I remember hearing, back in the glory days of the LP, that Monty Python’s Matching Tie & Handkerchief had a ‘third side’ embedded into one of the sides (parallel grooves? something like that). Of course, I spent many hours trying to get the third side to play without success (hell, I was in high school… what was I supposed to do, study?). Was this an urban legend, or did this actually exist? Anyone else heard this?
Heard it? I had it!
There were two grooves running parallel with each other. Drop the needle on one groove and one set of skits plays. Drop the needle just a half a hair away and the other set of skits plays. Don’t ask me what the skits are, I cannot remember the specifics.
Ah, for the days of real ‘album art’. This was the one with a printed slide-out jacket (extra paper that protected the record, for you whippersnappers).
The outside sleeve showed the title and a guady tie and handkerchief on a man’s suit. Pulling the jacket from the sleeve showed the tie and handkerchief and suit were on a Terry Gilliam illustration ofa purple-faced man with a noose around his neck.
Other albums had special tricks.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy” had a special catch groove at the end of one side revealing the fact that it was ****** who bruised *** arm. Wouldn’t work on a cassette or CD.
Damn this new technology! Damn Damn Damn!
You bet. They double-tracked one side, so it had two complete half-length recordings on that side. My dad bought the LP to use in the satire portion of that semester’s English class; he played it through once at home and took notes so he’d be able to discuss it, took it to school, started playing it, and it was a completely different bit…
You can figure it out by playing the two sides. One’s shorted. Put a piece of felt with a hole in the middle of it on your turntable, the put the record on with the short side up. Hold the record so it doesn’t spin, make a note of where (relative to the label) you’re setting the needle, and let the record go. If you get the side you’ve heard before, take the needle off, stop the record, then let it rotate half a turn and put the needle back on and let the record go again.
Ethilrist, that works fine if you have a good turntable but is hell if you’re making do with the folk’s RCA console to play your comedy albums. I think my own copy of Matching Tie and Handkerchief suffered from groove wear so it was difficult to set the stulus into the alternate groove.
Ethilrist, that works fine if you have a good turntable but is hell if you’re making do with the folk’s RCA console to play your comedy albums. I think my own copy of Matching Tie and Handkerchief suffered from groove wear so it was difficult to set the stulus into the alternate groove.
Actually it can be sorta worked with little extras here and there. I have found that the Aquabats like to include things. In one of their albums at the end there is a good 5 minutes of silence before launching into a interesting western style commercial for the Aquabats then a funny little ditty about playing with toys.
And the Beastie Boys last cd would play only certain things in you put it on a dvd drive on your computer.
I believe only the first pressing of the 3-sided album actually had the extra side…for cost reasons subsequent pressings were released in a standard 2-sided format. If you have “Tie and Handkerchief” and can’t seem to find the “3rd side” you might not actually have one. (You do have all the same material, just not split up as a novelty.)
Cost cutting huh? That must be why they dropped the Executive Version of The Album of the Sound Track of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail that can only be played once. 