Saturday, May 1, 2021

POP-A-LOOZA: Eight-Track Mind

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my look back at a once-popular audio format, "Eight-Track Mind."

While this piece is mostly about eight-tracks, it does touch a little bit upon my history with cassette tapes, too. I haven't written all that much about cassettes, though I've been thinking of starting a new series called C30 C60 C90 GO! (My Cassette Treasures). That series would reminisce about individual cassettes that meant something to me in my life. If I ever write it, the inaugural C30 entry will celebrate the single most important cassette I ever owned, a bootleg live tape of The Flashcubes at Syracuse's Jabberwocky in 1978. My most important cassette? Nothing else even came close to it.

Cassettes served as inspiration for two fake This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio playlists, "Music On Cassette" and "The Mixtapes Of Your Life." A piece called "The Mixtapes Of October" preserved the annotated playlists from a few mixtapes I distributed to fellow pop fans. Recalling the spirit of my mixtapes, "A Mixtape By Any Other Name" talked about the process of affixing silly superfluous names to CD-R compilations, and "Format du Jour" listed various formats I've owned--45, 7" EP, 10" EP, 12" single, LP, eight-track, cassette, flexi-disc, cardboard cut-out record, VHS, CD, DVD, CD+G, CD-ROM, mp3, digital album, plus a sheet-music bonus track--each with an example of one song I owned in that format before I owned it in any other format.

But today, we focus on the KER-CHUNK! of the eight-track. "Eight Track Mind" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:


Volume 1: download

Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
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I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

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