Pluggers by Rick McKee for January 05, 2020

The eight-track player in a car bit… as if. Good luck too, though.

I installed a eight-track player in my first car back in the early 70s.

I never had much good luck with those things. I lost a couple because the tape broke and snarled around a roller. I much preferred cassettes although they can be tricky too.

At first I was expecting our plugger to be wishing for Chrysler’s in-car record players to return. I’ve never seen a 16 rpm record.

Maybe now these millennials will stop asking that annoying question, “that’s what you did music on?”

What a terrific album he has there to listen to, whether on vinyl, CD, or streaming.

Whisky A-Go-Go ! … The place where “The Doors” cut their teeth :-)

Secret agent man, Summer Times, Baby I need your lovin’, Poor side of town, Said the Snake… Just love Johnny Rivers! I’d rather hear em again and again than the lousy lyrics and catastrophic cacophony emitted from electronic keyboards that gets sold as music today.

Well I put in a 4-track tape player in my ‘64 Dodge Dart. Two year later I replaced it with an 8-track. But at home I had a combo 4-track 8-track machine because the two formats weren’t compatible, sort of like VHS and Betamax

I don’t understand why people are so into vinyl. They weren’t that great back in the day and still aren’t. They damage easily and need a lot of attention. I can remember when CDs came out you couldn’t give away albums because nobody wanted them. The prices now are through the roof for even used albums.

My experience with 8-track is limited to re-building the cartridges used for commercials at the campus radio station.

I doubt any 8 track tapes survived more than a few years. My player was gone a few days after installation, along with the passenger window.

Vinyl LPs, yes. 8-track tapes, no. One of the worst ideas in recorded music ever.

A friend had a CD player with a removable faceplate to prevent theft (it’s complicated), and there was a blank panel you could put up in its place. I told him he should replace the blank panel with the facade of an 8-track player with Foghat’s Greatest Hits sticking out.

I still have some 78’s. Talk about fragile.

I’ve had this idea years ago of having an 8track car player (had one in my first) with a cassette insert adapter and an adapter inside with the mp3 jack. Tweaking the art of kludge. Actually, I love the usb insert on my Fit, everything I can put on a usb stick.

One of my precious memories is working night shift, radio in the background, and the tune becomes 20 minutes of skip. You wonder when the DJ will come back from his smoke and notice. It’s fun when things go wrong.

I have a bunch of LPs and a ton of CDs. I am NOT rebuilding my collection every time they come out with some new razzle-dazzle.

I sure miss my DY-NO-MITE 8!

I installed an 8 track in my 59 Chevy impala.

Vinyl outsold CDs for the first time in decades, last year. I started buying mine in about 1960. Still have most of it, too.