Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's just us, neither Jerry nor Davis here, so it's
Speaker 1: short Stuff, the bereft edition.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I want to thank NPR, capture dot Com, a website
Speaker 3: called ps Audio, a website called ever Present, and more
Speaker 3: for the research that went into the eight track cassette
Speaker 3: player or eight track cartridge itself. April eleventh is National
Speaker 3: eight Track Tape Day, so we've missed that. But if
Speaker 3: you don't know what an eight track is, it preceded
Speaker 3: the cassette tape and we're gonna get into what this
Speaker 3: thing was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you usually wedged in between LP record albums and
Speaker 1: cassettes because that's basically where it really popped up in
Speaker 1: the seventies is kind of where you really associate eight tracks.
Speaker 1: But it was way older than that, apparently, as far
Speaker 1: back as the forties it was essentially coming into development.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, which surprised me. You might be wondering, like,
Speaker 3: why did we need eight tracks at all? And it's
Speaker 3: because at the time, dear listener, especially younger dear listener,
Speaker 3: if you wanted to play the music that you wanted
Speaker 3: to hear, you could play it on your record player
Speaker 3: in your house. You didn't have a record player in
Speaker 3: your car, you had a radio that played whatever the
Speaker 3: heck they wanted. So all of a sudden, eight tracks
Speaker 3: came along as a mobile version away to take the
Speaker 3: music that you wanted on the road, either via your
Speaker 3: car or via these awesome portable players, of which we had.
Speaker 3: One of it was a Lloyd's. We had a deck
Speaker 3: in our conversion van, of course, but we had just
Speaker 3: look up the white Lloyd's eight portable player and that
Speaker 3: was the very one. I found it online and I
Speaker 3: might even get one on eBay. It brought back so
Speaker 3: many nostalgic memories.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, maning you totally should of One of my
Speaker 1: friends in high school, Mitch, not dirty Mitch with skabies,
Speaker 1: but the right different Mitch.
Speaker 2: That sounds good.
Speaker 1: His grandma had a huge white Lincoln Continental with an
Speaker 1: eight track deck in it, and we got our hands
Speaker 1: on a Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on eight track and
Speaker 1: we just cruise around listen into that in that car.
Speaker 1: It was pretty.
Speaker 2: Boss, skipping forward two songs at a time.
Speaker 1: Ish. Yeah, yes, yeah, that's something I can't wait to
Speaker 1: talk about. But just when a little background on the
Speaker 1: how this worked. It was built on ancient technology from
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties, which was magnetic film, which became
Speaker 1: real the real film, and essentially is that is tape
Speaker 1: that has magnetized metal particles on it, and when sound
Speaker 1: is converted into an electrical impulse, the tape writer translates
Speaker 1: that into well, it's an electromagnet. It translates it into
Speaker 1: a magnetic pulse that arranges these pieces of magnetic metal
Speaker 1: into ones and zeros, and then the whole thing is
Speaker 1: done backwards on the on the other end when you
Speaker 1: listen to it. This is the basis of not just
Speaker 1: cassette tapes, but since eight tracks came first, this is
Speaker 1: what they were built on over time. And there are
Speaker 1: a few inventions that kind of were stepping stones that
Speaker 1: led to the eight track.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the Germans were using it in World
Speaker 3: War Two. The Allies got a hold of it, and
Speaker 3: eventually it got to the music industry and they were like, hey,
Speaker 3: we got a thing now that we can play this
Speaker 3: stuff on the road.
Speaker 2: We think in a continuous loop.
Speaker 3: And the very first person to achieve the version that
Speaker 3: could go to market was a guy named William Powell Lear,
Speaker 3: the creator of the lear Jet.
Speaker 2: Previous to this, there.
Speaker 3: Were some sort of housing and internal guts things that
Speaker 3: were worked out by various people. A guy named George
Speaker 3: Eish in nineteen fifty three came up with the nab
Speaker 3: cartridge or the fiddle fidilipak cartridge. It's also called a
Speaker 3: cart if you ever heard of like on w CARI
Speaker 3: Cincinnati or old radio stations, they had carts, music carts,
Speaker 3: That's what that was. These were built for radio stations.
Speaker 1: It was short for cartridge slang. I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that was followed up by the Month's Stereo Pack
Speaker 1: and it was created by Earl Madman Months, and he
Speaker 1: directly influenced the development of the eight track because William
Speaker 1: Powell Lero is riding around in Madman Months's car when
Speaker 1: he was playing one of the Stereo pack cartridges for him.
Speaker 1: But the thing that really kind of separated Months from
Speaker 1: everybody else, he's the first one to go directly to
Speaker 1: the record companies and say like, hey, let me license
Speaker 1: your music and put them on this new format and
Speaker 1: let's start getting it out there. And like I said,
Speaker 1: William Powell Leer was like, this is a great idea.
