My three favorite bands of all time are The Eagles, The Who and ZZ Top, pretty much in that order. I have been fortunate enough to see each of them in concert. The Who in 1975, featuring the original lineup with drummer Keith Moon, ZZ Top thrice and the Eagles at Piedmont Park in 2010. Though the list has changed throughout the years, these three have always been favorites and I have always loved their music.
Especially when driving. What is it about music and, as ZZ puts it “that wonderful feel of rolling in an automobile”? Maybe it’s the motion, the music or both, but they go hand in hand like Lester and Earl, Fred and Ginger, Snowman and The Bandit. When listening to a song we love we tend to speed up, sing along and play air guitar. Or, in my beloved Jackie’s case, air drums. If you ever see her on the road and she’s flailing her arms, she’s not having a conniption. Well, if I’m driving maybe, but most likely she’s just playing along with the Allman Brothers.
In the waning years of my adolescence I got into progressive rock. It was all Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, The Moody Blues and Jethro Tull. In my early to mid twenties, it was Southern Rock and The Rolling Stones. In my late twenties to early thirties, I really got into Springsteen and John Cougar. I know he goes by his proper name Mellencamp now, but to me he’ll always be John Cougar.
And all on 8 track tape. For those of you too young to remember, 8 track was groundbreaking technology. All of a sudden you could listen to music you chose and not AM radio. FM radio did not gain a mainstream foothold until the early Seventies and even afterward, the 8 track market thrived because we could listen to whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.
The first 8 track tape decks appeared in Ford Mustangs, Thunderbirds and Lincolns in 1965. By the end of the Sixties, the tape market was booming. I owned a Ranger Mini-8, which featured a knob labeled “Fine Tuning” on the left hand side of the face of the player. It adjusted the head of the player and eliminated “double tracking” which 8 tracks were notorious for. This was ingenious, and I could never figure out why this feature wasn’t available on all players, auto or home. The Mini-8 was the only unit I ever saw it available on. Maybe Ranger had a copyright on it…
Let me explain double tracking. 8 track tapes had four channels the songs were spread over. Generally there were three songs on track one, three on track two, etc. Double tracking was the annoying, or maybe infuriating is a better word, phenomenon of hearing the music from a track faintly, or not so faintly, in the background while you were listening to another track. There were tricks to eliminate it, such as running through all the tracks quickly back to your original track. But, the most common and effective method was sliding a closed matchbook cover, small side first, under the tape. This wedged the cartridge up on the head and eliminated the double track. High tech, but it worked. Most of the time, anyway…
My friend Dennis installed automotive sound systems for a living. I owned a ’73 Super Beetle, and he talked me into letting him put a Pioneer AM/FM 8 track player and a pair of speakers called Mind Blowers in it. These things had a booster switch and when you hit it, it would literally rattle the glass of the airtight Bug. It’s a wonder I didn’t destroy the hearing of myself and several of my friends with those things.
The players were notorious for eating tapes, and when the inevitable jam happened, you had to remove the cartridge and pull the tape itself out of the player, sometimes tearing or having to cut the tape to get it out. This usually resulted in the tape being tossed, but not in my circles. My buddy Walt became known as “The Tape Doctor”, because he could pretty much fix any 8 track cassette. Torn or cut tape, no problem. He could patch it with Scotch tape and it worked seamlessly with just a blip in the music at certain points. He was a true Seventies 8 track genius. If Walt couldn’t resurrect your tape, there was no hope. Once, my Pioneer ate my Pink Floyd tape. I gave it to Walt, and when I met up with him a few days later he said, “Hey, I got your tape fixed,” and handed me a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass cartridge. I looked at him and he said, “Don’t worry, I had to break the cartridge getting the guts out. The Tijuana Brass was an old broken one of my dad’s.” It worked perfectly, of course, and when my friends were looking through my tape box, they’d pull it out and bust out laughing. “The Tijuana Brass???” they would snicker and sneer. I’d pop it in, “Breathe” from The Dark Side Of The Moon would come floating out of the speakers, and that would be the end of that.
8 tracks eventually gave way to cassettes, cassettes to compact discs, compact discs to mp3s, AM radio to FM, FM to iTunes and Sirrus XM Satellite radio. But through it all, we have continued to rock while rolling.
And it seems like certain music goes with certain types of travel as well. I used to have to endure trips from Atlanta to Texas with my parents listening to elevator music. That’s an experience I would not wish on anyone, particularly since we had to make the trip at 65 mph. If my father hit 70, my mother would come unglued. I always loved listening to the Eagles and Southern Rock riding through the country on sunny afternoons. Going into town to hit the Mad Hatter or the dance clubs, it was always Rod Stewart, The Doobie Brothers or The Stones. Riding around on rainy days with my buddy Chip, we liked to listen to the Who and Pink Floyd. And for a night of beer drinking at Shakey’s or Manuel’s, it was always Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson. For road trips to Florida, I always liked The Allman Brothers or ZZ Top’s “Tejas”, an underrated album which in my opinion is one of, if not in fact, ZZ’s best. On a date, whatever you wanted to listen to was out the window. It was whatever she wanted to hear, although Fleetwood Mac was always the best go-to music, if the opportunity presented itself. I had to endure whole nights of the Carpenters or Chicago as well, but I drew the line at Helen Reddy. I only went out with one girl that wanted to listen to Helen Reddy. She brought along her own tape. We only went out once.
Like most Boomers, my taste eventually evolved into what became known as “Classic Rock”. This was simply the music we grew up with but, at least in my opinion, it’s better than anything that’s being produced currently. I created my own CDs with music downloaded from Napster, LimeWire and iTunes. But, CD technology is fading. I don’t have an iPad or any other such device. We have Sirrus radio, but over time you realize that, like the FM stations and iTunes radio, they play the same stuff over and over again. The one station I really enjoy on Sirrus is Willie’s Roadhouse, which features the old time legends of Country music. George and Tammy, Ray Price, Loretta, Conway and all the greats. None of the bad pop that Country music has become.
So today, I do something I was genetically incapable of in my youth. I pretty much ride in silence. My car and my van do not have Sirrus. There is one Classic Rock station in Atlanta, and with the exception of Kaedy Kiely, it is terrible. In the morning, I listen to WSB to get the traffic and the weather, then turn it off before it gets into who said what or who shot whom. But every now and then when the mood hits me, I’ll pull out my Who, Eagles, ZZ Top or one of my mixed CDs. I’ll put it in and crank it up. Just me, my music and the road… Still Cruisin’! –J.
Speak Your Mind