Andy Savage
Andy Savage’s music was playful, lo fi and intensely personal. He could be self deprecating, just a wee bit snide or jovial. His tapes were always fun and in some ways epitomized the true nature of the DIY approach.
Above, the cover for his cassette, “Well” and as you can see, on the inside ( below) he lists a couple of other tape releases and contact information.
As Andy notes in his comments, he also produced compilations or tapezines called “Supertrouper”. Always entertaining and engaging, he would often narrate bits here and there. The scan below is probably too blurry and small to read but features 26 tracks and even has room for a tape by Andy himself, “The Space Dentists”.
I think my first venture into tapes was my tapezine Super Trouper. It was a paper publication from the 80’s originally, but round about issue 6 my printer broke down and I couldn’t get it fixed, so I needed a new way of reproducing the magazine.
I remembered a flyer I had received once from Holland – it stood out because it came as a tape that people just passed on. I can’t even remember what it was advertising now, but the idea of a tape you could pass around I liked very much!
I figured if you could do a flyer on a tape, then why not an entire magazine. So Super Trouper became a tapezine and so it was from about issue 7 unitl about 25 when I finally finished doing it (sometime in the late 90’s I think).
It was great fun to do. I loved getting contributions for it on tape from all over. I’d get music and spoken word stuff, and edit it all together into a kind of show. At its height each issue had about 100 copies distributed. It doesn’t sound much but back in the days before easy internet access and mp3s it was hard work!
Infact it was the advent of the internet that killed it off. (Internet Killed the Tapezine Star!) I went online along with so many others and self-publishing was a mere click of a key away, so no need anymore for a format like Super Trouper. But it was fantastic fun while it lasted!
Andy now refers to himself as “Angelo Gravity” and you can check out his current projects here.
