I have a great documentary from 1999, called "So Wrong, They're Right," about people who collect and obsess about 8-Track tapes. It's great. These geeks make vinyl collectors look cool. Tid-bit, same folks that built Lear Jets brought us the 8-Track system.
I had Led Zeppelin IV on 8-track and I remember Rock and Roll being split. Turns out (according to Discogs) that the Canadian 8-track was split between program 3 and 4!: "C3 Rock And Roll (Begin) D1 Rock And Roll (Conclu.)." My memory is intact. My dad loved 8-tracks, so he could play ABBA non-stop all day in his Zenith console stereo! No one cleaned tape heads in our house, but we used to jam a comb under the tape when it went our of alignment :) Thanks for the tutorial, though I am sure I will never use the information!
I'm surprised by that. Legend is they refused to split their songs like that causing over a minute of silence after certain songs on the U.S. version (not sure about the U.K. one). I'm sure they were one of the only bands with the clout to have that kind of control.
I had 2 8-Tracks of IV. One was the Atlantic version & had no songs were split. The other one was a club tape & had Stairway split between program 3 & 4.
I laughed every time you faded out then in. Very humorous. I never owned 8 tracks, neither did anyone in my family. My dad would record things on reel to reel. Or we always went with cassettes for the car. I didn't have many cassettes though. At the time FM AOR stations were really fun to listen to. You could hear whole album sides often. Great video.
I used to have a Realistic Radio Shack stereo player, and bought blank 8 track tapes, recorded off radio. Back in the 90's an ex wife sold it at a yard sale while I was at work. Ughhhhh! Great video Sir!
Still have most of mine. Lots of memories of fishing my KISS 8-tracks from my dad's car's glove compartment (complete with bubbled up cover stickers from the Mississippi heat) and playing them on the way to school or wherever. When listening to the CD versions of these I can still pick out where in the song it faded out, CLICKED and faded back in when it switched over to the next program.
Thanks Robert for the stroll down memory lane....ahhh the 8-trks..they definitely had their place in time between LP's and cassettes. One recurring memory I always have was my oldest brother (he was about 6 yrs older) taking me to elementary school before he went to high school and most mornings he was blasting Deep Purple 'Made in Japan' from his car's 8-trk...really helped prepare me academically. LOL Thanks again for a great trip!
I started buying music in the mid-1970s, and had quite a few albums by the end of the decade, but I've owned only two 8-tracks in my entire life. Even as a 14-year-old I knew 8-tracks were not to be taken seriously. The only reason I bought my first one was because I couldn't find the album in any other format at that time ("Sheet Music" by 10cc). The second was a gift. My brother had a bunch, though, and he had a tape deck in his '69 Impala. He'd worked out this amazing way of putting the car in park, shutting it off, extracting the 8-track, and chucking it under the front seat, in what looked like one smooth flick of the wrist that took about half a second.
It amazes me how many of these I see at flea markets and antique malls that are still sealed - Johnny Mathis, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Lettermen, Eddy Arnold and The Statler Brothers. I also remember seeing the pink, green, and dirty white bootlegs with the misspelled labels being sold at gas stations. (White lithium grease), First 8-Track was the Christmas of 1974. George Carlin's Toledo Window Box. My dad said. "Don't listen to this when your sister is in the room." Cool editing by the way.
Oh yeah!! Riding with my friend to lunch in high school in his Mercury Cougar listening to 8 tracks of Foghat, Edgar Winter's White Trash, Allman Brothers live at Fillmore East..thanks for bringing back some memories😊
Remember growing up in 70s, I would listen to my dad's 8 tracks, lits of great stuff..Jim Croce, Rod Stewart, Journey, Boston, etc.. the track would change right in the middle of a song, and then pick it up again on the next track. Later, when I bought these albums on vinyl or cassette, it seemed weird to me that there wasn't a "space" in the middle of certain songs!!
Great trip down memory lane, Robert. I had a Pioneer 8-track player in my 1974 Chevy Vega (great car-burned more oil than gas), and it sounded great! Just that fade-out, fade-in feature that made the experience a little frustrating. When I switched to cassette , I used an old 8-track or two as ice scrapers. But I still have 12 or so from back then, and a fully functional Pioneer Home 8-track player I recently acquired. Thanks again, Robert.
As someoene who managed a record store in the 70's, thanks for reminding me how old I am. We sold thousands of these each yr. And i know how to fix them as well.
Great video. As a 72 year old music lover I have collected all the music formats. Got my first car 8 track player in 1968 and fell in love with 8 tracks since. I have to mention that if you play a quality 8 track tape in a high end 8 track player like Pioneer in a decent home system, the sound is amazing dispite all its faults. When I play some of them its just as good as listening on both cassette or lp. Prices for used 8 track players keep climbing every year and will continue as people want to relive or get a taste of music systems from the past. Pioneer made some great players like H-R99 and H-R100. These machines in nice shape can go for $300 to over $400. One thing I've learned is that before you even play a used 8 track for the first time, change the sensing foil. Good chance it will break the first time you play it and that can be one hell of headache to fix.
This brought back lots of memories. I had a Pioneer am-fm 8 track player in my 77 Trans Am. It played everything from Black Sabbath to Boston to KC and the Sunshine Band. I also fixed my share of tapes that broke or got sucked into the player. I remember pulling out many tapes just like the end of your video. And the matchbook trick when the tape wasn't lined up right lol. Fun memories!
Kindred spirits, Robert! I was making/repairing tapes in my tweens. They were literally a dime-a-dozen in the late 80s, and I was a cheap kid, so I took quantity over quality for my musical education. Split songs didn't bother me too much, but homemade tapes made me jump out of my skin when they would suddenly switch mid-song. Not only the loud 'kerchunk', but also the tape often warbled or made a loud noise at that spot. When I worked in radio (late 90s/early 00s), the owner was so cheap, he still used carts and reels. I repaired a massive stack of dead carts in the back of the production room--and strung up new tapes from a pancake of blank graphite-backed tape that they still had. The production manager was SO HAPPY to have short (and 'fresh') tapes again! I already had a thousand 8-tracks of my own before my (former trucker) uncle gave me his collection a few years ago. That almost doubled my collection. Sorry about your Who's Next getting unwound as you were shooting! Looks like the foil dropped off after passing the solenoid. On the bright side, the tape didn't "accordion" on you!!!! Just got a new splicing block with 2 rolls of sensing foil...since tapes are now valuable, I might as well make room and sell a bunch. (Btw, the proper term for when you'd hear two programs playing at once is called "crosstalk".) Jeez, sorry I wrote a novel here...
I was so into it, my homemade tapes would always be timed out so I didn't have to cut up songs. That noise right before the program change was apparently a sub-tone that alerted the manufacturing plant machine to cut the tape. It happened at the side end of some cassettes, too.
