Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Unearthed Treasures: A Deep Dive Into The Fascinating World Of 8-Track Collecting [Episode 205]

Transcript

Unearthed Treasures: A Deep Dive Into The Fascinating World Of 8-Track Collecting [Episode 205] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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The thrill of finding something out there in the wild, There's nothing like it.
0:04
In that chapter in the book where I talk about my good friend Chad
0:08
who worked at a bottle exchange when that, yeah, a guy came in
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with a garbage bag full all of eight tracks. It spilled open, and
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that Van Hailing Too was just one of the first ones that came out,
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and oh sorry, I was I was gonna throw those out and he's like,
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uh, can I have those? I'm totally bummed. Rock and roll,
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I mean, gotta leave you do you're reading, Little Hands says it's
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time to rock and roll, Rock, Roll up, Read I totally booked.
0:37
Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read
0:40
and rock. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot com. Every episode
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there in audio and video links to your favorite listening platforms, exclusive videos,
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blogs, and the latest rockbook releases, all at booked on rock dot com.
0:55
Also make sure you follow and subscribe on Facebook, x, Instagram,
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and TikTok. Exclusive content almost daily on all those sites, which you can
1:03
find through Booked on Rock dot com. Author Tim Durling is a first time
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guest. He's here to talk about a few of his recent books. In
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this episode, we're going to talk about Unspooled and Adventure in eight Tracks.
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This is a guided tour through the eyes of a collector. Whether it's vinyl,
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CD, cassettes, reel to reel, or yes, eight track tapes,
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you can enjoy this in depth deep dive into the crazy world of collection.
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Tim reveals what is the only box set released on vinyl, cassette,
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compact disc and eight track, what are some of his most prized possession eight
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tracks in his collection, the History of eight tracks, and a whole lot
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more, And also keep an eye out for a second episode with Tim.
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He's got a book called Down for the Count The Yant Album Review. It's
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an album by album look at the recorded studio output of one of hard rock's
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best kept secrets, Yant. But in this episode we're going to get into
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eight tracks. Here is Tim Durling. Hi Tim, welcome to the book
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Down Rock Podcast. Hi Er, thanks for having me. This is great.
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Yeah, Well, you just released a brand new book on Kansas that
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we want to have you back for. That's called Let It Be Your Guy,
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The Kansas Album Review free Plug. So we'll talk about that next time.
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So that's out now. But I want to cover a few of your
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recent books that you released. One is this beautifully put together book Unspooled and
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Adventure and eight Tracks, and then another one we have here Why and t
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down for the count. So yeah, we'll do a little split episode deal
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here. We'll split these up into two episodes. Before we get into the
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books, though, let's let's find out about yourself where you're from. Also,
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I'm interested in your background and radio because they're both radio guys and why
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bon Jovi and Journey are two important band names when it comes to your love
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of collecting music and eight tracks. Yeah, it's all, it's all kind
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of related. But yeah, I'm from a little little town in Woodstock,
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at Woodstock near Brent. We're on the main border and born in seventy four,
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so I came. You know, I grew up with the I think
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the best music ever. You know, they always say that the music that
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you like when you were fourteen fifteen years old kind of forms a basis for
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the music you like forever. And when I was fourteen, I was listening
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to bon Jovi and def Leppard and Dan Halen and White Sneak and Rush and
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and you know, I've gotten into more seventies stuff since then, but it
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hasn't changed all that much. And as far as being in radio, my
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history and radio, that's what I took after high school. I took a
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radio broadcasting course for two years and I ended up working part time at my
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local AM radio station. So this is, you know, really happy,
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it's exciting. I work so far back that some of our older songs we
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still spun off forty fives. And I learned all about what carts were,
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and I talked about that in the Unschooled book. And then, you know,
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mid nineties, the industry was changing, as you probably know, and
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I was out of radio for thirteen years, and then I came back part
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time, same station, now FM, different format, and I ended up
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getting a job as a copywriter, creative writer, commercial writer, I guess
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you could say, and with a little bit of on air. And I'm
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still at it. I don't have any on air duties anymore, but I'm
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still working in radio. So yeah, it's been you know, quite a
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long. You know, you're just one of those things. Day in,
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day out, you get up, you go to work, and then you
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realize it's been x amount of years that you've been doing the same. Yeah.
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And by the way, I think the connection got cut off Canada right
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to New Brunswick. Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, because there's a
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New Brunswick, New Jersey. Yeah yeah. New Brunswick's a province. So
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Woodstock is the anybody that's ever heard of the band April Wine, the same
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from April Wine who sadly passed away last year. Miles Goodwin was born in
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Woodstock, New Brunswick. He didn't live there, but that's part of the
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lore. His family was passing through. So it's a pretty cool little,
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you know, tidbit of information. Also, I'm about seventy eight minutes away
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from maduc Dick near Brunswick, which is where the Savient Simple factory is located.
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That's a pretty cool, big deal for such a small part of the
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world over here. And you had Martin pop Off, a fellow Canadian who
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wrote the forward for Unspooled. Martin's been on this podcast many times, yes,
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yes, yeah, he's a prolific author. Great forward that he writes
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in that book. I did tell you that when I checked out your YouTube
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channel, I said, you work in radio, because you've got a radio
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voice, and he said, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I noticed
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that right away, but unspooled an adventure and eight tracks. Let's start with
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this one. I love this. It came out last summer, five star
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reviews across the board on Amazon. I'm sure you've seen that. Yeah,
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it's gratifying, and yeah, this is the book where there's a lot to
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it and it's kind of a I love doing interviews like this because it's kind
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of a hard book to explain to people. It's not just about eight tracks.
