Blood on the 8-Tracks, Track Seven: You Can’t Go Home Again:

So, what to do with all of these old 8-tracks? Do I try to enjoy them again by re-buying them? Do I let sleeping dogs lie? (And, as you’ll see below, there were some real dogs.)

And if I do buy them again, do I get them in CD format? mp3? VINYL?!

As I said in the first of at least seven too many posts link about this, when deciding whether to re-buy an album, it pays to remember that I may have already played it out. In other words, no matter how good the record is, is it worthwhile replacing it if I’m just going to listen to it once and just file it away? Like plutonium, but in a good way, every record has its own half life.

And my tastes have changed, too. I don’t always know if a record that seemed great to Jaybee-the- pimply-fifteen-year-old will still seem so to Jaybe-the-grumpy-old-man-who-scares-the-four-year-olds-who-pass-by-his-house?

I have to keep this all in mind when considering which 8-tracks to replace. (You’d think I’d give World Peace this much thought.)

So how’m I doin?

Replaced So Far:

Dave Mason: Alone Together

When the odd song played on the radio, it epitomised the obscure-yet-classic-sounding solo albums of the early seventies. Actually sitting down to listen to such albums can prove disappointing. Not here, though. While the songs don’t convey a strong personal identity (a common flaw of many such “classic” solo albums) they are tuneful and well produced. This version of “Only You Know and I Know” beats the hell out of the Delaney and Bonnie version. A vinyl copy basically fell into my lap, and my life is better for it. A-

And this is what the original vinyl looks like. Pretty cool, huh? (Things that look like vomit are cool, right?)

Stephen Still and Manassas:

This double album showcasing Stephen Stills temporarily salvaging his career avoids sequencing hell, dividing it’s four sides neatly over the four tracks. And it fits on a single CD! It would be all downhill from here for poor Stephen, though. A-

Graham Nash: Songs for Beginners

There are more good songs here than Nash ever wrote for CSNY, so you wouldn’t blame me for thinking he didn’t have it in him. So it was a very pleasant surprise, that I finally got a chance to replace last year. Good then, excellent with the sequencing fixed. A-

Van Morrison: St. Dominick’s Preview

Not as brilliant as Astral Weeks or Moondance, but a little sharper than either Tupelo Honey or His Band and Street Choir, this one suffers only from a bit of schizophrenia by mixing radio friendly short ones, with long slow ones, but Van brings it all together nicely in the title cut. But I do miss how “Independence Day” would bleed into the other tracks on the 8 track, making everything sound like it was recorded on a boat on a foggy ocean in the middle of the night.  A-

The Rolling Stone: Let it Bleed

A true Roommate Mike garage-sale special. For the Stones, it’s actually a bit uneven. “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get WHat You Want” are amongst the greatest rock n roll songs ever, but that causes some of the rest to lag behind. Hidden Gem: “You Got the Silver”  A

The Redundant:

Live Cream

I loved this record and considered it to represent some of Clapton’s greatest work. It’s reviled by those critics who preferred rock n roll to be shorter and tighter. I understand, but my gut is still in agreement with fifteen year old Jaybee. So I just swallowed the Cream oeuvre whole with the box-set of Those Were the Days. But I just couldn’t win - my favorite track - “NSU” was in a different version.  Whatever. This is still a guilty pleasure.  A-

David Bowie Stage

Superior to the really crappy “David Live”, it’s a good representation of Bowie’s best 70s work. But I've got all these songs already in their original studio versions, so why bother? But if you don’t already have Low, Heroes or Station to Station, it’s highly recommended. A-

Contenders:

Rolling Stones: Their Satanic Majesties Request

This one’s not bad at all. Just not quite on the level of many other early Stones records. I’ve had less reason to get it since getting the Singles Collection. But someday. Another Mike Special! B+

10cc

Remember these guys? This is their first and it’s really good. It’s got the Beach Boy vocals, the Graham Gouldman melodies and that British sarcasm. C’mon Amazon! I’m waiting! A-.

On the Fence:

These are the ones that may may suffer from either half-life or taste change considerations, in order of my increasing hesitation:

Poco - A Good Feelin’ To Know

Although I loved this record when it came out, and have had a couple of chances to replace it, I haven’t. I’m afraid to. Something tells me that Ritchie Furay doesn’t translate well to other decades. Maybe it’s me.

Graham Nash/David Crosby

Talk about not transcending a decade! This has got to be the quintessential half-assed supergroup albums of that time, and yet I’ve got fond memories of it.  If you thrust it into my hands I wouldn’t throw it back at you.

