#and forever sounds like it could pass being on rpm. a little.

[seat-safety-switch]

You can say a lot of bad things about the humble postal system. It’s slow, it’s expensive, and the folks who work hard to make sure you get your bills and junk mail could be a little more chipper about it. Watch your tongue, though, because the postal system does something truly glorious: it provides insanely clapped-out, mega-mileage postal vans at auction.

That’s right. Targeted for criticism by a variety of bad actors, miscreants, contrarians, and folks grumpy that they didn’t get what they wanted in life, the government is forced to sell off perfectly good vehicles just because they’re a little unsafe, in the hopes of recouping some money that they can then spend on new, soulless postal vans. Every farmer for miles around probably has one or two of these things in their back forty. This is because even after the ancient parcel vans of my youth stopped being useful for luxuries like “providing heat,” you can still throw a pregnant sheep in the back, full-throttle that shit all the way to the property line, and be pretty sure that it will make the return trip even if you haven’t changed the oil since Mulroney.

Part of this is because these vehicles are supremely engineered for their purpose. Like sharks, they have exactly the ideal parts required for the job they are meant to do, and no luxuries like air conditioning, seven-speaker surround sound stereos, ABS, or chairs with padding. Sure, they devour fuel, but that’s what you get when you use technology from the Bronze Age to develop an engine that wears like the mountains. Where did such a glorious piece of lost technology come from, in our current era where smartphones last twelve minutes and brand-new microwaves come with a sticker telling you what number to phone in order to safely recycle them?

Once upon a time, the government used to have demands of the manufacturers from which they were ordering several million vans. They could insist that these vans run forever, never need to be maintained, and double as cover in the event of a semi-automatic gun fight. It would cost a little bit extra, this overbuilding, but this was justifiable: we are the government, after all, and if we didn’t ask them to do their job, they’d just rip us off. Now, not so much. In the pursuit of business efficiency, the government just treats themselves as another boring consumer. Buy the same Ford Transit or German-made electric conversion van as everyone else. Did it break down because it’s not meant to be driven one point eight million kilometers in a single year by a suicidal Newfoundlander who doesn’t understand enough English to comprehend the concept of “keep the engine below 9,000 rpm?” Buy another.

There’s still time left to get a van like this of your very own. Together, we will hold onto these glorious artifacts of a bygone era, and ideally take them down to the track together. Won’t the track marshals be pissed when we clock a thirty-six second pass, and stop halfway through to refill the tank.

[jaeyooniverse]

Hi! I'm doing alright ☺️ hope your day is going well!

Yeah being the oldest child is stressful sometimes - honestly though I'm glad to be the oldest, I want to be able to set an example of how to be a kind person and also to protect my siblings and look after them when they need it. I don't think I'd switch places even if I could (though I used to wish I had an older sibling to teach me how to do things that I couldn't go to my parents for!)

One of my siblings was actually the one who got me and another sibling into kpop 😂 that first sibling has mostly stuck with Seventeen and Monsta X while the other one and I have branched out quite a bit. Our tastes mostly overlap with a few differences, which is nice - I'm trying to get one or both of them into SF9 but I think it's only going to end up working for the one willing to get into more groups, if it works at all 😔

I got into them after Summer Breeze! They were recommended to me by a friend, though I actually sort of knew about them before because of O Sole Mio which has been one of my favorite songs for ages - I remember looking into them a bit back when Good Guy came out, seeing that MV and the one for Enough, going "meh I don't like their concept, guess O Sole Mio was a one-off" and dismissing them, then hearing RPM (and I think Easy Love as well) and going "huh I like that song" but not putting together that they were the same group... past me why were you so thick-headed............. anyway I watched the Summer Breeze MV and spent the next three days going "WAIT that song was by SF9 too? And that one? And THAT one? Wtf I love all these songs why did I not realize they were all by the same group????" lmao

RPM is I think one of the best albums I've heard! It's why I decided to get that one first - that one and Knights of the Sun are my top two at the moment, though there are still a couple of albums I haven't gotten around to listening all the way through so it might change? They're both so good though, I feel like it would take a lot to dethrone them 🤔

Idk if I've mentioned but I'm Youngbin biased! Pretty much all of them bias wreck me on the regular but I always come back to him, he's just so 🥺 idk I love him very much... I assume your bias is Jaeyoon, but who are your bias wreckers, if you have them?

