Widemouth Tapes

Widemouth Tapes was founded in the later half of 1978ev in BalTimOre, as a part of the Merzaum Collective, by writer/performer/etc Chris Mason. The Merzaum Collective included such sub-units as the performance group "CoAccident", the publishers of "pod" books & "e pod" magazine, the music group "Svexner Labs", "Desire Productions", etc.. The name "Merzaum" was contructed by combining the dadaist Kurt Schwitters' "merz" with the Russian futurist Alexei Kruchenykh's "zaum". This combination was meant to be expressive of the collective's political & lingual historical sympathies. Of particular interest to most members of the collective were sound & visual poetry, "language-centered" writing, improvising, & alternatives to capitalism & hierarchies - such as through collaboration.