Eight-track exhibit at Barry Whistler Gallery in Deep Ellum plays well with music lovers

by Teresa Gubbins

Local colorful character and Dallas record store owner Bucks Burnett -- surely one of the world's best known collectors of eight-track tapes -- shared some of his prized possessions this weekend at a unique exhibit at the Barry Whistler Gallery in Deep Ellum. Eight Track Tapes: The Bucks Burnett Collection was a three-day event spotlighting Burnett's collection, with an eye towards building enthusiasm and possibly funds for a museum dedicated to the obsolete musical format.

The exhibit included a Friday night performance by The BBC, a band starring gallery owner Barry Whistler, and on Saturday, a guided tour and talk by Burnett, who shared highlights of the collection with a crowd of about 50.

Popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, eight tracks were the first tape format to reach a national mass market; some attendees stood around recalling having eight-track machines in their cars.

The selection of eight-tracks Bucks displayed were slanted in favor of the Beatles, including a comprehensive collection of every Beatles eight-track ever released, as well as an installation of eight-tracks by the Rutles, the '70s Beatles parody created by members of Monty Python. Burnett also devised a number of special set pieces such as the one revolving around the 2-XL, a robot-shaped toy from the '70s that used 8-track tapes, which he said he'd acquired just last week.

Playing to a camera that was recording the event for his long-running documentary-in-the-making This Is Spinal Tape, Burnett walked around the gallery, picking up eight-tracks that struck him and sharing anecdotes. In his introduction, Whistler had joked that he'd be closing the gallery at 5 p.m., a playful jab at Burnett's garrulousness. But Bucks was surprisingly reserved, a bit of a disappointment since his name-droppy anecdotes about the eight-tracks -- how and where and why he got them -- were funny.

Holding up an eight-track for XTC, he said, "Andy Partridge told me that they don't have an XTC eight-track," in a sing-song know-it-all voice. For his eight-track of Velvet Underground with Nico, he observed that it lacked the expected banana sticker. "Was it ever there? Was it peeled off? We will never know."

He shared that he had a copy of every Beatles release on eight-track, including two versions of the White Album, and then held up a "deluxe three-pack" Beatles box set which he kissed. He said there were only 65 copies issued in 1969, in America only, to celebrate the transition from white plastic eight-tracks to black.

"You're looking at the only copy you're about to see in your lifetime -- that's why I'm starting the museum," he said.

He called his collection of 500 Rutles eight-tracks in their original Warner Brothers shipping cartons "the great pyramid of my collection." Next to it, he set up an homage to Yoko Ono, of whom he is a fan: It consisted of a Yoko eight-track set atop a white ladder, representing the ladder in Yoko's art project that John Lennon climbed the night he met her.

As entertaining as Bucks was, half the fun lay in the crowd of music devotees and Friends of Bucks, including his wife Barley Vogel and media types such as photographer Nan Coulter and Candis Wheat of the State Fair of Texas.

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