Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: Seth is, of course the producer of Stuff to All
Speaker 1: Your Mind, but he also co hosts the music podcast
Speaker 1: Rusty Needles Record Club. Today's episode is going to be
Speaker 1: something of a crossover episode because we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about Stuff to Blow your Mind type stuff, but this
Speaker 1: one is going to veer directly into vinyl record territory
Speaker 1: for I think a large, a large portion of the episode,
Speaker 1: and especially when you get into that area, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really gonna have to defer to you, seth uh, being
Speaker 1: the master of records that you are, and with myself
Speaker 1: being someone who was told from an early age not
Speaker 1: to touch records and being an obedient child, I obeyed
Speaker 1: everyone on that and I have virtually not touched any
Speaker 1: vinyl my entire life, because that's what grown ups are
Speaker 1: supposed to do. You know, it's not actually a bad
Speaker 1: rule to make for children, because you know they are
Speaker 1: very delicate and um not not only um do I
Speaker 1: manufacture vinyl on my own, which is has taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about it. But also, um, I run a
Speaker 1: record label, so I've had it pressed at at vinyl factories,
Speaker 1: and and I'm a big vinyl collector on my own,
Speaker 1: and even me, I'm I'm very familiar with what you
Speaker 1: should and shouldn't touch. Basically only touched the rim and
Speaker 1: the label never touched the grooves. Even I just because
Speaker 1: I'm a human being, I'll be clumsy and drop something
Speaker 1: You'll like scratch against an edge and like, well, that's
Speaker 1: ruined forever, you know, So I can't imagine entrusting that
Speaker 1: to a child, you know. Uh, That's why children's records
Speaker 1: are always just scratched into oblivion. So so you know,
Speaker 1: I I understand, and I also understand why even adults
Speaker 1: have are hesitance to to to jump into that world.
Speaker 1: But I also see the attraction of it obviously. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a weird house, cinema episodes are always pointing out
Speaker 1: which movies score has been re released in some sort
Speaker 1: of strange ultra rare vinyl release, and and it's often
Speaker 1: beautiful for just from a packaging standpoint, but also when
Speaker 1: you get down to the details of the record pressing,
Speaker 1: Like I see the appeal of it. So it's not
Speaker 1: for for lack of of occasionally thinking, hey I could,
Speaker 1: I could start getting into vinyl. But but yeah, just
Speaker 1: from from an early age I was I was told
Speaker 1: shouldn't touch that, and I agree. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: wonderful for forcing yourself to be actually involved in what
Speaker 1: you're consuming musically. That's my favorite part about vinyl. Sure,
Speaker 1: the sound quality is better, There's there's no getting around that.
Speaker 1: It is better. But uh, in addition to that, I
Speaker 1: love that I need to put the record on the
Speaker 1: little turntable, I need to turn on my stereo, gotta
Speaker 1: put the needle in the groove, I need to wait
Speaker 1: fifteen to thirty minutes, flip it over, put put it
Speaker 1: back on the other side. You know, like like I
Speaker 1: have an active interest in what I'm listening to, and
Speaker 1: therefore it makes me appreciate it more. It's just like
Speaker 1: eating sunflower seeds, you know. Cracking open the shells is
Speaker 1: half the fun, you know. Okay, so you give that
Speaker 1: tactile experience with it. It's not just a passive series
Speaker 1: of zeros and ones being pre chosen by an algorithm.
Speaker 1: I chose this record, I'm putting it on. I'm making
Speaker 1: these noises happen in my own small contribution way. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're going to be talking in general
Speaker 1: about things hidden in music. Uh, you might think of
Speaker 1: them as easter eggs, um or any other number of
Speaker 1: terms you might use hidden messages if you'd rather. And
Speaker 1: we'll also be talking about accusations and panics associated with
Speaker 1: some of these techniques, the psychology involved, and specific examples
Speaker 1: from music history. And as we explain these various record
Speaker 1: based techniques, I will give some real world examples of
Speaker 1: them that you can find in your local record store
Speaker 1: and that hey, I think you should listen to, because
Speaker 1: I think every example I give is something that I'm like, Yes,
Speaker 1: I recommend this, go check out out excellent. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: some of these examples are gonna come up are things
Speaker 1: that were mentioned in papers I'll be citing, but they're
Speaker 1: obviously ones in many cases you are very familiar with,
Speaker 1: and you can perhaps give a little more background on. Right,
Speaker 1: all right, So the first stop is going to take
Speaker 1: us back before musical recording was possible, or at least
Speaker 1: to a time when the main way to record music
Speaker 1: was at least via media, was to put it on
Speaker 1: paper was to write down the music, and even then
Speaker 1: a certain amount of of musical encoding is possible. So
Speaker 1: we have to be reminded that music is information. So
Speaker 1: it shouldn't come as a surprise that hidden information can
Speaker 1: be present in music in ways that predate analog or
Speaker 1: digital media. Not even getting into what's possible with language itself,
Speaker 1: because obviously, uh, you know, any given songs, lyrics in
Speaker 1: any given language, there's gonna be a enough complexity there
Speaker 1: that you can hide things that you can you can
Speaker 1: sort of get across points, uh, subliminate lee, you can
Speaker 1: use metaphors. I mean, all the weapons of language are
Speaker 1: at your disposal if you at all know how to
Speaker 1: use them when you're crafting lyrics and uh. But but
Speaker 1: beyond that, we can certainly look at examples of musical cryptograms,
Speaker 1: because basically musical symbols and musical notes can and have
Speaker 1: been used in substitution ciphers. And we've talked about substitution
Speaker 1: ciphers on past episodes of Stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: When musical theorists in the West began to assign letter
Speaker 1: names to notes, steering I believe the ninth century, see
Speaker 1: it also became possible to turn things around. Uh though
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I believe the Romantic period and beyond
Speaker 1: that that this was really explored. So you might be wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about here with the obviously we
Speaker 1: have notes, we haven't play an A play a B natural, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And this is where we see a great example of this,
Speaker 1: and this is the one that I mentioned a number
Speaker 1: of you're familiar with, um the famed Baroque composer Johan
Speaker 1: Sebastian Bach, who through seventeen fifty would employ what we
Speaker 1: call the Bach motif. So that's a B flat and
Speaker 1: a A c and then a B natural. Now you
Speaker 1: might say, well, well that's a B A C B
Speaker 1: that what that's that's meaningless? Well, in German a B
Speaker 1: flat is B and a B natural is H, thus
Speaker 1: spelling out Bach clever. Maybe maybe once it's been explained,
Speaker 1: maybe a little too obvious, but but yeah, there it's
Speaker 1: an example where he decided to using the system in
Speaker 1: place to to to label these different sounds, to then
Speaker 1: turn it around and write is no own name in
Speaker 1: the music itself. And there are numerous other examples of
Speaker 1: this from other composers you know, I've actually looked this
Speaker 1: up before because it is it's a fun idea to
Speaker 1: communicate with the sounds of notes. In fact, I remember
Speaker 1: there was a gosh, I believe it was a scene
Speaker 1: in the Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia where they're on
Speaker 1: like a game show and these are like what these
Speaker 1: are things you'll bring to a picnic and they'll just
Speaker 1: play notes and they'll like spell out the words, so
Speaker 1: like e G G. I'll bring an egg that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, you know, like it's it's it's something you
Speaker 1: can do and it's fun, it's puzzle e it's it's
Speaker 1: good times. So I've looked this up in the past.
Speaker 1: There are approximately, especially if you include the h as
Speaker 1: as a part of it, around two hundred words that
Speaker 1: you can spell using just musical notes, so you know,
Speaker 1: things like cabbage head. You know, like these things, these
Speaker 1: things are possible, they're they're a part of that language.
Speaker 1: So I think it would be difficult, but I bet
Speaker 1: you could form a message, you could form sentences, and
Speaker 1: you know, we'll talk more about more examples right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you're essentially talking about music obsessed individuals,
Speaker 1: total music nerds in different ages just eventually getting in
Speaker 1: there and just experimenting with what they could do. Be
Speaker 1: it something that was about creating new sound, elevating the art, etcetera,
Speaker 1: or just having a laugh, and that's those those two
Speaker 1: ideas seemed to run throughout the history of of this
Speaker 1: kind of hidden messages in music activity. They are also
Speaker 1: older examples of musical cryptograms, including the work of Renaissance
Speaker 1: musician Joaquin d. Prey lived fourteen fifty five through fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty one. He was a French Flemish composer and he
Speaker 1: composed a particular work this is Missa Hercules du Ferrari.
Speaker 1: It was for the Duke of Ferrara, and the music
Speaker 1: is derived from the musical letters in the duke's name.
Speaker 1: A musical cryptogram that was later known is the saghetto cavato.
Speaker 1: Another example, American occultist Paul Foster Case would create a
Speaker 1: cryptogram in the twentieth century that made use of esoteric
Speaker 1: symbols and concepts, and if I understand what I was
Speaker 1: reading on it correctly, it used occult sim oles Hebrew
Speaker 1: and Latin to translate a word into notes. Though the
Speaker 1: usage here would be more ceremonial than anything. Um, but
Speaker 1: but one of one of one of several examples will
Speaker 1: be touching on that it that either is within the
Speaker 1: realm of the occult or we'll touch on examples later
Speaker 1: that are more in the area of sort of like
Speaker 1: faux occultism or accusations of occultism, etcetera. So those are
Speaker 1: all excellent examples. But let's give our audience one more
Speaker 1: that's a bit more modern. Something they can they can
Speaker 1: go find a record of right now, the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven album Let There Be Rock by A C d C.
Speaker 1: They close with a song called a Whole Lot of Rosy,
Speaker 1: where the primary guitar riff goes A C A D
Speaker 1: A C A or Akadaca, which is A C d
Speaker 1: c's nickname in their home country of Australia. Ah, that's impressive.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that, huh so Johan Sebastian Bach. Also,
Speaker 1: the members of A C d C all all the
Speaker 1: same brain when it comes to coding the songs. Here, yes,
Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder. So there's just there's just a few
Speaker 1: brief examples to demonstrate what is It was possible even
Speaker 1: before analog and digital media becomes involved in the scenario.
Speaker 1: But at this point let's move on to some more
Speaker 1: analog examples. So the first thing we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: with actual recorded audio is something that I'm sure many,
Speaker 1: if not most, of you are familiar with at this point,
Speaker 1: either by virtue of various panics over popular music, especially
Speaker 1: satanic panic, and it's um reverberations through media from everything
Speaker 1: you know, from horror movies to to supernatural television shows
Speaker 1: and so forth. But also it impacts actual record and
Speaker 1: actual recording practice, an actual production practice, a technique known
Speaker 1: as back masking. So before we get into any actual
Speaker 1: examples of back masking or allegations of back masking, and
Speaker 1: this is where it gets, it gets very weird because
Speaker 1: it seems like on the surface you would think either
Speaker 1: you're doing it or you're not doing it. And if
Speaker 1: you're doing it, truly it's it's provable, but I guess
Speaker 1: a little more ambiguous than that. So in simple terms,
Speaker 1: this is reversing audio, especially recordings of human speech, playing
Speaker 1: it backwards in a recording. In many cases you know
Speaker 1: you know it when you hear it. Basic backwards speech,
Speaker 1: which is also sometimes utilized in media for like alien
Speaker 1: words or arcane spells and so forth. A lot of
Speaker 1: times it's used for creepy effects, and I think we
Speaker 1: all we you know what, when you hear it, you
Speaker 1: can hear this this sound effect, and it's it's people
Speaker 1: speaking backwards. Um, that's what it is. It's almost unfortunate
Speaker 1: that we're also familiar with it at this point because
Speaker 1: back in the old days, before you know, before we
Speaker 1: all walked around with computers in our pockets and we
Speaker 1: all have the ability to record ourselves whenever we wanted,
Speaker 1: it must have truly sounded foreign. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: here audio played backwards, and it's been like, wow, what
Speaker 1: is that. I've ever heard any creature make that noise before?
Speaker 1: And now when we hear it, we just go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's reverse audio. We know what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, we know, we know the hallmarks of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess with with actual reverse audio, like one
Speaker 1: of two things happens. It just sounds weird and cool.
Speaker 1: That sounds like dark magic and so forth, And I
Speaker 1: think that's especially nowadays. That's how most of us hear it.
Speaker 1: But also the brain can't help but lean into it,
Speaker 1: and sometimes try and hear things in it. Uh, And
Speaker 1: that gets into a whole other area. Now, the other
Speaker 1: side of the equation we mentioned allegations um of of
Speaker 1: of back masking, erroneous back masking, arguments that, especially um
Speaker 1: dangerous seeming rock bands of previous decades, the idea that
Speaker 1: they were actually back back masking in a way so
Speaker 1: that what sounds like just normal lyrics can be reversed
Speaker 1: and have a totally different meaning, usually one that is
Speaker 1: satanic or sometimes not. There's a great episode of The
Speaker 1: Simpsons where a joke is made that Paul McCartney uh
Speaker 1: snuck in a recipe for lentil soup into Maybe I'm Amazed.
Speaker 1: We have to play it backwards to hear it. And
Speaker 1: here's actually the really fun part. Over the closing credits
Speaker 1: of that episode of The Simpsons, they do play maybe
Speaker 1: I'm amazed. This is actually a famous episode. This is
Speaker 1: the one where at least becomes a vegetarians this episode.
Speaker 1: That's a great episode. Yeah, and um so uh in
Speaker 1: that episode they do play maybe I'm Amazed over the
Speaker 1: closing credits. And if you actually record the closing credits
Speaker 1: audio and reverse it, they really did insert a recipe
Speaker 1: for lentil soup into that song. It's wonderful. Wow. I
Speaker 1: had no idea, not in the real song, only in
Speaker 1: the Simpsons episode. Wow. Yeah. So it shouldn't surprise anyone
Speaker 1: that this practice goes back pretty much is as long
Speaker 1: as we've had the ability to record and play back speech.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was reading, you know, there's a book
Speaker 1: titled Language, Myths, Mysteries, and Magic from Any fourteen, and
Speaker 1: there's an article in there on backmasking by Karen stoles Now,
Speaker 1: and the author points out that this actually goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to Thomas Edison around eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: as the noted American inventor and businessman would would experiment
Speaker 1: with playing music backwards I think, notably a whistled version
Speaker 1: of Yankee Doodle Dandy um, and this would have been
Speaker 1: used via um tinfoil phonograph recordings. He observed that music
Speaker 1: quote is still melodious in many cases, and some of
Speaker 1: the strains are sweet and novel, but altogether different from
Speaker 1: the song reproduced in the right way. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think we're I think this is a realization that certainly
Speaker 1: someone like Thomas Edison was in a position to uh,
Speaker 1: acknowledge and admire back then, and then there's kind of
Speaker 1: been a wave of it throughout audio history and certainly nowadays.
Speaker 1: I've never really looked at this before, but if you
Speaker 1: go on like YouTube, you'll find so many examples of
Speaker 1: people taking music and reversing like whole albums just to
Speaker 1: play it backwards and see what happens. Uh. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: have a specific thing they're going for, maybe there after
Speaker 1: something in the lyrics, or it's one of the cases
Speaker 1: that will be touching on later on in this episode.
Speaker 1: But other times, especially with I saw the number of
Speaker 1: like ambient albums, people just want to experience the album
Speaker 1: they love, both both the forwards and backwards. I've got
Speaker 1: another little recommendation to throw in here. Okay, So there
Speaker 1: is a wonderful musician and his name, his real name
Speaker 1: is Dave Portner, but he goes by A V taar
Speaker 1: A V tear is most famously from the band Animal Collective,
Speaker 1: but he has a wonderful solo career as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a time when he was married to one
Speaker 1: of the members of the band Moom and her name
Speaker 1: was Krea Breckon. Okay, so they released while they were
Speaker 1: married a collaborative album together called Pull Hair Rubbi. All right, now, Um,
Speaker 1: when this album first leaked back in the days when
Speaker 1: like leaking was a big issue. Uh, folks would listen
Speaker 1: to and they were like, oh, this is a bad leak.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the entire album is played backwards. Someone
Speaker 1: let me know when you get a real version of
Speaker 1: the leak. Well, A V. Tare himself came onto these
Speaker 1: boards and was like, no, no, that's that's the real version.
Speaker 1: When he and his wife had finished recording their album,
Speaker 1: they decided, you know, the entire album sounds better if
Speaker 1: you play it backwards. So what became a pretty straightforward
Speaker 1: folk album became a pretty foreign sounding backwards album. And
Speaker 1: it's it's wonderful. It's called Pull Hair Rubb. I. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it, and um, it sounds almost instrumental. It
Speaker 1: sounds very foreign, and it sounds very strange because once
Speaker 1: they did reverse it initially and they decided, yes, this
Speaker 1: whole album just will be backwards versions of every single song.
Speaker 1: Then they did start leaning into that. Then they made
Speaker 1: special decisions that really highlighted those choices, and it worked
Speaker 1: out really well. Genuinely, it's a wonderful album. I think
Speaker 1: people should listen to it on a very I guess
Speaker 1: kind of simple level. It reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: what's going on with AI and creativity nowadays, be it
Speaker 1: with text or visuals, where you have a level of
Speaker 1: human uh creativity that's going into the machine, it's getting
Speaker 1: spat out in some form, and then there's going to
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of tweaking, either after tweaking to
Speaker 1: the resulting material, or then going back and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I see what the technology does to what I
Speaker 1: started with. What can I do to optimally, um change
Speaker 1: the results and make it even more in line with
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to create. I think this has been
Speaker 1: something UM that's an element of creativity that people have
Speaker 1: used forever, which is just taking some of the decisions
Speaker 1: out of the hands of the creator to help influence
Speaker 1: something else, whether it be like those um you know
Speaker 1: those like cut up practices where you're trying to write lyrics,
Speaker 1: so you write little words, put them in a hat
Speaker 1: and pull them out one by one, or um you
Speaker 1: know those famous Brian Eno cards where there's like difference
Speaker 1: like prompts written on each card that you pull out,
Speaker 1: and that's supposed to help you with your production process.
Speaker 1: Like you know, there's there's lots of examples of this,
Speaker 1: and yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I think
Speaker 1: AI and intentional reversing just takes a few of those
Speaker 1: decisions out of the hands of the artist. Now Stalls
Speaker 1: Now also shares an another example from Edison. Edison and
Speaker 1: his colleagues were apparently also fond of taking recordings of
Speaker 1: someone saying mad dog and playing it backwards so that
Speaker 1: it sounded like God damn. And this was this was
Speaker 1: not any kind of early satanic record recording. This was
Speaker 1: apparently just pure novelty. They just observed that this was
Speaker 1: the case and found it amusing. But it touches on
Speaker 1: something that will will keep coming back to the idea
Speaker 1: that sometimes when you take spoken language and you reverse
Speaker 1: it, it it can sound like other words in that language,
Speaker 1: um and yeah. And then there's a lot of psychological
Speaker 1: layering to put on top of that, but we'll get
Speaker 1: to that than now. Eventually, real to real tapes came along.
Speaker 1: This would have been the nineteen thirties, and it became
Speaker 1: increasingly easy for audio lovers to experiment with the medium. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, French composer Pierre Schaefer lived experimented with tape looping, sampling,
Speaker 1: and back masking, and the use of backmasking would then
Speaker 1: increase among avant garde musicians during the nineteen fifties, according
Speaker 1: to stas Now, and and certainly I think a lot
Speaker 1: of you out there can can think of various um
Speaker 1: recording artists who use some of these tools, tape loops especially.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of ambient um recording artists that
Speaker 1: I can think of that that make use of this.
Speaker 1: But you know, it comes down to just manipulating the
Speaker 1: recorded data at heart. Now, in the history of backmasking,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to talk about all this without touching on
Speaker 1: the Beatles. And it's it's not just because of the
Speaker 1: Beatles are are popular and uh and are an easy
Speaker 1: uh band of source for all this like that they were.
Speaker 1: They really were the ones that are credited with sort
Speaker 1: of bringing back masking into the main stream, both for
Speaker 1: for good and kind of also for uh for bad,
Speaker 1: for the you know, leaning into the whole panic area
Speaker 1: so um. To be clear, though, all major and serious accounts,
Speaker 1: which which stalls Now discusses in their paper, seemed to
Speaker 1: to to to drive on the Beatles engaged in backmasking
Speaker 1: purely for novelty's sake. Um this entails large. I think
Speaker 1: the main examples here three tracks off of the legendary
Speaker 1: nine six album Revolver. That would be I'm Only Sleeping
Speaker 1: Tomorrow Never Knows, but then also the single Rain, which
Speaker 1: wasn't on that album but came out of the same recordings.
Speaker 1: So specifically on these I'm Only Sleeping you have a
Speaker 1: back masked lead guitar part by George Harrison. So George
Speaker 1: Harrison played it one way. When they were tinkering around
Speaker 1: if You're going out, you know, how they were putting
Speaker 1: all this together, they said, hey, we like it better
Speaker 1: in reverse. Let's use it that way. It helps create
Speaker 1: this kind of dream like, uh, you know, psychedelic sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure just novelty variety, and probably just purely aesthetics.
Speaker 1: It's just what dictated these decisions for them. I mean,
Speaker 1: and sure maybe maybe part of it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: it'll be funny if people try to reverse these things
Speaker 1: because they sound backwards, but I bet that wasn't really
Speaker 1: the primary thoughts. I'm sure aesthetics were the first and
Speaker 1: foremost decision maker there yeah, I've seen it mentioned that
Speaker 1: the John Lennon and producer George Martin both kind of
Speaker 1: took credit for the discovery, but both in in kind
Speaker 1: of casual ways, like I think George Martin was more
Speaker 1: along that it was more along the lines of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were experimenting and this sounded good, and John Lennon
Speaker 1: was more more likely to say, well, I was really
Speaker 1: high at the time and I kind of discovered it
Speaker 1: either way, though, Yeah, Tomorrow Never Knows also has backwards
Speaker 1: guitar on it, and then Rain stands out a little
Speaker 1: bit because it features backward vocals. So these are popular
Speaker 1: and I guess somewhat obvious examples of back masking in
Speaker 1: the biggest band in the world. And so of course
Speaker 1: this leads to greater scrutiny, great greater awareness of the technique. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is going to mean that that later on
Speaker 1: people were looking at subsequent Beatles albums and saying, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder, what's what's farwards, what back what's backwards? Are
Speaker 1: they using this again? Um? And this ends up this
Speaker 1: ends up leading to a lot of speculation from some
Speaker 1: of the more I guess, you know, conspiracy minded fans
Speaker 1: about what maybe hidden in subsequent albums those stalls Now
Speaker 1: writes in their paper quote, there were no hidden messages
Speaker 1: until the fans and fanatics went looking for them. And
Speaker 1: so from here we begin to veer into this area
Speaker 1: of of accusations of back masking and getting into urban
Speaker 1: legends about songs like Revolution nine off of White album.
Speaker 1: If this is something I wasn't super familiar with, but
Speaker 1: there's a voice saying number nine, number nine, number nine,
Speaker 1: and the legend goes that if you if you reverse that,
Speaker 1: you hear turn me on dead Man, and um, you can.
Speaker 1: You can find examples of this on I think just
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page for the Wide album or for Revolution
Speaker 1: number nine, and you can hear it. I was listening
Speaker 1: to it just the other day, and I have to
Speaker 1: say I did not find it particularly convincing. I feel
Speaker 1: like you really have to want to hear turn Me
Speaker 1: on Dead Man. And then you get into that area
Speaker 1: where it's like, if this is the hidden message, why
Speaker 1: is the hidden message? Like so like clunky? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you I think you can say that about um, something
Speaker 1: that I think you're coming to, which is all of
Speaker 1: the Paul Is Dead clues that are out there. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was taken as one of those as a Oh,
Speaker 1: this is just an indicator if folks don't know. There's
Speaker 1: a a long held rumor slash conspiracy theory that is
Speaker 1: clearly very untrue, but people just like to talk about
Speaker 1: it that Paul died in a car crash early on
Speaker 1: in the Beatles career and then he was replaced by
Speaker 1: a Paul look alike at one point. Um, it's obviously
Speaker 1: very untrue, but there are many examples that conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: like to talk about, like, um, oh gosh, here here's one.
Speaker 1: For example, if you look at the cover of Abbey
Speaker 1: Road picture in your mind, you have the four Beatles
Speaker 1: walking across the road. Uh, They're all dressed in kind
Speaker 1: of interesting clothing, very distinct from one another. Um here,
Speaker 1: I'm going off top my head, but I think I
Speaker 1: can do this all the way. At the back, you
Speaker 1: have George Harrison, who is dressed kind of like a
Speaker 1: working man, kind of like working man's clothes, denim, nothing fancy.
Speaker 1: In front of that, you have Ringo who's wearing like
Speaker 1: kind of a fancier suit and tie. Okay. In front
Speaker 1: of that you have Paul, also dressed, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: casually and I think he's not wearing shoes, all right,
Speaker 1: And then in front of him you have John Lennon
Speaker 1: who is dressed all in white with long flowing hair, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So the message you were supposed to receive from that
Speaker 1: is that John Lennon was God and he was taking
Speaker 1: home the dead body of Paul McCartney. He wasn't wearing
Speaker 1: shoes because something to do with like being buried without
Speaker 1: your shoes on. It was. It was something that's one referenced.
Speaker 1: Ringo represented like the priest who was like burying and
Speaker 1: giving the eulogy, and George Harrison was representing the grave digger,
Speaker 1: the man actually burying Paul, and it's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess you know, like that's that's quite a stretch. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of other things too, Like if you hold
Speaker 1: a mirror up to the bass drum on the cover
Speaker 1: of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, it allegedly like
Speaker 1: gives you the date that Paul died. And like if
Speaker 1: you look at like the pictures on the cover of
Speaker 1: Let It Be, I think Paul's is the only one
Speaker 1: with like a red background and everyone else's his white
Speaker 1: or something like that, like there's all these little things
Speaker 1: and they're all meaningless. But this, this was another one
Speaker 1: that turned me on dead Man. It's I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know why someone could put some so much
Speaker 1: stock in this, but I suppose it's fun, you know,
Speaker 1: just to look for clues and and and hints and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to remember this is in the
Speaker 1: wake of of Beatlemania, and we could think of it
Speaker 1: as like a heretical strain of Beatlemania that began to
Speaker 1: attach itself to these various cryptic details in either the
Speaker 1: uh you know that the advanced production design of the music,
Speaker 1: or the advanced record design, you know, illustration work and
Speaker 1: graphic design on the albums. There's plenty to sort of
Speaker 1: latch onto in both of these, and um, some of
Speaker 1: one of those things. I guess you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of conspiracy thinking some of this may have began
Speaker 1: for fun, it's just as an amusement, but then it
Speaker 1: can kind of take on an energy of its own,
Speaker 1: and you begin to wonder to what extent or people
Speaker 1: truly buying into this idea that Paul is dead and
Speaker 1: has been replaced by a look alike and Obviously, the
Speaker 1: most rational thing you would do if you were perpetrating
Speaker 1: this kind of conspiracy was leave a lot of clues
Speaker 1: for it in your subsequent album output. Absolutely so. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney was not dead then and as of this
Speaker 1: recording still alive. Actually now, it is worth noting that
Speaker 1: A Day in the Life off of Sergeant Pepper's Only
Speaker 1: Hearts Club Band, which will come back to again, that
Speaker 1: it does contain some sounds that are just for dogs though.
Speaker 1: There there's also the allegation that a reverse section at
Speaker 1: the end of the song can be reversed into something crude.
Speaker 1: But according to to to Martin, this is all just
Speaker 1: gibberish reverse. They just recorded a lot of gibberish and
Speaker 1: then reversed it. I mean, I mean, you could hear
Speaker 1: nearly anything in anything. I remember personally. I had a
Speaker 1: copy of um Crosby Stills in Nash Deja Vu, and
Speaker 1: when I was younger, I played the title track backwards
Speaker 1: because why not, you know, I had a record player,
Speaker 1: why not play it backwards? And there was a section
Speaker 1: where I swore, my little teenage brain, I swore that
Speaker 1: they said you cannot hide hide amongst them. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I was hanging out a friend of mine's house and
Speaker 1: I heard her her I think it was her stepfather,
Speaker 1: was in the other room playing this record out loud,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my gosh, I know a
Speaker 1: hidden message in this record that if you if you
Speaker 1: play it backwards, that it says you cannot hide, hide
Speaker 1: amongst them. And she's like, oh, go tell him, go
Speaker 1: tell them, Like okay, this is gonna be great. So
Speaker 1: I go to this adults little teenage boy, like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you play this song backwards, you can hear, you
Speaker 1: can hear hidden messages, you can hear you cannot hide,
Speaker 1: hide amongst them. And he goes. He stares me for
Speaker 1: a while cox's head. He's like, you smoke a lot
Speaker 1: of pot, do you No, I'm just a music lover.
Speaker 1: I love plagued my records backwards, And yeah, didn't. Didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the reaction I was hoping for, which
Speaker 1: was all in praise and a standing ovation. But oh well,
Speaker 1: this is a great time for me to ask this though,
Speaker 1: because I guess this is some thing that should be
Speaker 1: obvious to to people who use record players. But I
Speaker 1: didn't even think about this. But every every record player
Speaker 1: gives you the ability to play both forward and backwards.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Almost? Almost? Um, some of them do
Speaker 1: it deliberately, Like there are record players that I own
Speaker 1: that literally have a switch that you can go from
Speaker 1: forwards to backwards. And that's if you have a quote
Speaker 1: unquote like fancy record player, that button will be there.
Speaker 1: And that's that's a very useful thing to have, especially
Speaker 1: we're trying to like cue up an exact moment in
Speaker 1: a song, that kind of thing. So yeah, so that
Speaker 1: that that is a feature that many record players have
Speaker 1: a literal reverse button, but on the less expensive ones.
Speaker 1: And this is the way I used to do when
Speaker 1: I was younger. You would turn off the belt that
Speaker 1: that that that drives the actual turning of the record,
Speaker 1: and you would but you would leave the speaker on
Speaker 1: and you would manually move your hand backwards pushing the
Speaker 1: record in reverse, which makes it sound even creepier because
Speaker 1: it's not even like, you know, at like a regular pace.
Speaker 1: It's got like this like human lurch too. It's you know. So,
Speaker 1: but but I also know that there are record players
Speaker 1: that just will not go and reverse no matter if
Speaker 1: you push them, you'll just end up breaking them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's different kinds, but some actually just have a
Speaker 1: button that plays it in reverse. Interesting, Well, this is
Speaker 1: this is all telling because it does sound, from what
Speaker 1: you're saying, like just the basic vinyl record scenario would
Speaker 1: sort of put the tools in the average music fans
Speaker 1: hands to sort of go in and investigate for themselves,
Speaker 1: um and uh and and find things potentially or confirm
Speaker 1: things that they heard they might find. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, by most accounts, backmasking by the Beatles was
Speaker 1: generally more about novelty and dumb jokes, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that occult backmasking didn't take place. According to Jonathan Winel,
Speaker 1: Darryl Griffith's, and Stewart Cunningham in Easter Eggs, Hidden Tracks
Speaker 1: and Messages and Musical Mediums, occultist Alistair Crowley encourage practitioners
Speaker 1: to engage backwards thinking by listening who recordings backwards. And
Speaker 1: while I think this sounds kind of silly, this notion
Speaker 1: and the ripples of this notion certainly influenced the eventual
Speaker 1: place of backtracking in Satanic panic Um Satanic panic. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is something that we've touched on the show before.
Speaker 1: This was a moral panic, mostly in the United States
Speaker 1: and then also in um in the UK and parts
Speaker 1: of Europe during the eighties and nineties, though it's reverberations
Speaker 1: in subsequent years and subsequent decades can be found in
Speaker 1: different parts of the world and also in different sort
Speaker 1: of communities and certainly faith communities as well. Basically just
Speaker 1: whips everyone into a frenzy over the idea that something
Speaker 1: that had never really existed in the world, that is,
Speaker 1: the organized worship of Satan, was in engaging in covert
Speaker 1: means of corrupting the youth of the world, as well
Speaker 1: as ritually torturing and murdering children. So, um, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: much more one can say about Satanic pan uh in
Speaker 1: its awfulness, but and and and also the like the
Speaker 1: real cost of it to to actual human beings. There's
Speaker 1: also a lot to be said into how it ends
Speaker 1: up impacting media, how it impacts music and horror and
Speaker 1: so forth. Um, But back masking comes into play as
Speaker 1: a part of all of this as well, because you
Speaker 1: had allegations that scary metal bands and even bands that
Speaker 1: we might not think of today as being that scary,
Speaker 1: we're using backmasking to corrupt listeners with incantations of devil, magic, drugs,
Speaker 1: and more. Which this era is so baffling to me
Speaker 1: because I suppose, if you're the kind of person that
Speaker 1: wants to believe in this organized worship of Satan that's
Speaker 1: happening right under your nose, any of your neighbors could
Speaker 1: be a Satan worshiper. I suppose you're also the same
Speaker 1: same kind of person that's going to believe that a
Speaker 1: backwards incantation can do something have some effects in the
Speaker 1: real world. So I don't know, Like, like, I just
Speaker 1: hope for the practice cold minds of most people to go, wait,
Speaker 1: there's a backwards spell on this, Oh well, good things
Speaker 1: spells don't work, so who cares? You know? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: ultimately raises a bunch of ridiculous questions when you when
Speaker 1: you start analyzing it with a logical mind. But and
Speaker 1: then some of them too. It just it just made
Speaker 1: absolutely no sense. It makes no sense to me. For example,
Speaker 1: it was alleged at one point that A. C. D.
Speaker 1: C's Highway to Hell contained back masked lyrics, and when
Speaker 1: asked about this, Anger's Young refuted it by saying, hey, well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing subliminal about the the actual lyrics to the song.
Speaker 1: Part of the lyrics are hey, Satan paying my dues
Speaker 1: playing in a rocking band? Like what if? Like what
Speaker 1: why do you need to also hide the Satanism? If
Speaker 1: you're basically saying praise Satan right there in the lyrics,
Speaker 1: I don't get it. And there were these were but
Speaker 1: these were real accusations with potentially real consequences for bands
Speaker 1: and record companies at the time. For instance, one accusation
Speaker 1: that picked up steam among evangelicals, especially at the time.
Speaker 1: And this is one that I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: you have heard, and there are examples of this. You
Speaker 1: can pull up on Wikipedia for the entry for this song.
Speaker 1: But led Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven classic rock song, like
Speaker 1: it's it's a song that, uh, I think it is great,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't tell you because I've heard it too
Speaker 1: many times on the radio. So it's it's not my
Speaker 1: favorite led Zeppelin song because I've just heard it too
Speaker 1: many times. It would not be like in the top
Speaker 1: ten for me. And it contains it does contain some
Speaker 1: actual lyrics. That's that go as follows. If there's a
Speaker 1: bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely sure what that means, but that those are just
Speaker 1: part of the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven. And the
Speaker 1: accusation is that if you play this backwards, then you
Speaker 1: hear the words here's to my sweet Satan, the one
Speaker 1: whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
Speaker 1: He'll give you, He'll give you six six six. There
Speaker 1: was a little tool shed where he made us suffer sad.
Speaker 1: Satan way too elaborate for back basket, not a chance.
Speaker 1: I mean I after I read this, I listened to
Speaker 1: the example of it, and I mean it is it
Speaker 1: is creepy to hear because you are hearing reverse language.
Speaker 1: You are hearing uh, you are hearing something that sounds
Speaker 1: like Satan. But then on the other hand, it's so
Speaker 1: ridiculous sounding, like what does this even mean? Like if
Speaker 1: I were to take this at face value, why what
Speaker 1: is the tool shed doing for me in this scenario?
Speaker 1: Like nothing in this is is is really all that
Speaker 1: creepy compared to any actual Satanic lyrics, So really there
Speaker 1: are there are plenty of examples in led Zeppelin's lyrics
Speaker 1: that are, on the face more shocking than what we
Speaker 1: have right here in the alleged back masking. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, and also I think, um, certain words just
Speaker 1: when they get reversed automatically kind of sound creepy. Like.
Speaker 1: For example, I remember Yoko on No got accused of this.
Speaker 1: She had a song called kiss, Kiss, Kiss, and of
Speaker 1: course when you play kiss kiss kiss backwards, it's six
Speaker 1: six six for sure. And um, you know I I yeah,
Speaker 1: I think certain words just sound easily like other words backwards.
Speaker 1: But I don't believe for a moment that this many
Speaker 1: words could sound good forwards and backwards, not for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, also the weird exercise you'd have to go
Speaker 1: through to get to this point. Um. I think the
Speaker 1: other important thing is like when you when you reverse lyrics,
Speaker 1: when you reverse words, you're gonna get other sounds. But
Speaker 1: those sounds are not going to have real context until
Speaker 1: you give them contexts and you you say like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that sound, that that kind of six six six sound,
Speaker 1: it's gonna sound like like six six six, uh, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah, it's a real Laurel or Yanny situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the other telling thing about this, but first
Speaker 1: of all, it's an accusation that Robert Plant and their
Speaker 1: audio engineer at the time refuted um and and unlike
Speaker 1: with the Beatles, it doesn't seem like the band or
Speaker 1: those involved in producing the tracks really found this technique
Speaker 1: all that interesting. And I don't know this is maybe
Speaker 1: just me, but I feel like if they had actually
Speaker 1: done this on purpose, It's one thing to cover it
Speaker 1: up during the the initial period of satanic panic during
Speaker 1: the you know, certainly in the eighties and even nineties,
Speaker 1: But it seems like if this, if they had actually
Speaker 1: backmasked some content here and gone to some links to
Speaker 1: put some satanic silliness in here, it would have come
Speaker 1: out right like how great are are the surviving members
Speaker 1: of led Zeppelin going to really be at keeping secrets
Speaker 1: like this? I mean, um, I think when these things happened,
Speaker 1: Like another example of this that was famous at the
Speaker 1: time was the supposed sinking of playing Pink Floyd's Dark
Speaker 1: Side of the Moon with the Wizard of Oz, and
Speaker 1: I gave you this whole experience with the two lined
Speaker 1: up perfectly, and everyone in Pink Floyd is like, how
Speaker 1: would we do that? You know, like the we were
Speaker 1: just like in a studio. Everything's analog, like we didn't
Speaker 1: have like, you know, no, of course not, of course
Speaker 1: we couldn't have done that, you know, yeah, or like
Speaker 1: can you imagine that the reality where they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is actually how we make all of our albums.
Speaker 1: We we pick a classic movie, we play it, and
Speaker 1: we just match things up with what's happening on the screen. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean that could be somebody's artistic um technique, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just those connections are not made by the creator.
Speaker 1: Those connections are made by on your end when you
Speaker 1: combine two things and look for meaning between those two things,
Speaker 1: which can be fun, but don't believe it, you know,
Speaker 1: like fun is fun as long as you don't believe
Speaker 1: this nonsense. Yeah, enjoy it, but don't ruin by going
Speaker 1: too far into rank. So I mentioned that there were
Speaker 1: potential real consequences for all this, Like it got to
Speaker 1: the point where there were actually some lawmakers that were
Speaker 1: interested in demanding backtracking warnings on our albums so that
Speaker 1: consumers would could be aware that there might be hidden messages,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous to imagine, like may contain hidden messages
Speaker 1: that may contained electric guitar. And this is another thing
Speaker 1: getting back to I mentioned earlier, how when you have
Speaker 1: the full tools of language at your disposal, there's so
Speaker 1: many things you can do to manipulate people, to um,
Speaker 1: to hide your message, to say something kind of cheeky
Speaker 1: so that some people get it but others don't. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of stuff you can do with UM with language
Speaker 1: that hasn't been reversed, and great lyricists are going to
Speaker 1: be able to use those tools. Like doing this whole
Speaker 1: backtracking technique is just such a crude and ineffective way
Speaker 1: of hiding your secret message if you actually have a
Speaker 1: secret message you want to get out there, and especially
Speaker 1: too if you want to keep it a secret for
Speaker 1: most people. Like like, for example, UM, let's say you're
Speaker 1: trying to send a secret message on a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper and you just write each of the letters backwards,
Speaker 1: so you have to hold it up and look at
Speaker 1: it in the mirror to read the best. Yeah, someone's
Speaker 1: going to figure it out. Like now, let let's let's
Speaker 1: say you take the first letter of each word in
Speaker 1: your lyrics and it spells a new secret message. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's that's going to be actually harder to decipher, you know,
Speaker 1: So it's it's not even a very good secret message. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it. We mentioned Don McClain recently on the
Speaker 1: show when we discussed the flight of Dragons, like American
Speaker 1: Pie has plenty of cryptic content within it and um
Speaker 1: and and that is achieved without reversing anything. Right. So anyway,
Speaker 1: getting back to this idea that like, why why would
Speaker 1: you need a label? Right, why would there need to
Speaker 1: be a warning saying my contained secret messages because if
Speaker 1: it's backwards, I can't understand it. Right. Well, that's where
Speaker 1: we get into these claims, and I think these are
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty much been refuted as pseudoscience
Speaker 1: at this point, but this idea that backmasked messages can
Speaker 1: be understood subconsciously even if you're not consciously understanding them.
Speaker 1: So one of the main prop onent's of the power
Speaker 1: of reverse speech is an individual by the name of
Speaker 1: David John Oates. And this is a guy that's appeared
Speaker 1: on the likes of Coast to Coast. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: the you know, the radio station radio show rather that's
Speaker 1: popular and known for its various treatment of UFOs and
Speaker 1: so forth. You know a lot of what I guess
Speaker 1: you've described the sort of fringe ideas and Oates would
Speaker 1: discuss this, this notion that normal speech contains a smaller
Speaker 1: percentage of backward speech that I'm not sure I even
Speaker 1: understand exactly what the idea here is that maybe it
Speaker 1: kind of cuts to the chase a bit that the
Speaker 1: thing that you're sort of trying to say through with
Speaker 1: forward facing speech, you're also saying, at least in a
Speaker 1: simplistic form, through the reverse of the speech. There is
Speaker 1: an example that is sometimes used to support this, and
Speaker 1: it's apparently if you take Neil Armstrong nine and saying
Speaker 1: small step for man, of course during the lunar landing,
Speaker 1: if you were to reverse that, uh, it sounds something
Speaker 1: like manual spacewalk. And um, this one I thought sounded
Speaker 1: pretty pretty silly to me. I mean, what does that
Speaker 1: even mean? Why? What? What? What's my take home from
Speaker 1: that you have? If if this is some sort of
Speaker 1: meaningful content, like I guess it, it would at best
Speaker 1: mean that the smart things that you say forwards sounds
Speaker 1: stupid or backwards. It doesn't make any sense if if
Speaker 1: it at least like predicted the future, it would be helpful,
Speaker 1: you know, like, um, oh, let's say he said small
Speaker 1: step for man and then in reverse. It it actually
Speaker 1: said like, hey, watch out for that rock over there,
Speaker 1: you're gonna trip over. It's like that would be helpful.
Speaker 1: He could use that information, you know, But but no, this,
Speaker 1: this is this is nothing. This is nonsense. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: again this has been widely refuted in scientific literature pseudo science,
Speaker 1: and one of the central arguments is that, okay, with
Speaker 1: with Oates work and with well not even just Oats work,
Speaker 1: but just in general, if you're trying to push this
Speaker 1: idea that that the thing that you're about to hear
Speaker 1: reversed is going to say something else, it depends heavily
Speaker 1: on priming. Uh, you're being you're given an idea of
Speaker 1: what you were about to hear backwards. And I encountered
Speaker 1: that time and time again researching for this episode. Like
Speaker 1: when you go to the the the audio audio examples
Speaker 1: on the Wikipedia for Stairway to Heaven, it tells you
Speaker 1: what you're about to hear, what you're gonna hear straightforward,
Speaker 1: and what you were expected to hear uh in reverse.
Speaker 1: So you're you're going into a it to it to
Speaker 1: it looking for that template to line up. But what's
Speaker 1: really going on is something called paraidolia. This is the
Speaker 1: tendency for humans to find meaning in something, be it
Speaker 1: uh seeing a face in the surface of the moon,
Speaker 1: secret messages in a reverse song, uh, connections between this
Speaker 1: album and this movie when this movie is played on mute,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And it's I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: powerful force. It's it's a it's something that guides a
Speaker 1: lot of our creativity that we can look at, like
Speaker 1: a smear on the wall. We can look at a
Speaker 1: cloud in the sky and we can we can we
Speaker 1: can lean into a version of it that's not there.
Speaker 1: We can make we can apply some sort of logic
Speaker 1: to it and and create fantasy. And I think that,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I feel like, easily the far more
Speaker 1: sensible way of understanding any kind of sense that seems
Speaker 1: to come out of reverse speech. I'm extremely skeptical of
Speaker 1: the notion that meaningful reverse speech would simply emerge from
Speaker 1: traditional speech UM, as well as the idea that meaningful
Speaker 1: information could then be understood by our brain even on
Speaker 1: like a subliminal level like mad Dog and God damn,
Speaker 1: sorry to have to curse again, but this is the
Speaker 1: one of the historical examples. UM. These ideas are maybe
Speaker 1: not completely unconnected from each other. Um, but they're also
Speaker 1: like there's not really a strong meaningful connection either, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the argument would be between those
Speaker 1: two were. And it's funny too because and then the
Speaker 1: argument is, oh, but only in English, you know, because
Speaker 1: these words, let's say we say them in French instead,
Speaker 1: the two words will not be the same two words
Speaker 1: forward and backwards. You won't you won't be the same
Speaker 1: message no matter what it's. It's basically impossible. So so no,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like when people make arguments about um,
Speaker 1: oh great predictions followed through like the Mayan calendar or something,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, but they didn't use like leap days
Speaker 1: like we do you know, like what time zone were
Speaker 1: they using? Like like like these things don't line up,
Speaker 1: like like different cultures have different um ways to kind
Speaker 1: of like uh parcel out our lives, and they don't
Speaker 1: match up across culturally. So so you can't just say
Speaker 1: something is a universal truth. It's just like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: that only works in English for me. When I have
Speaker 1: the words written down, and uh, I was looking at
Speaker 1: a couple of sources on this, you cat a little
Speaker 1: more depth in it, uh In a R Vokey and J. D.
Speaker 1: Reid suggested that some information might pass through when you
Speaker 1: were when you were reversing using reversed audio, but they
Speaker 1: were also very firm on the matter being misrepresented in
Speaker 1: the media. Uh In this in and one of their papers,
Speaker 1: they write, quote, is there any evidence to warrant assertations
Speaker 1: that such such messages affect our behavior across a wide
Speaker 1: variety of tasks? We were unable to find any evidence
Speaker 1: to support such a claim. Secondarily, we present evidence to
Speaker 1: suggest that the apparent presence of backward messages in popular
Speaker 1: music is a function more of active construction on the
Speaker 1: part of the perceiver than of the existence of the
Speaker 1: messages themselves. Right. It was like a raw shack test. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and this I think is extremely telling to at
Speaker 1: two thousand one study by Kriner, Altis and Voss found
Speaker 1: that quote no priming effect was found for backwards messages,
Speaker 1: although there were significant priming for forward messages. The results
Speaker 1: are not consistent with an effect of reverse speech on
Speaker 1: word processing. And I think that's this is really key,
Speaker 1: because we know that priming works with forward with normal language,
Speaker 1: that I can say something to you and I can
Speaker 1: prime you for something and the effects of that priming
Speaker 1: is measurable through experimentation. So if if if something was
Speaker 1: to come through via reversed audio through back masking, it
Speaker 1: would have an effect on priming, and we would be
Speaker 1: able to measure that. And there's nothing to measure because
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. It doesn't do that. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: there there's still plenty of fun examples of back masking
Speaker 1: in in music. One that that came up for me
Speaker 1: and this is another example of the song that I've
Speaker 1: heard many times, but I did not really think about
Speaker 1: the back masking in it because I'm just so used
Speaker 1: to hearing this technique. It's cool, but I don't give
Speaker 1: it a lot of second thought or even wonder what's
Speaker 1: being reversed. But there's a there's a Great Boards of
Speaker 1: Canada album Geogatti, and there's a track titled you Could
Speaker 1: Feel the Sky, and there's definitely some back mask audio
Speaker 1: in there, and it may be reverse. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's likely a reversal of a clip from I think
Speaker 1: a documentary on paganism that says the God with horns,
Speaker 1: and I guess this is maybe just kind of a
Speaker 1: cheeky nod to backmasking. History. Uh and and some of
Speaker 1: the you know, the Satanic panic ideas, which of course
Speaker 1: Boards of Canada would have very much been familiar with.
