Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Stories from Way Back - Walking Man & Why I Buy 8-tracks

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

“Dave was going to see Morley. He was trying to find the courage to ask her to marry him.” Some vintage Stuart McLean this week with two stories from way, way back.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome! Last week on the pod we played a couple of Stuart's very early stories, one from way back before I started working on the Vinyl Cafe, and another from my very first concert. It was fun to hear Stuart's voice from back then and think about how much it changed over the years. So for today's show, I've chosen two more older stories,

stories from back in the day. We'll start with this one. This is Stuart McLean with Walking Man. Dave began smoking cigarettes when he was 12 years old. So by the winter he turned 26 he had had 14 years of experience and he was pretty darn good at it. That was the winter of 1976, the winter he quit smoking for the first time. Dave was living in Edmonton during that winter, sharing a place with a bunch of musicians while he waited for the summer rock tours to begin. You need a special sort of moment

if you're going to do something as pretentious as giving up the weed. After Dave sailed through both New Year's Eve and his birthday in a cloud of smoke, he began to get twitchy because there weren't that many days of consequence left between where he was and where the summer began, and he knew that he didn't have a hope of quitting smoking once he was on the road. The best he finally could come up with was Groundhog Day. He stayed up most of the night before reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot and smoking his brains out.

He lasted four weeks. One of his flatmates was a sax player from Prague who claimed to be a friend of Václav Havel's. The sax player smoked some nasty little cigarettes from Turkey that came in a white package with a red moon and a red star and a bunch of snakes squirming around on the cover. Everyone else thought he was a nice enough guy, but as far as Dave was concerned, the sax player was the Antichrist. He only smoked at home and only in the kitchen, so that's where he left his cigarettes, in the kitchen for convenience and full view on a small table by the kitchen. So that's where he left his cigarettes, in the kitchen for convenience

and full view on a small table by the kitchen phone where everyone wrote down phone messages which, of course, was the first place Dave looked whenever he walked into the apartment. As I say, Dave managed to go four weeks without a cigarette that winter, which was about

four weeks longer than he should have lasted. Dave said giving up cigarettes was like losing his best friend. that winter, which was about four weeks longer than he should have lasted. Dave said giving up cigarettes was like losing his best friend. He didn't just miss the act of smoking, he missed everything about it. He missed going to the store to buy cigarettes. He missed opening cigarette packages. He especially missed the act of lighting them. Dave was never great at sports.

He's not a natural athlete, but lighting a cigarette was a piece of business that he could do really well. When it came to lighting a cigarette, Dave's hand-eye coordination was just about as good as anyone's. He could open a pack of cigarettes and get a smoke out into his mouth and close the packet and put it away all in one fluid movement. And without missing a beat he could get out his matches and strike the match against the striking surface which was something in itself. Striking a wooden match along sandpaper was one of Dave's favourite things. So much happens. There's a little explosion and the match flares and the smell of sulfur fills the air.

You have to wait for the flame to subside until it's perfect so it's perfect when you bring it up to your face to light your cigarette. It's not over then because you still have to extinguish the match, which Dave believed he did as gracefully as any symphony conductor waving a baton, shaking his arm in the air musically before he dropped the match into the ashtray. Like someone once said, smoking can be as graceful as ballet, and lighting a cigarette can be performance art. Quitting smoking meant giving up a lot more than a few hits of nicotine.

It was especially hard because you didn't just do it once. Once would be hard enough. But Dave soon learned he had to quit over and over and over. He'd forget he'd quit. He'd go to sleep and he'd wake up and he'd look outside and he'd think, what a glorious day, I think I'll have a cigarette. And then he'd remember he wasn't supposed to have cigarettes anymore. And he'd have to weigh the matter in his mind and quit again. During the day, he'd sometimes get completely absorbed in a task, something like looking up a number in the phone book. He'd get so absorbed he wouldn't think of cigarettes for long periods of time, sometimes as long

as a minute. And then he'd find the number he was looking for in the phone book and he would think, I did that rather well. I should have a cigarette. And then he'd have to quit again. That can wear a man down, quitting smoking every minute or so for weeks. Finally, one night Dave was sitting in the kitchen and the sax player from Czechoslovakia was smoking his cigarettes from turkey and Dave was watching him the way a cat watches a bird. He was thinking, smoking is what I was put on this earth to do. Smoking is the meaning of my life.

