obnoxious, loud and transgressive, so he talked me into letting them on. I thought with all the eclecticism here there could also be room for some punk. Though energetic, I find it rather tame and predictable, kind of a poor man’s G.G. Allin or something. I met them at Peter Peter’s. They were friendly and excited to get a release (their first, and last, it seems).
I think Little Brian & The Dogs could be the same artist as Én Hülm? If so, he is very tongue in cheek, as this sounds nothing like that. In fact, it’s more like a Hammond wiz showing off his skills than anything. Yet, it is pulled off with a certain pizazz, making it a nice side-ender. Sadly, the track got cut off halfway due to length, which led me to number it as #15.50 (fifteen and a half) on the Danish version as it was only half a number. I still feel a bit sad for Little Brian & the Dogs. I wonder what became of them?
What can I say about Master Fatman & His Freedomfighters? I’d never heard about him at this time. I guess I called his manager, Kim ‘Jack’ Foss (known for being a cinema/film kingpin here) and he told me to go to Loppen, a music venue at Christiania (the infamous ‘free town’) here that same night, where he was playing with his band. The music was pretty straight ‘Fat’ Elvis style rock ‘n’ roll, delivered with an over-the-top exaggeration and smarmy coolness. So I thought, what the heck, an Elvis homage would be fitting for a Memphis-based release. So I caught the man hurrying backstage afterwards and on the spot he just said, sure, talk to my manager. So I talked with Jack again. He told me to go to a certain address, which was a back yard staircase in a sleazy part of town. And sure enough, there was a small reel just lying there waiting for me. And that was pretty much that. Only a few years later, Morten Lindberg (his real name) gained fame, if not fortune here, and became what you could call a household name. His persona (as well as his bodily container) was larger-than-life, and he even had a talk show on national TV. He was sort of the Danish buddha (he had himself portrayed as such by famous artist John Kørner, sold as statuettes in various sizes, I have a small one) and Elvis archetype (later he branched into Abba and disco) rolled up into one. Everywhere he went he focused on spreading good vibes and peaceful karma. Not beyond mischief though, he produced the infamous flick, Gayniggers From Outer Space, that had a cinema release and sparked some controversy. But that’s the essence of Danish humor. It almost has to offend someone to be considered really funny. The point being, that the offended party should then forgive you and laugh along, as it’s all ironic (otherwise, it can get awkward!).
Nina & Frederik was the name of a world-famous Danish-Dutch husband and wife duo from the 1960s. This track on the Discogs page linked to this duo for a long time, which I found hilarious until I made an alternative artist entry and so corrected it. When I later met Kim G Hansen he told me the story behind it: He and his girlfriend at the time, Nina Weber, had been fooling around in the studio late at night and recorded some tracks just for a laugh. They broke up soon after and nothing more came of it. Their contribution is simple but well made and kind of funny in an uneasily suspenseful way. I guess they chose their name on a lark. Also, fittingly, the original duo had kind of a dark side, as Frederik got involved in criminal activities and they eventually broke up. It was a big celebrity scandal.
Peter Peter (Schneidermann) - I had no clue about this guy but he asked me to come right over. It was a very nice apartment in a quiet side street. I was surprised how spacious and well furnished it was. How could an experimental musician afford that I wondered? He looked like a scruffy street kid and apparently had plenty of free time. We talked a bit and found out we were both into cult movies. So Peter Peter went into a small room at the far end and dug out some groovy VHS tapes he said I could borrow (John Waters’ Female Trouble was one of them, still a favorite movie. I made sound excerpts from this and some of the others that I used for sound collages. A snippet of one served as my personal bonus track signature at the very end of Danish Pastry). He then proceeded to throw a tape in the VCR, telling me he had recently finished that soundtrack. So we sat back in the sofa and on the screen came the heaviest gay s/m dungeon sex scenes I’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of watching (turned out to be an experimental short by reknowned filmmaker Kurt Vesterskov). Then Peter Peter went into the room at the far end again and came back with a tape, his contribution to the comp. When he showed me out, I noticed a guitar hanging on the wall, a bright pink guitar with a small banana sticker. I knew that guitar, it had been etched into my brain for so many years. Back in 1978 when I was 14 and just getting into punk, one afternoon out of boredom I turned on the TV (there was only one, state-run channel back then) and was hit with... SODS, the first Danish punk band, doing their cover of Red Crayola's ‘Hurricane Fighter Plane’, and that shocking pink banana sticker guitar rudely flashing in close-up. Unbelievably awesome! In the next few years SODS’ (now renamed Sort Sol) first couple albums were the formative soundtrack of my teenage years. And I now realized I was standing in the presence of this guitar god. Wide-eyed I just stared at it, and tried to explain how much it had meant to me. Peter Peter just grinned his trademark grin and politely showed me out the door. The title, ‘S.O.D.’ is an homage to one of his favorite bands, Stormtroopers of Death, he later told me. I’m very honored that he gave me an original track that has never been published anywhere else. And that again has that ominous, lurking in the shadows, quality.
Picnic was from Aarhus in Jutland. After the anti-climax of ‘S.O.D.’, they come in with their sudden, short, sax driven blast of scrungy jazz-rock. They were quite big at the time, often playing live and having released two LPs, the second of which this track seems to be taken from. It’s Zappa-esque, avant-garde jazz-rock. There were quite a few bands around of that ilk. Not really my cup of tea, though in small doses like this it can be invigorating.