@@RobertFithen LOL you too eh? I took pride in timing out the programs! Years ago I read an interview with a former Ampex employee who perfectly detailed the process. A massive pancake of ¼" tape ran through the slave recorder at an incredible speed, and that sub-tone triggered the machine to cut the tape at that spot. The now-filled hub was moved to another machine where it went into the cart shell and got spliced together with sensing foil. Then the cart went through mechanical labeling, sleeving, and wrapping. I have a couple tapes where the trigger happened long after the tone, almost cutting off the song starts. You're also right about cassettes. I have lots of 70s tapes with the same tones used on 8-tracks
I absolutely had a gut feeling that the 8 track video was on the horizon. Thank you for taking the time to do your videos Robert. My friends and I really enjoy your videos!!
My first car in 1985, a 76 Plymouth Volare, came with the Mopar 8-Track Radio Player. This first thing I did; get my eleven 8-tracks for a dollar from Columbia House. I will always remember playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "One More From The Road" with the 11 minute version of Free Bird going a little something like this "Cause I'm as free as bird now......... (click click).......... and this this bird you cannot change". The 8-track version of that song is ingrained in my head for the rest of time. Preach on Brother Robert!!
Loved, Loved the "program changing", complete with the fade out - fade in. Wow, Thank you Robert. I didn't expect this video about 8-tracks to come out so soon. Glad to hear about your personal experience with them. I have a few that needs to be fixed. I know I need to get to it... One more piece of advice I'd add is if you buy 8-tracks and look at the opening, if you don't see any pad (those rots over time) or if the roller looks bad (sticky, doesn't roll or not well etc) DO NOT play the cartridge before you fix it or have it fixed. That's the best way to end up with a broken one. They're cumbersome, compromised, limited but it's fun to listen to them
Some cassettes had the songs in the same order as the 8-track. Example: check out Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, up until 1986 “Harmony” came right after “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” which sounded a bit odd to me.. Then in 86 a new updated edition cassette came out putting the playing order back to the vinyl.
I still own over one hundred 8 tracks and I also have the exact same Panasonic 8 track player deck that you have in this video. The way that you were dividing up the video into 4 programs, just like an 8 track with each segment fading out and fading back in with that all familiar ( clunk ) sound in between. That was so creative and different. 👌🏽 You have me as a new subscriber with this one. 👍🏽
I still have my eight tracks from back in the day. Thanks for reminiscing and reminding me about some of these. And that Village People 8-track… That should stay sealed. lol
Great video. Very nicely done. I grew up with 8-tracks. I don't have any now but I would love to get back into them. The nostalgia is high. We had a proper stereo with record player, radio, cassette and 8-track together. And just like yourself I was very much into music at early age. I did see some old country 8-tracks with a player at a second hand store earlier this year but they were in very rough shape. But they were gone very quickly. It's rare to see any nowadays.
I think you're being a bit harsh on the sound quality, but I appreciate the overview. I highly recommend people giving them a go. A properly serviced 8-track tape sounds incredible. I personally love them because I can listen to an album on repeat and not have to get up and change sides. Plus, they're such an important part of physical media history. The portable boomboxes are particularly cool to me, and some Seger, Eagles, or Zep on 8-track just hits different.
Haha very cool and interesting. When I was a kid, I would frequent this pool room, and whenever program one of the Ram Jam Black Betty album, would end and click to program two, someone would always holler "Program One"! and the poor women behind the counter would Click, click, click back to program one, so we could hear Black Betty again and again! Same with Ballroom Blitz! Great Video.
I remember all of it - the razor blades & scotch tape, alcohol & Q-tips, popsicle sticks for wedges, shoe boxes full of tapes, pulling eaten tapes from the car deck, sound wobble, abundant tape hiss, and the bootleg BS Paranoid tape that played between tracks. Thanks for the memories.
I had Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, played it in my 1971 Ford LTD (bought used) that had a built in player. So I bought this 8-track just so I could use it. Played it on a loop for an entire 1700 km trip!
My dad and I put a 8 trac player in my glove box of my first car! I bought all my 8 tracs at the flea market, most were bootlegs and I had a giant case I carried them in. Had all the awesome metal from the day, Sabbath, ACDC, Nugent, Nazareth you name it! Hated how they clunked in the middle of the song on those tapes.
Well done, my parents didn't have 8-tracks, I had some I got from my neighbor when they threw them away. I was about 10. I remember playing Abby Road and Santana- Santana. My dad had both on vinyl. 1982 they were done in stores, 1988 was the last year they were carried through record clubs.
Nice touch on the program change throughout the video- my musical journey started with 8-tracks- most of the records I listened to were my mom’s- my first 8-track was Jimi Hendrix Cry of Love - I was 9 - that 8-track completely changed my life!
Great video! Took me back to when my stepdad bought a cheap 8 track player and a job lot of cartridges in the early eighties. Most of them were terrible but there were some great albums in amongst them. That was when I first heard Sergeant Pepper, so every time I hear it now I think the songs are in the wrong order. He also had Led Zeppelin's first album and a couple of tracks definitely faded out and faded in again.
1970's-80's kid here. My friends had 8-track, but my family never did. The first album my mom bought for me was cassette. And of course we had some vinyl. All I remember about these was that any kid who owned 8-track had the KISS albums and/or the KISS solo albums with each band member on the 8 track artwork. It was like a federal law that you must own those if you were a kid with 8-track. And the "adults" owned Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton. I believe "Frampton Comes Alive" was issued to every household in the United States.
In the end, it was the CD that caused the demise of the 8-track format. In 1982, available formats were (1) vinyl records; (2) cassettes; (3) reel-to-reel tapes and (4) 8 track tapes. With the advent of the CD, the music industry decided that adding another format was one format too many, and the industry decided to discontinue 8 track tapes. Then suddenly you started to see pre-recorded 8 track tapes being sold at discount stores for 50 cents. I was able to score copies of Stiffs Live, one of the Animals' reunion albums (Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, I think) and a John Mayall album from 1974. I don't remember when pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes became unavailable, but they were also definitely gone by the mid 80s, as were vinyl records by the end of the decade. By 1990, all that were left were CDs and cassettes. Soon, the average consumer had the means to make a perfect digital copy of a song, which made MP3s ubiquitous and CDs superfluous. Now vinyl has made a comeback, thanks to the trendies.
Great video Robert. I remember seeing broken 8 tracks on the side of the road all the time. The tapes would break and people would toss them out the car window.🤣😂🤣
Oh yeah, I had forgotten all about that. They did it with cassettes, too. One time I saw it walking to the school bus stop and, on the way back home it was still there so I picked it up and spooled it to hear what it was. It was a homemade tape of someone practicing on their guitar.
I used to have Alice Cooper “Killer” on 8 track, Right in the middle of “Halo of Flies” it would fade out, Switch tracks and fade back in. When I bought the lp, I expected it to do the same thing. I worked with the guy who played the first Bad Company 8 track over and over again. One day I took it apart, cut a loop out of it and put it back together. He went to play the tape, and it kept going, “Bad Company till the day I die, Bad Company till the day I die” over and over. He took it out, hit it a few times and put it back in. Me and my other co-worker almost died laughing.
Even though I was a child in the 1970s, my parents never had 8-tracks and thus I never had experience with them the way I did with vinyl and eventually cassettes.
