Cruisin' Classics

I finally decided to purge my audio tape collection, since I'm pretty sure that's a dying technology. My car still has a tape player, but I don't even listen to tapes there - I usually just listen to the radio (even though the LCD is partially broken so it's difficult to see the station), or, if I'm going on a long trip, I take my iPod and the radio adapter that broadcasts to an unused radio frequency. So, tapes are a thing of the past. Except that my friends made fun mixes for me over the years, and it would be nice to preserve the collection of music, if not the physical tape. So I'm trying to write down the playlists from those mixes with the intent of finding those songs in my library/buying them on iTunes and re-creating the mixes on my iPod. On the other hand, I also have many tapes that were direct recordings of CDs, so these went directly into the trash. It's quite cathartic.

Another set of tapes that I have is the Cruisin' Classics. These were tapes sold by Shell gas stations in 1989 and 1990 for $1.99 (with purchase of 8 gallons of gas). Each one had 10 songs from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. My sister and I LOVED these tapes. We loved them so much we fought over them (though that's not saying much since we fought quite a bit in our childhood). To circumvent this particular predicament, I made copies of the cassettes by making my read-only "Annie" cassettes into writeable cassettes via the old scotch-tape-over-the-holes-on-the-top-of-the-cassette method (sorry, had to start calling them cassettes due to confusion with adhesive tape...). Well, being the packrat that I am, I still have 2 of the originals and one of the copies from 18 years ago. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about being a packrat.

Turns out it's harder to find information about Cruisin' Classics than you might think. These tapes were pretty popular when they came out, so it seems like someone would have chronicled their history and playlists somewhere on the internet. All I could find was eBay listings with patchy information and bad spelling. So, in case you're wondering and don't want to crawl through the interweb to find this information, here it is (Volumes I-III came out in the summer of 1989 and Volumes IV-VI came out in 1990):


Volume I: 60's & 70's

• You Can't Hurry Love [The Supremes]
• Kind Of A Drag [The Buckinghams]
• I Heard It Through The Grapevine [Marvin Gaye]
• (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher [Jackie Wilson]
• Joy To The World [Three Dog Night]
• Proud Mary [Credence Clearwater Revival]
• Do You Believe In Magic [Lovin Spoonful]
• Hot Fun In The Summertime [Sly & The Family Stone]
• Lady Willpower [Gary Puckett & Union Gap]
• Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season) [The Byrds]

Volume II: 70's & 80's

• Uptown Girl [Billy Joel]
• Rosanna [Toto]
• Love Train [The O'Jays]
• Your Mama Don't Dance [Loggins & Messina]
• Crocodile Rock [Elton John]
• Don't Stop [Fleetwood Mac]
• What A Fool Believes [The Doobie Brothers]
• Sara Smile [Hall & Oates]
• Rock' n Me [Steve Miller Band]
• Ramblin' Man [The Allman Brothers Band]

Volume III: 50's & 60's

• Johnny B.Goode [Chuck Berry]
• Great Balls Of Fire [Jerry Lee Lewis]
• All I Have To Do Is Dream [The Everly Brothers]
• My Girl [The Temptations]
• Travelin' Man [Rick Nelson]
• That'll Be The Day [Buddy Holly & the Crickets]
• Blueberry Hill [Fats Domino]
• He's So Fine [The Chiffons]
• Reach Out I'll Be There [The Four Tops]
• I Get Around [The Beach Boys]

Volume IV: More 60's & 70's

• Come See About Me [Diana Ross & The Supremes]
• Beautiful Morning [The Rascals]
• Midnight Train to Georgia [Gladys Knight & The Pips]
• Mr. Tambourine Man [The Byrds]
• Build Me Up Buttercup [The Foundations]
• Chain of Fools [Aretha Franklin]
• You Didn't Have to Be So Nice [The Lovin' Spoonful]
• How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [Marvin Gaye]
• My Guy [Mary Wells]
• Monday, Monday [The Mamas & The Papas]

Volume V: More 70's & 80's

• Listen To The Music [The Doobie Brothers]
• It's So Easy [Linda Ronstadt]
• Ventura Highway [America]
• Could It Be I'm Falling In Love [The Spinners]
• Can't Fight This Feeling [REO Speedwagon]
• The Heat Is On [Glenn Frey]
• Wake Me Up Before You Go - Go [Wham!]
• Kiss On My List [Hall & Oates]
• September [Earth, Wind & Fire]
• Footloose [Kenny Loggins]

Volume VI: More 50's and 60's

• Sherry [The Four Seasons]
• Blue Moon [The Marcels]
• Oh, Pretty Woman [Roy Orbison]
• Why Do Fools Fall In Love? [Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers]
• Get A Job [The Silhouettes]
• Runaround Sue [Dion]
• Do You Want To Dance? [Bobby Freeman]
• Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On [Jerry Lee Lewis]
• Yakety Yak [The Coasters]
• Oh, What A Night [The Dells]