Marrying Maiden: It’s a Beautiful Day

I do recall it being real pretty, but with song titles like “Essence of Now” and “The Dolphins” you know it’s going to be like talking to a hippie. Pleasant enough but when it’s done, it’s DONE. By the way, the guy actually sings too well. Are you seeing a theme here? I’d replace it but I’m afraid that it’s REALLY going to suck.

Bonnie Raitt’s first album. I don't even remember. The sound quality was pretty poor.  And I think it got lost before I got to hear it more than once. Where the hell did it go, anyway?

Van Morrison: His Band and Street Choir

This one was always a bit lightweight for me. I’m more of an Astral Weeks fan. It certainly wasn’t bad, and “Domino” is great, but that’s the only one.

The Real Dogs:

Then there’s the question of quality, ahem, quality:

Loathe as I am to admit it, not every record I’ve ever gotten is deserving of additional plays. Sometimes there’s a reason why something is in the bargain bin. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Renaissance: Scheherazade

One of Mike’s. (I never said he batted 1.000.) And if I gave it the time, it might prove to be okay. But prog-rock has not worn well for me and these guys come across way too serious.

The Mothers: Overnite Sensation -

This one’s all mine. I got thru it once but have no interest in trying again.

Quicksilver Messenger Service: Anthology

I think Mike got this one, but I can understand it. After all, it’s a Best Of. It’s got to have some good songs, right? Well, I gave it a single listen, hated the guy’s voice, and decided that life was too short. I was 22 at the time.

I realize that I’m being terribly unfair here, and could come to enjoy, or at least appreciate these albums if I gave them the time. But sometimes a record just gives off the aroma of “too much work to enjoy”, and these three really stank.

So What Does It All Mean?:

When it comes to music, I pride myself on not looking back. Given a choice between the known and unknown, I’ll almost always choose the latter.  

But it’s only human to want to occasionally relive old memories, even when you know they’re as likely to disappoint as they are to satisfy. Aside from the occasional loser (Thank’s a lot, ELP!)

I did okay.

I guess it’s all a matter of focus and commitment, and what you can achieve when you’re willing to devote your life to something important.

Some people (Ghandi) free a nation from the yoke of colonial rule. Some people (Jonas Salk) find a cure for the scourge of polio. 

And some people (me) move their old 8-tracks to CDs.

Blood on the 8 Tracks, Track Six: Velvet Underground Railroad

1979:

Friend Mike and I grew up in the same neighborhood and hung out in the same bar, where we talked about Ingmar Bergman while the TV played Benny Hill reruns. Kindred spirits, we’d eventually share an apartment. (I wonder if my Brother Pat remembers I took the stereo when I moved out…?)

The rent was cheap, which was great because neither one of us made a lot of money. What little we had was spent on essentials like records and parties. An exaggeration - to the relief of our landlord, we were disappointingly conventional. But we both loved music and would traul the discount bins for whatever we could find.

And it being the end of the seventies, most people were handing in their 8-track players, along with their souls to St. Ronny Reagan, but I digress.  

But it was a boon for us, with discount bins and yard sales overflowing with with used 8-track tapes.

2013:

Mrs. Jaybee and I took a trip to Boston, where Mike lives now. It was a week after Lou Reed died, and Mike thoughtfully left out a good article from the Globe. But then he surprised me by saying he never really heard a lot of Reed’s stuff - Velvets or otherwise - other than “Walk on the Wild Side”. So I decided I’d make him a mix CD of the Velvet Underground.

Later that week, while perusing allmusic or amazon for I don’t know what, I spotted a sale on 1969: Velvet Underground Live with Lou Reed. Then it hit me that Mike had actually gotten the first volume of this album from one of his discount bin dives. It must have been a short time before he moved to Europe, so he probably forgot. I probably played it more than he did.

Anyway, I decided to get the CDs.

1969: Velvet Underground Live with Lou Reed

The full album (plus bonus tracks!) this time.

And I’m slightly disappointed.

One difference between then and now is that I’ve since become much more familiar with all of their (brilliant) studio output. So now this record suffers in comparison.

Another odd thing happened.  I think the poor sound quality of the 8-track actually added to my enjoyment. The tape may have only played one half of the stereo mix, because my recollection was of Lou Reed’s voice, some muffled guitar and not much else. It gave the songs a very spare quality that I really enjoyed.  The now better quality put them on grounds for comparison with the now familiar studio versions, and the former lose out.

Grade: B+

Having Said That:

It occurred to me that I wasn’t hearing VU-the-icons-who-made-several-classic-albums. I was hearing VU-the-band-playing-a-gig. In other words, this album is a record of a moment in the life of a band, and not a Statement by Rock Gods from the Past, which is what the studio albums represent for me.