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It's about music collecting, it's about memorabilia, it's about it's kind of
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a trip for the eighties. And yeah, you mentioned you know bon Jovi
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in Journey. Why are they important? Well? Bon Jovi was the band
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that was responsible for me really just having the collection that you see behind me
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here and not just being satisfied with recording songs off the radio. I was
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twelve years old when Slippery when Wett came out and the first time I heard
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you give up a bad Name, I'd never heard anything like that on Top
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forty radio before, and it blew me away. And not only did I
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want to know about this band, I wanted to know if there were any
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other bands out there like this band. And when I started buying their albums,
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it was, you know, I would read the liner notes and pour
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through them and find out who produced the album, who engineered the album,
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who mastered it, who took the photography, what kind of instruments did they
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play? All that stuff. It just it soaked in and I didn't realize
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it was all that was soaking in. And the collectibility started there too,
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because inside the Slippery and Wet cassette it said also available, and it had
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the two previous albums. A lot of people thought that was their first album,
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right, because it was the first really big one, right, And
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I said, well, if I like this one, there's no reason I
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wouldn't like those other two. So that's where the completest had. We started
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right there. And Journey's important because they're one of the first sort of rock
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bands that I ever got into. I've always been a fan, but the
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first eight track that I ever bought as a collector was Journey's Escape album.
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So it all kind of ballooned from there. You never start with an entire
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collection. It's always piece by piece, right. I remember going back to
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the days of cassettes where you do good. You could go down that rabbit
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hole. And I had a part time job, didn't make much money,
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but it all went to cassettes. If they could afford too, I'd get
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two and it would be okay. I'd get into whatever band it was like,
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I remember Tom Petty. I just remember, you know, album by
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album by album, just getting next one, next one, next one,
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and it's it's it's so that's what's missing from nowadays. You know, with
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the streaming services, it's a different experience. It's that thrill. It's with
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eight tracks too. After reading the book Too, you find you find the
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Van HILLN two eight track and you know it's somebody just throwing it out.
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Those are the thrills. And there's also you know, the days of the
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I used to love to go to the music conventions where they'd have all the
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CDs, books, VCR tapes of kiss and concert from nineteen seventy seven.
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You're like, holy shit, man. You know nowadays YouTube it's there,
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but there was a time when before YouTube that was that was a find.
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It's really hard to explain to someone that didn't grow up with the Internet,
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with YouTube where everything is just to click away. When you know, you
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did have enough money to buy a cassette, you listen to that tape and
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if you didn't really like it that much, like I'm gonna like this,
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I paid twelve dollars for it, and and it just meant everything, and
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you cherished that music. And if you were fortunate enough to find something that
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was a little rare, boy, you really thought you were onto something because
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it was just I mean, I grew up in a small town, which
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stocks a small town, and I you know, I didn't have any older
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brothers, i'd have any older cousins to drive me to places. I didn't
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know where there were any used music stores or anything like that. It was
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a world that I knew nothing about. So I remember, you know,
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finding something like I have the forty five, but I don't have the cassette
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anymore. I wish it did. But when I found the cassette, bon
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Jovi wanted Dead or Alive. It was this little EP that came out that
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had like an acoustic version of that had a live version. It was just
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and it was this EP, not a cassette single, but it came like
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a regular cassette, And I remember, what's this like? And I was
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so excited. I was like, I'm the only one in the world that
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has this. Well, obviously I wasn't, but it was just I have
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such vivid memories of finding those things that are out of the ordinary and getting
10:20
into a band that A good example I always bring up is when I got
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into Rush pre internet, I had no idea how many albums they had,
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and so every time I went to a record store it seemed like I saw
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a Rush album I'd never seen before. So I just have to kept buying
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them until I didn't see anymore. And it was great. I mean,
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I mean, yes, there was that frustration of not being able to find
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something. And now you can find stuff online. You can't find everything.
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There's still things that have evaded me. But the thrill of finding something out
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there in the wild, there's nothing like it. In that chapter in the
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book where I talked my good friend Chad, who worked at a bottle exchange
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when that yeah, a guy came in with a garbage bag full all of
11:05
eight tracks. It spilled open and that Van Halen two was just one of
11:09
the first ones that came out, and oh sorry, I was, I
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was gonna throw those out and he's like, uh, can I have those?
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And it was just you know, and then he called me up and
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he said, you're not gonna believe this, and he came to the house.
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He had all these cool like it was hard when we first started collecting
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these things. It was hard to find good rock ones, you know what
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I mean. And you know, and then couple that, of course with
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the mean the main reason I wanted to write this book was when I found
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out, you know, with the advent of the Internet, when I found
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out the Columbia House an RCA music service kept making albums on eight track longer
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than the retail did. That blew my mind. I don't know why it
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blew my mind, but it was just something about albums from eighty five onward
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on eight track, like this should not be, should not exist, so
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weird. And of course back then I was like, well, I'll never
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have any of these, and I've done quite well. I found some rarety
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tracks. They've cost a little bit, some of them, but you know,
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it's just one of those things. I love getting as many formats as
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I can of my favorite bands, my favorite albums, they're just I like
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having them on all these different formats. It's just to me, it's just
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cool. Well for those listening on just audio, because this is on video
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and audio. Just to describe. Behind you, there as a wall to
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wall cassettes vinyl and it looks like are those kiss Yeah? To the top
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of me, those are the original McFarlane kiss figures from ninety six. There's
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an Alice Cooper one, and I believe there's a Doug McKenzie one. And
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over here there's a wall of CDs. There's more records that you can't see,
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and people get an idea of just how bad this habit goes. I'll
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turn this around. Those are there's the all wow, the eight track collection.
