Hidden Tracks - What's Your Fave?

[Skijumper]

Finding a hidden/unlisted track at the end or middle of an album isn't uncommon nowadays. But I had a most pleasant surprise when I hit the reverse button accidentally just as my David Gray CD was playing and found a track before the first song.

Anyway - I'd like to hear about your favourite 'hidden' track. Was it one you heard about and looked out for or one you stumbled upon?

By the way, does anybody know if there are other albums out there with hidden tracks at the beginning?

(Mods: I'm not sure if this should go into MPSIMS. If so, please move it.)

[Agrippina]

At the very end of Weird Al's Running With Scissors I was waiting for the hidden track, expecing something, anything. But I was quite surprised by the sudden screaming and banging of pots and pans. Scared the hell out of me.

[Rossarian]

As cool hidden tracks go, I like Better Than Ezra's song, [/i]Pork Und Beans[/i] at then end of their first album, Deluxe.

Also Memory Dean has a hidden track about 10 minutes after the last song ends on one of their albums. It starts with a sudden scream, which scared the crap out of me the first time I heard it.

[ultrafilter]

There's a classical piano piece at the end of No Doubt's Return of Saturn that I kinda like.

[Labdad]

"Eurotrash Girl" is a hidden track on "Kerosene Hat" by Cracker. And it's way the hell up there, too - like track 69 or 70. So you had to let the CD play dead air a while before you realized it was on the disc.

[RealityChuck]

The pioneer: The Beatles "Her Majesty." And, yes, originally it was not listed anywhere on the cover; later pressings added it.

Second choice: the third side of "Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief."

[rackensack]

The Clash's "Train in Vain"; on the LP version of London Calling, there was no reference to it on the cover or inner sleeves -- it was just stuck at the end of the second disk. Had to pull out the CD and look -- it doesn't list it either.

[hardygrrl]

On some copies of Nirvana's Nevermind, the song Endless, Nameless is hidden 11 minutes after the last song.

On the No Alternative cd, another Nirvana song, Pay To Play.

[saepiroth]

i like the second hidden track, track 15, from blink 182's third album, "take off your pants and jacket".







so i'm mentally disturbed. what? what? is that so wrong?

[seriousart]

Originally posted by hardygrrl
On some copies of Nirvana's Nevermind, the song Endless, Nameless is hidden 11 minutes after the last song.

And boy, is that ever a toe tapper :rolleyes:

My personal favorite was inexplicably left half-off the CD pressing of the album!
The song is called Cheerio, by the Boomtown Rats. I believe it's on the end of their tonic For the Troops CD.
It's starts about 2 munutes after the last song and it's pretty funny as it actually kind of makes sense in the context of a hidden/delayed track.

"I've been standing here five minutes and you haven't said a word.
Maybe you did. Maybe I haven't heard.
Well you better hurry up and say something or else I'm gonna go."

(On the CD it inexplicably stops here. On the album/ tape it continues after yet another 30 second pause)

"OK. Thats fine by me.
Cheerio... Cheerio...Cheerio!
Totally blew me away the first time I had heard it. I had owned (dubbed) the tape for months and always stopped it before the tape ended. One day I was listening to headphones and didn't bother to stop it and finally heard the track.

Of course, I imagine I'm probably one of the only Boomtown Rats fans on the boards, so this probably seems rather inconsequential to most...

Originally posted by Skijumper[
By the way, does anybody know if there are other albums out there with hidden tracks at the beginning?
On the beginning (5 minutes prior to track one) of Sister Machine Gun's "Burn" CD is a cool industrial cover of a Doors song.

[seriousart]

Actually, the Boomtown Rats album was Mondo Bongo.


Said the lonesome Boomtown Rats fan to himself...

[Nocturne]

To add to Rossarian's Better Than Ezra "Deluxe," there's also a hidden track on BTE's "Friction Baby," which is a weird amalgamation of of English, French, and Spanish which makes NO sense but it is a very nice-sounding Latinesque song.

On the Barenaked Ladies's Rock Spectacle album, there are two hidden tracks. One is a story, the other is a very short song.

On the Ben Folds Five CD "Whatever and Ever Amen" there is a short interjection as a hidden track.