The more sensitive among you might sense Dave's heading for trouble here. Because he was thinking, smoking's what I do. I smoke, therefore I am. And he said, give me one of those. And the Czech sax player said, it's about time. And Dave snatched one of those nasty brown smokes out of the red and white package with the snakes writhing about. And he lit a match and he brought the match towards his mouth. He thought it was going to be the greatest hit of tobacco he ever had in his life.

He thought pulling that sweet nicotine into his lungs was going to be like sipping on a glass of the finest burgundy. But it wasn't. It tasted just like all the other cigarettes he'd ever smoked. The only difference was he didn't have to worry anymore. He had his friend back. Dave quit twice more between 1976 and 1978, the most memorable time being at the end of the summer of 1977. He was road managing the Canadian leg of a deaf leopard tour when he met a promoter in Thunder Bay who earnestly explained how he had stopped smoking.

Walking. They were standing in the penalty box in the Fort William Gardens while Rooster had a local heavy metal band and the opening act on that night's show went through their disturbingly loud sound check. Walking, said the promoter for about the tenth time. Start walking. The promoter kept rubbing his head obsessively above his right ear. And whenever he stopped, Dave could make out a bald spot the size of a silver dollar. They were doing a show in the Sioux the next night, Sioux St. Marie. After that, it was Sudbury and North Bay, and then they were finished.

After North Bay, they had two weeks off in Toronto, and Dave was going to get to see Morley. He was trying to find the courage to ask her to marry him, and he knew she didn't like him smoking, and he was desperate to stop. He wanted to be done with cigarettes by the time he got to Toronto. He couldn't stop thinking about what the promoter had said. It was 10 o'clock the next morning when the bus pulled into the Esso station on the edge of Highway 17. They were somewhere around Blind River. All morning it had been rocks and trees and not much else. They had only seen the occasional town.

Everyone jumped off the bus and went inside to get coffee. They stood around the parking lot in pairs, smoking and stretching their legs. It was when they were filing back onto the bus that Dave was seized by a spasm of determination. He looked at the sound man and he said, I'm going to walk from here. Would you deal with tonight's show? The sound man, a taciturn kid from the rock who was still half asleep said, whatever. And that was that. Once in their life everyone has probably thought of not getting back into the vehicle that has brought them to some lonely gas stop on some lonely highway. Once in their life, everyone has wondered what they would do if they had the nerve to

step out of their life. This is what Dave did. He walked out to the highway and he stood on the shoulder and he watched the bus roar off down the road. The last person he saw was Roosterhead's bewildered drummer, his face pressed doubtfully against the back window. Dave lifted his arm in a sort of salute and he shrugged, and then they were gone. He was standing all alone on the shoulder, the summer sun hot on his neck.

The first thing he noticed was the silence. And then the gravel at his feet, and then the grasshopper that whizzed by his face. And he turned and he walked back into the cafe, and he stopped at the cash register and he bought himself a pack of cigarettes. Belvedere's. And he sat down in the coffee shop and he ordered a cup of coffee and he opened the package of cigarettes slowly and he looked at the neat rows of smokes inside. He carefully pulled out the one on the left of the bottom row.

