New Portland resident Leigh Marble offers up a very impressive collection on this, his first solo tape. Bowman, 11 Orchard Street, Cold Spring, NY 105516. C'mon Slacker can be had for $5.00 from Michael J. To capture it all, MJB uses two Radio Shack unidirectional mics (or goes direct) through a Roland MX-5 stereo four-channel mixer to a TEAC ?' reel-to-reel 4-track. Other songs have a lot of great pop touches like fuzz bass, hand claps, 'shooby-do-wah' backup vocals, tasty guitar licks, and vintage keyboard sound (that Casio again!). It features real drums (heard throughout the tape), rollicking piano (courtesy of a $100 Casio CTK-450), distorted guitars, and multi-tracked vocals.

If there were any justice, the lead off track 'I Shot the Invisible Man' would be used in some gen-x 'what are we doing with our lives?' romantic comedy. Bowman, C'mon Slacker contains several very tasty pieces of power-pop. Literally recorded in a basement (natural reverb, no boxes here!) by one-man-band Michael J. It has energy and enthusiasm that bursts through it's surface noise. This tape does sound a tad rough, but that's OK. 'Semper Lo-Fi', 'Guaranteed Basement Quality' according to the cassette label. Let's just say that some people could use some more practice and restraint. So when Larry offered to let someone review cassettes sent to Tape Op, I jumped at the chance to hear what my taping peers are doing.

The bad thing about self-released cassettes is, you guessed it, anyone can put them out without spending too much money. Photocopy some J-cards, dub a few tapes on the home stereo, and you're done. The great thing about self-released cassettes is that anyone can put them out without spending too much money.

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