"It's a celebration of a technology"

October 27, 2021 6:53 PM

Bob's 8-Track Garage Sale is, according to Bob, the only live 8-track radio show on earth. The show has a narrow focus. Bob only plays music directly from 8-track tapes that he finds locally in central Iowa. If you're in the central Iowa area, you can catch new shows every Thursday morning on 89.1 KHOI FM. The rest of us can stream them from the KHOI Archive for a couple weeks after their air date.

Bob has been running his show since 2015, and I'm delighted by his commitment to an imperfect format that was "right for its time".

8-track tapes were one of the first portable music formats, but they weren't designed for radio play. 8-track players don't rewind or fast-forward, so queuing up a song for the show means playing the tape ahead of time until it reaches the right spot. Each tape has four parallel channels, so playing the right song also means keeping track of which channel a tape is queued up for. And, of course, 8-tracks haven't been produced for forty years, so the quality can be a little dodgy.

posted by Lirp (34 comments total)

... they weren't designed for radio play ... 8-tracks haven't been produced for forty years, so the quality can be a little dodgy.

Hell, the quality was pretty damn dodgy when they were brand new, too! They weren't designed for anything other than being all-around annoying, as far as I'm concerned.

I can't tell you how many times my friend and I, in our late teens, listened to albums over and over on the 8-track in his car as we drove around our soulless suburban wasteland for hours in typical angsty-aimless fashion, utterly despising the shitty technology but not having any alternative. There are songs that even hearing them multiple decades after never having to use an 8-track ever again, I still mentally brace for the goddamn mid-verse silence...K-CLUNK...silence...resume. It's permanently burned into my brain, like a First World Problems version of PTSD.

I suspect this radio show appeals only to people who grew up after the era of being unavoidably forced to deal with those accursed machines on a daily basis.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:35 PM on October 27, 2021 [15 favorites]

Greg_Ace, I agree with everything you say ... except that last bit.

For me, there's always something to be gained in applying a filter to stuff, however random. The fact that it seems he'll play anything as long as it's on 8-track means you might just get a one two three punch of Devo, Peggy Lee, Deep Purple -- all 8-tracks I remember being in a certain friend's car. The Devo he'd bought for himself, the Peggy Lee came from his dad's collection, the Deep Purple from the older guy next door.

It's all the same culture.
posted by philip-random at 8:02 PM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

Holy FUCK!
posted by shoesfullofdust at 8:06 PM on October 27, 2021

So, when you run an information-rescue rig and demo it for people, they invariably try to gotcha you with their favorite obscure media format. (The face on that one guy when I told him yeah, I actually do have an ADAT deck. Hell if I know if it works; nobody's brought in an ADAT tape.) Don't ask me why. People gonna people.

At the beginning of my rig's demo career, the gotcha that worked was 8-track tapes. Why in the world would I bother with an 8-track player? The format was made for listening to commodity music in the car. That music's been remastered since, probably multiple times.

But I got tired of getting gotchaed, so I acquired a working 8-track player.

... Only to have a historical society a half-hour down the road actually bring me an oral history recorded on a ding-dang 8-track tape!

You just. Never know. My hat's off to this guy.
posted by humbug at 8:14 PM on October 27, 2021 [16 favorites]

you might just get a one two three punch of Devo, Peggy Lee, Deep Purple

But you can do that multiple other places online too, with better fidelity and without mid-song interruptions. I have thus far failed to be convinced.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:15 PM on October 27, 2021

I mean, hey, don't let me stop anyone from enjoying it if that's their thing. I just had to register my disapproval of the format. Pray car-

K-CLUNK

-ry on.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:18 PM on October 27, 2021 [8 favorites]

definitely bad technology.

My dad couldn't have cared less about music or hi-fi but he was a dedicated reader of Consumers Report. When I told him I was saving my money for an 8-track, he told me I was an idiot. And then he helped me buy a very cool Nakamichi cassette recorder.

To this day, I've never owned an 8-track.
posted by philip-random at 9:37 PM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

Albums got resequenced for 8-Track, and also for Cassette, so sometimes I'd listen to a vinyl version of an album I thought I knew well and would be a bit disoriented.

Also, the 8-Track version of Rocky Horror Picture Show movie soundtrack had a track change RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of a chorus of Time Warp and whoever did that should be punished.
posted by hippybear at 9:38 PM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

In defense of 8-Track however, there's the 8-Quad format, a quadraphonic (4.0 signal) recording had four completely discrete tracks, one for each speaker. 4 tracks were used at a time, and so a "track switch" (a *K-CLUNK" as described earlier") meant the other half of the album was beginning. Same tech, different result.

And the result is, a lot of the best modern surround technology conversions you hear of old Quad albums are from the 8-Track format sources. Other Quad releases had the signals in two channels and encoded in some way, or other tech that allowed for bleed-through of noise across channels. These tape recordings are true 4-channel, and thus have the most pure isolation of sound and are the best for converting.
posted by hippybear at 9:43 PM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

Well, from a brief survey online I saw pickings were slim as described above but...