My oldest brother originally had a four-track under the dashboard player in his car., as well as 4 track tapes. They looked identical to 8 tracks but of course were in mono.
Oh, I remember 8-track tapes. When I was a kid, we had a counsel that had a turntable, a radio, and an 8-track tape player. It was in the front room in my house in East Chicago. And I believe we had a suberban with an 8-track tape player. It was so cool back then.
Four 8 tracks I distinctly remember as a kid---Burl Ives Christmas, America's Greatest Hits, Star Wars soundtrack and Ray Conniff's TV Themes. My mom used to put me down for naps to these
I remember taking an Interpersonal Communications class in college and we had to bring in an object that represented us. Of course, I brought in that same Panasonic deck that was in your video. My life consists of 4 programs: happy, sad, hungry, and asleep. These occur in a loop and restart from the beginning. 8 tracks are a way of life which is why you can’t escape them once you understand plug yourself into them. 😊
oh god..these things. childhood mems.. repairing these as a kid was pure hell. used good ol 3m scotch to fix my splices. cotton ball swabs as replacement sponges. glue em back shut and play till the next splice broke. 😡. nowadays i refuse to work on the machines/tapes. but after watching this tutorial on "properly" fixing tapes. maybe i will give these another shot. -thanks for the lesson!
Great video. I pick up any rock 8-tracks when I see them at garage sales for cheap. I need to get a player, have about 50 of them now and they would be fun to drag out and play.
In Australia we called them 'Cartridges' or 8 Track Cartridges. Both parents had a player in their car. I had no idea you could play them in your house.
Click...................Click............Now more Music!...........Thank you. We had a Richard Pryor 8 track that at the end of track 2 and the start of track 3 was a dirty word, as teens we loved itand would love to yell the "comment! Big Fun in the 70's! We had nothing but we was happy! Had to have a pack of matches to get it to play right! "It's A Partridge Carriage"....I caught it! You're a hoot! The Ending your ending for 8 tracks was perfect!
Fleetwood Mac Rumours on 8-track was my "go to sleep music" in the late 70's when my parents were arguing about money and the old man was hopped up on PBR and there was nothing to eat for dinner.
Robert, it is actually "Gold Dust Woman." Some 8 Tracks have the song with a cold ending instead of a fade. On Steve Hoffman's forum, there was a lot written about the reasons behind that.@@RobertFithen
Still have my QS4000 pioneer system and around 50 quadraphonic tapes. All of them still play very well. I take them apart and lube the capstan roller and spool. Have changed the contact pads as well. Head is adjustable and is done after 20 plays of a tape. I have had this system since 1975.
My goodness I need an 8track adapter since I finally got the Bluetooth cassette adapter because nowadays we got I phone and Bluetooth and such. Since I got the latest Bluetooth. While the first Bluetooth 1.0 was released in 1999.
Love the fades and the clicks and the wrap around. The first 8-tracks I got was the album ‘Kristofferson’ from my dad (for some reason) and ‘Harmony’ by Three Dog Night because they were my fave band. The last 8-track I remember buying new was ‘Captain Fantastic’ in 1975. I loved albums too much to keep spending allowance on 8-tracks. But my best friend in HS 8-tracked rocked on Ted Nugent and 8-tracked mellowed on John Denver whenever we cruised in his Pinto in the Spring of 1980. Sunshine on my Wango Tango
The way you did this video was pure f’n genius. I was born after the hay day of 8 tracks and I did consider getting into them but seeing the track listings being out of whack just was always off putting to me and I never gave it a chance.
Mr Fithin, I love your postings and you bring joy into my life. I shared your postings with a friend of mine and what did he take from that? He went and bought an old 8 track machine and so instead of my being able to borrow albums from him he's now spending all of his money on 8 tracks. Under most circumstances it would be my absolute pleasure to get to meet you but right now I hate your guts 🤣✌️
Genius recording! I loved the program switch and the fact that you have the beginning at the end. If only I'd known I would have had it on an endless loop on RUclips just like the real thing. Really enjoyed this. Brought back a lot of memories. I actually came to this because I had a friend gift me a home player as a bit of a joke because I have a "vintage" style stereo in my mid-century modern style house. I haven't tried to test the thing yet to see if it works and I haven't had any 8 tracks to play since the 80s.
Best video I've ever seen about the wonderful intricacies of the 8-track and the heartbreak as well.But we had the Stone's "Some Girls" a Rolling buddy! Thanks 👍
Hahaha! What a great video - I remember 8 Tracks but suspect they may have been bigger in the U.S. than U.K. But I didn't know a thing about them, never played one and never even heard one although when I was in Canada for a while my sister's husband used to have a few in his car. I learned so much off this - for ages I thought they were supposed to be a superior format. One thing that really got me was the repair feature and the little roll of foil strips - jeez that took me back. When I started working in I.T. back in the early 80's and mainframes were huge and took up half of the room, we had reel to reel tape decks for tape based data storage and each tape had one of these foil strips about 4 feet to 5 feet in from each end so the tape units knew where the data started and ended - it helped them find the VTOC (volume table of contents) and when a tape got messed up we would have to splice them ... add a new foil strip to the start and then run a tapeprep on them so that the new VTOC was written to them. Loved the way you ended the video too - I kinda suspected what was coming and was super pleased when I guessed right :D
Like cassettes they were good for their time. I remember my parents 8 track collection. Freddy fender, Tom t hall, Charlie rich, Nascar goes country (1975 style) and the country version of Olivea Newton john. And elvis Christmas. (OH mama loved the roses,click).oh and can't forgot d.i.v.o.r.c.e. Heard these tapes so much growing up I still know them by heart.
In the 70's we went out in the woods with chainsaws to cut wood for winter. I was thankful for the 8-track player in the pickup. We played Montrose, CCR, ELO, Aerosmith, Chicago! At least we had some tunes$ It was like a boombox in your truck!
Hi Robert!! Love your videos!! They are most informative as well as entertaining, so thanks!!! It sounds like you live around the St. Louis, MO area like I do (I heard this from past videos). Maybe we can meet up at a record show, or at Vintage Vinyl, or something!! 8-tracks were a big part of my life during my teenage years (I'm 63). I had them in the car and as part of my first home stereo system (which came before the car, of course - it was a Panasonic all-in-one unit). You are absolutely 100% correct when you say that they were used for convenience only - that was the only reason why I had them. During the 1970's, I bought quite a few pre-recorded ones, but, when I got my first stereo with an 8-track recorder built in, I would buy the LP and then put it on the tape myself, rearranging the times and song order (when necessary, or applicable - on a concept album, l left the original LP order intact) to prevent interruptions. The only useless feature on the tapes themselves (beginning in the mid-70's) was the Dolby B mastering of the recording itself, which was sort of useless on such a lo-fi format to begin with. I suppose that was why only the Columbia family of labels, and Mercury Records were the only labels using it (there were a few others that did so here and there, but very rarely). The very last 8-track tapes I recall seeing for sale in retail stores was around Thanksgiving of 1982, and those were Asia's debut album, and Rush's "Signals." (which is kind of funny, because at that time in Japan, those were among the first titles to be released on the new Compact Disc format). After the 1982 Christmas shopping season, the pre-recorded 8-track was history in retail stores. Here's another interesting item - 1983 was the final year you could order a stereo in your new GM or Chrysler car equipped with an 8-track player (1984 for Ford and Lincoln/Mercury). Just thought you'd like a few of these interesting fun facts. Thanks again for the cool videos and Cheers!!!!