You skip My Story My Song? Are you one of those people who thinks ballads are boring? (no judgement if you are... well ok maybe a little judgement bc ballads are awesome, but I won't be upset 😂 everyone has their own music taste after all)

from your fantasy friend 💕

how did your day go? what were you up to today?

can you be my older sibling, too?? 😂 i do love caring for my siblings and doting on them but i actually hate the idea of people having to look to me as an example sfdhfhf like i'll notice some of my little brother's mannerisms and im like oh god he learned that from me didn't he 😭💀💀💀

okay but does that first sibling just stan svt & mx but listen to other groups sometimes, or do they purely only listen to svt & mx?? either way they should totally get into sf9 😁😁😁 i hope you're able to make your siblings fantasies!! 🤭🤭

lol thats so funny that was kinda me with svt and tbz?? for svt i heard very nice and loved it but didn't really listen to any of their other stuff til later and I was like oh hey these are those very nice guys! 😂

RPM SUPREMACY 🗣🗣 but yes knights is good too ^^ I haven't listened to it as a whole in a while tbh i should do that soon 😚 which albums have you listened to?

aaaahh binnie!!!! i love him so much hes actually one of my other biases! idk something abt him is just so heartwarming..his smile, his laugh, AH my heart melts just thinking abt him 😭 technically he was one of my first biases but it was before i knew all the members or was interested in stanning so i don't really count it? idk 😂 what matters is hes my bias now <3

but yes jaeyoon is my main bias!! love him to pieces oh he just makes me so happy!!! 🥰 followed very closely by dawon! the two of them are my ults in the group ^^ ♡

and then there's also chani~ idk every time i see him i just ❤!! yknow? 😂😅

and then pretty much everyone takes turns bias wrecking me 😂 most often it's rowoon or inseong,, so yeah i totally get it's hard to have a bias in sf9 😂😂

nooo i LOVE a lot of ballads in fact I think MSMS is my fave of sf9's! it's just that the rest of the album is so HYPE and then you get to end and it's like.. idk i just really wish i could get a album thats 100% energetic songs and no ballad/slow song 💀💀 RPM is perfect tho bc like i said before i just feel like the songs go together 😚😚

[fabioriccioli]

Virus, "The Wild Pile" and Sophie Marceau

I don't know what value writing music reviews can have today.

When I was 15 years old, in the mid-80s, my musical "sources" were as precious as they were scarce, in this regard I would like to list them ...

-hey, but who asked you? we care about your damned sources! - Ok, nobody asked me but when it happens to me again.

I have been home for more than a month, I am struggling with masks, disinfectants and new words such as: "comorbidity", "infodemia", "droplet", "tampon". I quote from the Internet: "I learned to wash my hands as if there was no tomorrow (but then, if there is no tomorrow that I wash my hands?)".

Therefore, I have all the time: to listen to another bulletin on TV, to turn on the radio and set sail for navigation ...

Although the equivalent of a geological era seems to have passed, even in those days there was TV and music was passing by, but it was only the main stream, inserted in international circuits; sometimes I had the impression that at RAI they only knew the Beatles ...

It was a little better on the radio: my mother had a Philips laptop and kept it on all day. From the kitchen, where she spent most of the time, music and everything else went straight to my bed, on the other end of the house.

We are in the 70s, my childhood, and that radio was truly a magical object: it had a cassette recorder and when the highlights of the season arrived, the Zecchino d'oro and Sanremo, my mother recorded the songs.