On Orbit's (only for now) CD, there is a hidden track consisting of footsteps for several minutes, then a short song, then crickets.

[Sultan Kinkari]

There's a cool hidden track at the end of Deee Lites Dewdrops in the Garden CD. It has surprised me on several occasions while deep in "mind meld" territory.

[chief]

I always liked the one at the end of Guns N' Roses , The Spaghetti Inicident?
it's a cover of a charles manson song, but its not bad.. kinda surprising considering the writer!

[Spoonbender]

I like the hidden track at the end of Green Day's Dookie, often referred to as "All By Myself."

I was alone
I was all by myself
No one was looking...
I was thinking of you
Oh yeah, did I mention...
I was all by myself?

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by hardygrrl
On some copies of Nirvana's Nevermind, the song Endless, Nameless is hidden 11 minutes after the last song.



I found that by accident. I was relaxing in my room with all the lights out, listening to that album. I had almost dozed off when the hidden track started blaring.

[Junior Spaceman]

The song before track 1 on the Songs in the Key of X', which is a Nick Cave narrative over a beautiful, slowed down version of the X-files theme (kinda) by the Dirty 3, is my favourite, except it's so hard to cue up.

There's a cool radio ad tacked on to the reissue of Radios Appear by Radio Birdman which Deniz Tek didn't even know about before he got his own copy.

[Harvey The Heavy]

On the Ramones "Loco Live", the song "Carbona Not Glue" is hidden after track 17 "Pet Sematary"

[Darqangelle]

Best of Gary Numan 1978-1983 2-cd set

The second CD, after the last track has a piano instrumental of "Down In The Park". Excellent version.

[pldennison]

I'll second "Eurotrash Girl." I think there are other hidden tracks (with actual music, not just blank tracks) on that CD as well.

Also, on Sarah McLachlan's Stumbling Towards Ecstacy, there is a solo piano and vocal version of "Possession" after the last song.

[Why A Duck]

Originally posted by seriousart
Actually, the Boomtown Rats album was Mondo Bongo.


Said the lonesome Boomtown Rats fan to himself...

Hang on there Buckeroo. I am a huge Rats fan. I went to see the Wall for the first time cause Sir Bob was in it. I even bought V-Deep! And don't forget, The Fine Art of Surfacing had two quasi-hidden tracks. At the end of one side, there's this weird Geldof chant that goes something like "It's not funny. I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing. It's not funny." The other side has some exaggerated announcer voice going "That concludes episode 3, we will be back short-", a loud click, then a bad-sounding radio snippet of "Feelings". These may only be available on vinyl though, I'll have to check the CD. Damn, I wish I still had my turntable, I've only got Tonic for the Troops, Surfacing, and Mondo Bongo on disc.

Oh, and there are actually two pre-tracks on the Songs in the Key of X CD. The first song is by Nick Cave and the Dirty Three called Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum, the second is the X-Files theme by the Dirty Three. The CD liner notes sort of give you a hint, on the back they say "Nick Cave and the Dirty Three would like to remind you that zero is also a number".

[Pnuk Guy]

One of the Ash albums has a secret track where they stuck into the recording studio drunk and recorded thems elves throwing up and stuff.

It's well good.

Actually, I've noticed a recent trend for the amount of hidden tracks to decrease.

About 3-4 years ago EVERY CD had a hidden track, they're becoming quite rare now.

[Legomancer]

I'm not a huge fan of all hidden tracks. I especially hate it when they put it on the same CD track at the last song, with silence in-between. The Meat Puppets did that, having "Coming Down" be the last track, then silence, then something else, and I didn't discover this until AFTER I had used "Coming Down" on a mix tape. Grrr. Also the "Track 0" tracks bother me because there's no easy way to actually listen to them, should you choose to do so, and often no indication that they're there.

Okay, that being said, Mono Puff has a Track 0 on It's Fun to Steal called, oddly enough, "Hidden Track". It's very odd and disturbing, and I urge you to look for it on mp3.

The most interesting/annoying one I've seen is "Steve is Here" by Dramarama on their Vinyl album. Not only is it hidden (there's a slight reference to it on the cd cover) but the way it's done is odd. The song's about a minute long, but instead of being a single 60-second track, it's made up of sixty 1-second tracks. As a result, I had that CD in my changer one day on shuffle mode and I kept hearing these weird, 1-second blips of sound and had no idea what they were.

