In my 1st car I kept a shoebox full of 8tracks (Part 6)
When you are a guy my age and you come up where I did, you played sports. For me and for most boys in southwestern PA that meant Football and Wrestling.
On a side note, I wish I had played tennis and golf. No one plays football after graduation and I gotta beg and plead with my wife just to get an occasional wrestle…
The outcome of that was that I hung out with my teammates almost exclusively in my high school days, and that in turn meant that I had “Black Friends”
This was back in the late 70s - when most folks with my skin tone did not have black friends. At least not in my area.
I also have to point out that I was only “NOT RACIST” by late 70s rural Appalachia standards. I was still fucking racist AF by my standards today. Just wanted that clear.
One of the prime hang out activities for my teammates and I was skating. There were roller skating rinks in a couple towns in the area and that’s where we’d be on many a Friday or Saturday night. The rinks of course played a mish mash of Disco, R&B, Rock and Funk. Hell it was the 70s - go figure, right?
The times we weren’t at the rinks in Washington or Canonsburg, we were in a field at a bon fire.
Since the team hung out and partied together we listened to each other’s tapes and from that I got familiar with black music from that era. It wasn’t a one way street by the way, talk to my black teammates and you’d probably be amazed by their knowledge of the Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith albums of the day.
So, what Soul/Funk/R&B 8tracks earned permanent spots in the shoebox? Which tapes were so in demand that I kept replacing ‘em when they died?
There were three.
Rufus and Chaka Khan "Street Player"
This one is a forgotten classic track. There needs to be an investigation to find out why Chaka isn't worshiped as the goddess she so obviously is
Next up was a monster album - a true classic funk/R&B record made by 8 white dudes from Scotland FFS.
Average White Band "Cut The Cake"
And last but for sure not least was one opf the best party records ever made. This record has EVERYTHING. Killer beats monster riffs and the innate ability to make even a crowd of beer buzzed white kids shake their asses
Ohio Players "Fire"
And one of my favorite party songs ever made
= new reply since forum marked as read
...because I could skip around to different tracks and enjoy the album covers. When my dad upgraded to a system with a cassette player, I ended up with his 8-tracks, many of which were funk albums.
I used to play them on my 2-XL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-XL
