8-Tracks Remembered

The following is an essay I wrote in June 2004, which I originally posted to the RS.com Castaways community boards. I figured I'd re-post it here, since I don't have anything new to say.. It's a bit rambling...

It's been almost 20 years since the demise of the 8-Track tape, and boy do I miss 'em!

Actually, no...I don't.In fact, having been spoiled by the pristine audio fidelity of the compact disc, I often wonder how in the world I ever tolerated the murky sound of 8-Tracks, not to mention the "bleed-over factor"...in case you're too young to remember, inevitably you could faintly hear music from, track 2 during soft passages or between songs on track 1 or 3 (depending on whether the head on your player was misaligned to the north or the south). Music from track 3 could very well be heard on tracks 2 & 4. And so forth and so on... Classical music, with it's dynamic range, was virtually impossible to enjoy on 8-Track for this very reason.

If that weren't bad enough, the very nature of the way music had to be sequenced on 8-Track tapes left you with no choice but to listen to at least 10 minutes of other tunes until you could hear your favourite song again. If you wanted to hear "Tomorrow Never Knows" twice you were required to listen to "Yellow Submarine" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" on the same track before the tape loop returned to "Tomorrow Never Knows". Now that particular example is not so bad, since there's not really a "bad" song on Revolver (with the possible exception of "Yellow Submarine", that is), but what about an album with 2 or 3 good songs plus a bunch of filler? Albums like that were a dime a dozen in the era of 8-Tracks (or at least it seemed that way). Tough. You just HAD to suffer through the songs that came before or after the ones you liked. Even that was not the worst thing about 8-Tracks. Inevitably, due to time restrictions, many songs recorded on 8-Tracks faded out in the middle to be continued on the following program (for those unfamiliar with the 8-Track medium, they contained 4 "Tracks" or "Programs", which contained about 15 minutes worth of music each and played in a successive loop). This was especially frustrating if you were really getting into a song, rockin' out and singing along when all of a sudden the volume starts to dwindle. Then you'd have to wait for the loud "click" that let you know the programs had changed (and if your player was old and worn out there was always the chance that it wouldn't "click", and instead would just repeat the program). By the time the song resumed you'd most likely lost the spirit of the whole thing.

I listened to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here so many times on 8-Track that I can tell you exactly where the first program-change fade-out was...the volume began fading right in the middle of the baritone saxophone solo about 16 minutes into "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". By the time the volume was back to normal on the 2nd program the tenor sax solo had taken over. Even now, when I hear that passage on CD, I half expect it to start fading out around that time.
Another feature of the 8-Track tape which was facilitated by time restrictions was the "repeated song(s)". On some 8-Tracks, in an attempt to avoid the hated "fade-out", they would just duplicate a couple of songs spread out on multiple tracks. If you were lucky, the repeated songs would be the good ones you wanted to hear again, and if you timed it right you could switch programs and replay the song having only to hear a short portion of the one that preceded it. Which was fine and dandy, unless you were playing an album straight through, and then the repetition would inspire deja vu.

When 8-Tracks were at the height of popularity (a phenomenon proving that even total crap can catch on and spread like wildfire) you could buy what we used to call "bootlegs". 8-Track bootlegs weren't the same thing as vinyl LP bootlegs, but they were just as illegal and a bane to the record companies whose revenue was tapped into by the inexpensive, inferior copies. Bootlegs were sold mainly in truck stops and 5 & dime stores (though I used to purchase them in a restaurant my family dined in often). The people who made them would simply record a vinyl album to 8-Track, make a few hundred copies, paste an amateurish looking song list on the front or back and then sell 'em for a fraction of the cost the "better sounding" originals were going for.I confess that I owned a TON of bootlegs, and my favorite ones were the compilations, where the guys who made them would choose what they considered to be "The Best of British Rock" or "Acid Rock Monsters of the 70's" or "Super Hits Volume 35", etc. (some less imaginative bootleggers simply titled their compilations after the genre of music contained on it...for instance, you might find a bootleg with the one word moniker "Rock"). I used to LOVE my copy of "The Best of British Rock Volume 2", but now whenever I hear the closing chords of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" I get all pumped up and ready to hear the opening riffage of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" (which followed hot on the trail of the Who song on the compilation). Nowadays I get somewhat confused when "Bargain" starts up on my CD of Who's Next because I'd become accustomed to the song order on the "Best of British Rock" collection. Oh well, it was a crash course in some great music...

Another thing about bootleg distributors...they weren't above selling half of a 2-record set as an individual product. I remember seeing The Beatles (White Album) Volume 1 sold seperately from Volume 2. And I vividly recall listening to the second half of Jesus Christ Superstar, even knowing it by heart before hearing the first half many months later. While vacationing with an aunt and uncle in Missouri I happened upon their copy of the entire rock opera and I spent several hours getting familiar with the part I'd never heard before. But ya know, I never really minded only having "Part 2"...There's STILL a "freshness" to the first half that I hear which sort of fades away when "The Last Supper" begins...
Still, if it had not been for cheap bootlegs I might never have heard Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money, The Moody Blues' In Search Of The Lost Chord or Alice Cooper's early works, Easy Action and Pretties For You. Not only was I financially strapped, too much so to buy the "originals", but we didn't have a record/tape store in our small town that sold 'em. What we DID have was a revolving supply of bootleg 8-Tracks that rack jobbers would supply to the 99'er restaurant...

I did, however, have my share of "original" 8-tracks, most of which were purchased in the clearance racks at Sound Warehouse in OKC (which I always made a point to visit whenever we were up that way), all bought for between a quarter and a dollar. I got some pretty doggone good stuff in those bargain bins, if I say so myself. A short list would include bands like Nektar, Magma, Sparks, the Pretty Things, the Faces, P.F.M., Focus...a real prog-rockers wet dream. At one point I had at least 30 8-Tracks on the Beserkley label, including a COMPLETE Jonathon Richman & the Modern Lovers collection.

As my family's personal economy improved I was able to buy more "original" label 8-Tracks, facillitated by the grand opening of the much missed "Record Parlour" in a nearby city. My pride and joy was a complete Led Zeppelin catalogue on 8-Track. Yep, I was actually very proud of that, believe it or not. My brother, inspired by my completist tendencies, wound up collecting all of the KISS albums on 8-Track, and he seemed to be as fond of them as I was my Zeppelin tapes. At least the KISS songs were usually too short to require fade-outs...the same could not be said of "Achille's Last Stand"...

The only thing I ever had that probably sounded just as good on 8-Track as it did on vinyl was Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Each selection on that album was exactly the same length anyway (13:01, I think), so there were no fade-outs or song repeats, and with this album you could randomly switch between the four programs and not be able to tell that you were listening to something different (the bleed-over factor probably even worked to this tape's advantage, making it even more densely noisy than it already was). I always thought Metal Machine Music sounded like someone fiddling around with a short wave radio during a bad electrical storm...

I hear that copies of Metal Machine Music on 8-Track sell for hundreds of dollars to 8-Track collectors these days. I've read an article where Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore was singing the praises of it's 8-Track incarnation, so maybe that's helped spike the interest amongst collectors. Can't imagine why anyone would want one, though...Yes, the glory days of 8-Track tapes are long gone history. Anyone who complains about the sound quality of even a non-remastered CD was most likely not around during the 8-Track age, or (as is the case with me) has become spoiled by digital audio's superior fidelity.

If this essay has brought back nostalgic memories of the bygone 8-Track era or whetted your appetite to know more about those neat little cartridges we used to shove into the player...usually also requiring a matchbook inserted between the tape and the player's receptacle to prevent wobbly sound or excessive bleed-through...I suggest you check out 8-Track Heaven. These guys seem to hope the 8-Track will one day make a grand comeback...