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100 Cassettes

Dennis Callaci

100 Cassettes started life as 100 hand drawn/painted cassette covers for an installation at the dA Center for The Arts in Pomona, California. Six months after that installation, the book 100 Cassettes started being written in earnest. The book’s ninety nine chapters (two of the cassettes make up one chapter) delve into the possibility of each imagined release by a wealth of artists spanning over fifty years. Find early entries of abstraction on Ida Cox, Alice Cooper, Talk Talk, Earl Sweatshirt and Lord Invader to nonfiction-based entries on Tony Conrad, Korla Pandit, Jackie Moore and Black Sabbath. Featuring a foreword by Jonathan Lethem and an afterword by Allen Callaci, the book winds around autobiographical information, the rich culture of Southern California from 1969 to the present day, and all musical points in between.


“Callaci conjures a mix of fiction and trivia and memoir and secret code, and when I say “I wish I’d written it myself” I mean that I wish I thought I could have, or even knew exactly how it works.” Jonathan Lethem, author of The Feral Detective

“This book could be your life.” Ira Kaplan, Yo La Tengo

“In 100 Cassettes, music and whatever else there is to life try to drive through Dennis Callaci's brain, and continually get stuck in its fascinating detours and rest stops. Who knows which parts are fact and which are fiction, but it's definitely all true.” Marc Masters, Washington Post, author of No Wave

“This collection conjures up times and places that are achingly personal and bends them towards the universal.” Allen Callaci, author of Heart Like a Starfish

Dennis Callaci was born in Corona, California and has bounced around Southern California his entire life.  He runs the record label Shrimper, noted for bringing forth the earliest recordings from Amps For Christ, Woods, Franklin Bruno, Lou Barlow's Sentridoh, The Mountain Goats, Dump, Wckr Spgt, Kevin Morby, The Secret Stars, and a few hundred other releases over the course of the last thirty years.  He is also in the band Refrigerator who have released twelve records over those thirty years, as well as solo records by Callaci & collaborations with John Davis, The Debts, and Simon Joyner.  A former KSPC DJ, booker of shows around Southern California, and GM of two record stores of note, music has eaten up the majority of his life.