OVO 1
1987
Art brut (prison art), tape fragmentation, underground european experimental music, first appearance in print of the phrase “phone tag,” Garry Reith, collage art, copy art. With new introduction and annotations.
Photocopy, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 12 pages. Art brut, tape fragmentation, underground European experimental music, first appearance in print of the phrase “phone tag,” Garry Reith, collage art, copy art.
- [Front Cover] Collage.
- [02] Introduction.
- [03] Anonymous drawing from a man in a prison in Texas.
- [04] Photograph
- [05] Tape Fragmentation. This page was reprinted in Sound Choice magazine issue #5. In the 1980s I sent and received many cassettes through the mail. The tapes were almost never recordings of music. Usually they were audio collages or people talking. In the 1990s I gave away several thousand tapes. I still have hundreds.
- [06] OVO Catalogue.
- [07] Dear Friends. Martin Klapper, pen and paper. Collage by Trevor Blake, paper and spray paint. Martin also sent photographs of bands playing in masks (to hide their identities from police) and on boats in the middle of a lake (to be able to quickly evade authorities). Sometimes people talk about underground music. But this is a letter from a time and place where real underground music was occurring; unauthorized bands were subject to arrest.
- [08] Phone Tag. This is the first time the phrase ‘phone tag’ appears in print.
- [09] Shit Sperm Monster. Drawing.
- [10] Letter from the Graveyard Shift by Gerry Reith. Gerry Reith killed himself in the early 1980s before I learned of him. I always thought this text was stronger than much of what appeared in Reith’s posthumous book Neutron Gun. Good ideas that can’t be carried out aren’t good ideas at all. This is why Ernest Mann’s piece in OVO 2 was impressive to me. Publishing this in 1987 is part of my own Trajectory Through Anarchism.
- [11] Back Cover.