Introducing 8 Track Camaro Rock Classics

I've been neglecting this blog in favor of chasing clout on Substack, and that makes me kind of sad. I want to reserve this space for the hardcore nerds who bother to read the really obscure stuff that bubbles out of my head. With that in mind, I am starting a new series: 70s Camaro Rock Classics.

We all have our guilty pleasures, and a genre of music I call 8 Track Camaro Rock is my biggest. This is the kind of dumb, loud, meathead hard rock music that you can imagine some reprobate would be blasting out of the 8 track deck of his souped up Camaro circa 1975 while taking hits from a bag of airplane glue. 

I've been a good little boy and pretty sensible all my life, but I get my bad side out of my system through music. I may wear collared shirts and dress shoes to work every day, but on the subway ride in I will be blasting some Foghat into my headphones. I try to be a sensitive man, so I get a guilty thrill out of the sexist macho in this music. I am an intellectual who reads at least a book a week, but sometimes I have to listen to lyrics written on the third grade level. 

This is the kind of music that no rock critic takes seriously, and they're actually right. I'll be highlighting these songs over the next few months, and having fun along the way. I'm also aiming to bring in some deep cuts, and not just the best known tracks of the genre. 

I am going to start with a band near and dear to my heart, REO Speedwagon. They started in Champaign, Illinois, where I spent some of the best years of my life. I always thought they were a cheesy 80s power ballad band, then a friend introduced me to their 70s 8 track Camaro classics. Before they hit the big time, they wandered through the polyester decade with album after album of boogie rocking. 

"157 Riverside Avenue" was the highlight of their first album, one they have played in concert since. In fact, it's best heard on their tragically named double live album You Get What You Play For. By that point, the band had honed their arena rock skills through years of touring. In this version you can hear the absolutely searing guitar work of Gary Richrath, someone who ought to be classified among the greats of his era, a kind of Midwestern Peter Green. 

The double live album itself is the greatest cultural relic of 8 Track Camaro Rock. The rock show was truly the place to be back then, and in case you passed out in the parking lot after smoking a J and drinking one too many Old Milwaukees, you could go down to the record store and bring the rock show home with you. At its base, 8 Track Camaro Rock is just about letting loose with some big dumb stupid fun. We could all use a dose of that. (REO Speedwagon in the 80s certainly could have, too.)