And then he pushed it back and he took the one in the top right instead. And he lit it and he smoked it right down to the filter. And then he stood up and put a two dollar bill on the counter beside the nearly full pack of cigarettes and he walked away. He wasn't only quitting smoking, he was quitting that pack of Belvederes. He walked out of the gas station and he started walking down the highway, the sun in his eyes. He had his wallet in his back pocket and nothing else. Nothing much happened for the first hour. The occasional car passed him. He startled a porcupine that was drinking from a puddle

in the ditch, but mostly it was quiet. And before he had gone far, Dave felt an overwhelming And before he had gone far, Dave felt an overwhelming sense of freedom descend upon him. He felt light and free of responsibility. No one knew where he was. He didn't even know where he was. He looked up at the sky as he walked. It was something he hadn't done for years. And as he watched the clouds change form, he felt an inexpressible sensation bubbling up from his gut. He had walked about

four miles before he recognized what it was. Happiness. He was happy. He was happier than he'd been for so long he couldn't remember. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so happy. It was a perfect moment, a moment so perfect it called for a cigarette. Dave stopped and he reached for his smokes and when he realized he didn't have any he looked around in panic. He saw a butt on the ground that someone must have flipped out a car window. And it was at that moment, standing over that butt on the edge of the highway, that Dave understood that he had to keep walking. Couldn't stop.

If he stopped walking, he was doomed. As long as he kept moving, he wouldn't smoke. He couldn't smoke. So he started moving again with his jaw screwed tight, swinging his arms back and forth, man in a hurry, not happy man at all, a man with worry bubbling around inside him. And that's how he went through the town of Blind River. It was lunchtime and he was hungry, but he marched right through the town with his eyes on the road ahead of him. He didn't look at the stores on the left or the shops on the right. He didn't look at the houses. He just looked at the road at his feet.

The highway of despair. The highway that was taking him out of town and away from temptation. The road he was following. Two hot hours later, he came to a sign that said, welcome to Algoma Mills. Dave knew he had to stop and get something to drink or he was going to be in trouble. He could see a general store coming up on the right. There were a group of kids on bicycles hanging around in front. As he turned into the parking lot, a kid who looked to be about 14 appeared from behind

a pickup truck and started walking along beside him. Mr. E said, will you do me a favour? Dave was a little dehydrated, he was suffering a little heat stroke, but he didn't stop moving. He kept walking. The kid had to struggle to keep up. The kid looked around and lowered his voice, will you buy me a pack of smokes, mister? Dave turned and looked at the kid beside him, but he didn't stop moving toward the store.

The kid was holding out a handful of money. Please, mister, come on. Dave frowned and sighed and abruptly changed directions, wheeling away from the store, heading back to the highway. The kid stopped for a moment and then ran after him. Please, mister, you can keep the change. Dave stopped and stood still without turning. It was the first time he had stopped moving in over four hours.

He felt dizzy. His body began to vibrate. The kid stopped too, right in his tracks. He was about five yards behind Dave, staring at Dave's back. Is there a beer store in this town? Asked Dave. He didn't turn around. The kid looked puzzled. Yes, he said.

Dave said, do you want a beer? The kid, who was starting to look a little worried, shook his head. And then he realized Dave couldn't see him. No, he said. Dave said, if you want a beer, I'll buy you a beer. I'll buy you a bottle of rum if you want. His fists were clenched by his thighs.

The kid started to back away. Dave turned around and started to walk towards him. I'll buy you booze, said Dave. I'll buy you any kind of booze you want, but I'm not buying you cigarettes. And then he turned and he started walking down the highway. After he'd gone about 25 yards, the kid called out after him. Jerk, said the kid. There was a donut store on the edge of town.

There was no way he could go into a donut store, but they had a drive-in window. Dave lined up behind a family in a station wagon from Saskatchewan. The station wagon was packed with vacation equipment. Coffee, said Dave, bending over to speak into the microphone when it was his turn. And two tuna sandwiches. He took the sandwiches and the coffee and he kept moving. If he stopped moving, he was sure he would start smoking, so he didn't stop. He'd eaten one sandwich by the time he was 50 yards down the road.

He shoved the other one in his pocket. He opened the coffee and immediately splashed half a cup down his pants. It's impossible to drink and walk at the same time. An hour later Dave was back in the middle of nowhere, back with the trees and the rocks. And a green hydro truck lumbered past him and then about a quarter of a mile on, slowed down, pulled over and reversed back along the shoulder. When Dave was standing beside the cab, the driver opened the passenger side door. Smoke billowed out of the cab. Hi, said the driver, waving his cigarette at Dave.

You need a ride? No said Dave, a cigarette, give me a cigarette. What said the driver? Give me a cigarette said Dave or I'll kill ya. The driver stared at Dave for a moment trying to size him up, then he slammed the door. Jerk, he said, and he peeled off down the highway. That was in the middle of the afternoon. At dusk, between Sprague and Spanish, Dave came across a man fishing over the edge of

a bridge, except when he got close, the man turned out to be a woman. Name's Jen, she said. Her green pickup was parked at the far side of the bridge. Any luck? Asked Dave as he stopped and leaned on the railing. Plenty of luck, said the woman, but no fish. And she spat into the water. Me too, said Dave. You have a cigarette, asked the lady.

No, said Dave, I was about to ask you the same thing. I quit, said the lady, I don't smoke no more, except for what I bum. You chew? Pardon, said Dave. You want to chew, said the woman. She was holding out a blue tin disc about the size of a hockey puck. Dave looked in. It looked like coffee grounds.

Go ahead, she said. It does the job. Dave took a pinch of tobacco between his fingers. Gotta take more than that, she said. Dave took more. He stared at the tobacco he was holding between his fingers. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. He didn't know if he was supposed to put it up his nose or in his mouth.

Under your tongue, said the woman, taking the tin back and slipping it in her pocket. Dave slipped the plug of tobacco under his tongue. His eyes widened. So this is what it's like, he thought. It's like having a mouthful of hot peppers. His mouth was quickly filling up with saliva. He looked at the woman for help. They say you get a better hit if you don't spit, she said. They say you get a better hit if you swallow. Dave swallowed. It was a mistake.

It felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of gasoline. It felt like his throat was on fire. He began to cough violently. So violently, he inhaled the soggy plug of tobacco that was resting under his tongue. His face turned red, his eyes bulged, the heat emanating from his esophagus turned his tear ducts into a sprinkler system. He couldn't catch his breath. Jen watched him with academic interest.

He was doubled over, his left hand clawing at his throat, his right hand pawing the air in front of him. Jen took the right hand and rested it on the railing of the bridge. Me, she said, I spit myself. And she spat into the river. Jen was a taxi dimmer. She and her husband had moved north so we could into the river. Jen was a taxi dimmer. She and her husband had moved north so we could open the business. Six months after they arrived, he took off with another woman and she taught herself

the business and kept going, what else could she do? Dave walked right through that night, stopping to spit every few minutes. The dawn came around five, first gray like ash, then streaks of pink until the horizon caught fire and the whole sky began to glow like the tips of a thousand cigarettes. Dave stopped for breakfast at 6 a.m. at a fast food joint in Macaro. He used the takeout window again. He got himself a coffee and an order of toasts with cheese. He'd be walking for 19 hours. He was tired and worn out, but he still didn't trust himself to go inside. If he stopped moving, he was sure he would start smoking, so he kept walking into the morning sun. This time he spilled the coffee down his shirt.

He's never been sure where he actually gave up. Somewhere on the Toronto side of Sudbury. He walked right through the Big Nickel without stopping. Somewhere on the other side of Sudbury he was sitting on a bench at a gas stop pretty well baked and a bus which said Toronto stopped right in front of him. And he figured it was an omen. And he got on.

He remembers it was the middle of the night. He'd been walking for maybe 40 hours. He'd covered over 150 miles. There was a 20-minute stop in Barrie. He had a coffee. He got to Toronto at dawn. He got a room and slept until supper. He phoned Morley and they went out for dinner to an Indian place on the Danforth.

After they had ordered, he came right to the point. He said, do you want to get married? And she didn't say a word. Not a word. She stared at him and then at the floor and after a minute he said, well? And Morley said, have you got a cigarette? And Dave said, you don't smoke. And she said, just give me a cigarette, okay?

