Dallas, TX (February 14, 2011)–The Eight Track Museum, conceived and realized by cultural provocateur and the world’s first “formatician” Bucks Burnett, will at open for visitors on a regular basis starting Wednesday, February 16.
To herald this auspicious circumstance, a celebration has been set for today as a love offering by the Museum in recognition of its official opening and debut of the Cloud 8 Gift Shop. Cloud 8 offers an array of unique offerings including Eight Track Museum shirts, vintage LPs, 8-tracks and CDs for sale. Burnett’s Earotica Music record store, located on Haskell Avenue within the Dolly Python complex at 1916 N. Haskell Avenue, has been renamed Cloud 8 in solidarity with the Museum’s retail division.
Starting at 7 o’clock, this evening’s events will be highlighted by an in-Museum performance by Dallas’ own The O’s whose new album, Between the Two on the Idol label will be released in a limited 8-track edition. The band will sign as many as eight copies (total press run) of the album at the event following their set. Opening for The O’s is Dallas songwriter Stu Dicious. Admission to the Cloud 8 Valentine’s Party is $20.
Also on hand will be Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, one half of the Talking Heads and the nucleus of Tom Tom Club. The just-out Tom Tom Club album, Genius of Live is being released on 8-track through Cloud 8, Burnett’s “dead-format” label, by arrangement with Frantz and Weymouth’s Tip Top label and Nacional Records, which has released it in other (non-dead) formats through a licensing agreement with Tip Top. Frantz and Weymouth will sign copies of their band’s 8-track purchased at the event.
The couple issued the following statement regarding their participation in the evening’s events: “We feel inspired and astonished that in our 30th year, Tom Tom Club’s Genius of Live will be available through a technology platform that is clearly on the rebound from obscurity to its rightful place as the transcendent format of the 21st century. Respect to Bucks Burnett and the Eight Track Museum.”
The Museum’s inaugural exhibition “Conceived in Cars/Birth of the Eight Track 1965” underscores the mobility the format afforded music consumers long before the era of the iPod. Hundreds of 8-track cartridges, including all Beatles albums released in the format will be displayed as works of art as well as the super-rare and quasi-priceless folding 8-track, introduced in response to the audio cassette and marketed for only a few months in 1970 after which this particular variation on the 8-track format “folded,” so to speak.
The Museum is located at 2630 E. Commerce Street, Dallas, in the Deep Ellum Community Arts Building. Phone number is 469-867-4074. Admission price is $10. The Valentine’s Day reception is $20.
Eight Track Museum
www.EightTrackMuseum.org
