Classic & Current Contemporary Non-Schlock-Rock Metropolitan Music

Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground (1987) - Charles Neal

Look for Tape Delay
at Barnes & Noble.

This book got rave reviews when it was first published in the late 80s. Author Charles Neal worked with me at WFDD and WKZL. He left North Carolina to go to London and write this book.

Tape Delay is full of cool and unusual interviews with and contributions from post-punk artists, including Marc Almond, Dave Ball, Nick Cave, Chris and Cosey, Coil, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Fall, Diamanda Galas, Genesis P. Orridge, Michael Gira, The Hafler Trio, Matt Johnson, Laibach, Lydia Lunch, New Order, Psychic TV, Boyd Rice, Henry Rollins, Clint Ruin, Silverstar Amoeba, Sonic Youth, Stephen Stapleton, Stevo, Mark Stewart, Swans, Test Dept., David Tibet, and Touch.

SAF Publishing Ltd. issued the first edition of Tape Delay in 1987. Two more printings - 1992 and 2001 - followed. There are still copies floating around, mostly second-hand at collector's prices.

Here's some early press from SAF for Tape Delay:

In 1984 author Charles Neal set about interviewing the major protagonists working in sound, word and image. Concentrating on the most challenging and confrontational, he deliberately chose those individuals and groups most at odds with the mainstream. His aim to produce a collection that reflected the cutting edge of the Eighties underground.

With only his tape recorder as defence, he solicited hundreds of hours of interview material, as well as photos, original writing and illustrations. His findings were as intriguing and diverse as the artists included. Often encompassing the taboo and perverse, the opinions of Nick Cave, Genesis P.Orridge and Michael Gira now read like lone voices against the tide of creeping commerciality that abounded in the Eighties music scene.

Those such as Coil, Einsturzende Neubauten and Lydia Lunch are still gnawing away at the boundaries of respectability, while New Order, Sonic Youth and Henry Rollins have become internationally renowned. Clearly, the confrontational legacy of the artists included within Tape Delay's myriad pages is still visible in today's musical world, whether it be in the industrial rhythms of Nine Inch Nails or the ambient undercurrents of Orbital or Underworld. Years later, this invaluable collection still makes for fascinating reading both as historical document and as signpost to future actions.

Further down the page I've posted some reviews of Tape Delay along with an NME article about the book from 1988.

You can read Charles' interview with Genesis P. Orridge on Genesis' blog. You can find other interviews from the book around the Internet.

Tape Delay - Original Cover Notes

Tape Delay is composed of interviews, exclusive writing, illustrations and photographs that reflect the intiatives of those who have deviated from the mainstream of sound, word and image since the mid-Seventies.

The continued dominance of an entertainment-based industry and culture determines that such work appears as 'specialist," whatever its content - any experimentation is easily marginalised. TAPE DELAY provides the first comprehensive focus on undercurrents and interventions that continue to exert a strong influence in spite of this, highlighting past actions and future possibilities.

Reviews for Charles Neal's Tape Delay

Here are bits from reviews of Tape Delay after its publication in 1987.

Look for Tape Delay
at Barnes & Noble.

• Tape Delay investigates those rare underground performers who've stuck their forefingers up the butt of commercial (in)sensibility to pursue their own visions. On that level alone it should be welcomed... A virtual Who's Who of people who've done the most in the past decade [the eighties] to drag music out of commercial confinement.
  -- New Musical Express
• Tape Delay is by far the most ambitious and comprehensive attempt so far to link together the large number of innovative noise-orientated bands to have emerged from the indie ghetto.
  -- Sounds Magazine
• Overall, this is a truly superb book which anyone even half interested in any of the artists covered should invest in.
  -- Impulse Magazine
• Intriguing and interesting.
  --Q Magazine
• Arguably the best genre book of all time.
  --Music From The Empty Quarter
• A collection of interviews with over 25 of the most interesting musicians from the past decade or so into a journo-free peek at the 80s underground.
  --Record Collector
• Anyone interested in underground electronic music will love this book.
  -- Future Music

NME Article by Jack Barron on Tape Delay from 1988

Thanks to DJ Pigg at MySpace for sharing this article with us. - DD