formats

She left me with nothin’ but my 8-track tapes

Posted on by brucehhackett

When I was 17, in 1972, my best friend had an 8-track tape player installed in his Ford Maverick.  Like me, he was a music lover and album buyer, but when he was driving around, he had grown mighty tired of having to listen to commercial radio in the car, especially the incessant commercials and DJ banter found on AM radio.

As the guy riding shotgun, I enjoyed this too.  Being able to choose your own music seemed like a dream come true. But it didn’t take long for me to see several significant, annoying drawbacks of the 8-track format which prevented me from ever considering investing in it.  

To this day, for reasons I’ll explain, I contend the 8-track tape was an ill-conceived and poorly executed idea.

Perhaps you shared my distaste for 8-tracks and didn’t succumb to the temptations of portability and convenience.  Or maybe you joined the millions of other Americans who embraced 8-tracks in the 1970s, only to rue the day several years later when the entire format went the way of the dodo bird (and rightly so).

Here are the six most obvious defective characteristics of the 8-track tape that, in my view, doomed the format to an early obsolescence:

No rewind or fast-forward options.   At home, when you listened to albums, you could change songs easily.  Simply pick up the needle on your turntable and move effortlessly to another specific song, or put on another album.

Once the decision was made to embrace some sort of tape player, if you chose a reel-to-reel tape deck or a cassette tape deck, you could hit “FF” or “REW” in order to back up or move ahead to the desired place on the tape. With 8-track tapes, you didn’t have that flexibility. Eight-track tapes were configured as four “programs” sharing four parallel portions of the tape bandwidth. If you were listening to a song and decided you wanted to skip to the next song, or maybe go back and listen to the same song again, you were out of luck. All you could do was jump to one of the next programs and listen to whatever song was playing on that program. To listen to the song you really wanted to hear, you had to listen to other songs first before the one you wanted came back around on the program. Man, was this irritating!

Messing with the way the artist sequenced the music.  

Because 8-track tapes are set up as four programs lasting about 10 or 11 minutes each, the order of songs often had to be changed in order to maximize efficient use of the available tape.  For example, if an album’s first three songs lasted more than 10 minutes, one song might be replaced on Program 1 by a different, shorter song from later on the album just so the music would fit the 8-track’s limited format.  This might happen on all four programs, completely altering the flow of the music as intended by the artist.  A particularly egregious example was “Abbey Road” (see tracking below).

Even worse, sometimes there was no mathematical way to make the various album tracks fit in four 10-minute sets, so one or more tracks would actually have to be interrupted midway through.  The tape would then fade out, and several seconds (even as much as a minute or more) would pass before it would automatically switch to the next program, and the song would then fade back in at the point of interruption and proceed to its conclusion. Needless to say, this was an abominable way to listen to a song, and certainly not the artist’s intent.

Physical limitations of the tape.

The movement of the head at the point where it switched between programs could sometimes pull the tape up or down, causing the tape to fold over and start playing the back side of the tape. The tape would continue to play, buy very muffled and barely audible. Continued playing would flip the entire tape over, so the tape would be wound on the reel inside with the backside showing. The program switch point is often the place where the tapes would sometimes be ingested into the player (“eaten”), most often when the tape head moved from program 4 to program 1, its furthest track change movement. At that point, the tape was ruined, and the player could no longer play that tape, or any tape.

Head alignment:  Misalignment resulted in reduced high frequencies and allowed sounds from adjacent tracks to bleed over, an effect sometimes known as “double-tracking.”  Among audio service technicians, there used to be a joke that “the 8-track is the only audio device which knocks itself out of alignment four times every time you listen to it all the way through.”

The sensing foil that allows the tape to switch programs would sometimes dry up, fall off, and the tape would separate, and disappear inside the sealed cartridge. This was especially prevalent on bootleg tapes that typically used cheaper sensing foils.  In general, the 8-track market was flooded with cheaper bootleg tapes, found at truck stops and service stations. Had the tape been reinforced on both sides at this point, the tapes would have been much more reliable.

Capstan wear and buildup was also a chronic problem with 8-tracks.  As tape residue, dirt and lubricant accumulated on the capstan, the tape speed would increase and, since the buildup was uneven, the tape speed would become correspondingly uneven.  Similarly, some units were subject to the capstan wear, causing a decrease in tape speed. Any alteration to tape speed is clearly an unwanted defect that made listening to 8-tracks unpleasant and frustrating.

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I had a couple of other friends at that time who invested in reel-to-reel tape decks as an additional component in their home stereo systems.  These devices, introduced in the 1950s and generally purchased only by serious audiophiles, offered high-quality sound but were relatively expensive and a little tricky to operate for most casual music fans. They became more popular by the 1970s as prices came down and more casual listeners became interested in home recording and assembling customized mixed tapes that collected choice tracks from their album collections.

I loved this concept.  It was like being your own DJ, but without the commercials and talk.  You could put together mixes for every occasion — holiday parties, pool bashes, dances, romantic encounters and more.

But reel-to-reel tapes were not portable.  You could take them to a friend’s house only if he/she also had the necessary reel-to-reel player.  Most important, you couldn’t play them in a car.  So I chose not to invest in this format either.

Enter the cassette tape.  When first introduced in the early ’60s, their sound quality was pathetic, marred by a prominent hiss and muffled sound.  Their use was adequate for use in voice dictation and playback of children’s nursery rhymes and such.  So music lovers shunned the format…until the Dolby Noise Reduction technology arrived in the early ’70s to substantially improve cassette tape sound quality.  This development, combined with newer chromium-dioxide tapes, made cassettes a significantly more attractive format. Decent sound quality, portability, and fast forward-rewind capabilities made them the clear winner as the best music delivery system for your car.

In late 1974, I made the investment in both a home cassette deck for play back and recording, and an auto cassette deck to play tapes on the road. I immediately began compiling mixed tapes (“Hack Tapes,” I called them) and they became very popular among my circle of friends, many of whom requested them at parties and asked to borrow them for road trips. I even took to making custom mixed tapes as birthday or Christmas presents for friends and family.

As more people saw the advantages of cassettes over 8-tracks beginning around 1975-76, the 8-track began its inevitable slide toward extinction.

So what was the thinking behind the 8-track, anyway?

The “Stereo 8 track” cartridge was designed by Richard Kraus while working under Bill Lear for his Lear Jet Corporation in 1963. The major change from the reel-to-reel tape players then available was to incorporate a neoprene rubber and nylon pinch roller into the cartridge itself, rather than to make the pinch roller a part of the tape player, reducing mechanical complexity.

In September 1965, Ford Motor Company introduced factory-installed and dealer-installed 8-track tape players as an option on three of its models, and RCA introduced hundreds of Stereo-8 cartridges from its labels of recording artists’ catalogs.  This push from major corporations helped spark the interest in this new product, despite its drawbacks which would become obvious later.

Hundreds of thousands of car and truck owners took the bait. Those in rural and small-town environments seemed to embrace it the most, as evidenced by the number of country songs that mentioned 8-tracks. Here’s Conway Twitty’s “Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night”: “Get ready to go, we’re gonna roll about sundown, I got some boogie-woogie music on the old 8-track, /I got the top laid back and we’ll cruisin’ and foolin’ around, /Here I am baby, ready to play, slide it on in and we’ll slip away…” Or Alan Jackson’s song “1976”: “Eight track tapes were still in style and Elvis was still alive, Wonder Woman sure looked fine, Bionic Man was still Prime Time…”

Some consumers bought 8-track players for their home stereos, but curiously, the manufacturers didn’t offer 8-track recorders, so buyers couldn’t assemble their own mixed tapes like they could with cassettes. I believe that oversight helped contribute to the decline of the 8-track’s popularity, and by 1982, the record labels stopped selling new music in the 8-track format.

Some folks loved the format and defended it to its dying day.  In an article in Stereo Review magazine that collected opinions from music consumers, here’s one viewpoint from a guy who felt the 8-track was superior to the cassette: “Cassettes sound like crap.  They only play at 1-7/8 IPS (inches per second), so even with all the metal tape formulations, and Dolby, etc., the sound quality is limited compared to an 8-track.  If 8-track manufacturers had invested in the metal and chrome tape the cassette had, it would have blown away the cassette, because 8-track plays at 3.75 IPS, twice the speed of a cassette, and with analog tape, it’s all about tape speed.”

Here’s another: “Those who say that not being able to rewind an 8-track is a drawback are crazy.  You could just let it keep playing.  Want to start over again? Just switch from track 2, to 3-4 and back to 1.  There you are, rewound, with just a few button clicks.”

Other observers were merciless in their assessment of 8-tracks: “The primary reason the 8-track became extinct was because it was an unreliable piece of shit.  They simply weren’t built to last and, subsequently, they earned a reputation as ticking time bombs.  Truth be told, brand new eight-tracks often sounded good, and the tapes themselves were virtually indestructible. They rarely melted in the sun or cracked.  It was the internal components that started to fall to pieces over time.  If the manufacturers hadn’t opted for cheap construction, things might have turned out differently.”