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Yeah yeah, I mean do you have to eventually think about building an
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extra room or how does that all work? You know what, I've done
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really well at making the most out of limited space. You know, there
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may come a time when I may have to you know, I'm not sure
13:18
what will happen. But managing to find a little bit more space here was
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based there, so I should have tabbed it. But I'm looking for the
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Van Halen too eight track. It's in here, I'll find I'm gonna put
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it. Yeah, yeah, it's the page I'm trying to find it.
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Here you will find I'll see which one of us gets there in the fifties,
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maybe some Oh here we go, yeah, page fifty five. Let's
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see if people can see this. This is so cool. But yeah,
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yeah, I found it too. So the way it's oh, here we
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go, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the way it's
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in the way this book is laid out, it's just crystal clear pictures of
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these so like you could see every little scratch and you know where the stickers
14:03
peeled, and I mean it's it's beautifully put together. Let's talk about that.
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Actually, who's responsible for this great layout? Yeah, I definitely want
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to talk about that. It's a very good friend of mine, Matthew Phillips.
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We've been friends for over thirty years. We actually met when I was
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taking radio broadcast and he was taking print journalism, so we were in the
14:22
same banner of communication arts. So yeah, we got we got to be
14:28
buddies. Found that we you know, we both liked you know, this
14:31
is ninety three and if you could find friends that still like def Leppard and
14:33
Winger and and then and and you know, it was really excited about the
14:39
covertil page album. You know you friends for life, right, But Matt's
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a graphic designer by trade, is a very good one, and he did
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such a great job on this book. Yeah, the graphics are eye popping,
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and you know, it's just blown away by it. It's a great
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coffee table book. And that's the thing I'd like to get through to people.
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People might say, what do I want a book about collecting a tracks?
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It's not just about that. It's a good looking book. It's a
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book about music. It's a book about collecting. What makes us collect things?
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You know, a lot of us collect something, whether it's Star Wars
15:13
memorabilia or movie memorabilia, or baseball cards or hockey cards, something that there's
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something inside of us, some of us that drives us to you know,
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I don't just want one or two of these, and I want all of
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them. And it's the search. It's that endless search. There's always something
15:28
else that's abating you. And there's a lot of there's a lot of great
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discussions in there about that. But I also did want to get down as
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well as I could a definitive list, or as definitive as I could make
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it, of all of these titles that were released on a track through the
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nineteen eighties, because it's in a day and age where you can google just
15:52
about everything. You can't just google this, you'll get parts, or you'll
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get you'll get you won't find what you're looking for. So I wanted something
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that people could sit down and go wow. I did not know all of
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these titles existed on a track. And if they're in one of the year
16:08
end lists in my book, and I start and I'll explain how those work.
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But if they're in a year end list, then it's confirmed to exist.
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It's not. I suppose it's not. Maybe it exists. Somebody told
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me it exists. Now they're confirmed to have been released by the Record Club's
16:26
Columbia House being the most popular. But the results wo RCA Laders become BMG
16:30
Music Service. They kept making eight tracks all the way to November nineteen eighty
16:34
eight, which is a lot later than I think most people would think eight
16:38
tracks were around. Most people would say, well, they died out in
16:42
the late seventies, and that was definitely the peak of their popularity. It
16:45
was more like around eighty two that you really started seeing and decline and then
16:49
you just stopped seeing them on store shelves at all. If anything, you'd
16:53
see them in the dump bins. Right. There was no resale value to
16:57
these things whatsoever. So it's crazy now that there's these titles that people will
17:00
pay big bucks for. Those tend to be the club the club cards,
17:06
you know, the ones that you had to be a member of a club
17:08
to get you couldn't get at the store. Full disclosure here, Tim,
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you might hate my brother for this, but I do remember early eighties he
17:15
had Jay Gile's band, Uh free centerfold? Wait? What was that?
17:22
What center frame album? You had that? And I think he had a
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Toto or a Boston album on a track, and this is when they're now
17:32
becoming phased out. And his friend took a hammer to it, and that
17:40
was basically like symbolic like yeah, let's make way for cassettes. Well you
17:45
apologies. Funny, it's a funny, funny medium, it really is.
17:51
Well, yeah, let's talk with what isn't it For those who may not
17:52
be aware of what an a track? Because I'm just old enough to remember
17:56
this, what exactly is an a track? How does it work? And
17:59
I know from working in radio, it's like a it's like a cart machine.
18:02
You can't rewind. Yeah, they don't rewind. Their their continuous loop,
18:07
which means that there are places where they automatically stop. And yeah,
18:14
the best way I yeah, and this there's a picture in here. This
18:17
is one that I managed to keep from from when we still used carts for
18:22
commercials and for station liners and for certain songs like certain gold songs, station
18:27
IDs at the top of the hour. Yeah, so there's there's there's a
18:32
cart. Basically it looks it's basically an eight track. The front of it's
18:37
clear. We're getting a thunderstorm. So if I disappear, that's why.
