I drive a Chevy Camaro from '78, it has an 8 track deck too.
It would be really cool to find some 8 tracks with rock/hard rock on 'em, but nothing to be found in Belgium as far as I know. They are being sold alot on ebay, but mostly from the US so postage is outrageous for a couple. Too bad, so I bought an adapted 8 track in which you place a normal cassette, so I'm able to play those. But the adapted 8 track is pretty much shit: one time a friend of mine played some Slayer tapes when we were driving to a festival and it sounded like King Diamond
Levi wrote:But the adapted 8 track is pretty much shit: one time a friend of mine played some Slayer tapes when we were driving to a festival and it sounded like King Diamond
A major improvement I would say - got to get me one of those. I cannot imagine how great Awaken the Guardian or The Deluge will sound!
gauze wrote:Hi
1st post here, I had to chime in on 8 tracks as my first albums as a kid were on 8 track (Deep Purple) and I got into buying them when they were at the absolutely cheapest in the late 80s-early 90s when you could get them for a dime pretty commonly.
As stated they were created for use in North American cars in 1965-66 and the format is pretty lo-fi because of this, due to cars generally being rather loud riding at the time. I think the top frequencies it could reproduce were in the 8k hertz range vs CD (20kz) or LP (I think up to 50khz can theoretically be reproduced from an LP if everything in your stereo could as well (speakers, amp))
They also released some 8 tracks in the UK, the original UK Harvest quadraphonic issues of Dark Side of the Moon fetch top dollar on the 8 track collecting market (I know of a still sealed copy that fetched US$750) and I have heard rumors of Motorhead stuff seeing the light of day in the UK but I have never seen one ...
Anything considered metal at the time in the 70s in the US was certainly produced on 8 track. They are pretty hard to find though and get OK money on Ebay, in my years of searching flea markets and thrift stores I have only turned up a few Priest and Sabbath (more of these and almost always Paranoid and Master of Reality) 8 tracks as well as proto-metal stuff like Sir Lord Baltimore (Deep Purple, etc).
Also as stated post82 stuff was record club only and are exceedingly rare, probably the only metal record I have of this era is Quiet Riot-Condition Critical. I saw Def Leppard-Pyromania once but I always hated them ...
i picked up some 8-tracks at the recordshop i used to work at in Boston; dude had TONS of them laying around...the only 'cool' titles i found (and later sold) were 'nevermind the bollocks', 'DEADBOYS 'young loud & snotty', 'trout mask replica' (BEEFHEART) and a live VELVET UNDERGROUND one (last two sold for big buck$). i'd love to see some obscure metal ones...
Given the recent "cassettes = retro-kvlt-cool" mentality, I was recently thinking, "gee, I wonder how long it will be before metalheads start looking for old 8-tracks?". Give folks another 5 years and they'll be looking for 78s and wax cylinder recordings of 'sabbath bloody sabbath'.
8-tracks were before my time, but they did have some advantages over cassette tapes. Namely, the not having to turn them over and being able to skip to certain songs. They also had some issues though; they were very sensitive to moisture/humidity and thus could get screwed up really easily (I think betamax video tapes had the same problem...?). I really gotta wonder how their sound quality has held up over the years; I suspect most of them would be almost unplayable by now unless they had been extremely well cared for, but maybe not.....?
"I'm sorry Sam, we had real chemistry. But like a monkey on the sun, our love was too hot to live"
-Becky
Hellpreacher wrote:i picked up some 8-tracks at the recordshop i used to work at in Boston; dude had TONS of them laying around...the only 'cool' titles i found (and later sold) were 'nevermind the bollocks', 'DEADBOYS 'young loud & snotty', 'trout mask replica' (BEEFHEART) and a live VELVET UNDERGROUND one (last two sold for big buck$). i'd love to see some obscure metal ones...
I assume this was at In Your Ear and the 8 track guy was Reed.
