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Short Stuff: 8 Track Cartridges · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's just us, neither Jerry nor Davis here, so it's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: short Stuff, the bereft edition.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: I want to thank NPR, capture dot Com, a website
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: called ps Audio, a website called ever Present, and more
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: for the research that went into the eight track cassette
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: player or eight track cartridge itself. April eleventh is National
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: eight Track Tape Day, so we've missed that. But if
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: you don't know what an eight track is, it preceded
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: the cassette tape and we're gonna get into what this
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: thing was.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you usually wedged in between LP record albums and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: cassettes because that's basically where it really popped up in
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the seventies is kind of where you really associate eight tracks.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: But it was way older than that, apparently, as far
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: back as the forties it was essentially coming into development.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, which surprised me. You might be wondering, like,
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: why did we need eight tracks at all? And it's
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: because at the time, dear listener, especially younger dear listener,
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: if you wanted to play the music that you wanted
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: to hear, you could play it on your record player
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: in your house. You didn't have a record player in
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: your car, you had a radio that played whatever the
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: heck they wanted. So all of a sudden, eight tracks
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: came along as a mobile version away to take the
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: music that you wanted on the road, either via your
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: car or via these awesome portable players, of which we had.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: One of it was a Lloyd's. We had a deck
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: in our conversion van, of course, but we had just
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: look up the white Lloyd's eight portable player and that
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: was the very one. I found it online and I
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: might even get one on eBay. It brought back so
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: many nostalgic memories.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, maning you totally should of One of my
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: friends in high school, Mitch, not dirty Mitch with skabies,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: but the right different Mitch.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: That sounds good.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: His grandma had a huge white Lincoln Continental with an
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: eight track deck in it, and we got our hands
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on a Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on eight track and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: we just cruise around listen into that in that car.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It was pretty.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Boss, skipping forward two songs at a time.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Ish. Yeah, yes, yeah, that's something I can't wait to
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: talk about. But just when a little background on the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: how this worked. It was built on ancient technology from
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties, which was magnetic film, which became
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: real the real film, and essentially is that is tape
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that has magnetized metal particles on it, and when sound
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: is converted into an electrical impulse, the tape writer translates
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that into well, it's an electromagnet. It translates it into
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a magnetic pulse that arranges these pieces of magnetic metal
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: into ones and zeros, and then the whole thing is
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: done backwards on the on the other end when you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: listen to it. This is the basis of not just
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: cassette tapes, but since eight tracks came first, this is
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: what they were built on over time. And there are
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: a few inventions that kind of were stepping stones that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: led to the eight track.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the Germans were using it in World
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: War Two. The Allies got a hold of it, and
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: eventually it got to the music industry and they were like, hey,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: we got a thing now that we can play this
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: stuff on the road.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: We think in a continuous loop.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: And the very first person to achieve the version that
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: could go to market was a guy named William Powell Lear,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: the creator of the lear Jet.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Previous to this, there.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Were some sort of housing and internal guts things that
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: were worked out by various people. A guy named George
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Eish in nineteen fifty three came up with the nab
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: cartridge or the fiddle fidilipak cartridge. It's also called a
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: cart if you ever heard of like on w CARI
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Cincinnati or old radio stations, they had carts, music carts,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: That's what that was. These were built for radio stations.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: It was short for cartridge slang. I guess you'd call it.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So that was followed up by the Month's Stereo Pack
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and it was created by Earl Madman Months, and he
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: directly influenced the development of the eight track because William
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Powell Lero is riding around in Madman Months's car when
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: he was playing one of the Stereo pack cartridges for him.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: But the thing that really kind of separated Months from
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: everybody else, he's the first one to go directly to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the record companies and say like, hey, let me license
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: your music and put them on this new format and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: let's start getting it out there. And like I said,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: William Powell Leer was like, this is a great idea.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to build on this and create a longer
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: playing version of it, and I'm going to call it
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the eight track.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then vinta Jet. Yeah.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: I should point out too quickly, and this can't be
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: a coincidence, but Earl Madman months was the.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Creator of that cart.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: If you're a Coen Brothers fan and a fan of
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: the movie Barton Fink, you will know that John Goodman's
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: character name is Carl Madman munt oh really, and there's
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: no way that's a coincidence. No, I don't know the
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: correlation or if it was just they got they thought
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: it sounded cool or something.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Who knows what a strange homage if it was.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Though, agreed, Should we take a break, Yes, all right,
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: we'll be right back with more on the bygone era
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: of the A track right.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: After this.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And things job Job. So all of this was being
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: developed in the fifties, I think as early as the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: forties technically, but the A Trek really came into its
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: own in the mid sixties. And the reason why is
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: because the Ford Motor Company said, Hey, everybody, have you
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: heard of these eight tracks? Well, we're going to start
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: putting eight track players in our nineteen sixty six model
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: cars as a high end option, and as more and
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: more cars started featuring eight track players, eight track cartridges
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: just became dominant as the form of how you listen
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to music outside of your home in a way that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: you controlled, unlike radio.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, they were pretty cheap. There were two
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: to three bucks.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: The most expensive on record was The Beatles' Greatest Hits,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: released in nineteen seventy. That was almost five bucks, four
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: dollars and ninety seven cents, which would be nice price, Yeah,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: the nice price. That'd be more than forty dollars today.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: So that was you know, that was an expensive eight
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: track for sure. It hit its popularity in the mid seventies.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: And I guess we should talk a little bit about how.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: These things played.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: You know, you've got the magnetic tape that you described
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: inside on a single, and there was a little motor
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: that pulled the tape across the audio head to make
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: it make the sound. But you're probably if you don't
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: know what these are, you're probably like, what is the
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: eight tracks?