Speaker 1: And there's still so many examples too of people going
Speaker 1: into business for themselves on back masking, playing stuff backwards,
Speaker 1: sharing it on YouTube and saying, hey, clearly, if you
Speaker 1: play this Black Sabbath lyric backwards, you hear I want
Speaker 1: to be like Jesus. Stuff like that. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: if you're just going into it purely for fun. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's probably some some fun and amusing quote unquot discoveries
Speaker 1: to make there, but just keep in mind that it's
Speaker 1: just as much meaning as can be applied to spilling
Speaker 1: some alphabet soup on the floor and seeing how many
Speaker 1: words are spelled outs you know exactly. That can be fun,
Speaker 1: but there's no meeting there. I thought it was put
Speaker 1: really well in a piece and salon written by Eric Davis.
Speaker 1: This piece was title what Exactly lyrics within the background
Speaker 1: rooves of Stairway to Heaven quote. Soon, backmasking became the
Speaker 1: Satanic panic du jour, giving paranoid Christians technological proof that
Speaker 1: rock bands like Queen Kiss and Sticks. And then there's
Speaker 1: an exclamation point in partheses did indeed play the devil's music.
Speaker 1: While most people Christian or otherwise found all this rather silly,
Speaker 1: these fears did reflect more pervasive fears that the media
Speaker 1: had become a subliminal master of puppets, fears that would
Speaker 1: themselves come to inspire some nineteen eighties metal and I
Speaker 1: think this this one might have also been the paper
Speaker 1: to point out that you also get these ridiculous images
Speaker 1: and ridiculous footage of of of the some of the
Speaker 1: provocateurs of Satanic panic, some of the the individuals that
Speaker 1: were making these accusations messing around with record players and
Speaker 1: playing stuff backwards and just really gazing hard and deep
Speaker 1: and trying to find evidence of Satan in the reversed audio. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone needs a hobby. I'm glad they're having fun.
Speaker 1: Good for them. How about you, sef, Do you have
Speaker 1: any any favorite examples of bat masking? You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. I have one that I absolutely love,
Speaker 1: not only because I think it's a fun example of,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of how this can influence the songs
Speaker 1: writing and kind of create a finished product, but also
Speaker 1: just because I think it's a lovely song off of
Speaker 1: a wonderful album by one of my favorite bands. Here's
Speaker 1: an example. Uh, this is off of radio Heads two
Speaker 1: thousand and one album Amnesiac. There's a very alien sounding
Speaker 1: song called like Spinning Plates. It sounds so odd because
Speaker 1: it originally started off as a song called I Will,
Speaker 1: which is very funny because radio had eventually actually finished
Speaker 1: that song and released it on a later album. But
Speaker 1: enough about that. They were trying to record this song
Speaker 1: during this recording session called I Will, and they just
Speaker 1: couldn't get it to work. They were just messing around
Speaker 1: with it, doing whatever, and at one point they decided
Speaker 1: to play it backwards and they're like, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the album I want to hear. So they
Speaker 1: had this, uh, this instrumental for this song backwards, and
Speaker 1: the like, this is good, this is good, and so
Speaker 1: so Tomy York, the lead singer. He created a new
Speaker 1: vocal melody to go over it. But when you when
Speaker 1: you played the forward vocal melody over the backwards song,
Speaker 1: it just didn't quite line up. It just didn't sound right.
Speaker 1: They didn't mesh together. So what he decided to do
Speaker 1: instead was to phonetically take the words he wanted to say,
Speaker 1: reverse them and then sing it backwards. He was obviously
Speaker 1: singing forward in real time, but he's singing the backwards
Speaker 1: result of what he wanted. So when he reversed it,
Speaker 1: it would sound like forward words. So I'll say that
Speaker 1: in a more succinct way. Tom York made up new
Speaker 1: words that were phonetically the backwards version of his new
Speaker 1: forward vocals, and then reverse the recording, creating lyrics that
Speaker 1: sounded forward in the final song but are actually being reversed.
Speaker 1: A very similar system was used in the TV show
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks for the character the Man from Another Place
Speaker 1: a k a. The Arm. He's the guy that's like,
Speaker 1: you know sometimes my arms been back. You know that
Speaker 1: that you like will come back in style? That guy
Speaker 1: that that's very similar system. Yeah. But but as as
Speaker 1: we'll point out, just like all this discussion we've been having,
Speaker 1: that character of the Man from Another Place from Twin Peaks,
Speaker 1: he always had subtitles because would you really be able
Speaker 1: to understand what he was saying backwards if there weren't
Speaker 1: subtitles there. I don't know. That's a that's a great point,
Speaker 1: and it's a key point. Now. I love Radiohead and
Speaker 1: and I love Tom York's um vocals. Tom new York's
Speaker 1: vocals almost seemed like the perfect vocals to use in
Speaker 1: an experiment of reverse or because I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I feel like I there's certain vocalists whose voices I
Speaker 1: I think of more as a musical instrument, like a
Speaker 1: pure instrument, as opposed to a deliverer of actual linguistic information.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that as like a slam on them, um,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't even necessarily mean that I can't understand
Speaker 1: what they're saying. I mean sometimes I think of people
Speaker 1: like um, like Maynard from Tool. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: I can understand the words he's saying, but I'm not
Speaker 1: really engaging with what he's saying on a lyrical level.
Speaker 1: It's more about like the pure sound experience. And I
Speaker 1: feel like that's that's what I have with Tom York. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at like the kind of the hallmarks
Speaker 1: of reversed audio and what's really changing. Uh, The big key,
Speaker 1: the thing that we cannot create with forward sounds and
Speaker 1: can only be created backwards is when anything percussive occurs,
Speaker 1: it goes and like a big sound at the beginning
Speaker 1: and then it trails off very quickly. So when you
Speaker 1: hear that backwards, especially, think about something like the sound
Speaker 1: of like a drum being played backwards. It's like which,
Speaker 1: which is a very iconic backwards sound. I suppose, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the one who edits these episodes. I could just
Speaker 1: put in a reverse sound there, but no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I like making with my mouth instead. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of it. And Tom
Speaker 1: York has a very vowel heavy, very floaty, ethereal singing style,
Speaker 1: a lot lots of oos and os and moaning and
Speaker 1: kind of like soft sounds. So because of that, forwards
Speaker 1: and backwards doesn't affect it too much. You know, he's
Speaker 1: not a percussive, you know, singer, and the percussion is
Speaker 1: really what signifies, oh, something's backwards here. So huh, all right, everybody,
Speaker 1: that's gonna have to be side A and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to flip it over for side b Uh. We
Speaker 1: ended up reaching the point where we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: cut this one in half, but we'll be back in
Speaker 1: the next episode. Stuff to blow your mind seth Will
Speaker 1: and I will continue this discussion and we'll get more
Speaker 1: into physical media, we're start we're we'll start talking about
Speaker 1: essentially enter the labyrinth of Vinyl records. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'll just remind everybody that core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed Monday's we do
Speaker 1: listener mail. Wednesday's we do a short form artifact or
Speaker 1: monster effect. On on on Fridays we do Weird how Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film. By the time you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, I think Joe is actually back, so uh,
Speaker 1: we should be welcoming Joe back on some episodes in
Speaker 1: the very near future. But we recorded these episodes ahead
Speaker 1: of time. And as always, thanks to Seth Nicholas Johnson
Speaker 1: for not only co hosting but of course producing Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. And if you want to reach
Speaker 1: out to any of us, if you have feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode of thoughts about reversed music and so forth,
Speaker 1: will you can email us at contact. It's Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
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