18:41
Hopefully not okay, but yeah, I'm looking behind me. I have my
18:47
eight tracks from my radio days here somewhere. I should have been ready.
18:51
I could pull them out. But yeah, a lot of my old skits
18:52
that I would do in college radio, and yeah, you could, you
18:56
know, you could record them and you could use them over and over again,
19:00
you know, you'd use them for a commercial then then and then we
19:03
had this thing in the studio called the bulky Racer, which is the big
19:07
magnet and you press a button and you turn it over and that would erase
19:14
what was on it sort of after a while. After a while, like
19:18
if you just played a cart that you hadn't recorded anything on, you'd hear,
19:23
you know, it's like using a cassette tape over and over and over
19:26
again. It gets the city, it gets weakened, right, it's there's
19:30
less magnetism there. And that's basically what eight tracks were. They're called eight
19:33
tracks near as I can tell, because they were broken up into four stereo
19:40
tracks, so four times two is eight. They did not have two sides
19:45
like a record or a cassette. They were broken up into four programs,
19:49
and the programs. They tried to keep the programs as close and length as
19:56
possible. So if you had a thirty eight minute album, then each of
20:00
your programs would be nine and change. They would try to keep them like
20:04
that because you couldn't rewind them, like you said, you could only fast
20:07
forward. They were very, very strange, and that is why, and
20:11
that's one of the things that people that do remember eight tracks remember about them.
20:18
That is why sometimes the songs would be out of order, and that's
20:22
also why sometimes a song would get halfway through and fade out. Then it
20:26
would change the next program and the song would fade back in. The benefit
20:30
was it was so a lot of people who listened to in their car.
20:33
I think was why the whole reason that they were popular is the portability won
20:37
out. They were really the first truly portable medium. It was very easy
20:41
to throw a tape deck into your car or your truck so you could listen
20:48
to the album you wanted to listen to when you wanted to listen to it.
20:51
So that's what went out. You were sacrificing a little bit of the
20:53
sound quality, you were sacrificing oftentimes getting to hear the songs in their intended
20:59
order, and you were sacrificing the ritual of sitting down and listening to the
21:03
music while you're looking at the cover art. Because the eight tracks cover arts
21:07
not only small half of it would be stuck in the machine while it was
21:10
playing. And then, inevitably, what would happen, because you had unless
21:15
people took the best of care and they got their head cleaners, they and
21:18
they cleaned the machine and they cleaned the tapes, they would have taken a
21:22
lot of maintenance. And if you didn't do that, eventually what would happen
21:25
is that the mechanism would slip a little bit because each of your length of
21:30
tape was divided up in four that was each of your programs, so they
21:37
would start to blend. So that's why sometimes you'd get what they call crosstalk,
21:41
and you'd hear you'd be listening to a song and you'd hear part of
21:45
another song at the same time because you're getting the corresponding song. If you're
21:51
listening to program one, you might be able to hear what's on program four
21:53
at that same point in the program. Really really odd format, really strange,
22:03
and you know, half the time. When I was a kid,
22:06
I'm old enough to remember my cousins having some of these. I remember,
22:08
you know, just at the turn of the eighties. I was five,
22:11
six years old, and I remember them having things like the cars and Blondie,
22:15
and I'm pretty sure the first time I ever heard back in Black was
22:19
somebody had an eight track of it. But I also remember a lot of
22:26
time spent fishing the tape out of the machine and having to respool them and
22:30
hoping that it didn't wind up inside there. Again. You know, they
22:34
weren't the most reliable and cassettes. Cassettes started I think around the same time
22:40
eight tracks did. I think, maybe even a little bit before. But
22:44
from what I've understood and what I've researched on it, the quality wasn't there,
22:48
and they weren't as reliable. They got better at making cassettes, so
22:52
that cassettes eventually overtook eight tracks as the preferred portable medium. Probably didn't hurt
22:56
that the Walkman came out in the late seventies. Now all of a sudden,
23:00
it wasn't just yes, I could listen to this in my car,
23:03
but if you were a kid and you had a Walkman, you could go
23:07
for a walk and listen to your favorite album whenever you wanted. So eventually
23:11
it tracks just as music formats do. They just eventually phased out, except
23:18
Columbia House and OURCA Music Service kept making them all the way through, almost
23:22
through the entire eighties, which that's just a strange, strange concept to me.
23:27
Even after all this time, even after I've been fortunate to find some
23:30
of them, it still doesn't make any sense to me that there was a
23:33
three or four year period where if you were a member of a record club
23:38
you could choose either vinyl, cassette a track or CD like CDs coexisting.
23:45
It's just a weird concept, but it happened, and it's part of music
23:51
history. It's a very small part of music history. It's a very niche
23:53
part of music history. And I knew that going into it. But I
23:56
think all music history should be documented, and this wasn't being documented. And
24:00
I'll and to get back to Martin pop Off. I had him on my
24:03
show. When I first had him on was I wanted to pick his brain
24:07
about eight tracks. I didn't even know this was going to be a thing.
24:11
I just wanted to know what he remembered about seeing them disappear from stores
24:15
and you know what people were doing that had big eight track collections to do
24:18
automatically switch? What did you do? We got to the end of that.
24:22
He didn't know anything about the RCOs, the record club only eight tracks.
24:26
He didn't know that those existed, the later eighties ones. And when
24:30
we got to the end of that conversation, he said, you know,
24:33
someone should write a book on this. And I was thinking, if Martin
24:37
pop Off thinks that there's a book here, there must be a book here.
24:41
And I talked to my buddy Matt, and I set about gathering information
24:45
and writing, and that's you know, the end result is what you see
24:52
here. Yeah, yeah. Nineteen eighty one is is that the year that
24:57
releases appear to come out on a track, because there's no definitive way to
25:03
track that down, though I'm sure you tried, so this is so,
25:07
this is how I broke it down. Nineteen eighty one appears to be the
25:11
first year that there were eight tracks that came out through the record clubs that
25:18
did not have a retail counterpart. So in nineteen eighty one, it was
25:23
still pretty common for most releases to come out on a major label. You
25:27
know, it would come out on vinyl, would come out on eight track,
25:30
it would come out on cassette. That was just standard process then was
25:34
real, real to real. But we won't even get that's a whole other
25:37
thing. We won't even get into that those were also available later than anybody
25:41
might think. But nineteen eighty one appears to be the first year that there
25:45
were some releases that you could only get through the record clubs. I don't
25:51
have any way of confirming that this is just through a lot of trial and
25:53
error. I really would have loved to have talked to someone who worked for
25:59
Columbia House or OURCA music service picked the brain about that. But the process,
26:03
you know, why did they keep making them? Why did they eventually
26:07
stop? So we start in eighty one and we end in nineteen eighty eight,
26:14
which is the last year that Columbia House or RCA made any titles available
26:19
on eight track, And so, yeah, it's a pretty much a trip
26:22
through the eighties eighty one through eighty eight. And at the end of each
26:27
year's chapter, I've got a list of all known titles to exist on a
26:33
track. And in doing that you start to see some trends. You start
26:36
to see when they decrease and there's less and less of them. So,
26:41
like I said, if it appears in one of these lists, it exists.
26:45
And like I said, it's the type of thing that most people just
26:49
shake their head and say, well, why does that? Why does that
26:52
even matter? I don't know, it's just fun. I don't know fun.
26:56
I don't know why does it matter? It's why does anybody get intrigued
26:59
by something that was just the thing that I remember distinctly. I talked about
27:03
this in the book. There's a website called eight track Heaven dot com.
27:07
Yeah, it exists today in an archived form, so you can still look
27:11
at it, but it's it hasn't been active for a long time. That's
27:14
what I was gonna say. I tried going there myself and it wasn't the
27:17
link wasn't working. Oh so maybe it's maybe it's maybe it's completely deactivated now
27:22
because there was just a the number eight track heaven dot com. Yeah,
27:29
okay, okay, so that's something that's changed. As the book came out.
27:32
They finally well that's too bad, bumber huh right, yeah, yeah,
27:36
but that was where I learned about these RCOs, these record club only
27:41
tapes, and there were some pictures. One of the first ones that I
27:44
saw was George Harrison's album Cloud nine, which came out in nineteen eighty seven,
27:52
and I thought that came out on eight track this nineteen eighty seven.
27:56
This would have been about ninety five that I first discovered this. Then I
28:00
saw a picture of David Lee ross edam and smile. I was like,
28:03
what, Like, how is this possible? How is there's this whole underground
28:11
segment, this whole different level of music collecting that I had previously known nothing
28:15
about. It opened up this world that I didn't know existed. I,
28:22
like most people, I had kind of figured, well, I guess they
28:25
stopped around nineteen eighty two. Yeah, they which they did. If you
28:30
bought them in stores, that's when you stop seeing them. How are they
28:33
making money off of these in the late eighties, right? I mean?
28:37
You know, well, I mean I don't know how these record clubs made
28:41
money because they had such a weird system to them, But they must have
28:45
figured that there were enough people out there, and I guess they could corner
28:48
the market on them by continuing to manufacture them. Now, if you were
28:53
a country music fan in the eighties and you had a big eight track collection
28:57
and you weren't ready to give it up, you didn't have to because all
29:02
the major country artists, most of the minor ones, they all kept coming
29:07
out with their releases on a track through these record clubs. With the rock
29:11
and pop ones, it's really weird. It's hit and miss. There doesn't
29:15
seem to be any logic for which ones did come out and which ones didn't
29:19
come out, And I don't know what the distinction is. You know.
29:25
Mainly I'm concentrating on the bands that I like, and as far up as
29:29
we know that they came with a tracks, you know, but there were
29:34
just a lot more that were available that manufactured, but probably manufactured in very
29:42
very small quantities, you know what I mean, Like even for I would
29:45
imagine, even for a huge selling album, they wouldn't have made too many
29:51
of them on a track. It would just have been I don't know,
29:53
I have no idea. And then some you know, lesser selling albums,
29:59
there could be like double digit printings of them. I don't know. It's
30:02
a it's very strange books on rock podcasts. We'll be back after this,
30:07
Hey, I won't be long. There's an interesting piece of trivia, a
30:12
track trivia cheap trick, what is the last band to have a number one
30:17
eight track ten years ago? Copy of that, I'm happy to report.
