"Fantastic F" 8-tracks

Since I've been ignoring the 8-track format as of late, I figured I'd focus on four 8-tracks released by some poop-hole company called "Fantastic F". What the hell does the F stand for? Fuck? Fart? Fudgepacker? Well, my guess is fudgepacker since they packed a lot of shit onto these four tapes.

By the way, did I ever tell you about my kick ass Superscope 8-track player? It's pretty sweet. I bought it about three or four years ago. Look how snazzy it looks with a Fantastic Fudgepacker tape jammed into the orifice.



Go figure that I'd buy a high-end player and play nothing but garbage tapes on it.

Anyway, Fantastic F's 8-tracks are the most colorful cartridges I've ever seen. If you place one of these fuckers around some other blandly-colored 8-tracks in a store, your eye is gonna catch them before you grab Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or The Beatles' "White Album" (by the way, the 8-track release of The Beatles' "White Album" has black and white pictures of all four Beatles on them. Can't really call that a "white" album!)

Anyway, let's get down to these very loud-looking 8-tracks...


A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac


This one actually isn't too bad. The covers are pretty faithful to the originals. The problem with this 8-track is it was mastered to damn loud, and peaks of the wave file are cut off even when I record it at a quieter volume. Hooray for the shitheads at The General Music Corporation!

Listen to Dreams


Super Disco April 1976: Sweet Love - Only Sixteen and others


There's a total of about two disco songs on this one. The rest are miscellaneous other tracks that don't belong on a disco collection. It's much like their "Hits of the 50s" 8-track (in this entry) which also contained hits of the 60s.

Their version of Slow Ride isn't totally awful, but it's one of the few songs on this tape which I'm most familiar with.

Listen to it here!


Super Rock: Do Ya - Hotel California and others


The audio on this 8-track was recorded too loud, it's a bit distorted, and the track I'm putting up sounds like it was recorded with a tin can microphone. Regardless, we've got the same singer trying to pull off some Electric Light Orchestra. I don't hear any of the awesome harmonies that are in the original version, and it makes you feel like you're eating a Caramilk bar with no fucking caramel in it.

Listen to Do Ya


Super Rock Volume 1


Whoever the fuck is naming Fantastic F's compilations of crap should be fired. But then again, they're probably not getting paid enough to give a shit about the name of the tape since these 8-tracks are bottom-of-the-barrel pieces of junk, offered at a much lower price than those expensive K-Tel compilations.

This is the worst one of the bunch. Not only does it contain the song "Dream Weaver", but it contains the worst rendition of Aerosmith's "Dream On" I've ever heard. The guitar playing sucks, and half of the lyrics are wrong. "I know everybody say you've got your blues to blow away" is a line that was pulled out of Fantastic F's Fudgehole. If you don't believe it's awful, listen for yourself:

Listen to Dream On

And that's it for this entry. I've got some stuff that I picked up while I was in Saskatchewan, so stay tuned for a super nifty edition of the Junq Tour!