Dennis Callaci - 100 Cassettes Book

Dennis Callaci founded the legendary Shrimper Records label in 1990 in Southern California, the same year as the formation of his band Refrigerator. Refrigerator has released twelve records over the last thirty years, and is at work on their thirteenth due out at the end of 2020. Shrimper has released hundreds of titles by artists like Sentridoh/Lou Barlow, the Babies, the Mountain Goats, Simon Joyner, Woods, Dump, Franklin Bruno, and many more.

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 Motherless Brooklyn

"This book could be your life."

--Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo)