Your Family Car-Tape

My parents were never the biggest music fans. When we'd go on holiday, the six of us would pile into a car and drive to the south of England and sometimes to the south of France with only the one tape playing on repeat. It was a home recording of the chart countdown from 1982 with David Kid Jensen's announcements expertly edited out by my Dad. We invariably listened to this tape on every family trip we took until roughly 1994 when I started getting interested in music and insisted on listening to other things.
On reflection, this is probably the most important and impactful recording of my formative years and probably did a lot more to shape my current tastes than I care to give it credit.

From memory, the tracklisting went something like this:

Chicago - Hard to Say I'm Sorry
Yazoo - Don't Go
Imagination - Just An Illusion
PHD - I Won't Let You Down
Fat Larry's Band - Zoom
Yazoo - Only You
Shakin' Stevens - Oh Julie
Haircut 100 - Love Plus One
Kraftwerk - The Model
Eddy Grant - I Don't Wanna Dance
Musical Youth - Pass the Dutchie
Tight Fit - The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger
Toni Basil - Hey Mickey
John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John - The One That I Want
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
the Stranglers - Golden Brown
Men at Work - Down Under
Irene Cara - Fame
Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

Did you have a car tape or something that got played all the time while growing up? Has it influenced you in any way?

We had 2 tapes for our 3 1/2 hour drive every holiday to our grandparents' in North Yorkshire (so probably 3 times a year for ~10 consecutive years),
Erasure "Wild!" & Fleetwood Mac "Greatest Hits"
it's been weirdly really satisfying listening to either of these records since then, I found "Wild!" at a friends' house a few years back and insisted it was played, surprising myself to the amount of tracks I remembered. the Greatest Hits track order is forever etched in my head but it's probably the reason I'm still fond of FM

What's kind of cool/weird about this is that I didn't really know anything about the acts on the tape at the time. I didn't even know who the artists were or the names of the songs because my dad only wrote down what he believed were the song names (so, 'Hard To Say I'm Sorry' was 'Hold Me Now'). At one point I must have worked out that the music was performed by people, and that they would have maybe recorded them somehow with instruments. I still had to work out what the performers looked like. I had little-to-no reference about the context of the songs or what they were about - I didn't at first know about Grease or the Grease soundtrack, for example. It was pretty much just a mash of different sounds which I heard and understood without any preference or prejudice whatsoever.

Dire Straits - first five albums
Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
Michael Jackson - Thriller

over and over and over again

What a great tape!

I know! It's a lot of fun, lots of different styles... I dunno, in my mind that feels like a really rich and eclectic era for chart pop - synth-pop, reggae, musicals, rock'n'roll, punk, AOR ballads, soul (both boogie and northern varieties), it's all in there in some form.

That's interesting. Why the 1982 chart? Did your Dad have some particular nostalgic attachment to 1982 or did he listen to and tape chart countdowns every year and conclude that 1982 was the best one?

it was years until we got a car with a tape player - late 80s but I do remember my dad had a semi decent not quite ghettoblaster but not a tiny tape recorder radio/tape player thing that ate up batteries and they recorded on to it crappy irish country/folk LP compilations advertsed on tv, brendan shine,foster & allen, fureys, philomena begley (this was 85ish) then probably the same tapes + newer versions on actual car radio (recorded from CD by this point as we got a cd player in 87)

Or was it the only one he recorded?

That's interesting. Why the 1982 chart? Did your Dad have some particular nostalgic attachment to 1982 or did he listen to and tape chart countdowns every year and conclude that 1982 was the best one?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, June 16, 2015 12:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think it was anything to do with '82 as a year necessarily, he just happened to tape the annual chart rundown that year and it got played to death in our car for over a decade after. I know he tried it again in '85, but somehow that one didn't get played half as much.

My mum didn't have a car for some of the 80s and when she got one in the late 80s it was an old early 70s Ford Escort and I don't think the tape deck worked. At least I don't really remember listening to music in that car.

I do have strong memories of my dad always listening to Hearsay by Alexander O'Neal in his car when we went to visit him though.

My dad made a bunch of mixtapes. We had a mix of early Beatles singles, but culled from the albums, not from the 62-66 collection. There was a mix of '50s rock - Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, etc. I think this mix was titled "Rock for Movin'".

Then there was a mix of folk-ish stuff. I know there were selections from the Pop Stoneman Memorial album (The Baby-O) and Rusty and Doug Kershaw (Diggy Liggy Lo).

Also a tape of musical numbers, including selections from Annie Get Your Gun as well as I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise from An American in Paris and the title song from Gigi. That's Entertainment stuff.

We had full albums of Sgt. Peppers, Graceland, Joshua Tree, a Weavers live album, and a Woody Guthrie compilation.

Then whatever I would bring, which would shift from year to year. Donald Duck, Star Wars, Poison, Primus, Black Sabbath. The stuff my dad brought always stayed the same.

This was all for our annual trip from Maryland to the Upper Peninsula.

i'll always associate the music of the eagles with catalonia cuz my dad endlessly played their best-ofs in the car when we went there on holiday every year when i was young. equally tinged by association are phil collins' no jacket required, dire straits' brothers in arms and tina turner's simply the best.

Later on, I'd listen to REM and Pearl Jam albums on headphones in the car. Those bands, especially REM, make me think of movement and travelling.

circa 1984 - my brothers tape that he would play in the car

there was a lot of other tunes on it that I cant remember:

madness - wings of a dove
elo - rock n roll is king
cars - drive
phil collins - against all odds
meatloaf - modern girl
joan jett - i love rock n roll
new order - blue monday
rod stewart - sailing
eurythmics - sweet dreams
the doors - riders on the storm
nena - 99 red baloons
the kinks - come dancing
depeche mode - people are people
howard jones - new song

'Envy Of Angels' by the Mutton Birds used to get played on repeat during our annual four hour drive to the south of France, just listened to it on spotify after not having heard it for 15+ years and I swear to god I was feeling some pavlovian car-sickness

We had a bunch of "Savile's Time Travels" 60s compilations that all seemed to feature The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black. We also had a couple of Rod Stewart tapes.

Anita Baker - Rapture and Giving You the Best That I Got
Basia - London Warsaw New York
Stevie Wonder - The Original Musiquarium Vol. 1
George Benson - Breezin'

Bat Out of Hell II definitely got played quite a bit as well because I remember being terrified by Steinman's 'Wasted Youth' monologue as a young child

it was particularly bad because I would be nervous all through 'Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are' because I knew what was coming next, and that song is like 2 hours long, I was like 'just get it over with, already'

We travelled basically across the country a lot when I was a kid, so I've heard all of these scores of times:

Wham! - Make It Big
Whitney Houston - S/T
Hall & Oates - Rock 'n Soul Part 1 (always wondered about Part 2, knowing nothing of the band outside of this album)
Air Supply - Greatest Hits
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Paul Davis - Cool Night
The Carpenters - Christmas Portrait

So I have a lot of fondness for early-'80s AC.

Known as Summer Sampler, this 2-sided cassette was extremely formative and accompanied more or less every single holiday. I post verbatim my brother's splendid recovery of the tracklist:

1. eagles hotel california 35
2. jj cale - cocaine (theres an eric clapton version)
3. little feat - willin' (sung by Lowell George Live 1977)
4. Bachman & Turner - Roll On Down The Highway or by the donnas
5. Santana -( Inner Secrets - 05 -) Well All Right
6. STEVE MILLER BAND - THE JOKER
7. Ry Cooder - Little Sister
8. christopher cross ride like the wind
9. LYNYRD SKYNYRD - Sweet Home Alabama
10. The Allman Brothers - Ramblin' Man
11. Doobie Brothers - What a fool believes - 1979

|>|>>|>|\.\.\..\.\.\..\.///,,,,,l;;,...////.//side2:)

1. america - magic
2. KENNY LOGGINS - KEEP THE FIRE
3. THE J. GEILS BAND - Centerfold
4. Dan Hartman - I Can Dream About You (Daryl Hall and John Oates have a version)
5. Rickie Lee Jones - Chuck E's In Love
6. Glenn Frey - The Heat Is On
7. Nils Lofgren - Secrets In The Street 1985
8. Meat Loaf - Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through
9. Joe Walsh - Rocky Mountain Way
10. John Mellencamp - Jack & Diane
11. the cars - drive (also version by ziggy marley)

was raised on this stuff, you wouldn't think it eh

XD

Group in the 70s and 80s between Baltimore and DC, so there was excellent radio available most everywhere we went, but I do remember the Annie Original Broadway Cast recording, the Tilson Thomas/Cleveland Carmina Burana, and an amazing Becker/Polydor demo cassette being the go-tos for when we headed out into the country. The demo contained this, which fascinated me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4VKk4raEmE

Summer road-trips with my parents in the early 80's, we always listened to these tapes:

Eagles - Live
CCR - Chronicle
Hank Wms Jr. - Greatest Hits

The funny thing I recall is when I asked my friends at school what their parents made them listen to in the car, it was usually the same three cassettes!

Billy Joel - Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2
Genesis - Invisible Touch
Madonna - The Immaculate Collection
V/A - Sun Jammin' Vol. 2

I'm forgetting some, but those were the most prominent. My dad tried to make whichever Atlantic Starr album had "Always" on it part of the regular rotation for a while, but my mom vetoed it.

We listened to a lot of the first Gorillaz album & I am the one to blame

I'm trying to remember my family's tape era but we jumped on the CD bandwagon pretty early on... mostly albums my dad dubbed on cassette, including a double with R.E.M.'s Murmur taking up an entire side, but with its own A & B sides curiously reversed

I forget what was on the flip of the murMur tape, but could probably find it if enough people contribute to my kickstarter

The tapes of mine that sometimes got played every once in a while:

The Beat - I Just Can't Stop It (wasn't until I was quite a bit older that I noticed with horror the repeated use of the word 'cunt' in the chorus of Two Swords)
The Police - Synchronicity (my father hated Mother, would always fast forward)
Big Country - The Crossing

This a pretty amazing thread to me because I'm old enough to have grown up with a family car which not only had no tape deck, it had no radio. Also, so many of you have musically active parents who would actually do something like dub a radio broadcast, or even an LP, to cassette. The idea of my mom and dad listening to Kraftwerk or Erasure is incomprehensible.

My parents weren't big music fans. My mum listened to a bit of French chanson and disco in her time. My dad taped the top 40 radio on occasion, like I say, and once every 3-4 years would shell out on a current pop album - The Pretenders 'Get Close', Annie Lennox 'Diva', an early Now! compilation. But by the time our family grew to 5 people, there pretty much wasn't time for music in their lives. It's kind of great though, because I still find myself naturally inclined towards the grit and 'feel' of early-80s music - not necessarily a genre, but just the kind of plastickier end of reggae-pop from that era, or the quality of drum machine sounds back then, and end up subconsciously recreating these sounds in my own productions when I make music.

Yeah I totally get that. My dad's Boots Randolph records and my mom's Johnny Cash have come back to me in bands like Brave Combo and rockabilly music.

my parents did audiobooks + NPR + classical radio, we didn't have music tapes in the car much really

Bruce Hornsby and the Range - The Way It Is (1986) --> To this day the most anodyne music I can think of. It's a wonder my dad didn't constantly nod off in the middle of the Pennsylvania turnpike.
the soundtrack to The Big Easy (1987)
Paul Simon - Graceland (1986)
Oh, and Car Talk on NPR.

http://cdn.discogs.com/8dhE67DeyEp7OwOqkvgNoStxHfM=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-5459933-1398778664-2409.jpeg.jpg
was kind of scared of the beach boys' bearded look on the cover...

sinister

My best friend's dad had Beach Boys' Sunshine Dream & Bat Out of Hell which I always associate with riding around in a van after school.

Great idea for a thread! My family's tapes are from the 8-track period, when we travelled all over the eastern part of the United States.

Lots of Neil Diamond, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles. All of Simon and Garfunkle. Jesus Christ Superstar. Buddy Holly. Lots of Beatles. Assorted 50's and 60's music, some K-Tel or Ronco comps. My dad had some big band stuff.

My mom has zero interest in music so whenever she was in the car we never listened to anything, but I have vivid memories hearing a lot of late 70s country/country rock stuff (Kenny Rogers, Waylon and Willie, the Eagles), selections from the Beatles 1967-1970 compilation, and a Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits tape which honestly is one of the most memorable musical events from my childhood.

I also remember my first big road trip with some friends just after I turned 17 when the discman-to-cassette adapter broke right away and we only had two tapes in the car - Guns and Roses "Appetite for Destruction" and REM's "Document" (which is a kind of funny yin and yang of big late 80s rock bands). We listened to both of them over and over and it was years before I could really stomach either of them again.

GarfunkEL. sp.

I remember one summer in the 90s we grabbed a tape that my dad recorded many years back, and every second song on it was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

Simon & Garfunkel - Live in Central Park
Air Supply's Greatest Hits
Boz Scaggs Greatest Hits

I remember one summer in the 90s we grabbed a tape that my dad recorded many years back, and every second song on it was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

lol that is a great 'all work and no play makes jack a dull boy' moment...

hopefully he did not try to kill you with an axe later

Mum's car had these on lock for like 10 years

Creedence (best of)
Van Morrison (best of)
Billy Joel greatest hits vol ii
Forrest Gump soundtrack
Big Chill soundtrack
Smokey Joe's Cafe - cast recording
Elvis: Live in Vegas 72 bootleg (i gave her that one, it's probably *still* in the car)

all I can remember is "Free Fallin'"

I'll have to dig it back out

My dad had some kind of choral praise music subscription, so he'd get a new tape every couple months and the car's center console was jammed up with them. It was under the auspices of him being the church's choir director, but I think he just hates regular music. Anyway, that's all we ever listened to on car trips until they bought me headphones and, like, 8 "D" batteries for my boombox.

Smokey Joe's Cafe - cast recording

had never heard of this, looked it up and am perplexed that it does not actually include the song Smokey Joe's Cafe wtf

parents never drove

woulda been a lotta Big Band, Bing Crosby and Perry Como

I don't think either of my parents ever listened to music, in the car or otherwise (except for my mother's Michael Bolton obsession, but that thankfully didn't begin until my teens).

In my memory, all of my childhood road trips are accompanied by the background noise of a Mets game on WFAN. This is obviously impossible.

At some point my father would also play old radio dramas like "The Shadow."

Early family car trips/cars were without tapes. First car only had AM radio, next one had AM/FM. It seemed like huge parts of the midwest didn't have any rock stations at all in the late 70s/early 80s (certainly this was true of the entire state of Iowa). Once we got a car with a cassette deck (mounted vertically in the dash, which I haven't seen since), it was the Muppet Show Album, the Muppet Movie Soundtrack, the Grease soundtrack, an Abbott and Costello record, and some Beatles (Sgt. Pepper & Revolver).

an Abbott and Costello record

Oh yes! That was one exception to the choral music my dad listened to. He had an A&C tape and I made him play "Who's on First?" probably 200 times.

we also only had one tape.
Dire Straits - Brother in Arms, with some of Paul Simon Graceland at the end

I didn't get a car until my 30s and I immediately made a CD with choice tracks from these on it

Great thread idea, and replies.

For regular trips we mainly listened to the radio as my dad was, and is, a huge radio fan, but there's a strong connection between longer car journeys as a family and my own changing musical taste. I got my first cassette walkman when I was about 9, and first tape (Adam Ant's "Friend of Foe") at the same time, and from that point I actively started buying tapes, as opposed to getting them as occasional presents (Disney stuff, soundtracks etc). Maxing out the pocket money meant "Now!" compilations were a regular choice and every other year we'd drive from where we lived in the midlands to stay with my maternal grandmother who lived near Rome, so these double tapes would get some heavy rotation on the extended stretches of autoroute, autobahn and autostrade on the way. Pretty analogous to dog latin's taped chart rundown I guess, but these did spur me on to getting quite a few albums by featured artists (Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Simple Minds etc), which also often lived in the car. We also used to listen to a lot of audiobooks, primarily chosen by me and my brother, with the Hitchhiker's Guide being a firm favourite for everyone. One thing that really sticks out was that just ahead of one of the last times we made this long trip, I'd got Talk Talk's "The Colour of Spring", and I realise now that this album really started to open me up to stuff that wasn't just pop. I never credited my folks with particularly varied tastes, but I remember quite clearly that after the first time we'd played that my mum remarked on how good it was.

I meant to add - neither of our family cars had a cassette deck - we didnt get one until I was in college, so roadtrips as a kid were usually local AM radio

Paul Simon - Graceland (1986)

also, since several people have mentioned radio: shouts out to WUNC, our local NPR affiliate, whose "folk & acoustic" program Back Porch Music was a popular choice on late-evening Sunday drives home.

(... also The Thistle & Shamrock, a syndicated Celtic-music program some of y'all are probably familiar with, which aired either directly before or directly after BPM--I forget which)

Just remembered my Dad bought Now 7 (UK) which he transfered to tape, except he labeled the tape 'When the Going Gets Tough' which is the only song I remember him playing from that compilation. I don't remember if he kept rewinding it or if he just filled the tape with that song in repeat or what...

My mum went through a phase of playing this EXTREMELY DEPRESSING french song called 'Dis Papa' about a little kid asking her Dad where her mother's gone. My little sister (who didn't really know much french at the time and didnt really understand what the song was about) kept getting her to play it again and again, to which my mum obliged. That was not a fun summer.

I can't really remember many compilation tapes being played in the family car, it always used to be full albums. I'd be here all day if I had to list 'em all, but there's a lot that I still listen to.

We had tapes but the ones I remember mostly playing were in the early 80s when we drove down to California: a tape full of northern soul songs + MJ's Thriller and Beat It.

Tango in The Night is the king of this, surely

for me, anyway

Movie soundtrack tapes. "Good Morning Vietnam" and "Dirty Dancing". (The former- with stuff like "Love is Strange" and "Liar Liar"- was a lot better than the latter.) Also compilation tapes of songs that were sold at gas stations. I don't remember what all was on them and it's the sort of esoteric knowledge that seems lost to the Internet, but I do remember "Hot Fun in the Summertime", "What a Fool Believes", Fleetwood Mac's "Sara" being on them.

Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack had the excellent "Nowhere to Run To," still among my favorite songs.

My parents liked soundtracks and show tunes and often played them in the house. Rogers & Hammerstein chiefly but also Fame, Little Shop of Horrors, Big Chill, Commitments.

These were rare in the car, for some reason. In the car we mainly got '50s/'60s oldies or NPR. Traditionally, if we were going camping, we had to have John Denver. I recall "Take Me Home, Country Roads" being especially poignant when you're driving on actual country roads leading to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River. Pedants will tell you that neither feature has much to do with West Virginia - both the mountain range and the river are overwhelmingly in Virginia. But I still have a soft spot for that song.

My parents had a vague maxim that dinner music should match the ethnicity of the food. So if we were having pasta, we would have Pavarotti or the Moonstruck soundtrack. For tacos, salsa (no pun intended). We ate a lot of Chinese food but the closest thing to "Chinese" music my parents owned was the Last Emperor soundtrack (which was co-written by David Byrne and Ryuichi Sakamoto). We heard that tape a lot.

1976 Monte Carlo had an 8 track player in it. Tape I recall:
Woody Allen
Loggins & Messina best of
Barry Manilow best of
Linda Ronstadt

Later standard cassettes included Steely Dan, Phantom Of The Opera soundtrack, Alan Parsons Project

John Cougar Mellencamp - American Fool
Dirty Dancing soundtrack
Eagles Greatest Hits vol. 1 & 2
Best of Loggins & Messina

My parents had a vague maxim that dinner music should match the ethnicity of the food

this is hilarious btw -- was the "vague maxim" ever made explicit, or did you have to piece it together yourself?

i might need to adopt this maxim, but the other way round.

What if the music is shit?

i won't listen to it?

My father in law is still kind of awesome for this - he sang in bands in high school and college in the late 60s / early 70s so is way into Steppenwolf and the Stones and the Animals and has a ton of sweet old 45s of like ? and the Mysterians and the Grass Roots and stuff. He's also way into Steely Dan and like later white guy classic rock fan canon like Stevie Ray Vaughn.

But in the 80s he ended up at a job where he would get schmoozed by companies on trips to NY where they would bring him to Broadway shows so he's also super into show tunes.

He drives a busted ass mid 80s Chevy pickup and or an old man Buick full of tapes of Neil Young, Black Sabbath, Cats soundtrack, Camelot soundtrack, etc.