I'm out, he said, and he went and he bought himself a pack of Belvederes. And that was the end of that. He left town at the end of that week. They hadn't settled the marriage thing. Morley said she had to think about it. When he left town, he was sure there was another guy in the picture even though she said that wasn't it at all. Dave stopped smoking by chance six months later. It was in Huntington, Virginia in the

heart of tobacco country. He smoked the last two cigarettes in his package as they drove past waving tobacco fields and red drying sheds piled high with crisp brown leaves. When they pulled into town at two in the morning, every convenience store and restaurant was shut tight and Dave had to mooch off the sound man who smoked menthol. Dave was so hungry for the feel of warm tobacco smoke filling his lungs that he smoked five menthols before he realized what he was doing. The next morning he woke with a strange, stale, minty taste in his mouth. He felt sick and he waved off the morning cigarette the sound man offered over coffee. And he never smoked

again. He and Morley got married the following spring. Thank you. That was the story we call Walking Man. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story, so stick around. ["Walking Man"] I have the best mother-in-law. Her name is Joni, and I am so lucky to have inherited her as family. She's loving, thoughtful, supportive, and she's amazing at keeping in touch. Even though we live about seven hours apart, she has a great

relationship with us and the kids. She sends little packages and cards in the mail just because. She's that kind of mom. I try to do the same for her, but with two little kids and a full-time job, I don't do as good of a job as I'd like. And that's why I'm so excited about my Mother's Day gift for her this year. It's an Aura digital frame, a frame where we can share our family photos directly with her. I just send them from my phone and they pop up in her frame, another province away.

Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. For a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $45 off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat Frame. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Use promo code VINAL. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. I was hoping this would be a surprise, but since I know Joni listens to the podcast, well, happy Mother's Day.

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app, or online at madjuri.com. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is Stuart McLean with Why I Buy Eight Tracks. Well, I have something here that I thought I should read tonight to you. It's a little piece written by a regular customer at the Vinyl Cafe, the record store. His name is Dwayne Crothers. This is not something that we habitually do on the show, read something that someone else has written, but I thought I'd read this today's show because Dwayne, well Dwayne grew up in Vancouver. He used to work

at the Magpie on commercial drive. He's a big chap, big bone guy, black framed glasses, wears a brown windbreaker that says Carl on the chest. Dwayne buys all his clothes at thrift stores or yard sales. He usually looks like he's on the way to an audition for an episode and leave it to Beaver. I've always enjoyed him. He's a pretty hip guy. Anyway, this is called Why I Buy Eight Tracks. Dwayne wasn't always into eight tracks. He sort of fell into them when he moved to Toronto. He hitchhiked to Toronto three years ago. It took him two weeks. Four days actually moving. The last four days he spent the first ten days standing opposite the super store at 12th and Rupert in Vancouver.

Duane's a huge music fan and he tried to bring his entire record collection with him. So he's out there with a knapsack and a pile of cardboard boxes taller than he was. He stood there for ten days before his girlfriend Cheryl, his ex-girlfriend Cheryl, who was bringing him food twice a day, finally told him that she had had enough and if he wanted to leave, he had to leave the records behind him, which he did. And that meant Dwayne arrived here in Toronto with no music, arrived in Toronto with no anything actually. And then one afternoon he was at the Salvation Army thrift store looking for smiley face plates. As well as his records, Dwayne left his entire smiley

face dinner service behind him in Vancouver. And he was finding meals just weren't as happy as they used to be. Anyway, it was during that visit to the Salvation Army that Dwayne bought his first eight-track tape, the Village People's first album, one of his all-time favorite records. Only cost him 25 cents. And you know what? It didn't matter that he couldn't play it. Lots of days you don't play records you own. You own a record like the Village People, there are probably more days that you don't play it than days you do. Well a few weeks later Dwayne was cruising yard sales just looking when he came upon

an entire carton of eight tracks. Now in his former life he wouldn't have given that carton a second look however he was enjoying the village people so much that he checked it out and he just about dropped over dead when he saw a copy of Roxy Music's Avalon for ten cents. And of course he bought it. Who wouldn't buy it? Ten cents for a copy of Avalon? He would have had to pay five or ten dollars to get that on vinyl if he could have found it. Twenty if he wanted to buy it on CD, maybe more. And it was exactly the same music. The next weekend, Dwayne went looking for eight tracks and he came home with 12. Cost him a dollar fifty for the dozen.

