Hey Everybody, Let's go on a Fuckin' Road Trip!
The mystique of station wagons and eight track tapes
Jeebus. Thinking about it now - my sister and I sliding around in sleeping bags on top of luggage as my dad negotiated the George Washington National Park bypass in a snowstorm - the only thing worse was the tingling sensation of nausea, which would have distributed everywhere. "Don't throw up. Don't fucking throw up."
And then sister throws up, and it's atmospheric in the back of a Gran Torino. At 50 miles an hour. In a blizzard. In the middle of goddamn nowhere - "Oh look, another tree!" Yes. Brown Gran Torino, I remember your misguided style. Why? Why make a car that looks like a.... huh, What the actual fuck DOES it look like? A pimento on a stick? A spear?
My dad decided that eight track tapes were “Where it’s at, man” according to his pal that amply supplied us with George Carlin and Richard Pryor records and always had a peculiar ‘air’ about him. Pretty sure my dad didn’t indulge in hippy things, but he always seemed to have fairly progressive friends. What did I know? At this age I was thinking Elton John was the King of Rock & Roll since the TV Elvis was no longer as sensational and Elton was everywhere.
“What did these eight tracks have on them?” is a natural question.
Well, given that this would be 1978, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ was the hot title, and was played everywhere. Hugely successful, spawning singles that would dominate AM radio. But nope. It’s not in enough places to hear. Record it for 24 hour road trips to Florida onto eight track tape. Why not? Seems reasonable.
I cannot tolerate that damnable record to this day, Lindsey Buckingham’s manual dexterity be damned.
This is the best review ever, actually:
The thing about eight track tapes is that you have a limited amount of time between each section/track. If a song or group of songs exceeded the tape time it would seamlessly flow over to the next track. In theory.
Conceptually I’m sure this was appealing to the marketing whizzes at the record companies, but fucking guess what, buddy boy - they do not work that way.
What happens is that you get the ‘KA-chunk’ sound in the middle of a song, which is more than jarring, it’s fucking scarring since I can no longer listen to certain songs from ‘Abbey Road’, Foghat Live, the soundtrack to Superfly, nor Willie Nelson. My dad had an eclectic taste of music, however it was not collaborative, so my sister and I were ultimately a captive audience. Soaked in vomit.
I read recently that eight tracks are cool with the hipsters. Welcome to ruining music, bearded friends. Enjoy the ‘KA-chunk’.