Ramton is one of my favorite entries on the tape. I didn't even remember contacting this artist. I think he had just heard about the project and decided to contribute. I do remember receiving a small grey, square packet just containing a tape with the title on it. No letter, nothing. I tried contacting the artist several times but to no avail. Anyway, I love this. The sounds and the title fit my concept and the flow of it perfectly, sort of echoing the Picnic track but in a rawer way.
Robin & Bad Men are another band that has nothing else on Discogs. I seem to recall getting the contact through Roland/Terminator Ted but I’m not sure. It’s kind of a dreamy pop track but with that dark fatalistic edge and kind of acts as a breather track after the agony of the preceding ones.
Sloppy Wrenchbody - I went to meet with Claus in his apartment, fittingly located in the seedier part of town (Vesterbro) with porno shops, pushers, street hookers and bars on every corner (not like that anymore). I was very impressed as I noticed several hometaper cassettes lying about. I specifically remember one of the ‘Total Recess’ comps from Mystery Hearsay from Memphis. So I knew he was my man. He kind of shrugged it off though, as just one avenue he was investigating. The music is sort of Skinny Puppy inspired electro-industrial. The track has not been released elsewhere. They had some success on the international EBM circuit with several vinyl and cd releases.
Slængs is another band with a spelling mishap, or in fact two. It’s supposed to be Slæng’s - slæng meaning a crew or posse, which is then spelled with the possessive like "gang’s". I think they were from North Jutland. It certainly sounds like it, a very naked, angry or desperate sounding track with a real postpunk energy, much like the band ‘Before’. The track is probably from their s/t 1985 cassette, which I then lazily misspelled as ‘plotter’ instead of ‘blotter’ (Danish for exhibitionist). I remember, on their recommendation, buying their vinyl EP which had just come out, but not finding anything useable. They then sent me their former s/t k7 release, where I decided on this.
Symphony Of Futuristic Times may not be the strongest track here. I guess it just held up at the time as a ‘futuristic’ synth composition. Like Aeroflot, it’s a little self-serious for my taste but gives some breathing room and perhaps a sense of ‘space’, where you can mind-wander and relax.
Terminator Ted is a bit ironic when I think about it. I met Roland, who lived nearby. He gave me 6 or 7 of his band’s self-released tapes, all full-length with well-made covers (no sign of those on Discogs). They tried to build a kind of mythos around it, something about a killer teddy bear. If they didn’t exactly attract a cult following (well, perhaps a tiny one), they at least seemed interminably infatuated with their teddy bear selves, I thought. After listening through all of that, I came up with just one track. But that was very good, being an exotic, atmospheric excursion for the teddy bear troupe.
To Hoveder (two heads) was apparently another project from Kenneth of Deep Sea Divers that I previously molested here. But I adore this track. It again has that darkly suspenseful quality that unites much of this comp (‘a speeding car comes closer and closer, and then...’).
Trash Taxi were from Funen, the middle island of Denmark. They were an EBM/electro band that had a single out and appeared on a few other comps a bit after mine. I didn’t get to meet them. It’s an upbeat track that hasn't appeared anywhere else. Cautiously ecstatic energies at work here, I like it very much.
TS Høeg and V. Olsson were two heavyweights of the Danish jazz-punk scene. They had been playing independently since the early days but also collaborating for many years in various bands though not anywhere else as a duo. I’m no longer sure what this sounds like, but I guess it’s more electronic avant-garde than one might expect from these two saxophonists.
Tzarina Q Cut were – again – from the Danish ‘avant-garde’ jazz scene. They were the duo of Jacob Draminsky on reeds and Jørgen Teller (who is still in full force on the experimental scene here) on guitar. TQC sprung from the mid-80s DIY aesthetic and had more of a free-jazz approach than most. This is the very first track on their first release from 1988. The Danish lyrics are quite funny, sort of a screwed-up jungle mating attempt gone awry.
Sadly, I remember nothing about U Turn I Turn. I don’t think I met the artist, but it fits in so well in every way. It should have been a big hit. It doesn't seem like they ever did anything else.
Vigoroso are another outfit I know zero about, except they were from Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark (which once boasted the proud motto: ‘Aarhus - Danish for progress’). You may know what vigoroso means (‘performing with a strong or energetic quality’), but did you know ‘obloquy’ apparently means ‘disgrace from strong public condemnation’ in Spanish? I didn't.
The punctuation signs (punktum punktum komma streg) on the ‘band’ name ..,- indicate a Danish children’s song that describes how to draw a simple smiley-type face. It is apparently a solo project from Roland of Terminator Ted, perhaps a one-off thing. The title, ‘meet the presidents’, is of course a riff on the Residents’ first LP, something I can appreciate, as it has always been my favorite album of all time. And their Duck Stab LP was the first I ever bought.
