Cassette is dead

Cassette is dead the future is 8 track. They were the not so wise words of my dad when in 1972 he bought a 'stereo' music centre complete with Turntable FM stereo radio and 8-track player.  We only ever had the one 8 track tape called the 'Tijuana sound brass' a poor copy of Herb Alpert.  The player never worked and used to get stuck on one of the tracks, so the cartridge only played 'When The Saints Go Marching In.'

The turntable never ran at the right speed and of the half dozen records we actually had the musicians all sounded like they'd been on a heavy night of drinking before coming into the recording studio.  We had one LP (Long Player Record) called 'A Stereo Space Odyssey' Which consisted of over panned stereo and an American gentleman saying 'Odyssey, odyssey' from left to right.

In the end I remember ripping the 8 track out, cutting a hole for a cassette machine and buying a tape deck from Tandy (Radio Shack) which worked quite well.

Ok so why am I tripping heavily down memory avenue? Because that stereo centre was our ONLY source for playing pre-recorded material - if you wanted to listen to music you had to get a record out shove it on the turntable and play it.  Now at home we have at least a dozen devices that do the same, hold 1000s of tracks of music and HD video  and I don't have to sit down anymore and listen to 'A Stereo Space Odyssey' which was, frankly a really crap record.