Remember 8-Tracks? I certainly do. When they appeared they seemed to solve a problem. How to play music in a car that was not on the radio. I remember my dad had one installed in our Ford Galaxy 500. He also bought a Lear Jet home stereo and put in his bedroom.
My FIRST 8-tracks were Sgt. Pepper and The Best of Peter and Gordon. My dad got a lot of Ace Cannon and Pete Fountain and a few other Country ones I can’t remember. For a while 8-Tracks were Hot and it seemed everyone got one. But as quickly as they seemed to take over they started to quickly die off.
While it was great to be able to listen to your favorite music in the family car as well as at home. 8-Tracks eventually had a multitude of problems.
One of the problems was actually considered a plus…at first. The ability to play your 8-Track over and over and over. Unlike records you never had to do anything once you started an 8-Track. They would play forever. I remember falling asleep many times listening to my favorite music. And when I woke up the music was still playing. Ah heaven. Or so it seemed at first.
But playing an 8-Track for hours on end caused a lot of HEAT to build up in the player. That heat would eventually cause trouble as the audiotape would start to stretch and the tape alignment would start to slip. Songs that once sounded great would start to warble or worse you would start to hear more than one song at the same time as more than one track would go across the playback head. Plus, sometimes when you tried to take out an 8-track from the player the tape would stick and pull out of the cartridge. Usually, this meant you had to throw it away and buy another one.
Another problem with the 8-track was how songs had to be arraigned on the tape to play. The order of songs on an LP record were not the same as what could fit on an 8-Track. This made for some interesting problems when listening. The worse was when a song would start on one track and then fade out and stop playing till the 8-Track switched tracks. I think this is probably what killed the 8-Track. There is nothing more irritating than having your favorite song butchered this way.
What are your memories of the now obsolete 8-Track? I admit I still have some. What about you?