Note that I smuggled a little thing of my own at the end (uncredited). Depending on tape speeds or other factors there was a half-minute of tape left, so I decided I might as well fill it out with my own subliminal programming. I had been fiddling with making these audio collages of sounds primitively recorded and mixed for a few months. I didn’t do tracks, only side-long assemblages of whatever sound sources I could find. This is an excerpt from a longer, untitled tape. There is a speaker from a Danish Disney children’s tape talking about Minnie Mouse whom “nobody wanted to help when she was baking the cakes, yet now everybody wants to help with eating them.” The scarier, multi-tracked sounds and voices came from a couple of the VHS tapes that Peter Peter loaned me and blended in, explaining the ‘hypnovista’ process where “you’ll feel no pain at all… let me just remove the needles.” I guess on the U.S. Harsh Reality edition it may have been almost absent as he would use a tandem setup with proper tape speeds. I called myself No Weye (a take on Maybe Mental’s Kweye k7, which I shrewdly recognized only existed as a mental concept, since I had tried ordering it from distributors a few times without receiving anything at all. Well, it did exist, but had just sold out, as I eventually got it, duh!) at the time but later changed it to P. Shrivelclub (a name that appeared to me in a dream). I made plenty of improvised tapes but hardly any ‘real’ releases. I mostly just sent them out as one-offs to tape trading contacts and other ‘lucky’ recipients.
About the Danish edition - When I sent out invitations, I promised the artists they would each receive a complimentary copy. That would have been very expensive to import with 30+ artists involved so I thought I would release a Danish edition myself, though I had no experience with that kind of thing either. And it turned out to be even more expensive to produce!
I didn’t plan to make a special cover for the Danish edition, it just sort of happened that way. At first, I was toying with various ideas, such as a picture I’d taken of a half-eaten Danish pastry that kind of looked like Elvis in profile. Or a found-in-the-street photo of a white horse grazing outside an old cottage; I would then have retitled as ‘Danish pasture’. But it didn’t quite gel until one day when I was riding the train and was leafing through the DSB (national Danish train company) free monthly magazine “Ud & Se” (Out & See) when I noticed an advert for items on their (now abolished) trolley catering service, “DSB togservice” (DSB train service).
I instantly knew that was it. I held a cassette case over it and it fit perfectly without any adjustments. Also, there was room for the track list on some red and white - the national colors - graphics. It had to be folded a certain way, at a 90° angle but that was an advantage as you could then refold it and get the track list on the front instead. The corporate “DSB togservice” fit on the spine, substituting for the real title. And an industrial cupcake of sorts substituted for an actual piece of pastry.
But these were ironic times and the packaging should be viewed in that light. On the same train journey, I noticed the small baggies for putting waste in that had just been introduced hanging on the backs of the seats (those are still around). These were adorned with little pictograms of crossed-over piggies, like ‘No Littering”. There were 16 images on each baggie, and since I had 32.5 artists I would symbolically represent them using two baggies for the outer packaging, with the “half” artist (Little Brian & the Dogs) represented by half a piggie - and where to put that? I found that a teabag fit perfectly with the cassette cover’s width. It was placed over the cup of coffee on the front so that instead of coffee you got tea. The flimsy half-a-pigsnout-picture piece of plastic was then inserted into the opening of the (Swedish, actually) teabags, the implication of which I left up to the beholder.
Although the cover was kind of a ready-made, I made one small alteration. On the front there is a line that says “forbehold for pris- og sortimentsændringer” (subject to price and assortment changes). As a small joke, I changed the “pris-“ to “gris-“ (pig), so it said “subject to pig changes”, of which there was. I overlayed the left side with the tracklist (which cost over $200 to produce as I had to rent computer time at a Rank Xerox center!). To fit into the bags better, I took the tape out from the case and placed them alongside in a baggie together with a yellow contact sheet (which I had made in the HR style). I then folded this contraption neatly and inserted it into the other baggie together with a larger, blue sheet, which also spelled the true title of the comp (which I then believed to be “Danish pastry in your ears” - it was shortened on release by Chris) and which I had used for invitations for submissions. This was then also folded around and ready to serve like some throwaway packaging for takeaway food.
Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors so you may wonder, why? But I did everything for a reason. I was definitely a bit insane at this time, paranoid even, but in a positive way. Strange, traumatic, but also wonderful things had happened to me around a specific time and place in August of 1988 that had altered my whole way of thinking into what a psychiatrist would term “magical thinking”. So I made sure every detail with the cover and what was on the tape had a deep, connected meaning and significance for me - if not understandable for anyone else. My actual reason for doing it this way was two-fold: As mentioned, I needed artist copies. But I also needed it to fulfill a special private purpose, something I had to do for myself connected to that epiphany I had had, but about which I can tell you no more.
After sending out about half of the 69 copies produced to the artists (and only getting a “good job!” note back from Peter Peter, which I appreciated) I was left with about 40 copies, some of which I gave to friends and family, and a few I sent to U.S. hometapers for publicity. At that time, I suddenly landed a temp job in Luxembourg and had to leave the country in a hurry. On the way to the airport I drove by Candy Records and asked if they would like to sell the rest. They got them for free on the condition that the sale price should be exactly 32,50 dkk, which was the price of all the items on the menu on the cover added together, and also the number of artists (and piggies) on it. When I returned some months later, they told me they had sold all of them very quickly, which I was elated and a bit surprised to hear.
That cover and elaborate packaging wouldn't work for the U.S. version. So I threw the Danish pastry I bought in the airport in a color xerox machine, and asked Chris to use those instead of the rather stale cover I had first sent him, in which he obliged. In return he sent me a finished copy, which I then sent to the music zine Influenza (edited by Ketil Teisen) where it received a short but positive review.
So that was pretty much all until now. I hope the comp still has something to offer. Maybe it has dated in a good way (though Danish pastry rarely does that). And I thank Chris, Jerry, all the artists, and everybody else who made it a (harsh) reality!