Sometimes he experimented with sound experiments with avant-garde techniques, such as recording holding the microphone of the radio in front of the television speaker (Telefunken, rigorously mono and in black and white) with results that Lou Reed of Metal Machine Music would have liked ( come to think of it now: that's why that record, hated and damned by all those who had even spent the money, had something vaguely familiar to me ...)

Then a novelty arrived at my house: a 45-rpm record-eater, a gift from an old musician and wealthy aunt of mine. I went from the soundtracks of the Oliver Onions (Orzowei and Sandokan) to the theme songs of the cartoons such as "Heidi" or "Dolce Remì", but if I had to say my favorite song I would say without a doubt "But what fault do we have" by the Rokes.

In middle school I take a few steps forward: I continue to remain stuck on the radio but it is a bit difficult for a 10-year-old boy to follow broadcasts at night, the most promising musically.

"Now the winter of our discontent ..." (cit. Riccardo III)

... for me it was that of 1981: I was 11 years old and my world was about to change forever; it hit like a tsunami, worse than the atomic bomb: it was apple time ...

They all seemed drugged: at school the girls of the gymnasium wandered the corridors with a dreamy look; even the teachers seemed different, absent.

They had all gone to the cinema the night before and the virus had hit them hopelessly. Other times, other viruses, if I still think about it, that reason starts again: "dreams are my realityyyy" and Basta!

That winter that opened with "Il tempo delle mele" ended in spring with another "classic" of my pre-adolescence: "Gioca jouer".

Well yes, I had 45 rpm and I also liked it: it had something really innovative.

It was also the discovery of another musical world, that of DJs, discos, but not for us children; for us there were house parties and there was dancing in the living room under strict adult control.

Arriving at the gymnasium, 1984, the hunger for music (and not only) pushed me to look for other sources.

I found them in the older brothers of my friends; there everything could happen to you: sometimes the rite had the flavor of a real initiation.

So I caught an older metal brother who fatally introduced me to the satanic world of heavy metal, made up of sharp voices, crazy guitars and fast drums. Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Slayer, obscure texts (but it was not important) and above all, ball volume.

My financial resources were not worthy of being called "financial resources": I lived as a parasite by copying everything I could and reading the magazines that I was able to remedy. "Il Mucchio selvatico" was my favorite because it opened up a world, not just hard rock.

Reading a review was, then, an extremely important fact, indeed vital: you were playing your monthly budget to buy that album that they had passed off as "album of the year" ... and how pissed you off to find out that you had thrown away the money...

I realize how tormented all this may have been and, conversely, how easy it is to enjoy all the music you want today. At 17 I was trying to translate Bob Dylan or Tom Waits with vocabulary, paper and pen, today just a click ... magic ...

Thinking about such things I come across this "Before love come to kill us", the debut of Canadian singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez.

Visceral album, oil mixed with petrol: inside each song the most poignant soul, the sweetest melody alternates with an aggressive and ferocious rap.

There is talk of love (moreover, what else do you want to talk about?) But inextricably intertwined with death understood as "never again".

You can guess it by looking at the cover of the album: where Jessie appears in a wedding dress, sitting on a "two-square" tomb, a symbolic reference to the song "Coffin" written together with Eminem.

It is love-passion that sung by the Colombian singer-songwriter: made of anger against those who betrayed us, of possessive jealousy towards those who no longer love us, those who left us, those who do not deserve us.

A harrowing passion that pushes us to hurt and hurt, like animals in a cage, drags us towards extreme gestures, as in "Coffin": dialogue for two imbued with anger, in a precarious balance between desire and abandonment, loving each other and launching yourself from a roof.

We move between r & b, pop, hip-pop sounds but always experimentally revisited: among the various co-authors and producers we find internationally known names, such as Björn Djupström or Suby.

With "Figures" Jessie demonstrates all her vocal talent, both when, with a hard scan, she shoots her "fuck" as if they were revolver shots against her ex, and when she gives in to pain and turns her "you" into sobs .