He got a KTEL compilation called Dynamite. He got Blood, Sweat and Tears. He got the first Kiss album and he got Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf. Within a few weeks, Dwayne had 200 eight tracks in his basement apartment. He spent hours trying to work out how to organize them, stacking them on the vertical, then trying the horizontal. Put a lot of thought into which tapes belonged beside which tapes. He still couldn't play them though, but it didn't seem to matter. Playing them didn't seem to be the point until one night he met a girl at a party who seemed

to be interested in everything he was saying. So he was encouraged and he took a chance and he told her about his eight track collection and she looked at him like he was crazy and said, isn't that a little like buying gasoline without owning a car? She had been talking to him intensely for an hour and as soon as he mentioned 8-Track, she started looking vaguely around the room and then she drifted away. Something like that can take the wind out of your sails,

especially if that something is a pretty girl, which it was. But it was only a setback. A few weeks later, Duane was walking home from another party when he spotted a portable stereo on the sidewalk beside a pile of garbage. It was an old Panasonic with detachable speakers, a turntable with a missing tone arm, a radio, and a slot to insert eight track tapes. So he lugged it home. And he set it down on the floor beside his mattress, and he plugged it in without even taking off his jacket, and the speakers crackled with dust, and Dwayne just sat there beaming at the static.

And then he said, what am I doing? And he jumped up, and he ran out of of the bedroom and he lifted the village people tape off the wall and he raced back into the bedroom and then slowed himself down carefully so he could appreciate the moment and he stuck it into the slot underneath the control knobs and the machine swallowed the tape with a satisfying kachunk. And for the first time since he had moved to Toronto, there was music in his life. And he lay back on the floor and he smiled up at the ceiling and fused with the satisfaction of his new sound system and his 478 albums that he had to play that had

cost him less than $50. So pleased with himself and the music that he didn't notice that the machine was sucking the Village People tape out of the plastic cassette box and spitting it out onto his bedroom floor like a mound of spaghetti. It didn't matter. He just needed a nudge. And finding that machine that night was the nudge he needed. He repaired the Village People tape. Took him two nights to figure out how to get the plastic box open and another evening to wind the tape back onto the spool, which he did backwards the first time, which wasn't such a bad thing really. Turns out the village people sound just about the same backwards as they do the right way

around. Dwayne still has that old Panasonic. He repaired it too, but he has 16 other eight-track players now. His favorite, the one he uses the most, is a bright blue plastic orb in the shape of a bowling ball that he got for his 29th birthday. And he owns well over a thousand tapes now, And he's never paid more than a buck for one of them, most of them ten cents each. And he's moved out of the basement apartment. Dwayne moved in with Brian at the beginning of the summer. Brian, who works weekends at the Vinyl Cafe, which is

how I got to know Dwayne through Brian. They're a good match, the two of them. Dwayne's eight tracks fit right in with Brian's collection of Styrofoam wig heads. Every man needs a hobby. And Dwayne wrote this piece that I want to read to you last autumn. He's submitted it to the focus section of the Globe and Mail, but he hasn't heard from them yet. This is called Why I Buy Eight Tracks. One, because they're cheap. In less than a year, I've bought over a thousand albums, and if these were CDs, they would have cost me over 20,000 bucks. My eight-track collection cost me less than 200. Two, because at that price, I can take chances. At a diamond album, I can try music I'd otherwise not risk.

