"New" Van Halen 8-track

[lloyd3]

Blasted e-Bay! Out of idle curiosity, I watched the "boys" latest iteration, most recently on Jimmy Kimmel (EVH was 60 in January, DLR will be later this year) and was impressed with how "Unchained" sounded (Eddie is still very good, Mr. Roth, not quite so much, Ms. Bertinelli's son is now playing base).  I never had that particular album and looked at the date it was issued....in 1981. Hmmm, they were still making 8-tracks then, so I went to eBay to see if a functioning copy was available. Lo and behold, a copy of "Fair Warning" was available for dirt nothing, and was guaranteed functional.

Drat the luck, now I've got to fix my player (unwind the Wichita Lineman from around the capstan drive). Joe Dirt's got nothing on me. Mine will be wailing away again shortly. Ker-chunk!

[Baldwinvette77]

Take a pic of you listening to it  ... oh wait....

[Ghoste]

I think that is fantastic!  One of my all time favorite songs and albums and all of it perfect Charger music.

[lloyd3]

Thank you Ghoste, sounds like we have similar tastes. In the almost 20-years I've had this car, I've had plenty of time to figure out what tapes were the most appropriate to my particular form of nostalgia. Van Halen came along late in the game for me, so I can't say that I was a giant fan, but they certainly were part of the background music in the final years of my somewhat extended adolescence. Lately, I've looked into who remains competent and active from that period of music history (and there aren't many). Much like the muscle-cars of the era, rock & roll personalities seem to burn very brightly and then live very brief lives.  I was really not a fan of the band after David Lee Roth left (Van Hagar....nah!), but this latest version sounds good to me. "Unchained" was also something of a re-discovery for me, I'd heard it and liked it, but never really knew the name of the song or the album it came out on.  (It bothers me when I find something fairly good from my past that I had somehow overlooked! It makes me wonder what else I missed-out on?). I can't imagine there was much, but every once in a while something pops up that I'm happy to re-discover.

[lloyd3]

Over time your tastes change. You get tired of some things (that you hear all the time), and yet others seem timeless, almost evergreen. With 8-tracks, you also have a medium that was fragile even when new. Time has whittled down my assortment to a few old favorites that I keep in the car. I also have a backlog of different artists that I can dig out when the mood hits me (from Country to Beatles, from the Tubes to Merle Haggard). They do sound uniquely different than on any other sound reproduction system.  Certainly not great, and sometimes pretty terrible, but absolutely what I remember them to be.  

[cdr]

ROBIN TROWER      

[polywideblock]

cool collection        

  I'd suggest trying to find hysteria  to complement pyromania   

[Brock Lee]

I still have the factory AM/FM setup in my car. Some of my favorite moments are when that cool song comes up on classic rock radio. The crappy sound, the smell of old car interior, it transports me right back to the late 70's. That is a big reason I don't upgrade to a modern stereo.

[Chad L. Magee]

I remember 8-track tapes growing up, as my sister used to listen to them.  Unfortunately, most of them were disco. ...

A few months ago, I found a NOS cassette to 8-track adapter (still in the leather cover) at a local ReStore for $1.00.  I think it is either the Sparkomatic or Craig brand.  That one will be going into my 70 RT someday, as it did have the AM/FM 8-track radio originally.  Most of the 8-track tapes that I have found around here are country, not rock...

[lloyd3]

What I have found over the years of chasing them down is that most of the more-popular rock (& country) stuff got used to destruction (like I said, they are pretty fragile). The oddball stuff is plentiful and cheap (i.e., Slim Whitman, Jim Neighbors, and lots of polka bands).  There is still good stuff out there; it just isn't nearly as cheap. Another thing you're battling with this medium is that these things have lived far-longer than they were ever designed to last.  The foam that cushions the tape and holds it against the "reading" head deteriorates over time. Another challenge is the metallic tape that was used to splice the continuous roll together (as well as shift the head to another track) loses it's adhesive qualities and fails. That usually results in the tape being "eaten" by the player (which is what I still need to repair on mine).  

It's a losing battle, no question, and each time you play one of these relics you're risking a mild disaster.  If they hadn't been such a big part of my adolescence and then young adult years, I'd have pitched them all long ago (which, of course, I've already done once!).   When I bought this car in 1996, it had this tape player, and.... I had a good friend, who had a friend,  who made his living (such as it was!) fixing these artifacts, and he fixed mine (quite nicely I might add).  I quickly looked around and found a few good examples (I mostly lived on the road for my work then, so I really got around the country). Also, people knew that I was looking, and many gave me what they still had (sadly, most were not what I was looking for, and I still have many boxes of them laying around).  Fast forward another 20-years and here I am, still buying these silly things (on eBay now). The fellow who re-built my "deck" has since gone on to his reward, so if mine goes south again, that's going to be it for me.  But for now, I have these tapes and this player, in this neat old car.  Every once in a while I slip one in and play it. I can tell you, nothing sounds quite the same.

[472 R/T SE]

Just make sure you have a little book of matches on stand by.   

[lloyd3]

Or a hemostat........