30:22
Yeah, when they came out with their album The Latest in two thousand and
30:25
nine, they actually put it out on a track and you know, in
30:29
typical cheap trick humor, they said, we wanted to have the number one
30:33
selling something that it came out. And there's actually put quite a long chapter
30:38
in this book where I talked to Kathy from Kate's track Shack, which is
30:42
a great resource for getting your tapes fixed and buying used ones. But there's
30:47
pictures of her with Rick Nielsen and Tom Peterson and it's pretty cool. But
30:52
yeah, that's anomally. That's the only one that I have newer than eighty
30:56
eight. But you know, another one I missed when came out, and
31:00
if you miss it, you either don't get it or you end up paying
31:03
a lot more for it is when the Alice Cooper put out live at the
31:07
Astro Turf about six years ago, which is when the original band reunited.
31:11
They did a set and that came out on a track, which I love
31:15
to have, but I don't record Store Day. I wonder if they have
31:18
special eight track stuff for records store. Yeah, though they do. I
31:21
think the band Ghost had won it was a record store I don't know if
31:23
it was a Record Store Day exclusive or not, but I know they've had
31:26
an album on a track and it's it's still very niche, you know what
31:30
I mean, because it's not practical. I mean, you know, cassettes
31:33
are coming back, which I think is cool, but it's a lot easier
31:37
to find a cassette player and a working cassette player than it ever would be
31:40
defined a working a track. I was about to say, yeah, it's
31:42
not like you can play these, they're more just items. I can,
31:47
but I got to tell you expensive, expensive, and you have to really
31:52
put a lot of maintenance into it. A great resource that I discovered is
31:56
a Facebook page called a Track Fixation, which I also taught about the book.
32:00
That's really when I discovered just how many of these albums existed on eight
32:04
track. But there are people that are dedicated to fixing up their players,
32:08
cleaning their players, cleaning the heads, putting new fault pads in their tapes,
32:13
testing their tapes, taking them apart, respooling them. I admire that
32:20
dedication, but I just don't have the patience for it. But it is
32:22
possible to listen, you know, to these albums on eight track, and
32:27
you know, I just think that's cool. But I just think they look
32:29
cool on a shelf, and I love the look on people's faces when they
32:31
come over and they go, what is that that's on eight that's on eight
32:37
track? Yes? Is this real? Yeah? So yeah? What what
32:42
are some of your most prized possession eight tracks? And why you mentioned the
32:45
Van Hillen two to one? Well, I can get a few of them
32:50
out but yeah, mostly it's albums and bands that I really really really like
32:55
and things that are rare, things that you're just not going to come across,
33:00
not definitely not come across in the you know, in the wild,
33:04
but you won't even see it on eBay and discogs. I've I've added many
33:07
a title to discogs that weren't there before on a track. But yeah,
33:13
well, okay, so you mentioned van Halen too. That's not a particularly
33:16
rare one because that was such a big album and that was seventy nine.
33:21
But how many people have this on a track? Oh fifty one fifty Yeah,
33:27
the album that got me into van Halen. That's the listening to it
33:30
on cassette Anna Walkman Christmas Eve nineteen eighty eight. That's yeah track. I
33:39
definitely wanted to have all the van Halen, but not only that. Related
33:45
is whoops, oh yeah, Sammy's solo album from eighty seven, from eighty
33:52
seven in between fifty and fifty and oh eight one two now, so it's
33:55
just called it does it say? Because there are two different titles for that
33:59
one. They had the mp TV, it's just self titled. I don't
34:01
have the I don't have any of the copies that say I never said goodbye.
34:07
I think it get reissued about ninety two, so yeah, that was
34:09
a fairly recent acquisition. But I and I also have this is one more
34:14
I want to show you one of the two that came out on November fifteenth,
34:17
nineteen eighty eight. Okay, November fifteen, nineteen eighty eight. Oh,
34:22
Journey's Greatest Hits, Yeah, nineteen eighty eight. What track that is
34:30
coed? Yeah? And uh yeah, it's I don't know, it's just
34:37
mine. It's still mind blowing to me, you know what I mean?
34:39
Uh? These number one that exist and uh so I'm not just collecting eight
34:45
tracks for the sake collecting eight tracks. I have to like the albums,
34:49
right, Okay, okay, what was my procession? What was the very
34:52
first eight track you ever got? Well, when I was five years old,
34:57
so this would have been nineteen seventy nine. For Christmas, I got
35:00
the Muppet Movie soundtrack on eight track, and we didn't even have an eight
35:05
track player in my house, so I had to go to my grandparents to
35:07
listen to it. But the first one that I ever bought was in nineteen
35:12
ninety and it was Journey's Escape I bought that for a dollar at a flea
35:15
market. Wow, this is like there was just no resale diet. It's
35:22
like people trying to get rid of VHS tapes. Now. Will it ever
35:25
come back around so that they're worth something? I don't know. People were
35:30
just they couldn't get rhythm quick enough. Stores couldn't get rid of them quick
35:32
enough. How about eight tracks that you've been trying to get for the longest
35:37
time, still have it, but hope to get one day. You know,
35:42
one of the one of the I'm going to call it one of my
35:44
white whales and it does exist, is the first bon Jovi. Okay,
35:50
there's a bond Jovi eight track, folks, I'm not even kidding. So
35:54
I'd really like to have that one. I'd like to get all the kiss
35:57
ones I've got. I've got all the way up through the Elder I need
36:00
Preachers of the Night, Lick It Up and Animalize I'd love to get.
36:07
I'd love to get the first find the first two Vandenberg albums. I'm a
36:09
huge fan of that band, Night Rangers, Dawn Patrol. I'd really like
36:14
to find, Uh, boy, you know I've done so, I've done
36:20
really well. Finding docin under Lock and Key. That's the only docin one
36:24
the rat EP and Invasion of your Privacy. And this gets to what I'm
36:30
talking about, because there doesn't seem to be one for Out of the Cellar,
36:32
which makes no sense, right, that's in the book you mentioned.