There is a thread that unites the tracks on the disc: it is the awareness of the irreversibility of things; as death so love comes and changes everything forever. The wedding dress worn at the cemetery appears to be another symbol of this unsolvable contrast, between the purest dreams and the most tragic reality.

In "Kill us" Jessie sings: "... nobody comes out of love alive ... I know you were mine and it was beautiful but winter comes and the roses don't survive ..."

It is not the winter of our discontent and Sophie Marceau is no longer to announce the spring of adolescence. Here is the whole tragic sense of loss, of someone, of something. Adolescence has long since ended and life has done its dirty job early, transforming the fairy tale into reality that is often violent and brutal.

However, songs like "La Memoria" (sung in Spanish) or "Love in the dark" with its simple and immediate pop, remind us that we still have a space of humanity within us; with the help of our memories we reconstruct it with difficulty and it is there that we keep the best of what we are and we will know how to be.

A nice job by a mature and talented artist who wouldn't surprise me at the next Grammy Awards.

As for me, the wind of memory has made its rounds, delivering emotions from another time. Besides, isn't that what happens when we listen to music? It is always nice to be able to write about it, beyond the definitions. I am grateful for this.

[richmegavideo]

My Horrible Records Time Capsule, Subtitled: Crapsule

  Cuing up "That Smell" by Lynryd Skynyrd

Related to Elements: Crate Digging, DJ, Underground

Every evening as I descended the basement stairs on my way to my nightly music-listening ritual in the man cave, I'd be forced to ask myself "What is that God-forsaken, moldy-ass smell?  ...And why are the stairs squishy feeling?"  I knew the answer already, but I was afraid to look and find out.  I ignored it until the smell became unbearably strong and it was obvious at that point it was time to act for the health and safety of my family.  

So after a little liquid bravery on a quiet Saturday morning it was time to bust out the power tools and demo some basement walls!  After a little sweat and a lot of noise I found a hidden crawlspace right next to the basement steps where the smell was emulating from.  

IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NASTY!  As soon as I removed the paneling hiding the hell hole, the smell rushed out of there and grabbed my nose hairs.  Thankfully my family was gone for the weekend and luckily I had a dust mask to help at least keep some of that death out of my lungs. Well now I did it.  I just created a huge job for myself, but it was one that couldn't be avoided any longer.  I knew looking at the hole what I had to do.  It was time to man up and seal this place up properly.  But only AFTER dealing with the mold that came courtesy of the dumbassery of the previous owner of my house.  I've watched enough Holmes on Homes on TV to know it needed to be "done right the first time or not at all!" Don't worry, I'm not going to go through the entire child birth process, I'll skip right to the baby.

Removed the nasty, poured concrete, sealed with Dry Lok Paint, insulated properly!

Long story short, after a lot of work the smell was finally gone!  Now I can seal this up properly and I'll know there will be no problems with moisture or moldy insulation again.

Water Tight, Air Tight, Sealed Space = Time Capsule

Before I seal this small crawlspace up behind walls for "eternity", I knew I had one chance to leave behind a permanent message for future archeologists or pissed off home-owners.  Something that I can leave behind that represents my lifestyle as a human being.  After pondering a while on the dilema with a few beers it hit me, "Duhhhhhh, RECORDS!!!" Records Last Forever!  Well, they do if stored andor played properly, and this was now the perfect sealed-off from the elements environment.  But there's no way in hell I'm going to leave behind any of my cherrished records!   Even some of my crappy records can still be sold for cash, so I couldn't just throw in random crap that some people would enjoy. I had to choose the most horrible records I had.  Stuff I'd have a hard time selling even if I wanted to.  I had to choose records that were horrible quality pressings or massively overproduced or just terrible music.  So I chose 3 records that represented all of those qualities and gifted it to the future inhabitants of my little corner of Earth.

Time Crapsule: The List!  My 3 Worst Records Left Behind in No Particular Order

Relax!  It's the Mexican Pressing

1.  Devo ‎– Freedom Of Choice "Libertad De Eleccion" LP (Warner Bros. Records) Mexican Pressing 1981 Look, I LOVE Devo.  It pained me to even THINK about dissing Devo in any way.  But this pressing was not their fault and if anything it probably pissed them off more than it did me.  I actually bought this record earlier this year from an online seller.  It was never the best album they did but it was a Devo album I didn't yet have on wax, still sealed for only 6 dollars!  What could go wrong with that deal!?!  Well, I guess I didn't pay attention to the "Mexican Pressing" footnote on the product listing.  

  "I'm on a Mexican, (woah woah) Radio!"

"What's so bad about a Mexican pressing?" you may ask.  After all, they invented the world's only perfect food, the taco, so how could they possibly screw up something as simple as pressing a record?  Well apparently they didn't have the speed setting right at the pressing plant that day because this record sounds like the Chipmunks doing Devo.  No lie, this thing somehow plays too fast at 33 RPM.  

But hey, no problem, I have a deck with pitch control, so I'll just slide it way down and then it will sound normal right?  Well it helps a little, but screw that!  Any time you have to use your pitch control to make ANY record sound right you are literally bending over and taking it from the record companies.  Even with the pitch adjusted the entire thing sounds hollow and without any nuances.  This is probably one of the worst cases of quality control I've ever seenheard in all my years of collecting records.  

So Naturally I couldn't sell this to anyone in good conscious knowing the look on their faces would be similar to the look on my face when the needle was dropped on it for the first time.  I can't pass on crap to others, that's the opposite of paying it forward.  Besides, Devo deserves more respect than that.  So I whipped it into the hell hole!  (sorry, bad pun!)

$12 from 720 records, this was unofficial as all hell, a DJ Shadow boot to boot

2.  DJ Shadow ‎– March Of Death / Karmacoma 12" BOOTLEG (Mo Wax) 2005 I love DJ Shadow's music and I love Zach De La Rocha's music so the thought of hearing a collaboration between them was WAY to intriguing for me to pass up when I saw this back in 2005.  I'll admit, I knew it was a boot when I bought it, but there was no other way to get that music back then, and, as it is often the case, curiosity killed the cat.   This sounds like pure ass.  It sounds like it was recorded from telephone and then pressed to record.  There is almost ZERO bass, it is muffled, it doesn't even begin to sound good at any point.  Even with my EQ highly tweeked it was not enjoyable to play on either side.  

As with all bootlegs, the artists on here didn't make a penny off this sale.   Shadow himself mentioned it's existence on his website and obviously if it was legit it would have gone through quality control until it sounded great... Like it does here...

The Real Deal.  Buy THIS if you want to actually enjoy that song.

Once I bought the Handmade record, there was no way I was going to keep that bootleg around, and I couldn't justify passing the buck onto a fellow Shadow fan even if he or she knew what they were buying.  They deserve better and the musicians deserve better.  It was clear that this boot deserves permanent dark days in the hole.  

  3. Natalie Imbruglia ‎– Smoke (Remixes) 12" Promo (RCA) 1998

Horrendous music doesn't even begin to describe this

Why in the name of all that is unholy do I even have this?!  I don't even REMOTELY LIKE Natalie Imbruglia so why is this vile record touching my other records?  It's not that she's a bad musician, (well yeah, she's pretty horrific or maybe average sounding on her best days) it's that this is an overproduced sounding remix clusterfuck.  The remixers didn't even attempt to use her vocal track in a respectful way, in a way that accentuated her vocals, or even left the vocals alone.  These songs were all about over-effect-processing trippy-trance sounding beats and basically they were trying to make it get played at some upcoming rave.  