Another thing: it’s probably a great record to introduce people to VU with.

So if I put aside my prejudices and try to listen to this like it was a new album with unfamiliar songs, I’d probably give it an A.

On the Other Hand...

But when push came to shove and it came time to make burn a CD for Mike, I stuck with the studio albums.

So let’s split the difference and give it an A-.

When to Play: When you’re looking for some ugly truth.

When NOT to Play: When you’re looking for sunshine and lollipops.

And if you’re wondering where to start with the VU, try this utterly brilliant post.

"Beginning the See the Light"

Bood on the 8 Tracks, Track Five: The Thing With Two Heads

The strangest 8-track I ever got was the bastard step-child my of desire for more 8-tracks and my  lack of funds. (It was around this time that my mom began singing her unique version of that great oldie “Get A Job”.)

Then I found out about a local electronics store that had a machine that could copy 8-track albums onto blank 8-track tapes. It was like magic! You paid for a blank tape that could hold the contents of one album (forty-five minutes should do it), and maybe a buck for the service, but that was it. Too good to be true, right? That didn’t stop me, though. I ran down there like a bat into hell.

And once there, I was so inspired that I had a brilliant idea. What if I bought one ninety minute tape and selected two albums to record? Genius!  I’d only have to pay for one tape, and get two albums!

What could go wrong?

Well, for one thing, such stores don’t have a big selection of albums to choose from - just new stuff, and no back catalog. But I did pick two records that - like Ray Milland and Rosie Greer - would naturally go together:

Emerson Lake and Palmer: Trilogy: 

and

Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman:

Brilliant, right? I mean, do you EVER hear about one without the other? Of course not. So, as you can imagine, these two parts - one ice, one fire - would come together to form, as Spinal Tap puts it, lukewarm water.

The guy at the store admitted no one had thought of doing this before. This made me proud. I felt like the guy who invented the Fluffer-Nutter.

More Like Olive Loaf:

When I got home and played it I found that the first track consisted of ten minutes of ELP music followed by ten of Cat Stevens. And as the tape progressed to the second, third and fourth tracks, 10 more minutes of ELP, 10 more of Cat and so on.  

It was kind of like an 80 minute “Donny and Marie” episode, except instead of a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n roll, it was a little bit anal British prog rock and a little bit anal British folk rock. (Just kidding, Cat. We’re cool, right Cat??)

Oh, and both albums were victims of re-sequencing.

Better Than One, After All:

The weird thing is that it kind of worked.

How?  Well, the blank tape I bought was of crappy quality. And although prerecorded 8-track tapes were more expensive than vinyl, whatever the record companies said otherwise, they were crappy quality, too!

This very crappiness-twice-over blurred the distinctiveness of each album, thus making the dour organ noodlings of Keith Emerson and dour folk croaking by Cat actually work well together. Go figure.

It turned out to be one of the best “albums” I got that year.

Worse Than When the Beatles Broke Up?:

Not really. But, not leaving well enough alone, thinking I could improve things, I eventually replaced both albums.

In the mid-eighties, I got a vinyl copy of Tea for the Tillerman, which, with the sequencing right and the sound clear made for a much less mysterious, but very good record thank you very much:

"Into White" - Dour, but beautiful, whatever the sound quality. 

(We’re cool now, Cat, right?)

This encouraged me to replace Trilogy with a CD version a few years later, which I played only once because it kind of sucked. That’s right, the correct sequencing and better sound actually made it worse:

"The Endless Enigma" - This might have been when I started to hate the organ. Ten minutes of your life you won’t get back.

Like how bright lighting can make someone look worse by making every little flaw stand out. (This is why I stay in the basement.)

So, yeah, Emerson, Lake, Palmer and Stevens were never the same once Stevens left. Kind of the Paul Simon effect. Just taking place inside my own head.

And while I keep hoping for a re-union, I know it could never live up to my expectations.

Blood on the 8-Tracks, Track Four: Hello I Must Be Going

Although I found the idea of chopping albums from two into four parts, as 8-track tapes do, unnerving, what I didn’t know at the time was to what lengths some record companies would go to save a little tape (or, to be more charitable, to avoid having long empty stretches at the end of some tracks). The sequence of the songs would often be different between the 8-track and vinyl versions of an album.

If you already knew the album, this could drive you crazy. If you didn’t, it could infuriate you later when you figured it out.

As someone who believes that, when playing vinyl, it should be against the law to play side two before side one, 8-Track Resequencing struck me as an even more egregious crime, warranting the appointment of a special prosecutor.

