03-17-2011, 12:11 AM
It's not nitpicking if the metaphor is as completely bungled as this one.
8-track tapes couldn't be rewound, because they didn't need to be rewound: the tape was a continuous loop. Similarly, they didn't offer fast-forward.
The nature of it being a looped tape, and with part of the transport inside the tape (the pinch roller) meant that it also didn't need "play" or "stop" buttons---nor did they have them, although recorders had a pause feature. So that whole interface on that app is dumb.
This app's features to play a few songs by one artist before moving onto another, or to shake to go to the next artist are distant analogies to the fact that an 8-Track tape could only play for a few minutes on each "track" (actually, track-pair for stereo) before having to be switched to the next track in order to continue hearing the program material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape
The S&G Central Park concert? That was 1981---I didn't realize 8-Track tapes were still being made. That's pretty close to the CD's intro.
This iconic Panasonic player has a "dynamite detonator" t-bar for manually switching to the next track:
8-track tapes couldn't be rewound, because they didn't need to be rewound: the tape was a continuous loop. Similarly, they didn't offer fast-forward.
The nature of it being a looped tape, and with part of the transport inside the tape (the pinch roller) meant that it also didn't need "play" or "stop" buttons---nor did they have them, although recorders had a pause feature. So that whole interface on that app is dumb.
This app's features to play a few songs by one artist before moving onto another, or to shake to go to the next artist are distant analogies to the fact that an 8-Track tape could only play for a few minutes on each "track" (actually, track-pair for stereo) before having to be switched to the next track in order to continue hearing the program material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape
... the Stereo 8 could switch between tracks automatically, with the use of a small length of conductive foil at the splice joint on the tape, which would cause the player to change tracks as it passed the head assembly.
The Stereo 8 also introduced the problem of dividing up the programming intended for a two-sided LP record into four programs. Often this resulted in songs being split into two parts, song orders being reshuffled, shorter songs being repeated, and songs separated by long passages of silence. Some eight-tracks included extra musical content to fill in time such as a piano solo on Lou Reed's Berlin and a guitar solo in Pink Floyd's Animals.
In rare instances, an eight-track was able to be arranged exactly like the record album version, without any song breaks. Examples of this are Quadrophenia by The Who, and some versions of Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues. Other examples of this rarity are Freeways by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Live Bullet by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Caught Live + 5 by The Moody Blues, The Concert in Central Park by Simon & Garfunkel, and Octave by The Moody Blues.
The S&G Central Park concert? That was 1981---I didn't realize 8-Track tapes were still being made. That's pretty close to the CD's intro.
This iconic Panasonic player has a "dynamite detonator" t-bar for manually switching to the next track: