Cassette Theory: A Mixtape (Eleanor Patterson, Rob Drew, and Andrew Simon)

Today we present a cassette theory mixtape. Three excellent scholars help us understand consumer-focused magnetic tape and its history as a medium for the masses:Eleanor Patterson, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Auburn, whose new book just won the 2025 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Book Award and a 2025 International Association for Media and History Book Award. It’s called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television distribution (Illinois Press, 2024). Rob Drew, Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University and a fantastic interpreter of pop culture like graffiti and karaoke. His new book is Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke, 2024). Andrew Simon, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. We’ve been wanting to talk to him for a while about his 2022 book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press). This conversation winds its way from the early days of radio, through the Anglophone indie rock of the 1980s, and into the streets of Cairo, where cassette tapes represented the first mass medium that Egyptian state power could not control. 03:49 Introducing the Cassette Theory Mixtape04:06 Meet the Scholars: Eleanor Patterson, Rob S. Drew, and Andrew Simon06:10 Diving into the Books: A Round Table Discussion12:24 Exploring the Prehistory of Media Distribution23:43 The Role of Cassettes in Indie and Hip Hop Culture31:12 Cassettes in Egypt: A Tool for Revolution and Resistance40:32 The Intersection of Media and CultureHear the full 90 minute conversation by joining our Patreon! Please support the show at patreon.com/phantompowerLinks to Mack’s recent travels:Residual Noise Festival at Brown UniversityResonance: Sound Across the Disciplines at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural AnalysisTranscriptAndrew Simon: [00:00:00] Cassette tapes and players did not simply join other mass mediums like records and radio. They became the media of the masses. Cassettes in many ways were the internet before the internet. They enabled anyone to produce culture, circulate information, challenge ruling regimes, long before social media ever entered all of our daily lives.  PPIntro: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound where I talk to people who make sound and people who study sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I’m a Media professor at Miami University, and I just want to start off by giving a quick shout out to a couple of creative communities that I got to hang out in. I [00:01:00] just got back from the Residual Noise Festival at Brown University, which was this amazing three day event featuring ambisonic sound, art, and music pieces performed both at Brown and at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. The lead curator of the festival was Ed Osborne, who is the chair of the Art Department at Brown, and a very accomplished sound artist. And in the middle of the festival there was this one day conference and Ed was kind enough to invite me to be the keynote speaker. And then I had an onstage discussion with Emily I. Dolan, the chair of Brown’s Music Department, and someone whose work I’ve followed for a long time, and it was a real thrill to meet her as well.