Tape Media - Comments by Richard Vollin

Tape Media - Comments by Richard Vollin

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
Richard Vollin 31st Jul 2017		Cassette Album Rag Doll - Rag Doll (1995)	Rag Doll was a Northern Virginia cover band that formed in late summer 1994, and performed locally in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. Consisting of Heather Schultz-Meloni (late of the Inhalers, and Jet Set), her husband Ned Meloni (Ice Water Mansion, Jack Starr, Brian Jack), Kevin Burnes (brief association with Dokken), and Joe Hasselvander (Pentagram, Jack Starr, Raven). Their live show was usually divided into an acoustic set, and one electric, dominated by contemporary and classic covers, with a few originals mixed in. Their self-titled tape was never commercially available, except at their shows. Ned described the band as a '90s version of Humble Pie.
Richard Vollin 15th Jul 2017		Cassette Album Death Row - All Your Sins (1982)	It was through the circulation of this tape, that PENTAGRAM slowly found it's audience, and gained a loyal following outside of Washington, D.C. My friend Joe Gillette, and myself formed a graphics/photography duo that between us, anytime a poster, gig flier, or whatever our circle of friends needed for promotion - we did it cheap (read: FREE), and on-the-fly. It also helped that I was backed by my friend Ron Lunn who operated the film lab where I worked, as a full-time offset press operator, graphic artist, and photographer. Dave Flood (drummer with The Obsessed) was also a graphic arts wizard, and between the four of us, we got it done. It was maybe a week after DEATH ROW were finished mixing their new songs that Joe Hasselvander approached me with his pencil and magic marker rendering for the tape cover. Hasselvander was a gifted free-hand artist in the Jack Kirby tradition, and everything he drew had that dynamic, larger-than-life, exaggerated style. I translated his sketch into a 5X7 stylized mock-up using Ulano Rubylith, and all the DEATH ROW guys approved. It was now just a matter of some basic typesetting, and getting the band together for a glam-metal photo shoot. Several rolls of film, hairspray, eyeliner, and a cooler full of beer jumped that hurdle. The guys picked out the pose they liked from contact sheets, and then it was time to get negatives shot, plates made, and sneak "All Your Sins" between the real money-making jobs. The side with the lyrics was printed first (light ink coverage), the next day the red, and the final pass was all that black ink - a few days later it was trimmed out, and ready for scoring and folding - Done. The tape duplicating was done by Joe Gillette and myself. I was using a Panasonic Technics recorder with high-speed duplicating capability, and we were already doing the HELLION "You're Not Welcome Here" tapes. Sometimes we did 'real time' between two decks. There was always a cassette deck running at our place. The only expense to DEATH ROW was the cost of the blank tape and the plastic cases. Gillette bought in bulk; TDK D-C46 with no labels, 100 quantity. We're talkin' high quality shit here baby - the last word in High Fidelity. Joe would take care of the label printing at his job on a Xerox printer that did self adhesive labels. I forget who brought me the master cassette, but it's on a Maxell LN C-46 (another benchmark of quality) that was done by Bob Dunbar from the final mix. That poor tape had to hold up over repeated use, and I never got a replacement, so every copy of "All Your Sins" came from the tape pictured here - that's it - you're looking at it. Eventually we got through that 100 blanks, affixed labels, scored and folded the covers by hand, and delivered them to Joe, Victor, or Bobby. Some they sold, but most were given to friends and fans, and some were used to obtain gigs. I'll wager each original tape spawned two duplicates and so on. Over the years, I've seen many multi-generation copies with blurry Xerox covers that were so bad - only it's mother would recognize them. Using an 8X lupe, the original paper stock will display a distinct, pebble-like finish, anything else is rubbish. For those who care about such things...an 'original dub', or even a 'bastard-inbred third cousin removed dub' will have that all important identifying "one....two....three....four" count-in before "Sinister", as that disappeared in subsequent mixes and releases. So there - 100 original copies, and now you have an idea what to look for, and how to ID it. By 1985, the "All Your Sins" cassette was already obsolete, the name DEATH ROW long out of use, and Dutch East India Trading released a re-mixed, re-shuffled version of it as PENTAGRAM ! The seeds were sown and making their way to parts of Europe, behind the Iron Curtain, and to parts of the world even Bobby never heard of..but they heard of him.