I did find 8 tracks of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Slim's Stomp 1946-1947 by Slim Gaillard and quite a few albums by Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. Those last finds were not entirely unsurprising to me for some reason.
posted by y2karl at 10:09 PM on October 27, 2021

METAFILTER: whoever did that should be punished.
posted by philip-random at 10:26 PM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

Houses of the Holy
Was an album by Led Zeppelin
I bought it on eight track
Not on CD
Fades out in the middle
The way an eight track's s'posed to

For a long while, buying endless crap car after endless crap car in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was not uncommon to find an 8-track player (usually not working) and an accompanying box of tapes in the car. I'm sad to say I've probaby thrown out 50 or 60 8-track tapes in my life. As noted above, the tapes were rarely of a single genre or artist, and usually quite a mix of same: Always (always) something "hard rock", usually something along the lines of "Carpenters Greatest Hits", and never anything that I would voluntarily listen to. (I was an ignorant snob.)
posted by maxwelton at 10:43 PM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

The moment I knew for sure that streaming had won over physical media was when I saw my first CD player being put to the curb the way I'd seen 8-tracks going to the curb when I was a kid.
posted by mhoye at 5:31 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

In the 1970s Ford cars usually came with a demo tape, featuring an unholy mix of Boston Pops, Perry Como, Barry Manilow, and various RCA studio groups playing easy-listening covers. It was the only tape you had so you memorized it to the last schmaltzy chord. Just like vinyl, there are plenty of original tracks that never will see the light of day on streaming services -- and like hippybear says they were often remixed to bin-pack into the 11.5 minutes per track.

I enjoyed this interview of one of the designers of the 8-track, Frank Schmidt.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:47 AM on October 28, 2021

Only to have a historical society a half-hour down the road actually bring me an oral history recorded on a ding-dang 8-track tape!

Were consumer 8-track tape recorders a thing? I thought 8-track was a playback-only technology, mostly for use in cars, with no recording equipment or blank media being made for the consumer market, and the length of each tape being tailored to its content.
posted by acb at 7:03 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I can't say that I really miss the format all that much, but I did covet one of these babies back in the day; yes, it's gimmicky as hell, but the gimmick is great.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:33 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

@acb I didn't think they were?! The historical society had no idea how that recording had come about, or even if it was the original/only, or a dub.

Just the weirdest thing.
posted by humbug at 7:52 AM on October 28, 2021

Yes, you could get 8-track recorders. Here are some ads.
posted by JanetLand at 8:04 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

People that bought the recorders were sad cases, digging deeper into bad tech. The only real upside to the 8-track was probably safety. You could stick it into the player while driving without looking at it. Once in the player, there wasn't much could do except advance to the next track.

Cassettes were smaller, had two sides and rewind-fast-forward options. More finicky overall. More things to take your mind off where it should be. Distracted driving before cellphones.
posted by philip-random at 8:19 AM on October 28, 2021

In the 1970s Ford cars usually came with a demo tape, featuring an unholy mix of Boston Pops, Perry Como, Barry Manilow, and various RCA studio groups playing easy-listening covers.

I think Chevy trucks used to come with a Bob Seger tape, back when he licensed "Like A Rock" to them.
posted by thelonius at 8:41 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Some albums got extended/unedited versions of songs:

Pigs on the Wing with guitar solo (1:30)
Miss You with sax solo (4:00)
Beast of Burden longer version
Sgt Pepper's reordered
Steely Dan

I surmise that there were more awful hack jobs than transcendant edits, though...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:01 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here's how you played music in your car back before 8-tracks (skip ahead to 1:20).
posted by Scarf Joint at 11:05 AM on October 28, 2021

I wonder what happens when they run into some 8-track carts for the 2XL?
[a toy robot with a player for guts; it would ask you multiple choice trivia questions, and you would press the corresponding track change button to submit your answer. also some limited Choose Your Own Adventure type stories]
posted by bartleby at 11:16 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Dad had a collection of 8 Tracks and 8 Track standalone players. makes me nostalgic for that time.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 12:19 PM on October 28, 2021

For those of you who caught the tail-end of 8-track, moved on to cassette tape, then adopted CDs (leaving the other options out of the mix, just sticking to mainstream here).. how did you deal with the End of the CD?

Tomorrow I'll be traveling to the city to visit the Old Record Store, I am pretty sure most of their business is fueled by vinyl sales, and likely this will be my last order/purchase of CDs. I want to support the store, but it feels so Quixotic to keep purchasing artefacts that end up getting ripped to a drive then boxed away. I'm late to Bandcamp but that looks like a promising digital service to purchase tunes and (seems like) the artists get a not terrible cut of the proceeds?

Anyhow, appreciate any feedback. I'm locked into an iTunes library and basically it feels like I'm doing it all wrong. I say this as someone who had a major library crash and lost everything, that might be the one reason I never quit cold turkey (purchasing CDs). I stream Netflix, I am not sure what my hang-up is re: streaming (music) services.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:51 PM on October 28, 2021

how did you deal with the End of the CD?

