From the Whited Sepulchre Garage Archaeology Project. A vintage 8-track of the Kansas classic "Point Of No Return".
I put away about 75 of these tapes on an upper shelf more than two decades ago, and dug them out last night. Good times, good times.
As I explained on Facebook to a 30-year-old-youngling, back when the earth was young, and the lava was still cooling, we didn't have cell phones that stored music.
We didn't have MP3's or Pandora, or even the now-primitive relic that you know as a CD. This was before we even had cassettes.
These were called 8-track tapes.
It was a long spool of tape that had 4 separate L and R channels. You couldn't speed up or reverse. You could only switch around from track 1 to track 4.
As the tapes aged, you could often hear two songs playing at the same time, which you remedied by folding up a piece of paper to tilt the cassette upward in the player.
Most of them were eventually "eaten" by the tape player. They were the only recorded music that could be played in an automobile for a long, long, long, long time.
Late 1960s through the early 80's.
Here's Kansas doing "Paradox", one of my favorites from this album. (I was a moderately bad violinist as a kid, and Robbie Steinhardt's rock violin artistry absolutely fascinated me.) You can safely ignore the first 50 seconds. It doesn't start crankin' until then.
I put away about 75 of these tapes on an upper shelf more than two decades ago, and dug them out last night. Good times, good times.
As I explained on Facebook to a 30-year-old-youngling, back when the earth was young, and the lava was still cooling, we didn't have cell phones that stored music.
We didn't have MP3's or Pandora, or even the now-primitive relic that you know as a CD. This was before we even had cassettes.
These were called 8-track tapes.
It was a long spool of tape that had 4 separate L and R channels. You couldn't speed up or reverse. You could only switch around from track 1 to track 4.
As the tapes aged, you could often hear two songs playing at the same time, which you remedied by folding up a piece of paper to tilt the cassette upward in the player.
Most of them were eventually "eaten" by the tape player. They were the only recorded music that could be played in an automobile for a long, long, long, long time.
Late 1960s through the early 80's.
Here's Kansas doing "Paradox", one of my favorites from this album. (I was a moderately bad violinist as a kid, and Robbie Steinhardt's rock violin artistry absolutely fascinated me.) You can safely ignore the first 50 seconds. It doesn't start crankin' until then.
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