The Only Perk of the Taurus

When I was younger, my family used to take road trip vacations to various destinations. In order to amuse us children and curtail us from literally killing each other (because my brother would poke me and repeat everything I said just to annoy me), we were given various car games like blue car, yellow truck, green van BINGO, the option to play “I spy with my little eye”, or the privilege of listening to The Ford tape. We obviously had a maroon Ford Taurus station wagon, because why would we possibly have even attempted to be any kind of cool, and part of Ford’s incentives back then before they were most likely going bankrupt, was to include a cassette demo tape of the hip songs of the time. We listened to this tape so many damn times that now whenever I hear a song from it, I immediately label it as a song from The Ford tape. It will be forever ingrained in my head. These special songs included “Oh Sherrie” by Journey, “Forever” by Kenny Loggins, and well... I honestly couldn’t remember the rest of the tape (except for the Neil Diamond, because I refuse to admit that I remembered that song was on there, and that it kicked ass)... So I googled the tape... And found THE ENTIRE lineup of music.

Lineup from the 1987 Ford demo tape from CBS Special Products:

SIDE A:
SOMEWHERE / Barbra Streisand

HEADED FOR THE FUTURE / Neil Diamond

I GOT LOST IN HER ARMS / Tony Bennett

I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU DON'T WANT ME / Rosanne Cash

LIVING IN THE PROMISELAND / Willie Nelson

FOOLISH HEART / Steve Perry

SIDE B:
FOREVER / Kenny Loggins

OH SHERRIE / Steve Perry

VOICES CARRY / Til Tuesday

COURTSHIP / Bob James

RESTHATHERIAN - THEME FROM THE COSBY SHOW / Grover Washington

OLYMPIC FANFARE AND THEME / John Williams

This could possibly be the coolest cassette tape on Earth and I really need to search for it the next time I go home, and pray that it wasn’t disposed of.