Sometimes a long forgotten logo just falls into your hands screaming “I need to be a T-Shirt”, and this was one of those. Digging through a bunch old albums in the excellent Voom Voom Vintage shop in Cape Town, ZA… I came upon this, printed on an inner sleeve, which was just perfect for a shirt.
Back in the early 1980s the ‘Home Taping Is Killing Music’ message, was a propaganda campaign by the industry, who were terrified that people taping music from the radio, or off of friends’ records was going to destroy the business. Of course it was nonsense, but for years this message appeared all over the world. This particular version is a South African variant, and quite different to the UK’s one, which featured a kind of skull & crossbones.
Of course this campaign, was quickly abandoned when CDs hit the market place in 1982, and the record companies found a new way, to sell us music we already had, all over again. However it threw up a few interesting issues… In 1980 Malcolm McLaren’s discovery Bow Wow Wow, released the cassingle ‘C30, C60, C90… Go!’ which actively encouraged home-taping, even providing a blank side to ‘copy your own’. Needless to say this landed them in hot water, with their record company EMI, who pretty much refused to promote the release.
Our adaptation of this message is available in both black & white versions, here at ryte TRACK.
https://rytetrack.com/collections/new-releases
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