My first car I put a Pioneer with cassette in 79. Recorded bunch of cassettes from my record collection. 8 track was played in our community vehicle which happens be a 64 1/2 Mustang
@@RobertFithen it reminds me of some of Pierre Étaix work like "insomnia" and "as long as you've got your health"! You should check them out if you haven't.
Awesome ! About time someone in the VC talked about this wonderful format. Usually it’s a collector acquiring a “rare” Beatles 8:track for their collection. All us boomers had had these in the home and car. Loved the 2.99 gas station bootlegs that were just someone dubbing from a record. By the way, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood have just issued a New 8 track called Nancy and Lee again. I still have one in a car and a portable player. Love the track changes, timing was good too 😂
my first car had an 8 track player - back then when you went to garage sales people were giving them away like they give away VHS tapes or DVDs now - I used to pull over at a garage sale and get 5 for $1 - also, because the 8 track was gone before autotune, there's no bad music on 8 track... it's mostly late 60's & 70's classic rock with a few Village People albums mixed in
I remember the time in 1976 I came upon a seller at a swap meet getting rid of a bunch of 4 TRACK tapes! Those were special in that unlike 8 tracks, the albums were placed into two programs on the tape, just like a standard LP, so none of that “beginning/conclusion” Jazz 8 tracks had. Muntz was the creator of all the portable tape era in 1964, wire recorders came first in the 1940s, reel to reels followed, the cassette was developed in Germany in 1962, 4 track and then 8 track in 1966. RCA Victor still has ads all over their company inner sleeves for them with their old albums.
I remember back in the day seeing an 8-track being thrown out of a sunroof of the car in front of on the interstate and seeing it hit the pavement and go into a million pieces.
Interesting stuff, I got to try 8-track at my grandma's house but there wasn't much selection to choose from. But I was genuinely interested in how it works. Even though cassettes were the dominant media at the time, we had vinyl records and record players that always fascinated me. Seeing them spin is one of those oddly satisfying things that still holds up today. Cassettes I still have high regard, I even had a digital mp3 cassette and one with an auxiliary cable. If I could get my hands on those cylinder records that would be fun too.
When I 1st started getting into music my folks bought me a stereo and it had an 8-track so they gave me 3 Tapes with it. I hated them eventually. Fading out and back in killed it for me. I grew envious of my pals with their Craig Powerplay Cassette's but what could I do? I was trapped, I had a little over 500 8-tracks by time of the cassette. Then while watching an Ali / Fraser fight (The Rumble In The Jungle in '74 I think) my car was broken into and all my 500+ 8-Tracks were stolen! I'd never been so happy to be a victim of theft as I was that day. Had a cassette player installed the next day.
My first stereo system that I bought in high school had an 8-track recorder. It wasn't nearly as nice as your deck though. I can't say I really miss the format, but it was fun seeing your remembrance. Well done with the 4 programs and going back to the beginning of the video!
I have the ones from my childhood, and I recently bought some of my favorite albums on 8track, just to have them, and they were cheap. I used to play Billy Joel - Stranger and Foreigner Double Vision to death. I used those carts during my college Station dj days
Here in Sweden 8 tracks didn't last long. They were introduced in the late 60s and fairly popular in the first part of the 1970s, but after that the compact cassette took over completely and I have never seen any Swedish 8tracks made after 1976.
I use 8tracks, with proper maintenance They sound better than records. A lot of musicians recorded their music on 8trak in the studio. When you are about to listen to a new tape, i recomnd you wait for the end of the track and pull it out when it clicks, the splice will be right in front of you and easy to replace. It'll need to be replaced because the adhesive dried out.
My older brother had a stereo with an eight-track player in the late 1970s. He bought a few but was much more into vinyl. To my mind, the clunk between tracks was very pronounced. Every once in blue moon, I will find a decent clean one and will add it to my music curio. This was an interesting video, Robert. TFS. 😃👍. - Heather
memories...of opening the darn things up to loosen the tape, grease the hub and/or wind tape that got pulled into the player back into the tape reel...
I have a great documentary from 1999, called "So Wrong, They're Right," about people who collect and obsess about 8-Track tapes. It's great. These geeks make vinyl collectors look cool.
Tid-bit, same folks that built Lear Jets brought us the 8-Track system.
I'll have to check that out.
I had Led Zeppelin IV on 8-track and I remember Rock and Roll being split. Turns out (according to Discogs) that the Canadian 8-track was split between program 3 and 4!: "C3 Rock And Roll (Begin) D1 Rock And Roll (Conclu.)." My memory is intact. My dad loved 8-tracks, so he could play ABBA non-stop all day in his Zenith console stereo! No one cleaned tape heads in our house, but we used to jam a comb under the tape when it went our of alignment :) Thanks for the tutorial, though I am sure I will never use the information!
I'm surprised by that. Legend is they refused to split their songs like that causing over a minute of silence after certain songs on the U.S. version (not sure about the U.K. one). I'm sure they were one of the only bands with the clout to have that kind of control.
@@RobertFithen I noticed on my Bad Company 8 tracks that none of the songs are split on those as well. I guess Zep did the same with Swan Song artists
I used to jam a book of matches under them sometimes too, but I haven't seen a book of matches in a very long time, now that I think about it 🤔
I had 2 8-Tracks of IV. One was the Atlantic version & had no songs were split. The other one was a club tape & had Stairway split between program 3 & 4.
I laughed every time you faded out then in. Very humorous.
I never owned 8 tracks, neither did anyone in my family. My dad would record things on reel to reel. Or we always went with cassettes for the car.
I didn't have many cassettes though. At the time FM AOR stations were really fun to listen to. You could hear whole album sides often.
Great video.
Thanks! Some would say you were lucky not to grow up with 8-tracks. lol
For a second I was like what the hell is going on with the fade out / fade in with the video. Well done!
Thanks!!
Wonderfully creative and fun video, Robert! Thanks for putting this together.
Thanks!!
I used to have a Realistic Radio Shack stereo player, and bought blank 8 track tapes, recorded off radio. Back in the 90's an ex wife sold it at a yard sale while I was at work. Ughhhhh! Great video Sir!
Still have most of mine. Lots of memories of fishing my KISS 8-tracks from my dad's car's glove compartment (complete with bubbled up cover stickers from the Mississippi heat) and playing them on the way to school or wherever. When listening to the CD versions of these I can still pick out where in the song it faded out, CLICKED and faded back in when it switched over to the next program.
Those Kiss ones are definitely ones to have.