I didn’t find out that Fragile was a victim of resequencing until later. Which made me that much more curious to get the CD version - to hear it the way it was meant to be heard.

A Misdemeanor:

One record that went through a couple of versions before I ended up with the one that was originally released was The Beatles Rubber Soul.

First there was the one I got from a high school “friend” who sold discounted - and obviously counterfeit - versions of albums. (I know, you’d think a Beatles fiend like me would have had the record already. More about that here.)  

As you probably know the American versions of Beatle albums were trimmed down from their original fourteen songs to about ten or eleven when prepared for release in the States. (What, you don’t know? Stop reading this blog. Now!) And what my friend gave me was a resequenced version of the American release.

So what I got was twice removed from original British version, and I didn’t know it. (Yeah, I didn’t know it either. Okay, you can read the blog again.) Now one might think that Beatles songs in any order should be just fine. But having heard how great Rubber Soul was supposed to be, now that I heard it, I was vaguely disappointed, and wouldn’t have rated it any higher than any other Beatles record. I’d still give it an A, but a weak A.

I eventually replaced it in the mid-80s with the vinyl American version. Short, compact and brilliant, it’s an A+ - one of the greatest albums ever released.  (That’s right, Bach! What of it?)

Strangely enough, the British version - with more songs, but missing “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (It’s on Help, you see.) seems a little diluted. Just a strong A, and better than 99% of any other albums I own. But still.

Bloody Murder:

Most albums didn’t fare so well. I think the most egregious instance of re-sequencing is Days of Future Past, by the Moody Blues, which, as you might imagine, is supposed to go in order of the f’cking day (ie, morning, noon, night, etc.,)!

Well, DOFP (the acronym kind of looks like Doh! and F*cked Up, doesn’t it?) got absolutely massacred in 8-track.

Don’t believe me?  Well, here’s the correct song sequence:

1. The Day Begins

2. Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling

3. The Morning: Another Morning

4. Lunch Break: Peak Hour

5. The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)/Time to Get Away

6. Evening: The Sun Set/Twilight Time

7. The Night: Nights in Whte Satin

Notice how the MBs even idiot proof it for the...slower listeners, with helpful prefixes in the song titles like “Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling” in case you didn’t figure out that it might be about the FREAKING DAWN.

So I think you’re in my corner on this so far, right? It.Kind.Of.Makes.Sense.Right?

Well, here’s the sequence from my 8-Track, with a little helpful running commentary by yours truly:

Track 1:

1. The Day Begins 

So far so good, right? Everything is goind according to plan.

2. Evening: The Sun Set/Twilight Time (Part One)

Well, that was pretty quick, wasn’t it? But I suppose it could happen if you’d been out drinking the night before and were just waking up at 5pm. So, even though the MBs didn’t seem like the partying type,  I’ll try to keep an open mind.

Track 2:

3. Evening: The Sun Set/Twilight Time (Part Two) 

They were so anxious to cram in the Evening that it didn’t fit anyway. So here’s the rest of it. I hear the guy who did this owns a butcher shop down the block.

4. The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)/Time to Get Away  

Okay, now that we’ve already jumped almost all the way to the end, we’re going back in time, like that movie Betrayal or was it Momento? I don’t remember.

Track 3:

5. Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling 

Okay, now I’m completely lost. What day is it again?

6. Lunch Break: Peak Hour 

Now I’ve never been one to turn down a meal, but this lunch is coming right after dawn, which means I either just got up and was hoping for some bacon and eggs or, if I’m having a really good time, just got to bed.

The Morning: Another Morning (Part One) 

Oh, that’s right! As a big fan of breakfast, how could I forget?  Here we are three quarters of the way through our day, and it’s only morning. It’s reminds me of the Lou Reed song about “wine in the morning and breakfast at night”. I guess he had this 8-track, too.

Track 4:

7. The Morning:Another Morning (Part Two)  

That’s right, folks. It’s STILL the morning! At this rate, we’ll never get to the end of this day. There's really only one valid response to this.

8. The Night: Nights in White Satin 

What? Well, we ended up in the right place after all. So why do I feel like I’ve got whiplash?

It’s like listening to that friend we all have who tells you about a movie he just saw, but who has to keep going back to explain things because he keeps leaving stuff out:

There’s this girl Dorothy who say’s ‘There’s no place like home’. Oh yeah, first she kills a witch, but before that she meets a Wizard who gives her friends… oh I didn’t mention the friends?  Well, there are three, unless you count the Good Witch, who she doesn’t kill, and those munchkins. But definitely not those flying monkeys.”

Who, by now, are probably flying out of your butt.

Next: Self-Inflicted Resequencing