truck stop 8 track

hello,

I bought this Black Sabbath Paranoid on 8 track a few months ago on
ebay. it was under a dollar, i figured that all copies of paranoid are
the same, when i recieved it 2 weeks later, it looked like a bootleg.
so I played it and the tape seemed to play a little fast (i've listened
to this album many many times) and the bass seems louder than on the lp
version. no doubt in my mind this is a bootleg. was this label common?
where were these bootlegs sold?


http://www.geocities.com/ledhedrusty/photopagetan.html

thanks
Rusty

On 23 Dec 2005 22:49:35 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

hello,

I bought this Black Sabbath Paranoid on 8 track a few months ago on
ebay. it was under a dollar, i figured that all copies of paranoid are
the same snip

A lot of copies of a single album on the same label are all different
on 8 track...different track order, different dupe plant, different
masters...one of the more interesting (and disappointing) aspects of
the format.

when i recieved it 2 weeks later, it looked like a bootleg.
so I played it and the tape seemed to play a little fast (i've listened
to this album many many times) and the bass seems louder than on the lp
version. no doubt in my mind this is a bootleg. was this label common?
where were these bootlegs sold?

http://www.geocities.com/ledhedrusty/photopagetan.html snip

That's a fairly typical fake tape, found in lowlife record stores,
truck stops, car washes and the like for years. No other medium lent
itself to fraud better than did 8 track in the '70s, since first
generation tape duplicating equipment, worn out as it was, was
becoming available for cheap and all one had to do was retrofit it
with .62 mm track width heads, and voila...fraud factory. Buyers of
RTR tapes were far more discriminating in quality and vinyl pressing
equipment was both rare and hard to come by used without the labels
knowing where it was going. Still, many fake LPs of Beatles albums
were pressed in the '60s before EMI nabbed them. I know; I have one
of them. The pressing quality was really bad, as was the "master,"
which was probably just another record. Cassette fraud was around in
the early '80s as well, but by that time, the RIAA member labels were
tracking down bootleg cassette operators and importers fairly quickly,
thus you don't see many.

Quality of most of these fakes was pretty bad...in your case, it
sounds like either the "master" (usually ripped right from a store
bought LP or RTR) was speeded up to save tape, or the slave machine
was running slow...both common signs of a fake. The "DayGlo" label is
your first tipoff. I remember seeing a lot of fakes like this in 76
and Skelly truck stops in the early '70s, mostly C&W and bible crap,
but some rock as well. There were some fake tapes that were not bad
in quality at all, but most were pretty bad indeed.

Sometimes I think it's the association with fraud that attracted
Charlie Nudo, our resident asshat, to 8 track in the first place!

dB

Rusty, bootlegs were sold just about everywhere. Even in large chain
outlet stores.

Oh, BTW, avoid this DeserTBob character. He's giving bad 8-track tech
advice that ruins your tapes. I have a feeling he does it on purpose-
be forewarned.

Hello,

What do you mean by dayglo label?

Thanks,
Rusty

On 24 Dec 2005 13:59:40 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

Hello,

What do you mean by dayglo label? snip

See the track label? That's the vaunted 1970s "DayGlo Red" color that
seemed to appear on everything.

dB

Y'know, I had two copies of Cher's self-titled 1971 album (with
"Gypsies Tramps & Thieves" and "The Way of Love")- one pirated and one
retail. The pirated tape sounded much better than the retail. The
retailed version wasn't partially erased or anything like that- wider
stereo separation and more detail in the bass on the pirated version.
Odd, huh? The label sucked though- plain B&W 'graphics'. LOL- no
day-glo red! :-(

On 24 Dec 2005 18:22:05 -0800, wrote:

Y'know, I had two copies of Cher's self-titled 1971 album (with
"Gypsies Tramps & Thieves" and "The Way of Love")- one pirated and one
retail. The pirated tape sounded much better than the retail. The
retailed version wasn't partially erased or anything like that- wider
stereo separation and more detail in the bass on the pirated version.
Odd, huh? The label sucked though- plain B&W 'graphics'. LOL- no
day-glo red! :-( snip

I'd believe it. I've gotten a few pirates in my stuff over the last
year, and...surprise surprise...one of them's pretty good quality!
This was of Bonnie Raitt's first album back in the mid-70s, and the
pirateer label was "Apollo," an obvious knock-off. The cart was an
off-beat rendition of your everyday Mastro, but the label at least had
a photo transfer of the original album cover (or part of it), done in
pretty good lithography. The recording was obviously done on a real
duplicating machine, and it sounds like the master was a copy of a
production submaster...a little more hiss than what you'd usually get.
The bass was there and the top end was pretty good, as well...I was
surprised! What's funny is the "disclaimer" that "Apollo is an
electronically created sound, made with our own apelike artists and
studio musicians," a sure fire tip that it's a pirate job. Nice one,
though! I have that album, and, aside from a lot more tape hiss, it
sounds fairly much the same.

On the other end of the spectrum were the "truck stop boots" so common
in the '70s. I have one of Cheech and Chong's first album done on
"Melody Records" out of Noo Joisey, and the quality is bad....the
master was obviously a worn record played too fast to get the whole
thing on less tape, and whatever they were using for a dupe line was
laden with hum. Of course, this is a vocal album, but one can tell by
the lack of sillibants that there was no top end, even new. The label
at least had some graphics...of an orb and sceptre...in color! Of
course, this had no bearing on the album therein, just a "trademark."
Many other pirate jobs of that era was run off on cheesy home
machines, and you can tell them by the start-up "squeak" at the
beginning of each track, and the usual misalignment. This is the
quality of Charlie Nudo's "alignment tape" frauds...bad, bad, bad!

dB