The which of the what, now? I still buy CDs, because most of the mainstream jazz artists I listen to are dead (or old), and their stuff is only available on CDs - and maybe vinyl, but I don't care about that at this point.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:04 PM on October 28, 2021

elkevelvet, I do, in fact, still buy all my music on physical CDs (with the very occasional exception of buying downloadable files on Bandcamp when there's no CD available - but if there's a CD on Bandcamp, I buy the CD version).

I am keenly attuned to right of first sale, and even if all my CDs end up as unwanted 50-cent-pile detritus after I die, I believe I should have the right to have my purchased media go to someone else when I'm done with it.

It's easy to buy CDs online, if you want to (although buying them at the Old Record Store is definitely its own kind of fun).

The End of the CD may be coming, but for me, there are still plenty of little plastic disks to buy, and I am very happy to keep buying them.

Back to the topic of the post: I had a bunch of stuff on 8-track, and like Greg_Ace, I can still hear the places where songs changed tracks; oddly, I find it kind of endearing. (I wouldn't ever go back, though; give me CDs over 8-tracks any day.) "Rock of the Westies" and "A Day at the Races" were two of my overplayed 8-tracks, along with a Freddie Prinze comedy album. I did, in fact, belong to an 8-track of the Month club for a while.

humbug, loved your story. Glad you were able to help out the historical society!
posted by kristi at 3:08 PM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

I moved from CD-first to Bandcamp-first a few years ago, when living in a tiny flat in London, and a decade or so after switching from listening to music directly off a CD to ripping CDs to audio files and playing them on a computer. I buy CDs when there is no Bandcamp download or other CD-quality lossless option (I know my ears probably can't tell 320kbps MP3 from WAV, but it's the principle that counts; this isn't the early-2000s any more, and we shouldn't have to put up with throwing away 90% of our audio data and hoping it's fine just to get our music down to a size where it'll download on a 56k modem in a reasonable time and fit on a 32Mb MP3 player).

I have grown to dread bands signing to a major label and stopping uploading to Bandcamp, because these days there's no way to obtain CD-quality lossless versions of their music conveniently. The mainstream download services don't do it (presumably for licensing reasons; Apple have gone to lossless, but only for streaming), and as I live in Spotifyland, the record shops carry only half a dozen new releases and a table of distressed back-catalogue that's mostly heavy on the classic rock. (I inquired about the new Lil Nas X album recently and the record shop clerk checked on the computer and informed me that there is not a CD release, meaning that presumably it's lo-fi download, commemorative plate vinyl and streaming only. Presumably the majors are on the way to “closing the digital hole”, repairing the mistake of having launched a digital medium without draconian copy protection on the assumption that CD readers would never exist and home computers would never have the RAM to manipulate such quantities of data.)
posted by acb at 3:27 PM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

commemorative plate vinyl

😄
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:43 PM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

8 track recorders were a thing. I remember Radio Shack selling them and thinking how inconvenient they would be compared to the newfangled compact cassette. They seemed relatively inexpensive to me, but that may be because I noticed them when they being overtaken by the cassette. At least the latter had a little window so you could see how close to the end of the tape you were getting.

I have a functional 8track player from the 70s. It's a Realistic combo 8 track/AM/FM stereo amp unit with a phono aux in. It's not a great sounding unit, some of the reason I attribute to the anemic full range box speakers I found with it. Plus, the filter capacitors need replacing, any it uses germanium transistors which were probably poor spec-d when they were new. The sliding tape head needed it's sliding mechanism cleaned and lubed. But the best part about it was that it came with the only 8 track you'll ever need: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass Greatest Hits.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:43 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I had an 8-track player for a time in 1978; it was included in the el-cheapo stereo I bought from the Columbia Record Club that year, which replaced the vinyl-only portable stereo I'd used through college. I already had records, so I think the only tape I had with it was whatever demo they included. I had cassettes available through my parents, and it was so much nicer, four years later, when I got married and we replaced the stereo with a tiny portable cassette tape boombox (with radio and removable speakers!) that lasted us several years. To me, this was on a par with replacing my 32MB MP3 player with the 6GB Nomad player that preceded my first iPod. I really have no memory of 8-tracks, except being aware of badly-timed K-CHUNKs; I rarely rode in and never owned a car with an 8-track player, and I moved straight from vinyl to cassettes.
posted by lhauser at 4:48 PM on October 28, 2021

There were even computers that used 8-track tape as storage. I don't remember if you could rewind, or just had to wait for your file to come around on the loop.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:49 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

There were even computers that used 8-track tape as storage. I don't remember if you could rewind, or just had to wait for your file to come around on the loop.

I'm guessing they plugged into a parallel port and used one track per bit, thus getting 8x the transfer speeds of serial tape drives.
posted by acb at 11:00 AM on October 29, 2021

8-track tapes were

WERE?!
posted by rhizome at 11:34 AM on October 29, 2021