I can afford to make mistakes. Three, because you can only buy them secondhand, looking for eight tracks is like being a prospector, only safer. More than once at yard sales, people have taken me into their homes and led me into their basements and opened a dark cupboard and pointed at a box under a pile of old clothes. It's an adventure. Whoever has an adventure, buying a CD.

Four. This is not a nostalgia thing. It's a political thing. It's like shopping at Goodwill. It feels good to buy something that hasn't been sold to you. That's what it says right there. I didn't write this. Dwayne wrote this. Five. I've never paid GST on an eight track. Six, because eight tracks are the dumbest musical format ever invented. There is no fast forward and sometimes songs are cut right in the middle of a track and you have to wait for them to change tracks to finish the song and the graphics are bad.

They're so wrong, they're right. Seven, the sound is better. The wider the tape, the bigger the sound field. The bigger the sound field, the greater the fidelity. Eight, because when I bought Julia Miller home and she looked at my eight-track collection, she said, any guy who collects eight tracks must have some good in him. Nine, because the tape might break at any time. There's no guarantee it'll come out of your machine in one piece. And so you never

know when you might be listening to a tape for the last time. And that means you have to appreciate the moment. You have to listen with the attention people gave music before recording devices. Ten, eight tracks are in the vanguard of the coming analog revolution. Our mission is to keep analog alive until its ultimate victory over digital, whatever the format. Eleven, because a valiant sedan was the finest car ever made. And you can still find valiance from the 1970s that are in mint condition. That's underlined three times. A green 1972 valiant with a velvet underground eight-track on the dashboard and a Johnny Cash eight-track and the player would be about the best way to move between any two places.

Twelve, and finally, not convinced? Think about this. You can buy a CD burner for $200. You can buy blank CDs for $2 each. If you buy 8-Tracks for 10 cents each, which is easy, you could buy a thousand eight tracks for a hundred dollars. Now, if you transferred those one thousand eight tracks onto one thousand blank CDs, you end up with a thousand CDs. And those thousand CDs will cost you no more than about two thousand dollars, and that's the cost of about 100 CDs in a record store. That means

you get 900 CDs for free. Get the picture? Thank you. That's a bit different, eh? Fun. That was a story we call Why I Buy Eight Tracks. Alright, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. That's more or less the moment when he gave up. Foam flecked and defeated, he lay back on the hood and he rode through the final rinse, which wasn't, as it turns out, unpleasant.

Soft and warm like a tropical rain. Would have almost been relaxing. Was he not blinded by the wax foam? And was he not startled by a distant roar of wind? Sounded like an approaching freight train. It was the dryer, of course. But Dave was too muddled to figure that out. When the wind hit, it hit with such a force it felt like it was peeling his eyelids off. He began to scream for

help. Lying on the hood of Mary's deaded car, his eyes closed, kicking and screaming like a newborn baby. He was still screaming when the garage door opened and the car rolled out into the coffee shop parking lot. Screaming so loud he didn't sense the crowd gathering around him. Until the guy with the ball cap stepped forward and tapped him on the shoulder. His shirt was torn off. His pants were in tatters. He was half naked, beaten and bruised. But he was exceptionally clean. Someone call the tow truck.

That's next week on the pod. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is eight-track aficionado, Greg DeCleute. Just before we recorded this, I asked him if he ever had an 8-track and his answer was absolutely. And then he went on to name Zeppelin. Who else?

Okay. Hendrix. Who else? Aerosmith. Yeah. Okay. Sex Pistols. Never mind the bollocks.

Anyway, yes. 8-track aficionado. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, who I also know has several eight tracks. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, who might've had a few, Greg DeClew and me. I have never owned an eight-track, but several, several cassette tapes. Jess Milton.

Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now. You all know how much I love Majoree. They're my go-to jewelry brand these days, and I'm excited because the stacking event is here. You can get up to 20 percent off everything when you spend $150. Perfect timing for a little spring refresh. Majoree makes fine jewelry for every day.

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