Three Questions With Tape Op - Larry Crane and John Baccigaluppi
Well this is pretty cool! Got to chat with living legends Larry Crane and John Baccigaluppi of Tape Op, who started it all when it comes to DIY gear 'zines. They recently released Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers, a retrospective book [link] which includes interviews with Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Linda Perry, and more. I was keen to ask them three questions about how they kept it up all these years, running an independent 'zine myself!
Without further ado...
Synth History: Can you tell me about the early days of Tape Op? How did you grow and maintain it throughout the years and what were the biggest challenges?
Larry Crane: I started Tape Op in April 1996 on my own with a couple of credit cards and visits to the photocopy shop. After a few issues I began using real printers. By the time John joined up in 1998, I was quite in debt as I’d also opened Jackpot! Recording Studio in early 1997, nine months after starting Tape Op. I didn’t really try to sell advertising in the mag when I ran it solo, though we had a few record labels running ads, and John was able to sell more ads, increase the circulation from 2,500 to 25,000, and get copies everywhere. The “free” subscription model is John’s idea, as paid-only subs would generate a lot less readers and then ad rates would be a lot lower, making for a difficult business plan. For a few early years, I don’t think we really made a profit, but now we can pay contributors and ourselves. Tape Op is not really a full-time job for anyone, though John and I might be close to that, and there is no central office with overhead costs, so that makes it easier to run. The simpler part is generating content, as many people saw what we were doing and pitched in to contribute and suggest interviews.
John Baccigaluppi: I contributed a little bit to Issue # 1, plus interviewed Mitchell Froom for # 10, and then I came aboard for issue # 11. During those first two years I was a big fan of what Larry was doing with the magazine, and when he’d send me a new issue I’d be super stoked to read it. I approached him with the idea of reaching a bigger audience, and I remember taking issue # 10 to the 1998 AES conference in San Francisco and having every single person I talked to at the show tell me, “The world does not need another recording magazine. We’re not interested.” We managed to get the first issue out somehow, though, and I ended up in the ad sales position, not something I really wanted to do, but I realized it was a good spot for me to be in. I’d be on the phone with the ad buyer from some audio company and I’d listen to them talk for a few minutes about how Tape Op was not the right audience for their company. Then I’d reply with something like, “With all due respect, you’re wrong. I own a recording studio and I own several pieces of your gear,” and I’d rattle off a list of the gear they made that was in my studio. Then I’d say, “I don’t read any of the magazines you are advertising in and neither do any of my friends and colleagues. You should be in Tape Op,” and that would get the conversation started.
Synth History: What were some of your favorite interviews?
Larry Crane: Brian Eno was always a top goal for a Tape Op interview. John and I finally got to meet him in London on July 22, 2011. He was gracious but punctual, and at one point he sorta hijacked the interview but that was amazing as he has so many things to say! It was a pleasure to meet him. Chatting with Susan Rogers was a treat, as her sessions with Prince created some of the best music ever. Finding out that he worked in the same obsessed way as my pal Elliott Smith was a revelation.
John Baccigaluppi: Oh man, so many! I agree with Larry on Brian Eno. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings was another really interesting one to do for me. I feel like it’s still really fun to do interviews, and in the last year or two, I’ve done interviews with Suzanne Ciani, Liz Pelly, Stella Mozgawa, Emily A. Sprague, Kenny Blume, Sylvan Esso, Cate Le Bon, and Sam Shepherd from Floating Points that were all really enjoyable and interesting conversations.
Synth History: What are your top three synths of all time and why?
Larry Crane: I bought a 28-pin DIP integrated circuit by Texas Instruments called the SN76477 Complex Sound Generator from Radio Shack in the late-’70s. I built a wooden box for it, added switches and potentiometers, and I had a monophonic oscillator/noise generator. Years later I felt too ‘grown up’ as a musician to be messing with this odd little box and tossed it in a dumpster. I regret that still. It was interesting to start my journey with simply an oscillator! The Casio VL-Tone VL-1 was my first synthesizer with keys, and I still own the original one. I was in my last year of high school and my pal’s mom bought one when it came out in 1981. I played with it a little bit and then knew I had to own one. I made a number of self-released cassettes as “Lawrence Crane” and used the Casio extensively. There’s a lot more under the hood than people thought. I bought the Radio Shack version of the Casio SK-1 that was rebranded as the Realistic Concertmate 500 in 1985. This was an affordable sampler–$100–and also a digital synthesizer. It features on a lot of my tapes from then on, and even on some live recordings of the band Vomit Launch that I joined that year. The sampler function was fun to build loops and odd sounds in. I’d plug my bass guitar straight in and get monstrous chordal tones!
John Baccigaluppi: Oh no, that’s impossible to answer! I’m a synth nerd and I learned in college on a Buchla 200 modular system, EMS Synthi AKS, and ARP 2600. I then did a summer workshop with John Chowning and later bought a Yamaha DX7–that was based on his research. I got really good at programming that.
We are in a golden age for synths right now, and while I love the classics there are so many amazing new synths both in the modular world and standalone synths. I love the ASM Hydrasynth and Expressive E Osmose for their forward thinking MPE–MIDI Polyphonic Expression–architecture. On the vintage side, my Korg MS-20 and Polysix get a lot of use. In my Eurorack, the Mutable Instruments and Verbos modules are favorites. I have to also confess my love for the iPad. It’s an amazing instrument with its 2D touch screen, and the computational power rivals and exceeds the most powerful digital synths from the early days of digital synthesis. To think that I can have both a Synclavier and a Fairlight CMI on my iPad for about $500 is amazing to me. But newer apps, like Moog’s Animoog are even deeper. And to see Donald Buchla’s 700 digital synthesizer ported over to the iPad is a gift of modern technology. During the pandemic, I made a mostly synth record paired with loops of my cat and you can hear it with liner notes on the Bandcamp page.
Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers is available now.
Synth History Exclusive.
Interview conducted by Danz.
Photos courtesy of Tape Op / Pitch Perfect.
