by Joe Wallace

This post is perhaps not terribly safe for work. You have been warned.

I am a follower of author William Gibson on Twitter, and recently he mentioned finding 8-track tape erotica at southern truck stops. The very idea of this was mind-numbing. Could such weirdness actually exist?

Apparently it’s not enough to get naughty videos and vinyl records. Somebody decided there was DEFINITELY a market for dirty goings on delivered via eight-track tape.

The concept seems so odd that I became obsessed with seeing them for myself. What do these things look like? Who buys them? What on earth do they get out of them? Well, that’s a totally stupid, harebrained question as we all know what you get out of them.

But looking at the packaging for 8-track tape pronorama makes me think that the very last thing on earth these would do is turn somebody on. Thinking of somebody producing smut for an 8-track audience doesn’t make me envision high production values…it makes me visualize a corrugated tin shack somewhere with a Radio Shack microphone dangling from the ceiling while a couple of 19-year old high school dropouts force out grunts and wheezes between shifts at the local In-N-Out Burger.

No pun intended.

I mention all that to say that after being turned on (heh) to the concept of 8-track tape erotica, I actually found some images of these no doubt classics of the recording industry:

And according to William Gibson’s Twitter posts, if I read him correctly you can STILL PURCHASE THESE DAMN THINGS as under-the-counter, on-the-sly finds in the deep south.

Let me repeat, I am certainly no prude–you should be able to listen to any damn thing in any old format you want as long as your eyes are on the road and BOTH HANDS are on the wheel. But these can’t POSSIBLY raise so much as an eyebrow, can they? Not having heard them, I’m guessing they’re as erotic as a reading of De Sade’s 101 Nights Of Sodom by Ted “Lurch” Cassidy.