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Rewind and Rock with Sharon Stewart: Ford Introduces 8-Track Players and Styx "Renegade" · Mega Rock On Demand

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: White snake on your powerhouse rock station would slide it in.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, speaking of sliding it in, we're gonna talk about eight-track tapes, all right, on Rewind and Rock.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: They actually had to slide that tape into the player.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was on this day in 1965, actually, that Ford began offering factory-installed eight-track players in the Mustang, Thunderbird, and Lincoln, giving drivers something new control over the music in their cars.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course, this was before Spotify, CD, and cassettes.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was the eight-tracks.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But eight-tracks had some serious flaws.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the players themselves were notorious for eating tapes.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you had to put a matchbook between the uh the tape and the tape player just to keep it from doing that.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, a lot of times back then, frustrated drivers with yards of tangled tape, they would throw the whole thing out the window once the eight-track player ate the tape.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of eight-track roadkill along America's highways back then.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um, here's another thing.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Albums had to be divided among four programs on the eight-track, which could mean splitting a song right in the middle.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the one I remember, I had six pieces of eight on eight-track.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Renegade started on program three, faded out mid-song, and then clunk, switched to program four, and then faded back in.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was awful, honestly.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why nobody's bringing them back today.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, how about this?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just for old time's sake, I'll play pieces of eight for you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Minus the clunk as we look back to this day in rock and roll history when Ford introduced the eight-track player in their cars September 15th, 1965, as we rewind in rock on Mega Rock.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my for my life from the long arm of the long