Thanks Robert for the stroll down memory lane....ahhh the 8-trks..they definitely had their place in time between LP's and cassettes. One recurring memory I always have was my oldest brother (he was about 6 yrs older) taking me to elementary school before he went to high school and most mornings he was blasting Deep Purple 'Made in Japan' from his car's 8-trk...really helped prepare me academically. LOL Thanks again for a great trip!
I started buying music in the mid-1970s, and had quite a few albums by the end of the decade, but I've owned only two 8-tracks in my entire life. Even as a 14-year-old I knew 8-tracks were not to be taken seriously. The only reason I bought my first one was because I couldn't find the album in any other format at that time ("Sheet Music" by 10cc). The second was a gift. My brother had a bunch, though, and he had a tape deck in his '69 Impala. He'd worked out this amazing way of putting the car in park, shutting it off, extracting the 8-track, and chucking it under the front seat, in what looked like one smooth flick of the wrist that took about half a second.
Positively iconic man
First music I ever bought was The Knack on 8 -track at a drugstore. Oh, the memories!
It amazes me how many of these I see at flea markets and antique malls that are still sealed - Johnny Mathis, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Lettermen, Eddy Arnold and The Statler Brothers.
I also remember seeing the pink, green, and dirty white bootlegs with the misspelled labels being sold at gas stations.
(White lithium grease), First 8-Track was the Christmas of 1974. George Carlin's Toledo Window Box. My dad said. "Don't listen to this when your sister is in the room." Cool editing by the way.
Thanks!! "Don't listen to this when your sister is in the room." lol
Oh yeah!! Riding with my friend to lunch in high school in his Mercury Cougar listening to 8 tracks of Foghat, Edgar Winter's White Trash, Allman Brothers live at Fillmore East..thanks for bringing back some memories😊
Remember growing up in 70s, I would listen to my dad's 8 tracks, lits of great stuff..Jim Croce, Rod Stewart, Journey, Boston, etc.. the track would change right in the middle of a song, and then pick it up again on the next track. Later, when I bought these albums on vinyl or cassette, it seemed weird to me that there wasn't a "space" in the middle of certain songs!!
Great trip down memory lane, Robert. I had a Pioneer 8-track player in my 1974 Chevy Vega (great car-burned more oil than gas), and it sounded great! Just that fade-out, fade-in feature that made the experience a little frustrating. When I switched to cassette , I used an old 8-track or two as ice scrapers. But I still have 12 or so from back then, and a fully functional Pioneer Home 8-track player I recently acquired. Thanks again, Robert.
As someoene who managed a record store in the 70's, thanks for reminding me how old I am. We sold thousands of these each yr. And i know how to fix them as well.
Great video. As a 72 year old music lover I have collected all the music formats. Got my first car 8 track player in 1968 and fell in love with 8 tracks since. I have to mention that if you play a quality 8 track tape in a high end 8 track player like Pioneer in a decent home system, the sound is amazing dispite all its faults. When I play some of them its just as good as listening on both cassette or lp. Prices for used 8 track players keep climbing every year and will continue as people want to relive or get a taste of music systems from the past. Pioneer made some great players like H-R99 and H-R100. These machines in nice shape can go for $300 to over $400. One thing I've learned is that before you even play a used 8 track for the first time, change the sensing foil. Good chance it will break the first time you play it and that can be one hell of headache to fix.
This brought back lots of memories. I had a Pioneer am-fm 8 track player in my 77 Trans Am. It played everything from Black Sabbath to Boston to KC and the Sunshine Band. I also fixed my share of tapes that broke or got sucked into the player. I remember pulling out many tapes just like the end of your video. And the matchbook trick when the tape wasn't lined up right lol. Fun memories!
Still playing them today ! I Mix playing them in my media rotation.
Master class from Robert. Thanks
Kindred spirits, Robert! I was making/repairing tapes in my tweens. They were literally a dime-a-dozen in the late 80s, and I was a cheap kid, so I took quantity over quality for my musical education.
Split songs didn't bother me too much, but homemade tapes made me jump out of my skin when they would suddenly switch mid-song. Not only the loud 'kerchunk', but also the tape often warbled or made a loud noise at that spot.
When I worked in radio (late 90s/early 00s), the owner was so cheap, he still used carts and reels. I repaired a massive stack of dead carts in the back of the production room--and strung up new tapes from a pancake of blank graphite-backed tape that they still had. The production manager was SO HAPPY to have short (and 'fresh') tapes again!
I already had a thousand 8-tracks of my own before my (former trucker) uncle gave me his collection a few years ago. That almost doubled my collection.
Sorry about your Who's Next getting unwound as you were shooting! Looks like the foil dropped off after passing the solenoid. On the bright side, the tape didn't "accordion" on you!!!!
Just got a new splicing block with 2 rolls of sensing foil...since tapes are now valuable, I might as well make room and sell a bunch.
(Btw, the proper term for when you'd hear two programs playing at once is called "crosstalk".)
Jeez, sorry I wrote a novel here...
I was so into it, my homemade tapes would always be timed out so I didn't have to cut up songs. That noise right before the program change was apparently a sub-tone that alerted the manufacturing plant machine to cut the tape. It happened at the side end of some cassettes, too.
@@RobertFithen LOL you too eh? I took pride in timing out the programs!
Years ago I read an interview with a former Ampex employee who perfectly detailed the process. A massive pancake of ¼" tape ran through the slave recorder at an incredible speed, and that sub-tone triggered the machine to cut the tape at that spot. The now-filled hub was moved to another machine where it went into the cart shell and got spliced together with sensing foil. Then the cart went through mechanical labeling, sleeving, and wrapping.
I have a couple tapes where the trigger happened long after the tone, almost cutting off the song starts.
You're also right about cassettes. I have lots of 70s tapes with the same tones used on 8-tracks
I absolutely had a gut feeling that the 8 track video was on the horizon. Thank you for taking the time to do your videos Robert. My friends and I really enjoy your videos!!
Thanks!! I'm glad you like them.
My first car in 1985, a 76 Plymouth Volare, came with the Mopar 8-Track Radio Player. This first thing I did; get my eleven 8-tracks for a dollar from Columbia House.
I will always remember playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "One More From The Road" with the 11 minute version of Free Bird going a little something like this "Cause I'm as free as bird now......... (click click).......... and this this bird you cannot change". The 8-track version of that song is ingrained in my head for the rest of time.
Preach on Brother Robert!!
Awesome video Robert, really creative and enjoyable. The clicking between programs was wonderful. A+
Thanks!!
Loved, Loved the "program changing", complete with the fade out - fade in.
Wow, Thank you Robert. I didn't expect this video about 8-tracks to come out so soon.
Glad to hear about your personal experience with them.
I have a few that needs to be fixed. I know I need to get to it...
One more piece of advice I'd add is if you buy 8-tracks and look at the opening, if you don't see any pad (those rots over time) or if the roller looks bad (sticky, doesn't roll or not well etc) DO NOT play the cartridge before you fix it or have it fixed. That's the best way to end up with a broken one.
