Triptych: 8-Track Fail

Back at the old childhood basement, two of my brothers and I hooked up our Sound Design 8-Track player from back in the day. Yes, "The White Album," Beach Boys, KISS, the Who, America: they all came back via magnetic tape, four tracks, and the brutal cachung of the manual track-selector button. We'd forgotten just how lame and unfriendly, not to mention inefficient, was 8-Track technology: ugly red plastic cases, no fast-forwarding or rewinding, songs re-sequenced to fit the track time-limits, or rudely divided in between tracks. How did we put up this?

And, alas, the inevitable disappointment: while we were grooving to "Brown Sugar" on Made In The Shade, the tape was eaten alive, usually the sad denouement of music in the Basement Era.