Danish Pastry compiles a whopping 32 artists/bands from Denmark. Though exclusively Danish, it is not technically part of the Harsh Reality ‘Country’ series, in which label head Chris Phinney solicited contributions from the hometaper community. In this case, Harsh Reality label fan Jan Dorph Walløe compiled the tape for release. And what an assortment it is! Jan put a lot of work into this tape and will tell the story of how it came to be. He provides fascinating insight as a case study of assembling a pre-internet compilation and doing so from a ‘fan’ perspective, as well as shedding light on the Danish scene that he experienced. BIG thanks to Jan for his efforts!
Article by Jan Dorph Walløe
I had been buying tapes from Harsh Realty since August 1988. Chris asked if I could make a Danish compilation for his label, and though I had no background in music production I was willing to try. I often went to concerts at a place in Copenhagen called Huset (The House), which had a scene called Barbue (French for ‘brill’) featuring upcoming local (and international) acts plus experimental bands. Some brief background on Huset and Barbue (auto-translated from the Huset web site and Wikipedia):
“The house has existed since 1970 when it was handed over by the Municipality of Copenhagen to a group of ‘hippies’ and artists who, under the title ‘Projekt Hus’, had ambitions to create a cultural meeting place for the young. Born out of the 1970s commitment to new forms of democratization, Huset has from the start been a place where the users themselves jointly created and organized the activities. Barbue (1984-94) was a rock club on the first floor of Huset in Magstræde in Copenhagen.”
I went to Huset often, mostly to see foreign bands. I didn't care so much about the Danish scene until I did this compilation. So I went and talked to their booker, Henrik Føhns, who later became a well-known radio journalist. Henrik gave me a huge list of phone numbers of people that had been sending them demos. So that was my entry point.
It was a difficult but fun process. I had to acquire two high quality cassette decks which were expensive back then. One of them was kindly gifted to me by some random guy, whom I never met before or since, when he heard about my project. The other one, a TEAC, I bought new. They were not alike, with one running a fraction faster than the other. This worked out well because sound on the master tape got slightly sped up and I was able to squeeze in a bit more music. When after some months I had made the final picks for the compilation I needed to decide which order to present them. After some experimentation I decided on a simple alphabetical order.
I knew a guy who had access to a professional studio and was willing to help me get some time. This was helpful since some of the submissions I received were on reel-to-reel tape that I otherwise had no way of transferring. He was able to make a finished professional master tape for me on a big studio reel. But when I listened to the cassette dub of that, it was all wrong - the levels, the timing - everything. So I chose to go back to my home solution so I could control it better. I recorded the master on a TDK MA-110, but there was even less space on the SA-100s that I was using for the Danish self-released edition. So I had to practically do away with pauses between tracks, which made the exact timing and levels even more critical.
I spent many months fiddling with these small details trying to get the perfect master. Today I am not really sure if I produced two master tapes, one for my own edition, and one for Harsh Reality, or if I dubbed my own edition (one-by-one in real speed at home) and then sent the same master tape to Chris. I think the former, since I still have an excellent sounding master tape here somewhere. I think I mailed the master to Chris in a big box with some actual Danish pastry, plus the cover template for the U.S. edition, which I wasn’t too happy with and soon changed to color pictures of Danish pastry from the finest patisseur in town (at the airport, actually).
There had been a big punk/wave scene in Copenhagen back in the day, which I had been a part of but not in any active way. I was not a musician and only had a friend or two who was. By 1988-89, it was more like a post-postpunk scene, and nothing new and revolutionary had replaced what happened 10 years earlier. For me, the new big thing was the international cassette network and the myriad of artists it spawned. I had only recently discovered and immersed myself in this network, mostly through the music section of the mammoth zine-review zine Factsheet 5.
While conducting my search for this compilation I hoped to uncover a similar underground of undiscovered original talent here. Well, for the most part I didn't. What I found was that an actual k7-based scene had indeed existed here, but that was back in the early 1980s. When most of the bands failed to get much recognition or sales this way, they gave up. There were several small experimental music tape labels, like the one run by Gry Records, by far the best punk/wave music shop in Copenhagen. They also sold cassettes from those other labels, but I never saw them when I went record shopping there. You had to be in the know as they were more or less hidden under the counter. Anyway, that scene didn't really exist anymore and all the stalwarts from back then, some of whom did participate in my compilation, had become deeply discouraged with cassettes. What I also found was that only a very few of the artists I surveyed knew or cared about the new wave of international k7 labels (which I would date from mid-1980s on). So I actually gifted out a lot of my favorite new k7 releases to many of them for inspiration - something I came to regret, as it later dawned on me that it wasn’t really appreciated.
About the bands on the tape…
Aeroflot is a synth-prog journey of a rather epic caliber. It’s a long but fitting opener. These guys (a 5-piece) were very ambitious and demanding, both of themselves, and of me, asking many questions. I sent them a k7 by the Israeli tape-collage artist Paradox (Eli Talgam) to lighten them up a bit, and in return received a phone call from their leader who was absolutely furious. He considered my gift a huge insult and threatened to pull out of the comp. It took a lot of effort to calm him down. I needed the track since the comp was almost finished by then. It was strange since they had recorded some joking, improvised rap music on the other side of the track they submitted, but evidently had a very narrow definition of what music should or could be. They released a tape and appeared on another Danish compilation a couple years later but disappeared after that. I think the Discogs entry from 2020 is by another Aeroflot.
Anoxia Cerebri is a guy named Danny Lund who had self-released a k7 a year earlier. I liked this guy. I thought he had the right attitude, noodling at home with various gear. I also liked that he made an original track for the compilation. And that's about all I know about him. He told me Anoxia Cerebri means lack of oxygen to the brain.