36:36
Yeah, there's just a few of them, Like it's like Sammy Hagar's Voa.
36:38
There doesn't seem to be one for Voa, even though the one that
36:43
came out after it is on eight track. So I would think if you
36:45
were buying them at the time actively in that format, i'd be really annoying.
36:50
Yeah, what's the music from the Elder from case you Have? Yeah,
36:54
that's a retail card. That was nineteen eighty one, So that was
36:58
a retail card and that's not the easiest one to find, but it's not
37:01
the hardest. Creatures the Night. I've only ever seen a retail version of
37:06
that. I've never even seen a club card of it. I'm sure there
37:08
must have been, but as we know, that wasn't a huge selling album
37:12
when it first came out. And then lick it up and animalize our strictly
37:15
Columbia house versions. And that's another thing I talked about in the book,
37:20
why why did it stop? But animalized when they kept going through eighty eight?
37:23
You know, why why wasn't Asylum or Crazy Nights put out an eight
37:27
track? I don't know, and I can't definitively say that they weren't either.
37:31
That's the thing about it. It's all to the best of my knowledge.
37:35
I'm not going to put anything in there that speculated. And I'm sure
37:37
you've reached out to some of the big Kiss collectors like Julian Gill and yeah,
37:43
from Three Sides of the Coin is a big Kiss collector. Julian actually
37:47
contributed the chapter the Kiss chapter in this book, which was which is was
37:51
a real thrill? Yeah? Yeah, So what do they have to say
37:54
about the ones from the eighties? He had absolutely no interest in age.
38:00
Okay, see, now I wonder Mark Chacchini. I watched Three Sides of
38:05
the Coin a lot, and he's a big collector. A bit you he
38:07
might have something. I've never seen him talk about eight tracks, which I've
38:09
always wondered why. But again, everybody has their collecting focus, right,
38:15
everybody has a focus. Like to me, I wouldn't be the least bit
38:17
excited about collecting different figures. But if I thought that I could go somewhere
38:22
and find one of those three titles, I don't have a track. Yeah,
38:25
I'm excited all of a sudden. Yes, it just depends another piece
38:30
of cool. A track. Trivia is Springsteen's Live seventy five to eighty five
38:34
box set. And I first heard this on vinyl. My brother in law
38:37
had it, and that's when I became a diehard Bruce fan. That's when
38:40
I really was like, yeah, I'm in because I had Born in the
38:44
USA on cassette and I love Tunnel of Love. But I was like,
38:46
oh, yeah, this guy's good. There's in the book. It's noted
38:51
there is a significance to this box set. Can you talk about that?
38:53
The only known box set to come out on all four formats? Yeah?
38:59
All four? Yeah, it came out on on was four records, you
39:05
know, two CDs, and I think it came on three eight tracks.
39:08
There's a picture of it in here, but yeah, it's pretty weird.
39:14
And Toddle of Love came on an eight track too, by the way.
39:15
Okay, do you have it? Yeah, I'm not a Springsteen guy,
39:21
but it does exist. Yeah, what are the biggest selling albums on eight
39:24
track boy, just just the ones that you would probably figure, like Pink
39:31
Floyd Ducks Out of the Moon. I would imagine, yeah, I would
39:35
imagine it would just be a percentage of that, right, I mean,
39:37
you know, Michael Jackson Thriller came out when they were still making retail eight
39:43
tracks. It's not the easiest thing to find now, but yeah, I
39:46
would I would say it would just be the biggest selling albums, but just
39:50
a very small percentage of them. And I don't know how Columbia House like
39:55
sales factored in, because you know, if you talk to a lot of
39:59
bands, and I'll say they didn't make any money off those. And that's
40:01
why a lot of bands ended up not allowing their music to be distributed that
40:07
way, because you know, when their introductory offer was always what twelve seed
40:12
twelve albums for a penny or whatever, and and two more if you can
40:15
conscript to other people to join, it can't have been a lot of money
40:19
made there. I know. I I used to love that man, I
40:22
became I remember getting so many CDs that I became fans of that band just
40:28
because I said, what the hell I mean it's you thought there was like
40:32
a trick to it, or maybe there was something. Am I missing something
40:36
here? But it was really that the only the only trick was is if
40:38
you weren't if you weren't careful and you didn't send back your Selection of the
40:43
Month card, if you didn't want it, you know, then you didn't
40:45
end up having to something you didn't really want. But other than that,
40:46
if you would, you know, just keep track of that stuff, you
40:49
know, have use your brain. I remember I joined COLUMBIAUS in ninety three,
40:54
and when I was replacing my casseests with CDs, man I cashed in
41:00
there because they'd have sales on all these old CDs, and I remember getting
41:04
like the First Blue Murder and a bunch of the White Snake ones like this
41:07
is great and it's funny. Like up here in Canada, they seemed to
41:13
stop with the eight tracks in eighty four through Columbia's. As far as you
41:19
know, I've never seen one past eighty four. I'll show you one of
41:21
the ones that I have, because it's not that easy to find the Canadian
41:24
I believe it or not. But Grace under Pressure, oh yeah, rush,
41:29
Grace under Pressure. Okay, Yeah, so that's a Canadian version of
41:35
that, and that's that's, like I said, that's the last year that
41:39
I know of that they made them in Canada. So it was the same
41:44
company as the States, but it was a different branch, so different numbering
41:46
system, and you know, there were acts up here in Canada that didn't
41:51
have record deals in the States, that sort of thing. So anyone that
41:52
stands out, like as far as you talked about how sometimes they would rearrange
41:55
the track listing, anyones that really stand out as like wow, what what
42:00
the hell? Yeah, because one that always comes to mind if anybody's a
42:02
Queen fan, Queen two was originally released to be sort of a quasi concept
42:09
album. It had a dark a light side, and the dark side,
42:14
and the songs are all in a whack on this eight track. So program
42:17
one is the loser in the end, the March of the Black Queen.
