The Mid 1970s, 1974 to 1976

I've not been able to find the particular models of 8 track units I had.  The above YouTube videos "set the mood", though.

This was a very tumultuous time.  My Mom and Dad had been divorced.  I was a young teen in high school.  I had attended FIVE different schools while living at the house on the river road.  I guess the boundaries and bus routes kept getting changed. 

Shortly after I started high school my Dad asked my brother and I if we wanted to move in with his then girl-friend and family.  It was one of those "good idea at the time" at the time things.  A lot of the years get all "smushed" together and it's difficult to keep things in the correct chronologic order.

I do recall that even though I'd purchased a couple of 8-track tapes, I didn't really get in to 8-track cartridges until after the move.  Why did I get in to 8-track, when I was already in to compact cassette?  It was a matter of availability, I suppose.  The same hardware store that sold the speakers I was accumulating, stocked a good selection of 8-track tapes, and they were quite current as well.   Tapes didn't get scratched or get worn out like records did.  Yes, tape did wear out and dgrade iover time, but they did tend to stand up better to normal "wear and tear."  When we moved in with my Dad's girlfriends, I shared a bedroom with her oldest son.  I still was using my old BSR.  i remember listeninging to such singles as "Lady" by Styx, "I'm Not In Love" by 10CC, "Mandy" by Barry Mannilow, "Some Kind of Wonderful" by Grand Funk, "Tinman " by America and "Love Rollercoaster" by the Ohio Players.  I was still in to the Top 40 type music. 

The first "stereo" unit we had was an 8-track under dash automotive one.  I'm not sure of the specific manufacturer of the deck.  After discovering I didn't have a power source strong enough for the deck to change tracks, my Dad brought home a 12 Volt "car" battery for us to use.  When the battery wore down, we just had to charge it up again.  I actually had mounted the speakers from the old DUMONT TV in to a pair of the speaker boxes I'd received from my Granddad.  I thought I was in audio heaven.  The deck had a manual thumbwheel tracking adjustment.  I rarely needed to resort to the book of matches to adjust tracking. 

Still, I figured it would be better idea to be using a home unit, than having a 12 volt car battery in my bedroom.  I bought an AM/FM 8-track unit from the  son of my former babysitter.   It was one of those low-end cheapo units that one could get at Canadian Tire, K-Mart, Zellers or such places.  Quite shortly after that, I sold that unit, along with the old BSR I had [which I'd since installed a stereo phono cartridge into it].

My next unit was a CANDLE AM/FM 8-Track recorder. The neat or quirky thing about that unit was, was that it actually had speakers built right in to the unit.  The speakers were small, oval, full range ones, so I managed to get a set of external speakers of better quality.

For the most part I was still in to the Top 40 genre.  Rock 102 [WBEN  FM], Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on WYSL FM [or was it WISL FM?]  I listened to CHUM FM; at the time it was still a "progressive rock" format station.