Now I'm listening to El Chicano Revolucion. Very cool. I listened to Booker T. and Hugh Masekela already today.

The 8-Track Museum is falling down. I think it's entropy. All 8-tracks must fall to the floor. They're just obeying gravity. They were sorted into precariously teetering piles of different sections. Now they're mixed up on the floor. Not enough shelves. Not enough energy. More coming in all the time too.

Good ebay Bad ebay

Today I had some bad ebay when some 8-tracks arrived with melted pinch rollers. Here's the letter I wrote to the seller. I'll see how he responds.

Subject:"sold as is"

I am disappointed with these 8-tracks. Saying "sold as is" without saying just what "as is" means is hardly responsible when one of the tapes (Mamas and Papas) is spewing its gooky melted pinch roller all over its tape, and another (John Mayall) is also melted and unplayable, while not yet at a messy stage. I may be able to fix the Mayall tape though few hardy souls undertake to open an ampex cart at all, but I doubt if anyone can fix the other.

When one is purchasing 8-tracks as a lot, one is usually interested in some of the lot more than others. As it happens, I was looking particularly for the Mayall tape as I have most of the others already and am not so interested in others. If I was not as savvy about 8-tracks as I am, I might have stuck one of these broken 8-tracks into my player and broken that too by filling it with melted rubber goo. As it is, and because your communications during the transactions were so pleasant, I will wait to hear from you befoe deciding whether to go so far as to leave bad feedback for you. Perhaps you were merely negligent and not intentionally misrepresenting this product. If you never even removed the dustcap from the Mamas and Papas tape you would not have see n the gooky mess inside. Perhaps you are not very familiar with 8-tracks and their flaws.

Waiting to hear your response, &C.

Secretly I hope he says he'll send me some more 8-tracks!

Also my Booker T. and the MGs - McLemore Avenue 8-track came today. It's all organ Beatles covers. Cool. The Stax version of Abbey Road.

My Velvet Underground 8-track came today. I played it about 4 times. There's a song called The Gift in which a very neurotic sounding guy, Waldo, talks over some fairly noisy music in a nerdy way about how he misses his girlfriend. They're home from college and she's in like Wisconsin or something and he's in Penna. He's obsessing about her being unfaithful to him while they're apart. He can't afford to visit her, so he decides to mail himself to her in a giant box. Then the song switches to her point of view. Sure enough she's drinking and screwing around and has pretty much forgotten about him. The package arrives while a girlfriend is there. Oh God it's from Waldo, the schmuck. They have a hard time opening the package, so one of them gets a large knife...you know what's going to happen now don't you? Hint: blood is involved. Well you can listen to the song. It's pretty amazing.

Now I'm listening to The Man From O.R.G.A.N. again. Here's my super depressing Cancer Cat Blog for anyone who's interested.

So It's a regular work sorta day. I work in a used bookstore where I can play 8-tracks all day. I'm regaling the customers with some of my Xmas 8-tracks: Phil Spector's Christmas Album, featuring the Ronettes, Darlene Love, The Crystals and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans; John Denver & the Muppets - A Christmas Together; The Misteltoe Disco Band - Christmas Disco; and Elvis' Christmas Album. That's all so far. One day I cued up all the Xmas 8-tracks to White Christmas and we heard 12 versions in a row. Some people wonder how anyone can stand to shop here.

BILL DOGGETT, ARMSTRONG, ELLINGTON, ARMSTRONG, ETTA JAMES, CTI SUMMER JAZZ, LENA HORNE, NEWPORT 1972, RED HOOK & THE DECIBELS, TURRENTINE, HANK CRAWFORD, TURRENTINE, MONGO SANTAMARIA, CARL PERKINS, BRUBECK, LUCKY THOMPSON, CLAUDE HOPKINS, MILES DAVIS, GILLESPIE, DJANGO REINHARDT, KEYBOARD KINGS-PETERSON-GARNER-TATUM. MODERN JAZZ QUARTET, MILES DAVIS, JIMMY HAMILTON, COZY COLE, MILES DAVIS W/ TADD DAMERON, NEWPORT YEARS VOL 3, GETZ, JAZZ 50'S VARIOUS ARTISTS, BOB BROOKMEYER, BRUBECK, MILES DAVIS, MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE, JOHN COLTRANE, JOHNNY HODGES.

Sound good? That's what I got on the evil ebay last night at 2am. 36 jazz 8-tracks for $31! Psyched.
5 Miles Davis 8-tracks, 2 Coltrane and even a Django Reinhardt! Wow. What a great day. Now I have to swear off ebay until at least the new year

Three of the jazz 8-tracks I got today were on the Roulette label. I always like their stuff and I found their whole discography, plus several hundred other labels' at Both Sides Now .

I also found out that Murray the "K" was a famous DJ and Impresario in New York after Allan Freed.

A good day for shopping. I can't believe the luck I had. First I got some excellent stocking stuffers for my girl, which I can't really tell about until after Xmas, since she's one of two people I know that read this blog.

Then I got last year's baseball cards for only $1.50 a pack. I got 3 packs and I got Derek Lowe and a Topps All World Team Nomar Garciaparra! Go Sox!


Then I went to 4 thrift stores in Allston. One (ferget what it's called) - no 8-tracks. Two (Urban Renewals) - no 8-tracks. Three (Amvets) - one 8-track: El Chicano - Revolucion. 49cents. Including Don't Put Me Down (If I'm Brown) Awesome. Four (Hadassah) - no 8-tracks, but they did have 10 old Yiddish books published in New York and Philadelphia in the 1910s which they sold me for $1 each! Was I ever lucky the other lady wasn't there. She always charges too much. At this rate they were a steal though Woo-hoo! One is Maxim Gorky. The others are Leon Kubrin, Mendele something - I forget, and six volumes by Moishe Nadir. No I never heard of him either. I just doubled my collection of Yiddish books in one day. I studied Yiddish at the Worker's Circle in Brookline a little bit, but I'm not really on the level of these books yet. Hopefully one day I'll really be able to read them.



Maybe you're thinking, but what about 8-tracks? Well I got 5 excellent jazz 8-tracks at Diskovery for $15.
The women who runs it, Yolanda, is very nice to me. She had them marked $21, but she always gives me a deal. Here's what I got:
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers w/ Sabu John HandyIII - Messages
The Herbie Mann - Maynard Ferguson Years
Dinah Washington - The Queen of the Blues
The Lester Young Story Vol.4 - Lester Leaps In
and also a non- jazz one called
Murray the"K" Live "As it Happened"
What or who was Murray the "K"?
More topics for our research here at the 8-Track Museum.

Swamp Rat 8-Track Fanatic at our new location. Still some broken links. We're working on it.

I'm back again to tell you (my imaginary audience) all the rest of the 61 8-tracks I got.

The Best of the Ames Brothers
Al Caiola - Guitar of Plenty
Al Caiola - Soft Guitars
Van Cliburn - World's Favorite Piano Music
Perry Como - Live onTour
Ferrante & Teicher - ABC Collection
Ferrante & Teicher - The Exciting Pianos of
Ferrante & Teicher - Feelings
Robert Goulet - This Christmas I Spend With You
Robert Goulet - Won't You Dance With This Man
Hooked on Classics (2 copies if you're counting.)
Karajan conducts Ravel - Orchestre de Paris
King Richard's Fluegel Knights - Something Super! (Well, it's something...)
Guy Lombardo - Sweet and Heavenly
Claudine Longet - We've Only Just Begun
Mantovani - From Monty with Love
Mantovani - The Magic Of (4 tape Reader's Digest set)
Johnny Mathis - The First 25 Years : The Silver Anniversary Album
Johnny Mathis - Sings the Music of Bacharach and Kaempfert
Peter Nero - The Sounds of Love (You really wanna record that stuff , Pete?) (1987!!!!)
101 Strings - The Soul of Spain
Edmundo Ros - Today
The Three Suns - Pure Gold
Billy Vaughn - Everything is Beautiful
The Lawrence Welk Story - (tape 2 only) The Ballroom Days/ The Golden Hits
Lawrence Welk & Myron Floren - Polkas
Roger Williams - Golden Hits
Roger Williams - Play Me
Roger Williams - Somewhere in Time (1986)

3 tapes from Audiomasters Corp. with nice orange and black sleeves:
The Hollywood Sound Stage Orchestra - Million Sellers Vol. 2
The Velvet Guitars - Guitars for Lovers
The Velvet Piano and Strings - Angel Eyes
(What's up with these things? Studio musicians, I guess.)

Okay all the rest are various artists:
From Columbia House:
The Early Years - Great Stars of the 30s & 40s - Kay Kyser, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Gene Autry, etc.
The Fabulous 50s (2 tapes) - Mitch Miller, Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney, etc.
The Great Ones - Patti Page, Doris Day, Dinah Shore, Crosby, Mathis, Harry James, etc.
I Believe in Music (2 tapes) - Mathis, Coniff, Nero, Bennett, Faith, etc.
Let the Sunshine In - Faith, Bennett, Coniff, Mathis, Vinton, etc. (All the usual suspects.)
20 Great Stars Perform 20 Great Hits of the 60s - Nabors, Goulet, Mathis, Bennett, Coniff, etc.
From London Phase Four:
The Best of the 70s - as played by Mantovani, Frank Chacksfield, Ronnie Aldrich.
From RCA:
The Decade of the 50s - Eddy Arnold, Perry Como, Hugo Winterthaler, etc.
From Reader's Digest:
Jukebox Saturday Night (tape 2) - Miller, Kyser, Lombardo, Como, etc. (Already have tape 1.)

Okay that's the lot - whew! Would anyone in the world pay $35.50 for that stuff? Well I believe I could sell them for more, but we don't sell 8-tracks here at the 8-track Museum. No siree!

Oh boy! What a great day for 8-tracks! The 61 8-track lot I bought on ebay (for only $35.50 including shipping) came in. I bought it because of Dick Hyman's The Man From O.R.G.A.N. With a name like Dick Hyman how could he not be the Man from O.R.G.A.N.? One of tracks is called Agent Double-O-Soul!

Then I impatiently waited to see what other gems there might be in the box. Wow, what a bonanza!
I got Hugo Montenegro and Billy May - Popular Classics
Mitch Miller and the Gang - Peace Sing-Along

4 Ray Coniff albums: a double album on one 8-track: Somewhere My Love/ Bridge Over Troubled Waters; I Will Survive (1979); and two 1986 record club only 8-track issues, 30th Anniversary Edition and Say You, Say Me, which covers That's What Friends Are For and What's Love Got to Do With It! Wow! It also has a cool 80s Patrick Nagel-esque girly cover credited to Manuel Nunez. Here's some of his more recent work I found on the web in a similar vein.

3 James Last albums: The Love Album; Music From Across the Way; and Hammond a Gogo (Canadian release with text in french, german and english.)

I just finished listening to The Man From O.R.G.A.N. It plays beautifully even though it's 30+ years old. The previous owner of these 8-tracks took great care of them. Most of them are in their original sleeves.

3 Others have the late (for an 8-track) date of 1984 on them, also from Columbia House:
Julio Inglesias - 1100 Bel Air Place
Peter Duchin - Dance With Peter Duchin
Richard Clayderman - Music of Love

One tape is a four track with one of those converter thingies stuck in with a sticker that says 4/8 converter Remove only when used in 4-track player. This is Danny Thomas presents the Satin Strings. I only have 17 4-tracks here at the museum so I prize them highly.

There's a cool one called Tribute to Getz - by Combo Royale. It's from Certron Corp. Their Vivid Sounds line. So are they a bootleg company? Were royalties ever really paid? I worry about these things.