I don't remember anything about Cats Cradle. They can't spell, or it would have been Cat’s Cradle in proper English. Probably named after the Kurt Vonnegut novel, which I liked. I should mention that Cats Cradle also appeared on another Danish comp around the same time titled Klima (climate), along with many of the other artists on my comp. In fact, only one of them is not on it, which shows how small the scene here was.
Nothing comes to mind about Clone Cult. As far as I know they only ever appeared on this compilation.
Cockpit Music is one of the grand old bands from the early DIY 1980s. It’s sort of a twin band to Global Guaranty Orchestra. Both are (more or less) led by Peter Ole Jørgensen, a real stalwart of the Danish scene and still going strong in experimental/jazz-oriented/percussive lineups. This is the kind of music that runs like a nerve through the Danish music scene and also through this compilation, though I would rather have avoided it. In this sense, the comp is like a view back through the 1980s, whereas I would have preferred it to be more forward-looking. Cockpit Music is also an original track for this compilation.
Cyclon Anti Cyclon (‘Danish art rock duo’, per Discogs) is somewhat of a supergroup. Per Buhl Acs and Tomas Ortved were both in some of the most important acts of the first Danish punk wave. Peter Bonde is more known as an important visual artist. I never met them. I only received a small reel-to-reel tape in the mail. The track is also on their LP from the year after, though this may be a different version. It has a dreamy, evocative quality. I really like this track.
I don't know much about Deep Sea Divers. I remember visiting the head guy who lived very close to me and liking him. I gave him a tape I’d just received from my (still) favorite band, Big City Orchestra. Later I met him and he told me he totally couldn't get into that one at all. I should have asked for it back, I’m still missing that one. I remember seeing a poster with an upcoming gig by them in Barbue and not going. Not my favorite track here either. But it has again that sense of foreboding that I cherished.
Dub Tractor was my old friend Anders Remmer. We went to school together and lived on the same street in a suburb to the north. But we only bonded around 1978 around the 9th grade when we one day found out we had the same weird and experimental tastes in music. It was so strange to discover we both had records by the Residents, and had both recently acquired the Miniatures LP (edited by Morgan-Fischer). A bit later he formed his art-rock band How Do I which saw consistent critical success. We drifted apart after high school (he was much more mature and academically inclined) but once again found ourselves living nearby in the big city. So I asked him for a track and he started his solo sampler-based project Dub Tractor for the occasion. I received a complete demo from him, all solid tracks, of which I chose this. He said the title was from a Thelonius Monk composition. I coupled it with an untitled snippet I found elsewhere on the tape, without his permission, so you might consider this a bonus track of sorts. Among his other projects, Dub Tractor has since released lots of stuff and is still going strong.
Not much to say about Én Hülm. It’s just a track I received in the mail one day from something called Fusion Records, together with the (very different) one from Little Brian & the Dogs. I don't remember what it sounds like but I'm sure it's pretty good. Én Hülm seems to have never released anything else, which is a pity.
Foss / Høeg / Schneidermann / Skeel is an experimental constellation of “big” names on the circuit here, but more known for other projects. They released an LP in 1987 from which this seems to be taken. I appear to have misspelled (or misread, sometimes they weren't very legible) the title. It’s supposed to be ‘Clear It Out’, not ‘Clean It Out’.
Ginnungagab is a band from Jutland that has labored for many years, at least until 2011, without gaining much recognition. As for their name: In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap (or, as here, Ginnungagab) is the primordial, magical void mentioned in three poems from the Poetic Edda and the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording of Norse cosmogony. [Wikipedia]. I guess this mythological basis informs their music to some extent. I always wanted to explore their sound world, and even got their Sibuna release, but never got around to listening to it. Maybe I prefer them to be considered impenetrable and mythically out of reach, in a land to the far north. Speaking of Sibuna, I think that is the true title of the piece here, which I (again) misspelled as Sibone (and to think that I would come to work as a proofreader at the EU just a short while later, yech!).
Global Guaranty Orchestra, like Cockpit Music, is another of P.O. Jørgens’ many free-jazz based projects, and almost as prolific and long-lived as that. When I decided on the name for the compilation, I wasn't aware they had just released their Different Stages in Different Lives LP with a same-titled ‘Danish Pastry’ track. So, with their permission, I got the title track from that. They told me to just take it from the record, which I did. I love this track. It has a crisp quality and acts sort of like the eye of the hurricane. Serendipity?
Hunk Ai, the second band from Jylland (or ‘the province’, as we arrogantly term most any place in Denmark out of Copenhagen). It’s the second prog(-ish) track to my ears, in this case, of the R.I.O. variety which I don’t know much about. It appears to be from their second LP which had not yet been released by then. It's shrilly and annoying, though in a satisfying way.
Kim G, or Kim G Hansen as he is known, is a soundman and producer (also for radio and TV). He also has been active as a musician in many concurrent projects. This track appears to be his only solo release. I remember being very happy with his two professionally well done contributions. I only met him once by chance a few years ago at a record shop. I promised to send him a copy of the comp as he had lost his own copy. I never got round to it, but I guess the Bandcamp version will remedy that. Also, I think it is a bit funny the track is called ‘bonus track’, as there are a few different varieties of that on here (and this isn't really one).