I think I bought this on year one of my record collecting days, when I was an utter newb.  I clearly didn't play it before I bought it or I would have left it in the store.  I'm pretty sure I bought it because I liked some of Rae and Christians productions at the time.  Yet even that remix, the only remix I bought it for, sounds abominable.   There is literally nothing about this collection of corny, predictable-build filled, and utterly outdated sounding remixes that sounds even remotely tolerable.   I attempted to sell it a few times and I got blank stares from the record store owners I showed it to.  The last guy I brought it to said "Dude, I have like 5 of those online right now for a buck, so even if you want to donate it to me, I don't want it."  I swore that would be the last time I took it home feeling embarrassed and defeated, so into the hell hole it goes with the rest of the heinous archaic black discs!

A Warning for the Future

  And now the message.  Time to write something that will be my legacy, something awe inspiring...  I could leave a written http link to this blog, but blogs are too temporary and who knows if the Intenet won't be directly responsible for Skynet in the future.   

Hmmmm....

Ah hah!!!

Sometimes I just can't leave well enough alone

Cuing up Taps

  It's the moment of truth!  Now it's time to permanently seal the horrible record time capsule.   2" pink foam was cut to size, but not too tight yet leaving room for expansion foam to cement it firmly into place.

Closing the coffin lid on wack records

  Lastly I sealed off the capsule forever with Great Stuff expansion foam.  

Using expansion foam around all 4 sides for an airtight, watertight seal

That's all folks!  Nothing more to see here!

The expansion foam has now cured, the cavity is officially sealed off forever.  Now I'll cover it up with drywall and hopefully the next guy won't see it until I'm dead and buried.  

And on the day I die, I can do so with a small sense of fulfillment knowing this little piece of history was left behind for future generations to hopefully enjoy hating as much as I did.

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[itsworn]

Drag Strip Testing an LS6 1971 Corvette

Car Craft Editor Terry Cook surely aspired to something greater. He delighted in assaulting and deconstructing preconceptions. While we wore the trendy rags of the day, he insisted on suits and he knotted nutty ties. Rather than a Tri-Five, a Chevelle or any piece American Iron, he aspired to and drove a freakin’ Morgan- four-bore motor and a frame made out of wood. We were further disoriented when he announced his project hot rod was going to be a fiberglass four-door T nudged by a turbocharged Vega four-popper. Beyond the norm.

Cook was enamored of the Car&Driver philosophy and its editorial execution, as well as key players Leon Mandel and Brock Yates, and for a while he modeled some of Car Craft’s physical production after theirs. Road tests or drag tests or whatever you want to call them, were published without a byline or even a photo credit, as this was policy at the precious New York-based magazine.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

It was policy that CC tech stories leak as much minutia, detail and as many decimal points as possible, because that’s what readers had come to expect from the premier drag racing publication. By the time we were done, column inches had jacked into column-yards, which inevitably overwhelmed the photographic presentation. Cheeky Cook ruffled another feather or two by running carry-over copy in the front of the magazine, rather than the back half as is tradition.

The story here is what I thought I’d remembered and had included in the original copy for “Goodbye Forever LS-6.” I didn’t hit the nail. I barely hit the wall. Truthfully, I don’t even remember if I was the one that wrote it, though the sophomoric slop in it leads me to believe I did. The stuff I missed is astounding.

Most of the time, what you think you remember isn’t how it happened at all. I know. I’ve proven it to myself time and again, because I can look at one of my centuries-old magazine stories and it will tell me so. It can’t be wrong, can it? Sometimes I have to ask someone who was there at the time, and most times I can find a witness. This is about one of those times. But these old days, some of the faithful have already passed on, so I’m on my own here.

In the late sixties/early seventies, if you wanted to traverse the greater Los Angeles landscape in a Chevy, you called the Western Region guy, Wayne Thoms, an affable and accommodating human being if there ever was. He had the go-fast gene, too, even if it was a vicarious one. The length of time you’d spend with the car was strictly up to him, but a month was the usual term—he had to make allowances for the mechanical work you planned to throw at the car as well as the time required to take the hop-up stuff off. More often than not, we’d be grinding the mule for at least two months.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

There was an unwritten agenda at Car Craft: whatever it was, made sure that it ran better than one tested by anyone else. If it didn’t the first time out, you just kept at it. The very least, there were tacit rivalries with Cars, Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding and Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, so when Wayne dangled the Ontario Orange C3 under our noses like a maggoty goat carcass to a turkey vulture, we could not refuse.

