Mike Pougounas
Mike Pougounas from Athens was part of the early independent rock scene in Greece. His band, The Flowers Of Romance, issued the tape above on Mick Magic’s Music And Elsewhere label in 1992.
Mike continues to make music with his latest group, New Zero God. Their “Fun Is A Four Letter Word” CD, above.
I can’t remember who gave me Lord Litter’s address or phone, telling me that he was a gig promoter. The Flowers Of Romance were looking for venues to book in Germany for a tour in 1989. I called him up (so I guess it was his phone number that I had) and he told me “no…no…I will send you a letter to see what I am doing”.
This is how it started.
He sent me an envelope full of addresses. Contacts, presentations of releases, etc. I started getting in touch with these people. We exchanged albums for cassettes, cassettes for cassettes, and people started asking me for tracks to feature in their cassette compilations…
Imagine that… Us, a Greek band from a country who was never interested in promoting its local bands abroad, found our own friends and connections.
Mick Magic from M&E (Surrey), Lord Litter and his fantastic radio shows in Berlin, exchanging singles for albums with the band Missed In Diary from Detroit, Albums for albums with Lemon Avenue from Australia.
The next Greek that asked me about promotion was Yiannis Kalifatidis from the Greek / German band Into the Abyss. I sent him Lord Litter’s envelope… Yiannis got so involved that he was releasing about 2500 xeroxed copy pages of an informational…”thing” 4 times a year.
The tape movement was a great idea.
Imagine this: We were sending our album to Don Campau or Lord Litter, we were broadcasted and the radio show was recorded and posted to others, then played again via other independent radio stations around the world.
Everything with good will. Just for the people who were out there for art’s sake… Nothing else is needed to say, I guess.
We can do that now, faster, thanks to the internet. We won’t wait for 2 weeks to get a reply.
It’s an idea that will die when the last artist will fade from the face of this planet.
Thanks to this movement, this is what I made with my music and I feel I left a mark of my existence to this world. I am sure you’ll see a couple of people you know.