Linda Lovelace Fanclub were friends of Peter Peter. Like me, he loved everything obnoxious, loud and transgressive, so he talked me into letting them on. I thought with all the eclecticism here there could also be room for some punk. Though energetic, I find it rather tame and predictable, kind of a poor man’s G.G. Allin or something. I met them at Peter Peter’s. They were friendly and excited to get a release (their first, and last, it seems).
I think Little Brian & The Dogs could be the same artist as Én Hülm? If so, he is very tongue in cheek, as this sounds nothing like that. In fact, it’s more like a Hammond wiz showing off his skills than anything. Yet, it is pulled off with a certain pizazz, making it a nice side-ender. Sadly, the track got cut off halfway due to length, which led me to number it as #15.50 (fifteen and a half) on the Danish version as it was only half a number. I still feel a bit sad for Little Brian & the Dogs. I wonder what became of them?
What can I say about Master Fatman & His Freedomfighters? I’d never heard about him at this time. I guess I called his manager, Kim ‘Jack’ Foss (known for being a cinema/film kingpin here) and he told me to go to Loppen, a music venue at Christiania (the infamous ‘free town’) here that same night, where he was playing with his band. The music was pretty straight ‘Fat’ Elvis style rock ‘n’ roll, delivered with an over-the-top exaggeration and smarmy coolness. So I thought, what the heck, an Elvis homage would be fitting for a Memphis-based release. So I caught the man hurrying backstage afterwards and on the spot he just said, sure, talk to my manager. So I talked with Jack again. He told me to go to a certain address, which was a back yard staircase in a sleazy part of town. And sure enough, there was a small reel just lying there waiting for me. And that was pretty much that. Only a few years later, Morten Lindberg (his real name) gained fame, if not fortune here, and became what you could call a household name. His persona (as well as his bodily container) was larger-than-life, and he even had a talk show on national TV. He was sort of the Danish buddha (he had himself portrayed as such by famous artist John Kørner, sold as statuettes in various sizes, I have a small one) and Elvis archetype (later he branched into Abba and disco) rolled up into one. Everywhere he went he focused on spreading good vibes and peaceful karma. Not beyond mischief though, he produced the infamous flick, Gayniggers From Outer Space, that had a cinema release and sparked some controversy. But that’s the essence of Danish humor. It almost has to offend someone to be considered really funny. The point being, that the offended party should then forgive you and laugh along, as it’s all ironic (otherwise, it can get awkward!).
Nina & Frederik was the name of a world-famous Danish-Dutch husband and wife duo from the 1960s. This track on the Discogs page linked to this duo for a long time, which I found hilarious until I made an alternative artist entry and so corrected it. When I later met Kim G Hansen he told me the story behind it: He and his girlfriend at the time, Nina Weber, had been fooling around in the studio late at night and recorded some tracks just for a laugh. They broke up soon after and nothing more came of it. Their contribution is simple but well made and kind of funny in an uneasily suspenseful way. I guess they chose their name on a lark. Also, fittingly, the original duo had kind of a dark side, as Frederik got involved in criminal activities and they eventually broke up. It was a big celebrity scandal.
Peter Peter (Schneidermann) - I had no clue about this guy but he asked me to come right over. It was a very nice apartment in a quiet side street. I was surprised how spacious and well furnished it was. How could an experimental musician afford that I wondered? He looked like a scruffy street kid and apparently had plenty of free time. We talked a bit and found out we were both into cult movies. So Peter Peter went into a small room at the far end and dug out some groovy VHS tapes he said I could borrow (John Waters’ Female Trouble was one of them, still a favorite movie. I made sound excerpts from this and some of the others that I used for sound collages. A snippet of one served as my personal bonus track signature at the very end of Danish Pastry). He then proceeded to throw a tape in the VCR, telling me he had recently finished that soundtrack. So we sat back in the sofa and on the screen came the heaviest gay s/m dungeon sex scenes I’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of watching (turned out to be an experimental short by reknowned filmmaker Kurt Vesterskov). Then Peter Peter went into the room at the far end again and came back with a tape, his contribution to the comp. When he showed me out, I noticed a guitar hanging on the wall, a bright pink guitar with a small banana sticker. I knew that guitar, it had been etched into my brain for so many years. Back in 1978 when I was 14 and just getting into punk, one afternoon out of boredom I turned on the TV (there was only one, state-run channel back then) and was hit with... SODS, the first Danish punk band, doing their cover of Red Crayola's ‘Hurricane Fighter Plane’, and that shocking pink banana sticker guitar rudely flashing in close-up. Unbelievably awesome! In the next few years SODS’ (now renamed Sort Sol) first couple albums were the formative soundtrack of my teenage years. And I now realized I was standing in the presence of this guitar god. Wide-eyed I just stared at it, and tried to explain how much it had meant to me. Peter Peter just grinned his trademark grin and politely showed me out the door. The title, ‘S.O.D.’ is an homage to one of his favorite bands, Stormtroopers of Death, he later told me. I’m very honored that he gave me an original track that has never been published anywhere else. And that again has that ominous, lurking in the shadows, quality.
Picnic was from Aarhus in Jutland. After the anti-climax of ‘S.O.D.’, they come in with their sudden, short, sax driven blast of scrungy jazz-rock. They were quite big at the time, often playing live and having released two LPs, the second of which this track seems to be taken from. It’s Zappa-esque, avant-garde jazz-rock. There were quite a few bands around of that ilk. Not really my cup of tea, though in small doses like this it can be invigorating.
