Another covid tragedy is a local rent-a-spot huge antique mall that has been here long before I have,  you can tell the writing was on the wall when a month before it went under all the heat was turned off and everyone inside is wearing a parka and most of the stalls are 40% off. I'll be sad to see it go since I've got some epic scores here through out the years so I suppose I'll just double down on the estate sales when ever they come back. Some days I think I've been doing this crap too long since about everyone else I started doing this with has long moved on.

 Any way I was able to obtain this nice avocado themed Toyo player for $6.00 that matches the laundry / tape room it has a touch of wow and flutter that I'm still working on.

Let's talk about 8 track soundalike bands, not to be confused with those nasty bootlegs where a person tapes an album on a tape and slaps a cheap label on it to sell at a truck stop, I'm talking about tapes where the company hires a band to crank out tapes of music that was popular at that time and actually hires a band to play them. Makes you wonder if these were taking away K-tel’s business or trying to bypass the laws by them by selling them in the US (K-tel is a Canadian company). 

 Some of these are incredible simulations the way Beatlemania sounded before Legends In Concert picked up the ball and ran with the concept. These are a guilty pleasure of mine since firstly, they hearken back to a time when 8 track tapes were fun and quirky before they became expensive collectibles (never pay more than $4 for one of these). Also some of the bands do a great job getting the sound down and even Sexy Thing on the Convoy tape (A tape with a photo of a cheap plastic toy truck on the cover) sounds better than the original in my estimation. They're also a relic since now if anyone tried to put out something like this the royalties per song would destroy any profit margin.

 

Columbia House is known for its rare and hard to find 8 track tapes and I think I found one, keep in mind that just because is is rare doesn't necessary mean that anyone wants it, so I present to you Symphony On Wheels, each track has a different writer and I'm not sure if they are the performers or it's a studio band, either way it's a fun cash in on the very short fad of roller disco music, I challenge anyone to name a single famous band exclusively to the genre.

The sound is very period and is less disco sound than 1970's cop show chase music combined with a dusting of blauxploitation and if you don't like this review you can write your own but remember I said is was a rare tape and I haven't seen a single reference of on Google so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.

Phase 2 of the quarentine started this week and I finally got the carpet installed that I ordered in April and geot the music unit back together. I forgot what a non tinny tape sounded like and am a bit overwelmed by it, suddenly the Meet The Brady 8 track tape has all the nuance and clarity of an Original Masters Recording of a The Dark Side of The Moon LP. So nice to not live like a divorced guy in his parents basement.

 

 

Right before this plague hit I was scheduled for a new rug and had an appointment for the carpet men to install a rug that was a remnant from a retirement home that looks like a black version of the wall paper of Blanche Devereaux’s from The Golden Girls bedroom. After I cleared out the living room of the phonograph and 8 track player everything got pushed back 2 months and standing, so now I’m living in an empty sitting room and not sure if I’m ready to drag everything of the boxes just so I’ll have to go through the packing drill in a month, so this is my current sound system.

Long time no blog, but I figure no one wants to hear about me finding lots of country and classical tapes or machines that are stuck on program 4 and not worth a second glance which is too bad since it was a nice Sears portable, that being said today I found a beautiful low-fi SoundDesign player that brings back memories of one of those all in one TV/phonograph/radio consoles that use to be placed predominately in most of those gracious living homes in the mid 1970's. This baby plays cassettes 8 tracks and the radio and with the matching speakers will accent any mid century abode.

Also this weekend I found one of those drugstore rotating comic book racks I grabbed for a c-note. It's a nice way to display bronze aged comics and there's no pharmacist yelling at my 11 year old self that this isn’t a library.

 

It's always nice to find a clean 8 track player with the paperwork still attched, this one is from Sears and has a cigarette lighter adapter, although now I hear cigarette lighters in cars are refered to as "power adapters" but my car is from 2000 so it's still relevent, and since the CD player stopped working last month I'm back in the sadle with 8 track tapes and looking for a way of coming to a quick stop without having the player fly under the seat. 
 

 

 It' nice to know that the term "shrinkflation" applied to 8 track tapes back in the day too as you can see in these sleeves. The next step was those tape companies that just gave up and sold tapes shrinkwrapped like it was game over.

I picked up this K-tel in store demo on ebay that was once played in the store on an 8 track player, I like it because it's a compilation that is made from 5 different compilation tapes, I wonder what mulitverse it came from?