The 8-track Side Show

Step right up folks and prepare to bedazzled.

This generic tape is made of tinted Plexiglas and has no other identifying markings. It has Earth Wind and Fires Greatest Hits on it. Where did it come from, who made it? maybe it was created for demonstrative purposes. I know I’ve spent timeless hours watching the tape go around and around.

I got this one years ago still sealed in the original cellophane so you can imagine both my shock and outrage when it played The Sound Track of Grease! Grease came out on RSO Records from LA. and KC’s label was TK Records in Florida. Could this be the work of that guy who put the cyanide in Tylenol in the 80’s?

I once read about some guy who bought a Beatles album at a yard sale that was pressed on pink vinyl and sold it for $10,000. I’m currently accepting bids, do I hear $1000?

This well played bootleg was probably peddled across the truckstops of America. For me a great perk of collecting 8-tracks of the 70’s is hearing the great R&B artists of that era that sang in an almost womanlike high pitched falsetto. Groups like The Stylistics, Blue Magic, Earth Wind and Fire and to an extent the haunting sounds of the Isley Brothers. I wish rap had a few of these high voiced crooners. Music of the "Me decade" is often ridiculed but I think that label applies mostly to white groups like Barry Manilow, England Dan and John Ford Coley and the Starland Vocal Band. But that's another webpage.

The "Soul" artists on the tape include Kool & the Gang, Herbie Hancock, Gladys Knight and the Pips and surely the greatest spokesperson of a generation of soul brothers-Elton John. Makes you think, did they run out of "Super Soul Hits after Vol. 1-10? Maybe Vol. 12 will feature the Osmonds.

By the illustration you see that unlike conventional tapes this odd ball 8-track starts with program 5 and ends with 8. I’m anxious to hear it once they invent a player equipped to play these tracks.

Next, we come to a tape that when played will turn the listener into stone. I consider this the missing link between disco music and punk rock since it would probably offend both John Travolta and Johnny Rotten.

Grand Funk's Shinin On In 3D

I give this tape an A for effort and a F for execution. When the 3-D effect works it can turn an all right film into a great one (Does anyone remember the gallbladder hovering above the audience in Andy Warhol's Frankenstein?). Somehow seeing Mark Farner Standing still in 3-D is about as useful as playing a quadraphonic Pink Floyd cartridge on a mono Powersound.

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