On Depeche Mode's Construction Time Again album there's a reprise of "Everything Counts" that is unlisted. I remember the first time I listened to that album the last song was playing and I thought to myself, "I have a feeling there's something else." and lo, there was the reprise.

[unwashed brain]

On their first EP, Opiate, the song "the gaping lotus experience" appears and fuels all the rumors about Tool's supposed connection with Satanism. On Undertow, the song "disgustipated"is track 69, and serves as a very scary and funny display of the band's humor. After 11 minutes or so of crickets chirping, a lonely detatched voice tells of you waking up in a ditch with blood all over yourself.

[Labdad]

Originally posted by pldennison
I'll second "Eurotrash Girl." I think there are other hidden tracks (with actual music, not just blank tracks) on that CD as well.

Yes there are. One called "I Ride My Bike" appears around track 88 or so, then at the vey end - maybe track 99 - there is a reprise of "Kerosene Hat" with some different lyrics (here comes old sorbet head). As I understand it, this last track is actually the audio portion from a camcorder that was left running while the band was making up lyrics.

[Superdude]

Originally posted by Nocturne

On the Ben Folds Five CD "Whatever and Ever Amen" there is a short interjection as a hidden track.

Actually, mine doesn't have it, unless you're counting "Smoke," which is listed on my CD. There are a few others that come to mind:

"Kid Things" by Counting Crows, about eight minutes after "St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream" off of This Desert Life

The aforementioned Nirvana song.

IIRC, Nine inch Nails has one on one of his CDs, but I can't recall which one. It's like track 68 or something.

Diana Krall has a hidden track on her When I Look In Your Eyes CD. Track #13.

"Chelsea," another by Counting Crows, appears on the Across A Wire CD. Disc one. After "Anna Begins," there's several minutes of what sounds like a needle on an old record, and then the piano and horn intro.

If I think of any more, I'll add them.

[sk8rixtx]

"Fist" by the Deftones on the Adrenaline album.

[pezpunk]

Originally posted by Legomancer

The most interesting/annoying one I've seen is "Steve is Here" by Dramarama on their Vinyl album. Not only is it hidden (there's a slight reference to it on the cd cover) but the way it's done is odd. The song's about a minute long, but instead of being a single 60-second track, it's made up of sixty 1-second tracks. As a result, I had that CD in my changer one day on shuffle mode and I kept hearing these weird, 1-second blips of sound and had no idea what they were.


WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!!! A DRAMARAMA FAN!!! ARE YOU FROM JERSEY? I was going to list this song too. I agree it can be rather annoying if you play it on shuffle. I think the one second tracks go from like song 13 to 99 so that is a LOT of little blips. Man don't get me started on Dramrama I could start a whole thread on them. Unfortuanetly the thread would consist of me and me alone raving about Dramarama. oh well.


I gave you candy, gave your diamonds gave you pills....

[seriousart]

Originally posted by pezpunk

I gave you candy, gave your diamonds gave you pills....[/sub]
ahem
Give you anything you want
Hundred dollar bills
I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see
Just marry me, marry me, marry me


You're not alone, pal... and no, I ain't from Jersey :).

[seriousart]

Originally posted by pcubed
I've only got Tonic for the Troops, Surfacing, and Mondo Bongo on disc.


If I'm not mistaken, I believe those were the only Rats albums released on CD.

[Spoke]

I'm partial to the countrified cover of Raspberry Beret (http://www.canoe.ca/JamSounds2/raspberry.au) (click for a snippet) which appears as a hidden track at the end of the Derailers' Reverb Deluxe CD.

[Why A Duck]

Originally posted by seriousart
Originally posted by pcubed
I've only got Tonic for the Troops, Surfacing, and Mondo Bongo on disc.


If I'm not mistaken, I believe those were the only Rats albums released on CD.

You're probably right, and TftT was an import. I really qish their first album was available, that rocked.