Speaker 1: I'm going to build on this and create a longer
Speaker 1: playing version of it, and I'm going to call it
Speaker 1: the eight track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then vinta Jet. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I should point out too quickly, and this can't be
Speaker 3: a coincidence, but Earl Madman months was the.
Speaker 2: Creator of that cart.
Speaker 3: If you're a Coen Brothers fan and a fan of
Speaker 3: the movie Barton Fink, you will know that John Goodman's
Speaker 3: character name is Carl Madman munt oh really, and there's
Speaker 3: no way that's a coincidence. No, I don't know the
Speaker 3: correlation or if it was just they got they thought
Speaker 3: it sounded cool or something.
Speaker 1: Who knows what a strange homage if it was.
Speaker 3: Though, agreed, Should we take a break, Yes, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll be right back with more on the bygone era
Speaker 3: of the A track right.
Speaker 2: After this.
Speaker 1: And things job Job. So all of this was being
Speaker 1: developed in the fifties, I think as early as the
Speaker 1: forties technically, but the A Trek really came into its
Speaker 1: own in the mid sixties. And the reason why is
Speaker 1: because the Ford Motor Company said, Hey, everybody, have you
Speaker 1: heard of these eight tracks? Well, we're going to start
Speaker 1: putting eight track players in our nineteen sixty six model
Speaker 1: cars as a high end option, and as more and
Speaker 1: more cars started featuring eight track players, eight track cartridges
Speaker 1: just became dominant as the form of how you listen
Speaker 1: to music outside of your home in a way that
Speaker 1: you controlled, unlike radio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, they were pretty cheap. There were two
Speaker 2: to three bucks.
Speaker 3: The most expensive on record was The Beatles' Greatest Hits,
Speaker 3: released in nineteen seventy. That was almost five bucks, four
Speaker 3: dollars and ninety seven cents, which would be nice price, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the nice price. That'd be more than forty dollars today.
Speaker 3: So that was you know, that was an expensive eight
Speaker 3: track for sure. It hit its popularity in the mid seventies.
Speaker 3: And I guess we should talk a little bit about how.
Speaker 2: These things played.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got the magnetic tape that you described
Speaker 3: inside on a single, and there was a little motor
Speaker 3: that pulled the tape across the audio head to make
Speaker 3: it make the sound. But you're probably if you don't
Speaker 3: know what these are, you're probably like, what is the
Speaker 3: eight tracks?
Speaker 2: What does that even mean? Each tape had eight tracks and.
Speaker 3: A sensing strip that told a solooid coil like, hey,
Speaker 3: a program is over, which was you know, roughly two
Speaker 3: songs and now it's time to switch over to the
Speaker 3: next track.
Speaker 2: So when I said you could skip ahead.
Speaker 3: Two songs at a time, if you hit the button,
Speaker 3: it would it would pop forward the two songs roughly.
Speaker 1: So weirdly, I want to say just one thing because
Speaker 1: I don't want us to get emails. I saw it
Speaker 1: in one place that it actually had four tracks, but
Speaker 1: there were two of each of the four tracks, so
Speaker 1: they were in stereo. So two times four was eight.
Speaker 1: I only saw that in one place. Everywhere else kind
Speaker 1: of described it as eight different tracks like you just did.
Speaker 2: But that idea out there, all right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so this, this whole thing what differentiates it
Speaker 1: from cassette is that it was it played continuously. It
Speaker 1: was an endless loop, right, So I guess if you
Speaker 1: pressed play, it would play the whole album over and
Speaker 1: over again until you press stop. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And the point is you didn't have to flip it.
Speaker 3: The downside of that as you couldn't rewind it or
Speaker 3: fast forward it except for skipping two songs ahead. But
Speaker 3: you couldn't go back two songs as far as I.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, so that was kind of one of the downsides.
Speaker 1: Another big downside is that these tracks were not like
Speaker 1: they just took an album and they cut it up
Speaker 1: into four equal amounts of time or eight equal amounts
Speaker 1: of time, I should say, right, So if one track
Speaker 1: could fit one in three quarters of a song, that
Speaker 1: three quarters of a song would fade out, it would
Speaker 1: be a click, and then when the next track started,
Speaker 1: it would fade back in. And people hated that.
Speaker 2: Of course they did.
Speaker 1: That's very clunky, understandably so, but that level of clunkiness
Speaker 1: really kind of gets across the just the kind of
Speaker 1: attention to detail that was given to eight tracks. They
Speaker 1: as far as technology goes, they were perfectly encompassed by
Speaker 1: what they looked like, clunky, giant plastic key and just clunky.
Speaker 2: I guess yeah. I mean it was interesting.
