Future 8-track tape cartridge
by The Seeds
late 1960s 8-track tape
Label: NAL [CRE-82038]
North American Leisure Corp., a subsidiary of Omega Equities Corporation, produced an 8-track tape version of The Seeds’ 1967 album Future for GNP Crescendo and it’s one of the most poorly-conceived Seeds-related issues ever made. And that’s saying something.
Eight-track tapes were infamous for shuffling song orders from their vinyl counterparts or for fading songs in the middle and splitting them across two programs. This was done to accommodate the four equal-length programs on an 8-track tape whereas LPs only needed to accommodate two halves. The NAL version of Future not only screws up the song order, though; it omits three (!) of the original LP’s songs altogether.
The songs as they appear on this pitiful cartridge are:
Program 1
"Introduction"/"March Of The Flower Children"
"Flower Lady And Her Assistant"
Program 2
"Now A Man"
"Two Fingers Pointing On You"
Program 3
"Travel With Your Mind"
"Where Is The Entrance Way To Play"
Program 4
"Painted Doll"
"Six Dreams"
So, there are eight songs plus the "Introduction". Missing are "A Thousand Shadows", "Out Of The Question", and "Fallin'". One feels sorry for any fan in the 1960s who got to know Future via this 8-track tape; they really got the short end of the stick.
The result of this haphazard surgery is actually a well-balanced if incomplete tape: two songs per program and none split up. So that’s something, I guess.
The cold- and corporate-sounding Omega Equities Corporation’s North American Leisure division (none of those words inspire confidence that groovy music is coming your way, do they?) gave their Future 8-track the catalog number CRE-82038 on its back sticker and spine, giving it a connection with GNP Crescendo’s original number of GNPS-2038. Confusingly, the number is a little different on the front-cover sticker under the album art (CR-82038). Quality control was not a priority for the music-loving hippies burning the midnight oil at Omega Equities.
A copy of this “Super Stereo 8” Future 8-track tape might be hard to find but would be an interesting curiosity for a Seeds collector, not only for the obscurity of the object itself but for the rash song-selecting decisions. Who knows who signed off on this or when, but we definitely don’t recommend anyone becoming acquainted with the album in this guise. This is not the entrance way to play Future.