It had the most powerful motor, so how could we refuse? For its final appearance on the world stage, the once mighty RPO LS6 454 was included in the ZR2 package (Special Purpose LS6 Engine Package) that also featured heavy duty power brakes, an M-22 transmission, transistor ignition, special aluminum radiator with metal fan shrouds, springs, shock absorbers and stabilizer bars for a premium of $1747.

The LS6 had been neutered by much milder events for the solid lifter camshaft and a 9.0:1 dog-brain compression ratio so that it would live on leaded regular (and later the unleaded pee that would be mandatory for the impending catalytic converter.) Quite a way from the race-like 11.25:1 of the 1970 LS6, it still advertised 425hp at 5,600 rpm and 475 lb-ft at 4,000 rpm. Its big 800cfm Holley still threatened in a way the pedestrian Quadra-Jet couldn’t hope to. The cylinder heads were aluminum and featured an open combustion chamber design. Volume was 119.09cc’s. The mechanical lifters were lashed hot at 0.024- and 0.028-inches. Chevy stuttered that the drop in compression for the 1971 LS6 would accommodate regular fuel. It didn’t. It bucked and pinged and wasn’t happy until it was slugging high-test hooch.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

Since most of us preferred tooling a clutch car, that whiney Muncie M-22 close-ratio had more than siren appeal. A diaphragm clutch with a 1,800-pound spring load operated dual 10-inch discs that had aluminum-backed facings and asbestos pads. The steel flywheel weighed 33 pounds. The system behaved well at high rpm and worked without flaw in front of the rock-eating Muncie. Zoom supplied the 4.56:1 gears, and we took the Corvette to Bob Heacox at Scat Enterprises for the installation.

Then we relieved the motor of its nominal cast iron manifolds that had been used to make the factory packaging as simple and as cost-effective as possible. Anyone who wanted the most from the 454 would likely strap on some headers, in this case Hedman (part HH-9) with 2-inch primaries and a 3-inch collector. Then some original BS: “To give the car the rally look (what exactly did that look like?) and an incredibly obnoxious sound, the Thrush Outsiders were plumbed into the header system and fitted below the rocker panels.”

Like the side pipes, the drone continued: “The car was an absolute bear on the street. The side pipes gave it primal sound and appearance and the Hedman headers relieved the congestion. But the biggest visceral boost came from the lower gears. Instead of taking two city blocks to go through the gears, it could be accomplished in half a block, all the while pinning you tightly against the seat.”

Then some more clunky copy: “The [lower numerical] gear ratio naturally meant that the engine would be turning at a higher rate, hence it would be louder. That volume, when multiplied by the Thrush pipes and the fact that one sat directly next to the exhaust exit meant that the driver was subjected to a fantastic amount of noise harmonics resulting in ringing ears for hours afterwards.” Sometimes, I think I still have them.

The Formula 1 L70-15 tires that were mated with 8.5-inch-wide ET Uni-Lug wheels were actually destined for a pick-up truck that belonged to the editor of Hot Rod Industry News, then a Petersen service publication. He’d sweet-talked me into scamming them, but much to my chagrin (tongue-in-cheek here), they were too large for the Corvette’s wheel houses and interfered with them long before the steering went to full lock. They did an atrocious job of visually overpowering the car. All we could was put them on for the beauty shots and roll them out of sight as soon as we were done.

My partner in this sublime stew of tomfoolery was the late Steve Collison. He lived to cut lights and pull gears like Dave Strickler. The Corvette was equipped with Wide Oval F70x15 tires. There was a trick to running bias-plies; if you got the air pressure to around 12psi, the tire would flatten out enough to give a scoche more bite from the pitiful, maybe-six-inch-wide bias-plies, and this worked especially well with an automatic. With a high-powered clutch car, it was a completely different deal. The Rat’s grunt pulverized ‘em.