[Outrider]

Originally posted by unwashed brain
On their first EP, Opiate, the song "the gaping lotus experience" appears and fuels all the rumors about Tool's supposed connection with Satanism. On Undertow, the song "disgustipated"is track 69, and serves as a very scary and funny display of the band's humor. After 11 minutes or so of crickets chirping, a lonely detatched voice tells of you waking up in a ditch with blood all over yourself.

Speaking of Tool...

"Maynard's Dick" on Salival is an awesome hidden song.

.
.
.

Hey..don't blame me, I didn't come up with the name ;)

[Legomancer]

I'm not from Jersey and I'm not a huge Dramarama fan, but I really like that CD.

Now I'm trying to come up with another hidden track to stay OT.

Oh yeah...I dunno if it's hidden, because it's sort of listed on the album cover, but the end of the Lemonheads' 'Lovey' album has this bizarre answering machine message.

"My head alone could feed a family of four for two weeks!"

[HalberMensch242]

NIN has two hidden tracks on the Broken EP, tracks 98 and 99. Both are covers..i think. Physical is a cover of a Revco song, who covered Elivia Newton John, and Suck is a Pig cover.

On Tyranny for You by 242, there is one hidden track..i remix of one of the songs on the cd.

[ReservoirDog]

Originally posted by Superdude
IIRC, Nine inch Nails has one on one of his CDs, but I can't recall which one. It's like track 68 or something.

On the Broken EP, tracks 98 and 99 are hidden songs. One of them is a cover of Physcial, originally by Adam Ant, I believe.

The other one is called Suck. I think it's a NIN original, but don't know for sure.

[Kittie]

Originally posted by sk8rixtx
"Fist" by the Deftones on the Adrenaline album.
I second that. Also, "Always and Forever" By Good Charlotte is a great song. It makes me cry :)
~Kittie

[orion007]

I second Spoonbender's choice of the hidden track on Green Day's Dookie. It makes me laugh every time :)

[Junior Spaceman]

Originally posted by pcubed
Oh, and there are actually two pre-tracks on the Songs in the Key of X CD. The first song is by Nick Cave and the Dirty Three called Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum, the second is the X-Files theme by the Dirty Three. The CD liner notes sort of give you a hint, on the back they say "Nick Cave and the Dirty Three would like to remind you that zero is also a number". [/B]
I know, except it's only the Nick/Dirty 3 piece that I like. I'm not sure that second track is the Dirty 3 - if it is, it's the worst thing they've ever recorded.

[Lodrain]

There's a hidden track on Depeche Mode's Ultra; a brief instrumental called 'Junior Painkiller'. I also know of a brief bit at the end of the Barenaked Ladies' Gordon album, which apparently is nameless, but consists mostly of inter-member banter and brief bits of music.

[Semp]

Originally posted by HalberMensch242
NIN has two hidden tracks on the Broken EP, tracks 98 and 99. Both are covers..i think. Physical is a cover of a Revco song, who covered Elivia Newton John, and Suck is a Pig cover.

Broken was originally released with two discs, the first being a regular five inch disc with the six-or-so standard tracks, and a three inch disc that had the two additional songs. The second disc didn't list what was on it, so in a way they were "hidden," but they weren't that hard to find.

And The Blue Flashing Light at the end of The Man Who by Travis is one of the better songs on that particular disc.

[pldennison]

Originally posted by seriousart
Originally posted by pezpunk

I gave you candy, gave your diamonds gave you pills....[/sub]
ahem
Give you anything you want
Hundred dollar bills
I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see
Just marry me, marry me, marry me


You're not alone, pal... and no, I ain't from Jersey :).

I ain't from Jersey either, and I like Dramarama. I like "Work For Food" better, though.

[seriousart]

And who could forget Everclear's wonderful hidden track "I Will Be Hating You for Christmas" on their So Much For The Afterglow CD.
Great, great tune.

(on-going hijackarama...) And for the record, Last Cigarette's my favorite Dramarama tune...

[Larry Mudd]

My favourite hidden content is on the LP version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Remember how on the Heart of Gold, there's some confusion, during which "One of our heros bruised their upper arm", and the narrator makes considerable to-do about not telling you who it was?


If you have a very old turntable, (that doesn't automatically return the arm when the record is over,) you can listen to a message in the groove just around the label on side four:

"Arthur bruised his upper arm... Arthur bruised his upper arm... Arthur bruised his upper arm..."

