One of many Vietnamese pop cassettes I've found in North Austin and Round Rock is this compilation entitled Hung Ho, #111 in the Làng Văn catalog. I've gathered that few, if any, of these are from Vietnam directly, but instead produced by Vietnamese expatriates. Làng Văn is one such label, founded in 1985 in Orange County, California. The label is still very active, although I can't seem to track down any list of their older discography and this is most likely out-of-print. I picked this one first for digitizing because of it's eye-catching purple j-card and the convenient fact that much of it is written with western script.
Hung Ho appears to be a sampler of then upcoming releases on the label, some of the more prominent Vietnamese-American pop singers are on here, including the late Ngọc Lan and Hương Lan. The former was "known for covering nostalgic French-language pop hits of the 1970s." Most of the tracks are ballads, poppy but not exactly upbeat; no bubblegum pop or dance singles on this tape. There's clear sense of sentimentalism in these songs, parallels to Enka music immediately come to mind. With the context of post-1975 Vietnamese diaspora considered, the source of the nostalgic, melancholy tones of these songs are quite obvious. Makes for odd juxtaposition to the valley girl-esque glamour shots on the cover, which clearly screams late 80s American pop culture.
Another find in a Austin area thrift store, along with a few other Cyrillic inscribed tapes from the Eastern Bloc. While I'm fairly good at finding context clues, this particular cassette, with it's red color scheme, clearly written date, and hand-drawn hammer & sickles, was a clearly a no-brainer. As with the rest of the world, tapes were a fixture in the Soviet Union throughout the 80s. Cassette players were manufactured domestically, often resembling American and Japanese Walkmans and boom-boxes. Both mainstream commercial and underground music was dubbed and distributed, only in Soviet Union...tapes mix you!*
Unfortunately, I have no idea who is on this tape, as translating it myself would be time-consuming. I did immediately notice that the tape has an identical "bumper" at the beginning of each side, some sort of melody repeated twice in left and right channels (to prove it's in stereo perhaps?), then a cheesy explosion sound effect, followed by an announcement and a snippet of a song. Perhaps some sort of trademark on the part of the dubber? Tracks are consistently spaced out as well. The recording itself is a bit rough but not terrible. The cassette used is a Kontak C-60, a common brand of the era. Like many other Soviet blank tapes, the graphic design is quite nice: basic colors, simple designs. Not at all a major depature from Maxells and TDKs of the era. It's a straight copy of Western design: no-frills, cheap and seemingly reliable, but not remotely great by any means (i.e. Soviet tech in a nutshell).
Both sides consist of uptempo rock songs, all male vocalists and for the most pop-oriented or soft rock. There are couple "Springsteen-esque" ballads in there as well, but nothing slow or melancholy. Lot of it sounds self-aware of it's own silliness (track at 19:10 on Side-2 kicks off with an amazing quasi-jazzy MIDI keyboard rendition of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"). I'm assuming this is a late 80s mixtape of VIA pop artists and late 80's Russian Rock bands. Based off that, it's likely a bootleg or personal dub copy of "state-friendly" music instead of say, a underground mixtape. No noisy, rough post-punk or metal tracks here. The last 5 minutes of Side 1 consist of some slick synth-pop dance music but, to my disappointment, cuts out shortly after. Fun tape overall, would make for make for a great standby mixtape for a weekend drive, especially in a Lada with the windows rolled down.
*(I am so so sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation)
Country: U.S.S.R.
Label: N/A (homemade mixtape)
Case: Norelco w/ black base
J-card: original Kontak j-card, tracklist and title info filled out (along with 3 hammer & sickle doodles)
C-60 Type I: black Kontak MK 60●5
Actual run time: 30:40 per side
Editing notes: Normalized to -0.3 db, right channel dropped out from 27:20 to 27:40 on Side-1, this was converted to mono for mp3 copy. Further playback confirmed error is part of the original dubbing.
.jpg)