Ramton is one of my favorite entries on the tape. I didn't even remember contacting this artist. I think he had just heard about the project and decided to contribute. I do remember receiving a small grey, square packet just containing a tape with the title on it. No letter, nothing. I tried contacting the artist several times but to no avail. Anyway, I love this. The sounds and the title fit my concept and the flow of it perfectly, sort of echoing the Picnic track but in a rawer way.
Robin & Bad Men are another band that has nothing else on Discogs. I seem to recall getting the contact through Roland/Terminator Ted but I’m not sure. It’s kind of a dreamy pop track but with that dark fatalistic edge and kind of acts as a breather track after the agony of the preceding ones.
Sloppy Wrenchbody - I went to meet with Claus in his apartment, fittingly located in the seedier part of town (Vesterbro) with porno shops, pushers, street hookers and bars on every corner (not like that anymore). I was very impressed as I noticed several hometaper cassettes lying about. I specifically remember one of the ‘Total Recess’ comps from Mystery Hearsay from Memphis. So I knew he was my man. He kind of shrugged it off though, as just one avenue he was investigating. The music is sort of Skinny Puppy inspired electro-industrial. The track has not been released elsewhere. They had some success on the international EBM circuit with several vinyl and cd releases.
Slængs is another band with a spelling mishap, or in fact two. It’s supposed to be Slæng’s - slæng meaning a crew or posse, which is then spelled with the possessive like "gang’s". I think they were from North Jutland. It certainly sounds like it, a very naked, angry or desperate sounding track with a real postpunk energy, much like the band ‘Before’. The track is probably from their s/t 1985 cassette, which I then lazily misspelled as ‘plotter’ instead of ‘blotter’ (Danish for exhibitionist). I remember, on their recommendation, buying their vinyl EP which had just come out, but not finding anything useable. They then sent me their former s/t k7 release, where I decided on this.
Symphony Of Futuristic Times may not be the strongest track here. I guess it just held up at the time as a ‘futuristic’ synth composition. Like Aeroflot, it’s a little self-serious for my taste but gives some breathing room and perhaps a sense of ‘space’, where you can mind-wander and relax.
Terminator Ted is a bit ironic when I think about it. I met Roland, who lived nearby. He gave me 6 or 7 of his band’s self-released tapes, all full-length with well-made covers (no sign of those on Discogs). They tried to build a kind of mythos around it, something about a killer teddy bear. If they didn’t exactly attract a cult following (well, perhaps a tiny one), they at least seemed interminably infatuated with their teddy bear selves, I thought. After listening through all of that, I came up with just one track. But that was very good, being an exotic, atmospheric excursion for the teddy bear troupe.
To Hoveder (two heads) was apparently another project from Kenneth of Deep Sea Divers that I previously molested here. But I adore this track. It again has that darkly suspenseful quality that unites much of this comp (‘a speeding car comes closer and closer, and then...’).
Trash Taxi were from Funen, the middle island of Denmark. They were an EBM/electro band that had a single out and appeared on a few other comps a bit after mine. I didn’t get to meet them. It’s an upbeat track that hasn't appeared anywhere else. Cautiously ecstatic energies at work here, I like it very much.
TS Høeg and V. Olsson were two heavyweights of the Danish jazz-punk scene. They had been playing independently since the early days but also collaborating for many years in various bands though not anywhere else as a duo. I’m no longer sure what this sounds like, but I guess it’s more electronic avant-garde than one might expect from these two saxophonists.
Tzarina Q Cut were – again – from the Danish ‘avant-garde’ jazz scene. They were the duo of Jacob Draminsky on reeds and Jørgen Teller (who is still in full force on the experimental scene here) on guitar. TQC sprung from the mid-80s DIY aesthetic and had more of a free-jazz approach than most. This is the very first track on their first release from 1988. The Danish lyrics are quite funny, sort of a screwed-up jungle mating attempt gone awry.
Sadly, I remember nothing about U Turn I Turn. I don’t think I met the artist, but it fits in so well in every way. It should have been a big hit. It doesn't seem like they ever did anything else.
Vigoroso are another outfit I know zero about, except they were from Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark (which once boasted the proud motto: ‘Aarhus - Danish for progress’). You may know what vigoroso means (‘performing with a strong or energetic quality’), but did you know ‘obloquy’ apparently means ‘disgrace from strong public condemnation’ in Spanish? I didn't.
The punctuation signs (punktum punktum komma streg) on the ‘band’ name ..,- indicate a Danish children’s song that describes how to draw a simple smiley-type face. It is apparently a solo project from Roland of Terminator Ted, perhaps a one-off thing. The title, ‘meet the presidents’, is of course a riff on the Residents’ first LP, something I can appreciate, as it has always been my favorite album of all time. And their Duck Stab LP was the first I ever bought.