To shake up the clocks with some sensational numbers, sticky drive tires were inevitable. There was just one small problem. The slicks were off one of Steve’s Chevelles, 9-inch Goodyears, and he’d screwed ‘em to steel rims. We jacked up the car and put them on. Everything was cool until he tried to drive it away. In our haste, we’d neglected to see that the inside of the steely wasn’t quite large enough to clear the calipers. When he let the clutch out, the car lurched and stopped just as quickly, as the rims grunched the calipers, flattening the bleed valve on one of them.

So then, skill not slicks would be the deciding factor.

There were two distinct episodes with this car. The antagonist was staffer Larry Schreib, an ex-Marine officer who had a way of doing things that the rest of us reefer-maddened liberals couldn’t fathom. Shortly after his CC gig, Larry proved his mettle as a founder of S-A Design. If you ever fooled with a small-block, you’ve probably thumbed one of Larry’s books. More on him in a minute.

Ed Baumgarten .c. Mid America Motorworks

Steve and I had previously established our routine behind the Orange Curtain at the OCIR outpost. As usual, operator Steve Evans had left the joint wide open for us- electricity on, clocks primed, and nobody there to stop us from the inevitable mayhem. As soon as we’d arrived, Steve went on his “I’m going to be top dog” rant, like he had to honor some sort of street-racing imperative down by the airport where he lived.

He banged gears a few times but was not satisfied with his efforts. I got in and found the groove right away and got the car off the line without smoking the tires or bogging the motor. I caught all the gears. The pass was clean, felt right. When I got back to the bleach box, Steve was whooping about what a grand pass it was. He said he could tell as soon as the car left the line. Too bad he’d forgotten to reset the clocks.

The best of five Pure Stock passes at OCIR on the Goodyear F70-15 Wide Ovals on the stock 8.5-inch steel rims netted a 13.72 at 102.04. The tires spun like crazy through Low. Between the 3.36s and less-than-able spark plugs, the motor coughed at the top of each gear and cleared the traps turning less than 5,000rpm in Third gear. We knew that this outing was just a warm-up and that we’d be coming back with guns and egos blazing.

I slipped away and made the long drive home just a little disappointed.

With the car packing its load of aftermarket goodies, we went down south again for the second round. We reset the valve lash and screwed in some fresh AC 45 XLS spark plugs. Here, memory fails again. I’m not sure who drove this time; maybe it was both of us. Talk was that 12.8’s on street tires were normal. Slipping off the line without undue wheel-spin and shifting at 6,500rpm, we ran a best of 12.64 at 114.21 and 12.65 at 114.35. I don’t remember if that made us smile or not but it was better than anything the competition could do.

A few days later it was, Larry Schreib decided that he wanted a piece of the LS6 and he got the keys and took it to Lions. The next thing that happened, the car was on the hook, vital humors seeping from somewhere deep inside it. Ol’ Lar had put a rod through the block. Ol’ Wayne Thoms wasn’t exactly inviting us to lunch the next day. The last that anybody saw of the Ontario Orange fiberglass, it was dangling from tow truck. That was in June or July of ’71.

Thirty-three years after the fact, I got call from Mike Yager, the head cheerleader at Mid America Motorworks. “Remember that Car Craft LS6 we talked about a few months ago, the one with the 4-speed that you and Steve Collison had drag tested?” he said. “I have it now, documented and all.” Then he was gone.

He sent the images you see here. He also included a fact sheet from the Mecum Auction. Seems Zora Duntov had driven the same Corvette for a Car & Driver test (6/71). It had the earliest known LS6 VIN. It had been equipped with power everything, but did not include air conditioning. It still has the burn marks from the headers, as well as the 4.56 gears it got for the test that never was.

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