What’s In Your 8-Track Case?

I need to get this 8-Track tape meme out of my system, and the best way to exorcise it is to list the contents of the tape case I discovered in one of our closets last week. Read what you will into the following playlist:

  • Black Sabbath – Paranoid (The first heavy metal band I ever heard…and the only recording of same I ever bought.)
  • Chase – Chase (A poor man’s version of Chicago; the screech trumpets will make your cat commit hara-kiri.)
  • Chicago – Chicago (Next to Blood, Sweat & Tears’ second album, the best horn-rock recording ever.)
  • Neil Diamond – Tap Root Manuscript (Did it years before Paul Simon.)
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Pictures At An Exhibition (What were these guys smoking?)
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Tarkus (Ditto.)
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Trilogy (Ditto.)
  • The Grand Funk Railroad – Time Machine (I forgot that GFR was “The GFR.”)
  • The London Symphony Orchestra – Star Wars (This was cool the first two thousand times I heard it.)
  • Original Soundtrack – Romeo & Juliet (Great parking music, IYKWIM.)
  • The Rascals – Freedom Suite (Double albums were especially cool on 8-track, since they went on forever.)
  • San Sebastian Strings – The Earth (By this time, Rod McKuen was either an old beatnik or a young New Ager. In any event, this one didn’t age gracefully.)
  • Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 – Greatest Hits (Holds up better than anything else on this list.)
  • Barbra Streisand – Barbra Joan Streisand (Before we knew her evil twin, Babs. BTW, this was the infamous scanned tape. But you knew that.)
  • Various – The Best of the Virtuoso Instrumentalists (I have no recollection of this tape. It has an oboe concerto. What was I smoking?)

Feel free to chime in if any of these albums resonate with your inner hippie.

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12 comments

  1. Was this your “what was I thinkin’ when I bought these” tape case. Although I agree concerning Sergio Mendes.
    Interesting note [to me anyway]: I once happened upon Sergio Mendes himself when I lived in Hawaii. He was sitting at an outdoor bar on the beach at Waikiki . You couldn’t miss him, a strange sorta’ little guy.

  2. No, I voluntarily bought each of those tapes, and at the time, thought it was a good idea. But, like many decisions made in the late 60s and early 70s, those decisions don’t hold up well under modern scrutiny.
    Did Sergio recognize you in Hawaii?

  4. I was going to guess Sergio Mendes on the 8 track quiz, a leftover guess from the album cover contest that was scuttled when you posted the updated image.
    Black Sabbath? What WERE you thinking?

  5. CP, it’s scary sometimes how our great minds are of one accord! Well, except for that Molly Ivins thing, of course. 😉
    Jim, I’m sure you’ve got no musical skeletons in your closet… I dare you to bare your soul regarding same over at your place!

  6. Did Sergio recognize you in Hawaii?
    Most assuredly. This was back in my drinkin’ days so I was seated several stools down the bar from him, as I remember it was just he and I at the Tiki Bar right on the beach at the Hilton Waikiki. I ordered and looked up and voila…..there was Sergio, he’s hard to miss. I did say hell-o and told him I liked his music very much. He said “Bom Dia”.
    Remind me sometime to relate the tale of how I came to meet Rod Stewart in Dallas under similiar circumstances.

  12. (Still have the receiver, in fact.)
    Someone should do a study on the effect that the creation and success of eBay has had on our packrat tendencies. I have a whole closet full of obsolete technology that I’m sure will someday be worth a fortune!

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