Can you imagine someone spending the precious time to write a book about 8-Tracks? 10 or more years ago and I would’ve said you would have to be nuts. As my love for music has grown and my appreciation for all formats of music, now I say…It is about Damn Time someone wrote a book about 8-Tracks. I have secretly been hunting 8-Tracks every time I go to a record store, an antique mall or even a yard sale, but have not found hardly any of bands I would remotely be interested in obtaining. I do have 6 Kiss 8-Tracks, but that is the extent of my collection currently. However, this book has sparked more interest in finding the ones for the bands I love.
The book is “Unspooled” An Adventure in 8-Tracks” and it was written by Tim Durling. When my buddy Mike Ladano told me about this book (he is actually featured in the book as well), I was actually excited and I went and bought a copy as soon as I went to Kickstarter and checked it out. I remember my brother having a bunch of 8-Tracks. He had Kiss and there was one by a band named Shark that I remember vividly. I remember how sometimes the song would fade out, you’d hear a click and the song would fade back in and finish. Some songs you would hear so much on the 8-Track that you expected the fade out, click, fade back in on vinyl, cassette or radio and I couldn’t comprehend why it didn’t. Enough about my experience with them, let us talk about the book.
Tim has given us a book that is both Entertaining and Educational. Wait…those two words do NOT go together! But they do for this book. It is made up of Tim’s personal stories, interviews of 8-Track Experts (there are some…really I promise) and interviews of collectors. The book is niche being about 8-Tracks but it is super niche in that it is about a certain aspect of 8-Tracks that most might not be aware and that is 8-Tracks from the 80’s and more specifically, 8-Tracks that are exclusive to Record Clubs. You know, like Columbia House where you could get like a million for 1 penny!
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