by Byron Moore
H
ey! Hello there! Welcome to Hip Webzine and the Music Spoo. Okay. Last time out we were talking about strange old records by fairly famous people and I'm sure record stores and flea markets saw a sudden surge in elpee interest. Well lookout cause this time we're dipping back further into the world of obsolete technology. Yup, those horrible cumbersome plastic honkin' crude hunks of portable music, our old friend the 8 track cartridge.See, it all starts off innocently enough; you see this funky very 1970s portable radio unit in great cherry red plastic at a rummage sale and it turns out to be a working portable 8 track player. Soon you come upon a stack of 8 tracks themselves for the old 'can't give 'em away price' and pretty soon, friend, you're a collector. Worse than that, you're collecting 8 tracks. You need help. But all you think you need is a sealed copy of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Does this sound a bit autobiographical? S'partly true. I don't need a sealed copy of In-A-Gadda, but I would like one that plays. No doubt the 17 min. title track fades out briefly to change tracks, then kalunk and we fade back into where it left off. Part of the charm of the things. Here's another aspect of their inherent charm: I read a very '70s story about a guy who was too waxed at the end of a party to get up and yank one of the suckers out of the player and endured the endless loop all night. These days hearing Deep Purple's Machine Head must certainly stir potential psychotic vibrations. (Though with the right album it can be a neat feature, Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger comes to mind.)
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