42:21
That makes no sense. It's not how this album's supposed to start out.
42:24
So yeah, some of them are just really really mangled. Some of them
42:29
they tried to keep more or less in order, but it's you know,
42:34
like I said, trying to keep those programs the same length and try not
42:37
to break. They really tried not to break up songs. It's it's just
42:40
only because of the timing issues. Yeah, well they did that with forty
42:45
five's too. My college roommate had Don McLean's American Pie and you had to
42:50
flip the side over to get to the second long song, right, I
42:53
wrote long song? Yeah. I think somebody told me that when they were
42:58
growing up their parents the American Pie album on eight track, and I think
43:02
of the basi American Pie was spread across three programs. Yeah. Yeah.
43:08
Tim Dirling is our guest. He's the author of Unspooled, an Adventure and
43:12
eight Tracks and another book called Down for the Count. The Y and T
43:15
album review. Here's a segue, how many Y and T eight tracks do
43:20
you have? He's he's going to get him now, Folks. Is going
43:28
to be probably probably my prize possessions. Okay, the first, the first
43:35
two which are impossible. I was trying to. You could find him on
43:39
YouTube to listen to, but you can't get him on Spotify because a tiny
43:44
label. It was on London, which is yeah. So these ones came
43:49
in a slipcase. Slipcase had the album art, the eight track itself doesn't.
43:54
And there's a section in my book called about naked eight track because these
44:00
slip cases tended to get thrown away. So you might go to a thrift
44:07
store, you know, or a garage sale or something and see a lot
44:12
of these eight tracks with no artwork on them and think, are these truck
44:16
stop tapes? Are they fakes? No, they're not if they've got a
44:21
record label on them. It's just that the it's just that the slip case
44:24
got thrown away, just like DVDs or video games or anything would have slip
44:28
cases. So some labels had both, uh the artwork on the tape itself
44:35
and the slip case. In the UK they did something interesting where the slip
44:42
case would have the cover art in color, but the eight track itself would
44:45
be in black and white. Just it just depended. And as far as
44:50
I know, and this is another this is another weird thing. Those are
44:54
the only Y and T eight tracks that I know of. But records we're
45:00
still releasing retail eight tracks in eighty one and eighty two. You can find
45:05
Sticks and thirty eight Special and bands like that. So Earthshaker and Black Tigers
45:10
should exist on eight track either, they don't or they're in such small quantities.
45:19
But you'd think after this many years of me looking for all things Y
45:22
and T, i'd have discovered them. Right. There's only one other eight
45:28
track that I know of that has any Y and T on it, and
45:31
that is a k Tel compilation called Masters of Metal that came out in nineteen
45:37
eighty three. It's actually a really good mix of songs and Mean Streak is
45:43
on it, and that came out on eight track, So as far as
45:46
you know, that's the only yan T song that's available on eight track under
45:51
the name Y and T. Yeah, and there are people that manufacture fake
45:55
eight tracks, yes, to sell them. So yeah, there is a
46:00
way to spot if it's a If it's a fake eight track, what are
46:04
you looking for? If it looks too perfect, that's the number one thing.
46:09
If it just looks too smooth, too perfect, too new, too
46:13
shiny. Eight tracks inevitably, even if they're kept in the best of shape,
46:16
you'll see this Queen one. This is a really smooth cover tell us
46:22
where people can get unspooled an adventure and eight tracks and also down for the
46:27
count and the new book on Kansas. I mean, they're all available pretty
46:30
much everywhere in Amazon. Yeah, there is through Amazon wherever your home country
46:35
is, wherever your home Amazon is. Type in my name Tim Durling,
46:38
and the first three things you should see in my books if you if you're
46:42
specifically looking for the unschooled, type in unspooled Tim Darling. Down for the
46:46
count Tim Darling. You know, uh right now. When you type in
46:51
Kansas book, the first two things you get are like Rhode Atlases and the
46:55
third one is my book. Yeah, all on Amazon? Yeah okay?
47:00
And where can people find you online? And your YouTube channel, Tim's Vinyl
47:06
Confessions. I've been doing this for almost it'll be ten years at the end
47:08
of August. Uh. And I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook all Tim's
47:15
Vinyl Confessions. Just look for me there. And I recently just joined TikTok
47:20
because my wife insisted I joined TikTok. I'm on there, all right,
47:24
Yeah, you gotta cover them all. I do TikTok as well. It's
47:29
a lot of news I've learned that it does. Yeah, it helps people
47:34
stay tuned because we're going to have Tim back on to talk about his Wine
47:37
t book. But for this episode, Tim, thank you this and congrats
47:42
on a great book. Thank you, thanks for having me on that's its
47:52
in the books.