Psrf 48: October 1997

http://psrf.detritus.net/volume/9/p48.html

'International Edition’ Showcases The Tape-beatles and Public Works

Coming as it did at the end of a four-year gap between it and the preceding issue, Psrf 48 took seriously the game of catch-up it had to do. So the Tape-beatles and Public Works stepped in, and ended up being major contributors of content to the issue. Running the gamut from the downright inscrutable to the merely odd, we find both groups at the height of their pseudo-journalistic craft. Filled with truth, half-truths, and flat-out lies, the texts you will find here defy superficial description. They are wholly ballasted by the weight of their overwrought paraphrasm.

Public Works also weighs in with a series of photo spreads inspired by those from the classic days of Life magazine. The piece “Matter: A History of the 3d Millennium” serves as a companion to their (at that time) recently-released début CD Matter And, as if to signal the pseudo-demise of that cat-lived group, John Heck offers up a double dose, in the form of “The True Uncensored Story Behind the Demise of the Tape-beatles,” as well as an Expatriot special, “Making the Money Which One Merely Looks At”.

(Incidentally, the Expatriot was a self-published travel journal that Psrf editor Lloyd Dunn wrote during a year he spent living in Bordeaux, France, as the guest of PhotoStatic contributor Philippe Billé. This accounts for at least some of that four-year gap we mentioned earlier.)

In addition to various scene reports by The Unknown Neoist and Ebon Fisher, there are also works by Stephen Perkins, Iain Haig, and Bill Brown. A selection of reviews of printed and recorded works rounds out the issue.