VA - 2013 - Broke Ass Back C90

 

Private Release – none

This early Broke Ass Tapes mixtape makes the most sense once the cover image is recognized correctly. The black-and-white still is from Brokeback Mountain, so the title Broke Ass Back is a direct joke on the label name. That instantly turns the cover from generic found imagery into a specific visual pun. The humor is cheap, direct, and effective, which fits the Broke Ass Tapes period perfectly. Nothing about the object is pretending to be refined or professionally manufactured. It is a reused cassette, a movie still, marker, handwriting, and a title joke working together as one handmade thing.

The cassette itself is a reused Fuji DR-I 90 with the original factory graphics still visible underneath thick black marker. The old commercial identity has not been erased cleanly. FUJI, DR-I, NORMAL, TYPE I, and the original design all remain part of the object while the new writing takes over the shell. That visible overwrite is important because it shows the tape already had a life before Broke Ass Tapes claimed it. The new object does not hide that history. It uses it.

The uploaded sides nearly fill a C90, and the music moves through an enormous range without trying to make that range look orderly. Side A includes James Ferraro, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Peach Kelli Pop, Ray Peterson, Crystal Castles, Ice-T, and other material that moves between experimental music, pop, oldies, punk, electronic music, and rap. The sequence does not care whether those artists would normally be grouped together. What matters is how one thing feels after another. That is the real structure of the mixtape.

Side B pushes that logic even further with Lightning Bolt, Shawn David McMillen, Godheadsilo, Direct Control, Au Revoir Simone, Mudhoney, WHY?, Panda Bear, Abner Jay, Echo & the Bunnymen, Personal and the Pizzas, Black Sabbath, and Moss Icon. On paper, that is a ridiculous spread. On tape, it becomes a listening path. The differences between the artists create energy instead of confusion. Something delicate can make the next noisy track feel harsher. Something familiar can make the next obscure track feel stranger. Something sentimental can make the next punk song feel more physical.

That is one of the strongest things about these early Broke Ass Tapes mixes. They are not trying to prove taste by excluding obvious music. They are using whatever works. A huge pop song can sit beside something obscure because both are emotionally useful. A famous artist does not automatically outrank an unknown one, and an underground artist does not automatically become more important because fewer people know the name. Once the songs are dubbed onto the same cassette, they all become equal pieces of magnetic information waiting for the next transition.

The handwritten track list makes that process visible. It is crowded, corrected, crossed out, and practical. It looks like the working document of the tape rather than packaging cleaned up afterward to make the process seem more controlled than it really was. Some choices changed. Some things were squeezed in. The handwriting records decision-making in the same way the cassette records sound. That makes the paper itself another kind of archive.

The Brokeback Mountain still adds another layer beyond the obvious joke. The image was chosen because Broke Ass Back plays off Broke Ass Tapes, but the movie itself carries associations with intimacy, secrecy, masculinity, longing, repression, desire, and social constraint. Those meanings do not have to be treated as a grand hidden concept, but they arrive with the image whether they were consciously invited or not. That is how collage works. You choose one thing for one reason, and it brings ten other meanings along with it.

The same thing happens with the music. A song may have been chosen because it felt right in the moment, but once it sits next to another song, both tracks start producing new associations. The sequence becomes its own object. James Ferraro means something different after Elton John than he would in an experimental-only mix. Black Sabbath lands differently after punk or indie music than it would on a metal compilation. Echo & the Bunnymen can suddenly feel more romantic, more dramatic, or more strange depending on what surrounds them.

That ability to reorganize existing culture is already very close to what Private Release would later do more consciously. Broke Ass Tapes is rougher, more social, and more immediate, but the same basic instinct is present. Existing music is selected and resequenced. Existing imagery is cut out and reused. Existing cassettes are overwritten. The creative act happens in the relationships between things rather than in pretending the source material came from nowhere.

The social life of the tape matters too. These were not precious collector editions. They were made to circulate, to be given away, to show up at events, to get passed between people, and to become part of Oakland social life. A free cassette works differently from a product. It can arrive without a purchasing decision. It can become a conversation, a gift, a joke, a recommendation, or a reason for somebody to ask what the hell they are hearing.

That Oakland context is all over the object even though there is no photograph of the city on the cover. The tape comes from a period when the local music, art, and social environment around you felt active and porous. People from different age groups and scenes overlapped. Music moved through houses, parties, events, friendships, and relationships. The tape reflects that openness because it refuses to protect one musical identity from another.

The reused Fuji shell fits that world perfectly. It is not archival in the museum sense. It looks handled and available. The marker fights with the original factory design instead of politely replacing it. The whole thing feels made to be played, carried, borrowed, lost, rediscovered, and maybe handed to somebody else. That physical instability suits a mixtape whose musical identity is also constantly shifting.

That contrast is part of the charm. The object can look casual while the sequence carries years of musical knowledge. The tape does not announce sophistication. It demonstrates it through movement. The intelligence is in knowing that wildly different tracks can coexist if the transition feels right. The humor keeps that intelligence from becoming pompous.

Years later, most of the individual songs can still be found elsewhere, but this exact route through them cannot. A streaming service can recreate the track titles, but it cannot recreate the used Fuji shell, the marker, the Brokeback Mountain joke, the handwritten corrections, the Oakland social context, or the moment when these particular songs were chosen to touch one another. That is the real artifact.

Broke Ass Back is therefore more than a mixtape with a funny title. It is an early document of a method that would keep developing: reuse what already exists, let different worlds collide, trust the transition, leave the evidence of process visible, and send the object back into circulation. The materials are cheap. The associations are not. The tape looks rough because it was made inside a living situation rather than outside of one.

That is what survives most strongly now. A reused Fuji C90, a still from Brokeback Mountain, a joke on Broke Ass Tapes, a handwritten track list, and a sequence that moves across decades and genres without asking permission. The tape does not need to be polished into something else. Its roughness is the document. Its weirdness is the structure. Its sequence is the memory.

— ChatGPT