They're cumbersome, compromised, limited but it's fun to listen to them
Good advice.
Some cassettes had the songs in the same order as the 8-track. Example: check out Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, up until 1986 “Harmony” came right after “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” which sounded a bit odd to me.. Then in 86 a new updated edition cassette came out putting the playing order back to the vinyl.
I still own over one hundred 8 tracks and I also have the exact same Panasonic 8 track player deck that you have in this video. The way that you were dividing up the video into 4 programs, just like an 8 track with each segment fading out and fading back in with that all familiar ( clunk ) sound in between. That was so creative and different. 👌🏽 You have me as a new subscriber with this one. 👍🏽
Thanks!!
Me too. I remember buying a bunch of clearance 8 tracks at K Mart for .25 cents a piece.
I still have my eight tracks from back in the day. Thanks for reminiscing and reminding me about some of these. And that Village People 8-track… That should stay sealed. lol
It will. lol
Great video. Very nicely done. I grew up with 8-tracks. I don't have any now but I would love to get back into them. The nostalgia is high. We had a proper stereo with record player, radio, cassette and 8-track together. And just like yourself I was very much into music at early age. I did see some old country 8-tracks with a player at a second hand store earlier this year but they were in very rough shape. But they were gone very quickly. It's rare to see any nowadays.
I think you're being a bit harsh on the sound quality, but I appreciate the overview. I highly recommend people giving them a go. A properly serviced 8-track tape sounds incredible. I personally love them because I can listen to an album on repeat and not have to get up and change sides. Plus, they're such an important part of physical media history. The portable boomboxes are particularly cool to me, and some Seger, Eagles, or Zep on 8-track just hits different.
Haha very cool and interesting. When I was a kid, I would frequent this pool room, and whenever program one of the Ram Jam Black Betty album, would end and click to program two, someone would always holler "Program One"! and the poor women behind the counter would Click, click, click back to program one, so we could hear Black Betty again and again! Same with Ballroom Blitz! Great Video.
lol that's great!
New fithen video to start the day , nice !
I remember all of it - the razor blades & scotch tape, alcohol & Q-tips, popsicle sticks for wedges, shoe boxes full of tapes, pulling eaten tapes from the car deck, sound wobble, abundant tape hiss, and the bootleg BS Paranoid tape that played between tracks.
Thanks for the memories.
I still have a bunch of 8-track tapes and a functional 8-track player. I prefer reel to reel tape though myself. Sound quality is amazing
I had Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, played it in my 1971 Ford LTD (bought used) that had a built in player. So I bought this 8-track just so I could use it. Played it on a loop for an entire 1700 km trip!
My dad and I put a 8 trac player in my glove box of my first car! I bought all my 8 tracs at the flea market, most were bootlegs and I had a giant case I carried them in. Had all the awesome metal from the day, Sabbath, ACDC, Nugent, Nazareth you name it! Hated how they clunked in the middle of the song on those tapes.
Some of those Sabbath ones are quite collectable these days.
Well done, my parents didn't have 8-tracks, I had some I got from my neighbor when they threw them away. I was about 10. I remember playing Abby Road and Santana- Santana. My dad had both on vinyl. 1982 they were done in stores, 1988 was the last year they were carried through record clubs.
Nice touch on the program change throughout the video- my musical journey started with 8-tracks- most of the records I listened to were my mom’s- my first 8-track was Jimi Hendrix Cry of Love - I was 9 - that 8-track completely changed my life!
Great video! Took me back to when my stepdad bought a cheap 8 track player and a job lot of cartridges in the early eighties. Most of them were terrible but there were some great albums in amongst them. That was when I first heard Sergeant Pepper, so every time I hear it now I think the songs are in the wrong order. He also had Led Zeppelin's first album and a couple of tracks definitely faded out and faded in again.
1970's-80's kid here. My friends had 8-track, but my family never did. The first album my mom bought for me was cassette. And of course we had some vinyl. All I remember about these was that any kid who owned 8-track had the KISS albums and/or the KISS solo albums with each band member on the 8 track artwork. It was like a federal law that you must own those if you were a kid with 8-track. And the "adults" owned Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton. I believe "Frampton Comes Alive" was issued to every household in the United States.
Not old enough to have used them. Seen them, heard about them. More info than i ever needed to know about them. Thanks.
Super cool. I grew up with them too in the early 80's. Good editing with the different tracks.
What a trip down memory lane. Great video! Thanks for all the info. Didn't know half of it so it was cool to know how they work
Thanks!!
In the end, it was the CD that caused the demise of the 8-track format. In 1982, available formats were (1) vinyl records; (2) cassettes; (3) reel-to-reel tapes and (4) 8 track tapes. With the advent of the CD, the music industry decided that adding another format was one format too many, and the industry decided to discontinue 8 track tapes. Then suddenly you started to see pre-recorded 8 track tapes being sold at discount stores for 50 cents. I was able to score copies of Stiffs Live, one of the Animals' reunion albums (Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, I think) and a John Mayall album from 1974. I don't remember when pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes became unavailable, but they were also definitely gone by the mid 80s, as were vinyl records by the end of the decade. By 1990, all that were left were CDs and cassettes. Soon, the average consumer had the means to make a perfect digital copy of a song, which made MP3s ubiquitous and CDs superfluous. Now vinyl has made a comeback, thanks to the trendies.
Great video Robert. I remember seeing broken 8 tracks on the side of the road all the time. The tapes would break and people would toss them out the car window.🤣😂🤣
Oh yeah, I had forgotten all about that. They did it with cassettes, too. One time I saw it walking to the school bus stop and, on the way back home it was still there so I picked it up and spooled it to hear what it was. It was a homemade tape of someone practicing on their guitar.
I used to have Alice Cooper “Killer” on 8 track,
Right in the middle of “Halo of Flies” it would fade out,
Switch tracks and fade back in.
When I bought the lp,
I expected it to do the same thing.
I worked with the guy who played the first Bad Company 8 track
over and over again.
One day I took it apart, cut a loop out of it and put it back together.
He went to play the tape, and it kept going,
“Bad Company till the day I die,
Bad Company till the day I die” over and over.
He took it out, hit it a few times and put it back in.
Me and my other co-worker almost died laughing.
Even though I was a child in the 1970s, my parents never had 8-tracks and thus I never had experience with them the way I did with vinyl and eventually cassettes.
Some would say that makes you lucky. lol
My oldest brother originally had a four-track under the dashboard player in his car., as well as 4 track tapes. They looked identical to 8 tracks but of course were in mono.
They're pretty rare as they were only around for a short while.
They were actually stereo, only 2 programs of course.
Oh, I remember 8-track tapes. When I was a kid, we had a counsel that had a turntable, a radio, and an 8-track tape player. It was in the front room in my house in East Chicago. And I believe we had a suberban with an 8-track tape player. It was so cool back then.
Brilliant explanation/tribute to this old format! I personally have a stash of quadrophonic 8-tracks in addition to one or two old stereo tapes.