“If the heads became misaligned even slightly (a VERY common occurrence), one track would bleed through into another track.  Worst case scenario:  two songs at equal pitch would play at the same time.  Best case:  a faint background of an altogether different track.  Either way, it was a thoroughly miserable listening experience.”

So there you have it.  The 8-track format, while perhaps not all that bad a concept, was shoddily merchandised and manufactured, and nothing was done to combat the onslaught of pirate/bootleg tapes on the market, which helped kill its credibility.

Cassettes, on the other hand, lasted for decades, staying viable as a music delivery option even as vinyl records were outperformed by CDs in the ’80s and especially in the ’90s and 2000s. (Eventually, though, cassettes and CDs both gave way to mp3 files and online downloading.)

Vinyl has since made a remarkable comeback in the past 10-15 years, and CDs too, to a lesser extent. Cassettes? Still hanging on by a thread in some circles, but 8-tracks are ancient artifacts from a bygone era.

If you want to get a chuckle out of anyone who lived through the ’70s, pull out an 8-track tape and ask them to slip it into their player!

If the wind is right, you can sail away and find serenity

Posted on by brucehhackett

In the late ’70s/early ’80s, there existed a commercially successful sub-genre of rock music that had been called “the West Coast sound,” or “adult-oriented rock” (AOR). Basically, it mixed pop, R&B, soul, funk, and jazz into impeccably produced radio-ready songs that emphasized melody and mellow vibes and downplayed rock’s harsher elements. “Soft rock,” some called it, although some of the songs were not ballads or even all that “soft.”

In 2005, J.D. Ryznar, a Southern California writer/director/producer who considers himself a fan of that music, became fascinated with how much of it seemed to be recorded by the same community of Los Angeles-based studio musicians. He developed a comedy video web series he dubbed “Yacht Rock,” which poked fun at what he guessed would be the music you’d hear if you frequented the marinas where the wealthy hung out sipping drinks on their yachts.

Although the songs of artists like Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, Toto and others were never referred to as “yacht rock” at the time the music was created, the moniker is now widely used, both lovingly and pejoratively, to characterize the precise, polished, sublime sounds that commanded a great deal of airplay in the 1975-1985 period.

Indeed, for almost two decades now, an Atlanta-based ensemble known as Yacht Rock Revue has been touring for up to 100 shows per year, pumping out convincing cover versions of songs that fall into the loosely defined category. I attended one of these shows in Nashville last week and found it be fun and entertaining, even if it was pretty much just a bunch of unidentified musicians operating as a competent cover band. They’re not unlike the “tribute bands” that cover songs of one specific group (like Dark Star, the famous Grateful Dead tribute band), except Yacht Rock Revue offer renditions of songs by a couple dozen different artists.

To my ears, many of the tunes played are great songs, even favorites of mine — tracks like The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes,” Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind,” Toto’s “Hold the Line,” Kenny Loggins’s “This Is It,” Nicolette Larson’s “Lotta Love,” Boz Scaggs’s “Lowdown” and Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun.” Sure, they were (and still are) overplayed, but that’s really the fault of unimaginative radio programmers rather than the artists who recorded them.

Ryznar admits that the “yacht rock” phrase was meant to gently mock the non-threatening, smooth pop that served as the soundtrack for his short-lived comedy video series, but the name stuck, thanks in large part to jaded music critics who seized on it in their effort to disparage anything that didn’t rock out aggressively with shrieking vocals and shredded guitar solos.

I asked a few music-loving friends what the term “yacht rock” meant to them, and one said, “It’s music for preppy, upper-class, entitled kids (or wanna-be’s thereof) who took the easy-listening way out of having to understand what rock ‘n’ roll was all about.” Another friend added, “Think Tad and Muffy on the back deck in the harbor, dressed in casual (but expensive) Abercrombie attire, with a pitcher of margaritas.”

I beg to differ. Even Ryznar said he used the term affectionately, and those who like this style have embraced the “yacht rock” term. They sold out the Ryman Auditorium last week, as they have in most cities where Yacht Rock Revue have performed, many showing they were in on the joke by wearing captain’s hats and other nautical gear.

It’s music with strong R&B and smooth jazz influences, high production values, clean vocals and light, catchy melodies. In 2014, music writer Matt Colier identified what he feels are the key defining rules of the genre: 1) Keep it smooth, even when it grooves; 2) Keep the emotions light even when the sentiment turns sad; 3) Keep it catchy; 4) Offer the exhilaration of escape.

Bands like Toto and Steely Dan featured a very clean, precise sound that was painstakingly produced, and critics who prefer a rawer brand of rock find that pristine sound to be a negative, synonymous with “too commercial” and “lacking soul or spontaneity.” Rock and roll is meant to be rough around the edges, uncultured, with in-your-face energy and immediacy, they claim. Well, hey, I like loud, growling hard rock too, but there’s room in my music library for both.

On Sirius XM, there’s a station called Yacht Rock Radio that plays this stuff exclusively. “We celebrate the smooth-sailing soft rock from the late 70s and early 80s,” says its website. “It’s the kind of rock that doesn’t rock the boat!”

“Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary,” released in 2024, examines the phenomenon, interviewing a variety of musicians and music industry types who, either enthusiastically or grudgingly, concede that the music in question is sonically top-shelf and melodically satisfying. Thundercat, a Grammy-winning bassist from L.A., said, “I’ve never identified it as yacht rock. I’ve always looked at it from the inside, like, ‘Dang, that’s just amazing songwriting.'”

Comedian/actor/musician Fred Armisen had this to say in the documentary: “Yacht rock, to me, is a very relaxing feeling. The singers all seem to be saying, ‘Hey it’s gonna be OK.'”

In its review of the film, Rotten Tomatoes concluded, “Retroactively dubbed “Yacht Rock” in 2005 by a parody website series, the easy listening, relaxing sounds of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which were beloved by many, came to be gently mocked and even dismissed by rock lovers and critics, but have since reclaimed their legitimate place in music history and are celebrated in this groove-infused film.”

So which artists and songs qualify as yacht rock? The boundaries are actually rather fuzzy, but you might start with Steely Dan. On albums like “The Royal Scam,” “Aja” and “Gaucho,” Donald Fagen and Walter Becker used a broad range of LA-based studio musicians to create the stylish palette they were looking for, and they were perfectionists about it, sometimes trying a half-dozen different guitarists (or drummers or keyboardists) to get just the right take.

Sometimes they used the truly professional musicians who went on to become the members of Toto, who, along with singer Michael McDonald, also guested on the recorded work of Christopher Cross, or Boz Scaggs, or James Ingram, or Nicolette Larson. It was fairly incestuous the way the same names kept popping up on these albums, but that’s because they were the “first call” session musicians most in demand at the time.

Said highly regarded guitarist Jay Graydon, “Many of these songs offered jazz chord changes, but rock/pop grooves. We’re closet jazz guys making pop records — confident, even cocky, and perfect performances every time.”

There are artists who might have a few songs that fall into the yacht rock template but the bulk of their catalog does not. People like Ambrosia, Little River Band, Pablo Cruise, Lionel Richie, Alan Parsons Project, Stephen Bishop, Art Garfunkel, Seals & Crofts, Air Supply, Phil Collins, Grover Washington, Eric Carmen, Steve Winwood and Hall & Oates have heard some of their music played on Yacht Rock Radio. Some are cool with it, but Daryl Hall, for one, took umbrage.

“It’s just R&B, with maybe some jazz in there,” he said. “Mellow R&B, smooth R&B. I don’t see what the yacht part is. It was just a fucking joke by two jerkoffs in California, and suddenly it became a genre. I never understood it. People misjudged us because they couldn’t label us. The music press always came up with all these kinds of crap labels. Soft rock, yacht rock. It’s nonsense, really.”

Toto ran into this same problem. Founders David Paich and Jeff Porcaro were seasoned studio players who formed Toto in 1977, blending rock, pop, jazz, funk, even some progressive. Their music didn’t fit easily into a single category, so critics didn’t know how to evaluate them. Ironically, their huge commercial success with tracks like “Africa” and “Rosanna” worked against them, as certain critics looked down their noses and dismissed them as “mainstream” and “anti-rock.” They were called technicians rather than legitimate artists, which were prejudices that had little to do with their actual musical performances.

There are those who label Cross’s 1979 megahit “Sailing” as the ultimate yacht rock anthem largely because of its chill nautical theme. Others say, “Anything with Michael McDonald on it qualifies.” McDonald himself finds the yacht rock designation “hilarious. It’s a bit exaggerated, but these things always have a bit of truth to them. They hit on something, and it has struck a chord for a lot of people out there who find the music nostalgic.”

My friend Paul, who has a lot of experience sailing, noted, “Yacht rock has had a bad rap because it sounds snooty and upper class, while the music is not. I think ‘Summer Breeze’ by Seals and Crofts sums it up very well.”

I’ve collected 30 songs from a variety of “yacht rock” playlists (including 15 from Yacht Rock Revue’s setlist last week) and included my own preferences in the playlist below. If you’re a yacht-rock naysayer, I’d bet good money there are at least five or six songs on this list that you admire, even if only secretly as a “guilty pleasure.”

One of my friends summed up one of the appealing things about yacht rock: “This should be your playlist of choice if you’re trying to get laid.”

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