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: What does that even mean? Each tape had eight tracks and.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: A sensing strip that told a solooid coil like, hey,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: a program is over, which was you know, roughly two
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: songs and now it's time to switch over to the
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: next track.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: So when I said you could skip ahead.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Two songs at a time, if you hit the button,
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: it would it would pop forward the two songs roughly.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So weirdly, I want to say just one thing because
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I don't want us to get emails. I saw it
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: in one place that it actually had four tracks, but
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: there were two of each of the four tracks, so
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: they were in stereo. So two times four was eight.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I only saw that in one place. Everywhere else kind
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of described it as eight different tracks like you just did.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: But that idea out there, all right.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so this, this whole thing what differentiates it
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: from cassette is that it was it played continuously. It
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: was an endless loop, right, So I guess if you
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: pressed play, it would play the whole album over and
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: over again until you press stop. Is that correct?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And the point is you didn't have to flip it.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: The downside of that as you couldn't rewind it or
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: fast forward it except for skipping two songs ahead. But
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: you couldn't go back two songs as far as I.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Know, Okay, so that was kind of one of the downsides.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Another big downside is that these tracks were not like
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: they just took an album and they cut it up
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: into four equal amounts of time or eight equal amounts
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of time, I should say, right, So if one track
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: could fit one in three quarters of a song, that
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: three quarters of a song would fade out, it would
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: be a click, and then when the next track started,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: it would fade back in. And people hated that.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Of course they did.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That's very clunky, understandably so, but that level of clunkiness
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: really kind of gets across the just the kind of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: attention to detail that was given to eight tracks. They
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: as far as technology goes, they were perfectly encompassed by
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: what they looked like, clunky, giant plastic key and just clunky.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I guess yeah. I mean it was interesting.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: They deserved to be popular for a while because it
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: was such a revolution and to be able to listen
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: to what you wanted to outside of your home. But
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the other limitations, you know, not rewinding stuff like that.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Apparently the internal components would fail a lot of times.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Like the cassette itself was very sturdy and long, lasting,
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: but the little motor and stuff that would fail your
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: car was famous for eating the tapes. They had a
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: lot of downsides, but that didn't outweigh up the initial
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: upside of being able to take your music on the road.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: No, for sure. I mean that was a big deal. Like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I never was like this eight track sucks when we
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: were listening to Seren night Fever. So I mean it
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't have been that bad. But I think for people
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: who are like really into music, it was probably very annoying.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Well, the irony is is that the cassette tape was
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: introduced in nineteen sixty five kind of.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Either just kind of squarely in the middle of.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Or just before eight tracks were at their zenith of popularity.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: But they weren't marketed, like bands weren't releasing music on cassettes.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: At first.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: It was just like, hey, here's a cassette, and you
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: can record yourself at home and interview your parents about
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: what life was like in World War Two.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do your own story core at home. Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So people were like, I can start taping songs off
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the radio with these things, and essentially it just kind
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of avalanche from there. Cassettes took over because you could
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: fast forward, you could rewind, and even though you had
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: to flip the cassette the worst thing that you could
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: possibly have to do in the world. They were way
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: cheaper than eight tracks too, just to produce and to purchase,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: so cassettes pretty quickly took over. And interestingly, this is
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: also happening at the same time with video VHS tapes
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: were overtaking Beta max and laser disc at the same
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: time too.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: What were you about to say, the worst thing you
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: would have to.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Do that was an addendum to having to flip a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: cassette tape.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Oh okay, I thought you were going to say, if
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: the tape unspooled some you would have to put a
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: pencil or use your pinky finger to rewind the tape
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: and draw that magnetic tape back into the cassette.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I always had to use a pinky because I never
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: had a pencil, because I wasn't a nerd.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I had one in my front pocket, my breast pocket.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: So that what else you got? Anything else?
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, just a couple of tidbits. It was a museum
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: for a little while.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: There was an enthusiast named Bucks Burnett in Dallas Texas
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: that had a museum because he collected him, and it
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: seems like it was open for a handful of years.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: The largest collector now is a guy named Gary Hetzman
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: who apparently has close to one hundred thousand tapes. He
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: may have more than that, because that was twenty nineteen. Yeah,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: and the most there's actually a very valuable one Frank Sinatra,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: So it's called Sinatra Joe Beam, Frank Sinatra and Antonio
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Carlos Jobim, which I bet is a great record, Yeah,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: because they did a limited pressing. Of course, it's scarcity
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: that makes something valuable, and they only did thirty five
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: hundred copies of that one. And if you have one
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: of those, you can get a few grand for it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Apparently, why not, what are you gonna do? You're not
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: gonna do anything to look at it, you might as
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: well sell it.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, get one of those Lloyd's players and put that
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: strap over your shoulder and go go down the street
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: rocking it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I found another player too that I would actually like.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: It was made by Panasonic. It was called the Dynamite
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Plunger Portable a track player, and the reason why is
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: because it had like a like the handle was like
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: on a rod coming off of it, and then it
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: had like a well the thing that you gripped, and
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: it looked like kind of a dynamite plunger is heat
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: came in yellow and all sorts of great colors.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: I'm looking it up because I got to see what
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you're talking about.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, there was one for sale.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, those are brad Man. Those are awesome.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: If I got into eight tracks, I would definitely buy
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: one of those. But I'm not into eight tracks, so
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's no reason to Like, people are
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: into vinyl still because of fidelity is so great. There's
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: really no reason to buy eight tracks now unless you
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: just want a little walk down memory lane of a
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: sort of a creadier version of everything else.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: All right, right, well, I guess since we started walking
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: out memory Lane, we just walked away from the short stuff, right.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that means it's out. Stuff you should
• 13:32
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• 13:35
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• 13:39
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