[Opus1]

Damn! Okay HenrySpencer and pcubed, now that you've got my hopes all up, how the hell does one play a zero track? I own the Songs in the Key of X CD, but I never looked at the liner notes. Now I've tried on both my CD player and my computer, and I can't get this zeroth track to play. I look at the track listing on my computer, and it doesn't even list a track 0 as being on the CD! What's the trick?

[Evno]

C.....D....? What is a CD? Is that some kind of ancestor of a Great Big Hard Drive Loaded With MP3's?

:D

[Junior Spaceman]

Opus1,

In the case of the 'Songs in the key of X' CD:

1) Press play, so that track 1 begins to play
2) Hold down the 'rewind' button (ie the button that lets you 'crawl' through the tracks, rather than going to the previous track) until the timer displays 9:00 or -9:00, depending on the display. If you don't have a 'rewind button', you're out of luck.
3) Carefully rewind an extra few seconds (about 10 seconds) until the beginning of the track - if you go too far, the CD player will return to the beginning of track 1.

The most frustrating thing about track 0 is outlined in #3 - most CD players mess up your hard work if you go a few seconds too far.

Another CD with a track 0 is the 'Twisted Willie' CD, which has a very nice Johnny Cash interview talking about Willie Nelson.

Hope that's helped everyone.

One final thing. Inexplicably, my old and crappy CD player, for a while, played track 0 on my 'Key of X' CD automatically, if I started it by pressing 'Play' without pressing any of the tracking buttons.

[pezpunk]

Originally posted by seriousart

(on-going hijackarama...) And for the record, Last Cigarette's my favorite Dramarama tune...

Actually mine too with the close second of emerald city. They also do a fine cover of femme fatale on the album cinema verite. As for "work for food" John Easdale mentions Uncle Floyd. Does anyone remember Uncle Floyd or was he a New Jersey phenomenon?

[mongrel_8]

I have to third the motion for Green Day: All by myself. Although I never could figure out what he was doing all by hisself. Probably composing poetry right? Am I right guys?

[Why A Duck]

Originally posted by Opus1
What's the trick?

HenrySpencer pretty much summed it up. A couple of notes though.

Not all CD players can play these songs. Computer drives especially are poor at this. If you read the back cover, in fine print it says something like "this CD does not comply with the Phillips/Sony Redbook spec" or some other jibber-jabber.

I've also heard that not all discs have it. It may be a Domestic/Foreign version issue.

[mnemosyne]

I like the hidden track at the end of Our Lady Peace's album, Spiritual Machines. It's a really interesting album all-around, and then at the end of the last track (after about 10 mins of silence) there is a discussion between Ray Kurzweil and a cahracter called "Molly". I haven't read the book that the album was inspired by, but there are some really interesting ideas in it.

[evilhanz]

I'm a huge fan of the Pet Shop Boys. (insert laughter here). I owned the album "Very" for about 3 months before I realized there was a hidden track after "Go West" called "I Believe in Ecstasy" while working on some research at three in the morning in my college dorm room. It was such a pleasant discovery and a nice, soothing song to boot.

Running with Scissors reminded me of Queensrycche's Empire album. At the end, you hear a woman speaking in a barely perceptible tone of voice. I increaed the the volume and strained to make out the words until at the very end there's a loud THWACK! I jumped out of my skin the first time I heard that.

[SirRay]

A few years back, I made an effort to listen to everyone of my (1000+) CDs [over a few months, you realize], and came up with a few hidden tracks not mentioned before (my definition: Song both not listed on the cover/listing, and not listed the CD itself):

Live - Throwing Coppers - track 14
Alanis Morrisette - Jagged little Pill Track 13
(an alternate 'You Ougtha Know')
The Presidents of the United States of America II - Track 15
Social Distortion - White Light White Heat White Trash - 12
They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18 - Tracks 18-37
Tin Machine - Tin Machine II - Track 13
Alas, I forgot what most of the hidden tracks are - eh, guess you could find them on Website.

[orion007]

Originally posted by mongrel_8
I have to third the motion for Green Day: All by myself. Although I never could figure out what he was doing all by hisself. Probably composing poetry right? Am I right guys?

Nah I like to call it "manual stimulation". :D