Note that I smuggled a little thing of my own at the end (uncredited). Depending on tape speeds or other factors there was a half-minute of tape left, so I decided I might as well fill it out with my own subliminal programming. I had been fiddling with making these audio collages of sounds primitively recorded and mixed for a few months. I didn’t do tracks, only side-long assemblages of whatever sound sources I could find. This is an excerpt from a longer, untitled tape. There is a speaker from a Danish Disney children’s tape talking about Minnie Mouse whom “nobody wanted to help when she was baking the cakes, yet now everybody wants to help with eating them.” The scarier, multi-tracked sounds and voices came from a couple of the VHS tapes that Peter Peter loaned me and blended in, explaining the ‘hypnovista’ process where “you’ll feel no pain at all… let me just remove the needles.” I guess on the U.S. Harsh Reality edition it may have been almost absent as he would use a tandem setup with proper tape speeds. I called myself No Weye (a take on Maybe Mental’s Kweye k7, which I shrewdly recognized only existed as a mental concept, since I had tried ordering it from distributors a few times without receiving anything at all. Well, it did exist, but had just sold out, as I eventually got it, duh!) at the time but later changed it to P. Shrivelclub (a name that appeared to me in a dream). I made plenty of improvised tapes but hardly any ‘real’ releases. I mostly just sent them out as one-offs to tape trading contacts and other ‘lucky’ recipients.
About the Danish edition - When I sent out invitations, I promised the artists they would each receive a complimentary copy. That would have been very expensive to import with 30+ artists involved so I thought I would release a Danish edition myself, though I had no experience with that kind of thing either. And it turned out to be even more expensive to produce!
I didn’t plan to make a special cover for the Danish edition, it just sort of happened that way. At first, I was toying with various ideas, such as a picture I’d taken of a half-eaten Danish pastry that kind of looked like Elvis in profile. Or a found-in-the-street photo of a white horse grazing outside an old cottage; I would then have retitled as ‘Danish pasture’. But it didn’t quite gel until one day when I was riding the train and was leafing through the DSB (national Danish train company) free monthly magazine “Ud & Se” (Out & See) when I noticed an advert for items on their (now abolished) trolley catering service, “DSB togservice” (DSB train service).
I instantly knew that was it. I held a cassette case over it and it fit perfectly without any adjustments. Also, there was room for the track list on some red and white - the national colors - graphics. It had to be folded a certain way, at a 90° angle but that was an advantage as you could then refold it and get the track list on the front instead. The corporate “DSB togservice” fit on the spine, substituting for the real title. And an industrial cupcake of sorts substituted for an actual piece of pastry.
But these were ironic times and the packaging should be viewed in that light. On the same train journey, I noticed the small baggies for putting waste in that had just been introduced hanging on the backs of the seats (those are still around). These were adorned with little pictograms of crossed-over piggies, like ‘No Littering”. There were 16 images on each baggie, and since I had 32.5 artists I would symbolically represent them using two baggies for the outer packaging, with the “half” artist (Little Brian & the Dogs) represented by half a piggie - and where to put that? I found that a teabag fit perfectly with the cassette cover’s width. It was placed over the cup of coffee on the front so that instead of coffee you got tea. The flimsy half-a-pigsnout-picture piece of plastic was then inserted into the opening of the (Swedish, actually) teabags, the implication of which I left up to the beholder.
Although the cover was kind of a ready-made, I made one small alteration. On the front there is a line that says “forbehold for pris- og sortimentsændringer” (subject to price and assortment changes). As a small joke, I changed the “pris-“ to “gris-“ (pig), so it said “subject to pig changes”, of which there was. I overlayed the left side with the tracklist (which cost over $200 to produce as I had to rent computer time at a Rank Xerox center!). To fit into the bags better, I took the tape out from the case and placed them alongside in a baggie together with a yellow contact sheet (which I had made in the HR style). I then folded this contraption neatly and inserted it into the other baggie together with a larger, blue sheet, which also spelled the true title of the comp (which I then believed to be “Danish pastry in your ears” - it was shortened on release by Chris) and which I had used for invitations for submissions. This was then also folded around and ready to serve like some throwaway packaging for takeaway food.
Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors so you may wonder, why? But I did everything for a reason. I was definitely a bit insane at this time, paranoid even, but in a positive way. Strange, traumatic, but also wonderful things had happened to me around a specific time and place in August of 1988 that had altered my whole way of thinking into what a psychiatrist would term “magical thinking”. So I made sure every detail with the cover and what was on the tape had a deep, connected meaning and significance for me - if not understandable for anyone else. My actual reason for doing it this way was two-fold: As mentioned, I needed artist copies. But I also needed it to fulfill a special private purpose, something I had to do for myself connected to that epiphany I had had, but about which I can tell you no more.
After sending out about half of the 69 copies produced to the artists (and only getting a “good job!” note back from Peter Peter, which I appreciated) I was left with about 40 copies, some of which I gave to friends and family, and a few I sent to U.S. hometapers for publicity. At that time, I suddenly landed a temp job in Luxembourg and had to leave the country in a hurry. On the way to the airport I drove by Candy Records and asked if they would like to sell the rest. They got them for free on the condition that the sale price should be exactly 32,50 dkk, which was the price of all the items on the menu on the cover added together, and also the number of artists (and piggies) on it. When I returned some months later, they told me they had sold all of them very quickly, which I was elated and a bit surprised to hear.
That cover and elaborate packaging wouldn't work for the U.S. version. So I threw the Danish pastry I bought in the airport in a color xerox machine, and asked Chris to use those instead of the rather stale cover I had first sent him, in which he obliged. In return he sent me a finished copy, which I then sent to the music zine Influenza (edited by Ketil Teisen) where it received a short but positive review.
So that was pretty much all until now. I hope the comp still has something to offer. Maybe it has dated in a good way (though Danish pastry rarely does that). And I thank Chris, Jerry, all the artists, and everybody else who made it a (harsh) reality!
'Clean Journey'
Form letter greeting note announcing further plans for my label, copentapen; only sent with complimentary copies to participants