Class was published in 1982 by Widemouth Tapes in Baltimore, a project of Michael Tolson, a.k.a. Tentatively, a Convenience. It was mastered at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Der Haag, The Netherlands, by the composer Eugene Carl. Except for "1-100", all the pieces were made in 1976, using both reel-to-reel and cassette recorders. In the works from 1976 I was interested in creating tapepoems via collage and overlaid tracks that were in many ways similar to my written poems of the time. "Piffle (Breathing)" is the most formally self-reflective, trying to bring the process of making the piece to the fore: it's me breathing and making the commentary. "My/My/My" is a three track realization of a poem from 1974, which has this epigraph from Satchidananda "Count these number of things you call mine. This is the distance from you to enlightenment". "Class" uses improvised repetitions by way of the rewind button on a mono cassette player; its primary sources being Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" (1954), screenplay by Budd Schulberg; and two songs by Lew Brown and Jay Gorney from "Stand Up and Cheer" (1934): "Baby Take a Bow", sung by James Dunn, and "I'm Laughing", sung by Tess Gardella. "1-100" was conceived and performed in the Fall of my sophomore year at college.

© 1982 Charles Bernstein. PennSound/Ubu Digital edition © 2005. These recordings may be used for noncommercial and educational purposes. Distributed by PennSound. Used with the permission of Charles Bernstein