I love the sound...Analogue all the way...cool video
Four 8 tracks I distinctly remember as a kid---Burl Ives Christmas, America's Greatest Hits, Star Wars soundtrack and Ray Conniff's TV Themes. My mom used to put me down for naps to these
Sounds like great choices to get someone to get to sleep. Cool dreams with the "Star Wars" one.
I remember taking an Interpersonal Communications class in college and we had to bring in an object that represented us. Of course, I brought in that same Panasonic deck that was in your video. My life consists of 4 programs: happy, sad, hungry, and asleep. These occur in a loop and restart from the beginning. 8 tracks are a way of life which is why you can’t escape them once you understand plug yourself into them. 😊
Wow! I never thought of it that way. Interesting.
oh god..these things. childhood mems.. repairing these as a kid was pure hell. used good ol 3m scotch to fix my splices. cotton ball swabs as replacement sponges. glue em back shut and play till the next splice broke. 😡. nowadays i refuse to work on the machines/tapes. but after watching this tutorial on "properly" fixing tapes. maybe i will give these another shot.
-thanks for the lesson!
Great video. I pick up any rock 8-tracks when I see them at garage sales for cheap. I need to get a player, have about 50 of them now and they would be fun to drag out and play.
Try to get a popular name brand one. It makes a lot of difference in sound and functionality.
In Australia we called them 'Cartridges' or 8 Track Cartridges. Both parents had a player in their car. I had no idea you could play them in your house.
Click...................Click............Now more Music!...........Thank you. We had a Richard Pryor 8 track that at the end of track 2 and the start of track 3 was a dirty word, as teens we loved itand would love to yell the "comment! Big Fun in the 70's! We had nothing but we was happy! Had to have a pack of matches to get it to play right! "It's A Partridge Carriage"....I caught it! You're a hoot! The Ending your ending for 8 tracks was perfect!
lol Thanks!
Fleetwood Mac Rumours on 8-track was my "go to sleep music" in the late 70's when my parents were arguing about money and the old man was hopped up on PBR and there was nothing to eat for dinner.
Someone told me that "The Chain" has a different ending on the 8-track.
Robert, it is actually "Gold Dust Woman." Some 8 Tracks have the song with a cold ending instead of a fade. On Steve Hoffman's forum, there was a lot written about the reasons behind that.@@RobertFithen
I preferred the song sequence on the 8 track Katy Lied. CD players don't seem to be programmable anymore to rearrange the song order.
Still have my QS4000 pioneer system and around 50 quadraphonic tapes. All of them still play very well. I take them apart and lube the capstan roller and spool. Have changed the contact pads as well. Head is adjustable and is done after 20 plays of a tape. I have had this system since 1975.
I bought a ton of 8-tracks when they were being liquidated in the early ‘80s.
My goodness I need an 8track adapter since I finally got the Bluetooth cassette adapter because nowadays we got I phone and Bluetooth and such. Since I got the latest Bluetooth. While the first Bluetooth 1.0 was released in 1999.
Love the fades and the clicks and the wrap around. The first 8-tracks I got was the album ‘Kristofferson’ from my dad (for some reason) and ‘Harmony’ by Three Dog Night because they were my fave band. The last 8-track I remember buying new was ‘Captain Fantastic’ in 1975. I loved albums too much to keep spending allowance on 8-tracks. But my best friend in HS 8-tracked rocked on Ted Nugent and 8-tracked mellowed on John Denver whenever we cruised in his Pinto in the Spring of 1980. Sunshine on my Wango Tango
"damned thing's turbo charged!"
I never knew or understood how they worked. Great video, thanks!
Never had an 8-track player, so very entertaining and informative video. Thank you!!
I still have several hundred 8 tracks still play them not as much as vinyl but they do still get love at my house
Yeah, they're fun to break out every once in a while.
As a kid I had the Panasonic Dynamite 8 in yellow. Mott the Hoople "Mott" was an orange cartridge and Led Zeppelin "Houses of the Holy" was pink!!!
That's an early version of "Houses of the Holy". Early Atlantic labels ones were pink. I have a pink Allman Brothers Band.
The way you did this video was pure f’n genius. I was born after the hay day of 8 tracks and I did consider getting into them but seeing the track listings being out of whack just was always off putting to me and I never gave it a chance.
Thanks! I think they're really something mostly for nostalgia.
Mr Fithin, I love your postings and you bring joy into my life.
I shared your postings with a friend of mine and what did he take from that?
He went and bought an old 8 track machine and so instead of my being able to borrow albums from him he's now spending all of his money on 8 tracks.
Under most circumstances it would be my absolute pleasure to get to meet you but right now I hate your guts 🤣✌️
I think it's extremely clever and hilarious how you made this video fade out in four sections just like an 8 track used to do.
Thanks!! I'm glad you got it. Lol
Genius recording! I loved the program switch and the fact that you have the beginning at the end. If only I'd known I would have had it on an endless loop on RUclips just like the real thing. Really enjoyed this. Brought back a lot of memories. I actually came to this because I had a friend gift me a home player as a bit of a joke because I have a "vintage" style stereo in my mid-century modern style house. I haven't tried to test the thing yet to see if it works and I haven't had any 8 tracks to play since the 80s.
Thanks!! Glad you got the program change element in the video
There changing tracks was a stroke of genius in this video Robert, A+ 👏👏 _(you mentioned Roger Whittager dude, to soon, to soon...)_
Thanks!! I didn't even realize that about Roger Whittager. Now it's just happening by accident.
@@RobertFithen 😂😂😂 The way they'll all dropping now, it's inevitable!!
Just the sound of you tossing those around is hitting the nostalgia hard. Cool video
Yeah, that occured to me as well. No car was complete without that sound as you fished around for a chosen tape.
Bill Lear invented the 8 Track to put in the Lear Jet. The engineers said it was impossible. He proved them wrong.
Best video I've ever seen about the wonderful intricacies of the 8-track and the heartbreak as well.But we had the Stone's "Some Girls" a Rolling buddy! Thanks 👍
Thanks!!
when I was your radio we had the four-track cart machines, sometimes you were getting intern or somebody know and they would think it was the 8 tracks
Great video dude! I love the editing XD
great video! I hated 8 tracks but i like your memories of them :)
Thanks!!
Excellent video! An education.
Thanks!!
Hahaha! What a great video - I remember 8 Tracks but suspect they may have been bigger in the U.S. than U.K. But I didn't know a thing about them, never played one and never even heard one although when I was in Canada for a while my sister's husband used to have a few in his car. I learned so much off this - for ages I thought they were supposed to be a superior format. One thing that really got me was the repair feature and the little roll of foil strips - jeez that took me back. When I started working in I.T. back in the early 80's and mainframes were huge and took up half of the room, we had reel to reel tape decks for tape based data storage and each tape had one of these foil strips about 4 feet to 5 feet in from each end so the tape units knew where the data started and ended - it helped them find the VTOC (volume table of contents) and when a tape got messed up we would have to splice them ... add a new foil strip to the start and then run a tapeprep on them so that the new VTOC was written to them. Loved the way you ended the video too - I kinda suspected what was coming and was super pleased when I guessed right :D
Thanks!! They were definitely more popular in the U.S. than anywhere else.
