DALLAS—Last fall, more than 200 people crammed into one of this city's premier contemporary art galleries for a three-day show. The white walls, accustomed to paintings that sell for thousands of dollars, were home to less rarified fare. The show? Eight Track Tapes: The Bucks Burnett Collection. "It was packed," says gallery owner Barry Whistler. Presiding over the affair was James "Bucks" Burnett, a portly fellow with long gray hair and a white beard. He wore a tailored brown suit covered with images from the album cover of Led Zeppelin's 1973 Houses of the Holy. Strangers showed up offering boxes of eight tracks, which Mr. Burnett happily pawed through, plucking out dusty rarities and putting them on display. The positive response "led me to think maybe I'm not insane," says Mr. Burnett. But it also helped him realize that a brief gallery show simply can't contain his vision for the hard plastic tapes, one of the clunkiest and most short-lived music formats of all time. He wants to open an eight-track museum.[Read more...]