Speaker 3: They deserved to be popular for a while because it
Speaker 3: was such a revolution and to be able to listen
Speaker 3: to what you wanted to outside of your home. But
Speaker 3: the other limitations, you know, not rewinding stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Apparently the internal components would fail a lot of times.
Speaker 3: Like the cassette itself was very sturdy and long, lasting,
Speaker 3: but the little motor and stuff that would fail your
Speaker 3: car was famous for eating the tapes. They had a
Speaker 3: lot of downsides, but that didn't outweigh up the initial
Speaker 3: upside of being able to take your music on the road.
Speaker 1: No, for sure. I mean that was a big deal. Like,
Speaker 1: I never was like this eight track sucks when we
Speaker 1: were listening to Seren night Fever. So I mean it
Speaker 1: couldn't have been that bad. But I think for people
Speaker 1: who are like really into music, it was probably very annoying.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, the irony is is that the cassette tape was
Speaker 3: introduced in nineteen sixty five kind of.
Speaker 2: Either just kind of squarely in the middle of.
Speaker 3: Or just before eight tracks were at their zenith of popularity.
Speaker 3: But they weren't marketed, like bands weren't releasing music on cassettes.
Speaker 2: At first.
Speaker 3: It was just like, hey, here's a cassette, and you
Speaker 3: can record yourself at home and interview your parents about
Speaker 3: what life was like in World War Two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do your own story core at home. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So people were like, I can start taping songs off
Speaker 1: the radio with these things, and essentially it just kind
Speaker 1: of avalanche from there. Cassettes took over because you could
Speaker 1: fast forward, you could rewind, and even though you had
Speaker 1: to flip the cassette the worst thing that you could
Speaker 1: possibly have to do in the world. They were way
Speaker 1: cheaper than eight tracks too, just to produce and to purchase,
Speaker 1: so cassettes pretty quickly took over. And interestingly, this is
Speaker 1: also happening at the same time with video VHS tapes
Speaker 1: were overtaking Beta max and laser disc at the same
Speaker 1: time too.
Speaker 2: What were you about to say, the worst thing you
Speaker 2: would have to.
Speaker 1: Do that was an addendum to having to flip a
Speaker 1: cassette tape.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I thought you were going to say, if
Speaker 3: the tape unspooled some you would have to put a
Speaker 3: pencil or use your pinky finger to rewind the tape
Speaker 3: and draw that magnetic tape back into the cassette.
Speaker 1: I always had to use a pinky because I never
Speaker 1: had a pencil, because I wasn't a nerd.
Speaker 2: Well, I had one in my front pocket, my breast pocket.
Speaker 1: So that what else you got? Anything else?
Speaker 2: Uh, just a couple of tidbits. It was a museum
Speaker 2: for a little while.
Speaker 3: There was an enthusiast named Bucks Burnett in Dallas Texas
Speaker 3: that had a museum because he collected him, and it
Speaker 3: seems like it was open for a handful of years.
Speaker 3: The largest collector now is a guy named Gary Hetzman
Speaker 3: who apparently has close to one hundred thousand tapes. He
Speaker 3: may have more than that, because that was twenty nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the most there's actually a very valuable one Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 3: So it's called Sinatra Joe Beam, Frank Sinatra and Antonio
Speaker 3: Carlos Jobim, which I bet is a great record, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because they did a limited pressing. Of course, it's scarcity
Speaker 3: that makes something valuable, and they only did thirty five
Speaker 3: hundred copies of that one. And if you have one
Speaker 3: of those, you can get a few grand for it.
Speaker 1: Apparently, why not, what are you gonna do? You're not
Speaker 1: gonna do anything to look at it, you might as
Speaker 1: well sell it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get one of those Lloyd's players and put that
Speaker 3: strap over your shoulder and go go down the street
Speaker 3: rocking it.
Speaker 1: I found another player too that I would actually like.
Speaker 1: It was made by Panasonic. It was called the Dynamite
Speaker 1: Plunger Portable a track player, and the reason why is
Speaker 1: because it had like a like the handle was like
Speaker 1: on a rod coming off of it, and then it
Speaker 1: had like a well the thing that you gripped, and
Speaker 1: it looked like kind of a dynamite plunger is heat
Speaker 1: came in yellow and all sorts of great colors.
Speaker 2: I'm looking it up because I got to see what
Speaker 2: you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, there was one for sale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, those are brad Man. Those are awesome.
Speaker 1: If I got into eight tracks, I would definitely buy
Speaker 1: one of those. But I'm not into eight tracks, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's no reason to Like, people are
Speaker 3: into vinyl still because of fidelity is so great. There's
Speaker 3: really no reason to buy eight tracks now unless you
Speaker 3: just want a little walk down memory lane of a
Speaker 3: sort of a creadier version of everything else.
Speaker 1: All right, right, well, I guess since we started walking
Speaker 1: out memory Lane, we just walked away from the short stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that means it's out. Stuff you should
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