Like cassettes they were good for their time. I remember my parents 8 track collection. Freddy fender, Tom t hall, Charlie rich, Nascar goes country (1975 style) and the country version of Olivea Newton john. And elvis Christmas. (OH mama loved the roses,click).oh and can't forgot d.i.v.o.r.c.e. Heard these tapes so much growing up I still know them by heart.
In the 70's we went out in the woods with chainsaws to cut wood for winter. I was thankful for the 8-track player in the pickup. We played Montrose, CCR, ELO, Aerosmith, Chicago! At least we had some tunes$ It was like a boombox in your truck!
Hi Robert!! Love your videos!! They are most informative as well as entertaining, so thanks!!! It sounds like you live around the St. Louis, MO area like I do (I heard this from past videos). Maybe we can meet up at a record show, or at Vintage Vinyl, or something!! 8-tracks were a big part of my life during my teenage years (I'm 63). I had them in the car and as part of my first home stereo system (which came before the car, of course - it was a Panasonic all-in-one unit). You are absolutely 100% correct when you say that they were used for convenience only - that was the only reason why I had them. During the 1970's, I bought quite a few pre-recorded ones, but, when I got my first stereo with an 8-track recorder built in, I would buy the LP and then put it on the tape myself, rearranging the times and song order (when necessary, or applicable - on a concept album, l left the original LP order intact) to prevent interruptions. The only useless feature on the tapes themselves (beginning in the mid-70's) was the Dolby B mastering of the recording itself, which was sort of useless on such a lo-fi format to begin with. I suppose that was why only the Columbia family of labels, and Mercury Records were the only labels using it (there were a few others that did so here and there, but very rarely). The very last 8-track tapes I recall seeing for sale in retail stores was around Thanksgiving of 1982, and those were Asia's debut album, and Rush's "Signals." (which is kind of funny, because at that time in Japan, those were among the first titles to be released on the new Compact Disc format). After the 1982 Christmas shopping season, the pre-recorded 8-track was history in retail stores. Here's another interesting item - 1983 was the final year you could order a stereo in your new GM or Chrysler car equipped with an 8-track player (1984 for Ford and Lincoln/Mercury). Just thought you'd like a few of these interesting fun facts. Thanks again for the cool videos and Cheers!!!!
My first car I put a Pioneer with cassette in 79. Recorded bunch of cassettes from my record collection.
8 track was played in our community vehicle which happens be a 64 1/2 Mustang
thanks...8 tracks are cool...and I enjoyed this
Bro that 8track program transitioning you did was a very cool detail to this video, thank you!
Thanks! I wonder how many people caught that.
@@RobertFithen it reminds me of some of Pierre Étaix work like "insomnia" and "as long as you've got your health"! You should check them out if you haven't.
Awesome ! About time someone in the VC talked about this wonderful format. Usually it’s a collector acquiring a “rare” Beatles 8:track for their collection. All us boomers had had these in the home and car. Loved the 2.99 gas station bootlegs that were just someone dubbing from a record. By the way, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood have just issued a New 8 track called Nancy and Lee again. I still have one in a car and a portable player. Love the track changes, timing was good too 😂
my first car had an 8 track player - back then when you went to garage sales people were giving them away like they give away VHS tapes or DVDs now - I used to pull over at a garage sale and get 5 for $1 - also, because the 8 track was gone before autotune, there's no bad music on 8 track... it's mostly late 60's & 70's classic rock with a few Village People albums mixed in
I remember the time in 1976 I came upon a seller at a swap meet getting rid of a bunch of 4 TRACK tapes! Those were special in that unlike 8 tracks, the albums were placed into two programs on the tape, just like a standard LP, so none of that “beginning/conclusion” Jazz 8 tracks had. Muntz was the creator of all the portable tape era in 1964, wire recorders came first in the 1940s, reel to reels followed, the cassette was developed in Germany in 1962, 4 track and then 8 track in 1966. RCA Victor still has ads all over their company inner sleeves for them with their old albums.
In 1980 when I get my first system at 13 it had an 8-track player..lol
I remember back in the day seeing an 8-track being thrown out of a sunroof of the car in front of on the interstate and seeing it hit the pavement and go into a million pieces.
I saw that happen with a VHS videotape in the late 80's.
Interesting stuff, I got to try 8-track at my grandma's house but there wasn't much selection to choose from. But I was genuinely interested in how it works. Even though cassettes were the dominant media at the time, we had vinyl records and record players that always fascinated me. Seeing them spin is one of those oddly satisfying things that still holds up today. Cassettes I still have high regard, I even had a digital mp3 cassette and one with an auxiliary cable. If I could get my hands on those cylinder records that would be fun too.
When I 1st started getting into music my folks bought me a stereo and it had an 8-track so they gave me 3 Tapes with it. I hated them eventually. Fading out and back in killed it for me. I grew envious of my pals with their Craig Powerplay Cassette's but what could I do? I was trapped, I had a little over 500 8-tracks by time of the cassette. Then while watching an Ali / Fraser fight (The Rumble In The Jungle in '74 I think) my car was broken into and all my 500+ 8-Tracks were stolen! I'd never been so happy to be a victim of theft as I was that day. Had a cassette player installed the next day.
Got to love it when thieves do you a favor. lol
My first stereo system that I bought in high school had an 8-track recorder. It wasn't nearly as nice as your deck though. I can't say I really miss the format, but it was fun seeing your remembrance. Well done with the 4 programs and going back to the beginning of the video!
Excellent, Robert! Peace…
Thanks!!
I have the ones from my childhood, and I recently bought some of my favorite albums on 8track, just to have them, and they were cheap. I used to play Billy Joel - Stranger and Foreigner Double Vision to death. I used those carts during my college Station dj days
Here in Sweden 8 tracks didn't last long. They were introduced in the late 60s and fairly popular in the first part of the 1970s, but after that the compact cassette took over completely and I have never seen any Swedish 8tracks made after 1976.
Mostly a US thing and, as I just learned, also popular in Italy.
I use 8tracks, with proper maintenance
They sound better than records.
A lot of musicians recorded their music on 8trak in the studio.
When you are about to listen to a new tape, i recomnd you wait for the end of the track and pull it out when it clicks, the splice will be right in front of you and easy to replace.
It'll need to be replaced because the adhesive dried out.
lol great video, love the difference in sound quality ect 😂I remember the tape of Animals how it just faded out halfway through Pigs .
My older brother had a stereo with an eight-track player in the late 1970s. He bought a few but was much more into vinyl. To my mind, the clunk between tracks was very pronounced. Every once in blue moon, I will find a decent clean one and will add it to my music curio. This was an interesting video, Robert. TFS. 😃👍. - Heather
Thanks!!
Great show!! And I wasn't offended, either.
memories...of opening the darn things up to loosen the tape, grease the hub and/or wind tape that got pulled into the player back into the tape reel...