Backwards messages on LPs

I played a country album backwards & got my house back, my wife back, my dog back, …

I also watch porn tapes backward to see hookers refund their fees.

That’s nothing compared to watching the men “vaccuum” up their deposit.

You can still do this if you have a 4-track cassette recorder, often used by cheapskate musicians like myself for home demos.

I’d just like to add that Falco’s song “Satellite to Satellite” on his album “Wiener Blut” contains a backwards message which says:

“Hi there. Falco and the brothers Bolland send greetings to you via satellite from Vienna and Holland. We thank you, sincerely, for playing this new hi-fi record by Falco.”

I had a friend that worked at a radio station when I was in high school, one night I took some albums in and we recorded them onto a reel-to-reel tape deck there and manually ran the tapes backwards… ok, so it probably wasn’t good on the equipment, but we didn’t own it.

“Darling Nikki” by Prince, now that he isn’t “The artist formally known as Prince”, said, “The end of the world is coming but I do not fear, the Lord is my savior, I do not fear.” Probably put in there to get the TV evangelist crowd.

“Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd has a grocery list embedded in it when you play it backwards, which included eggs, milk, and bread.

Korzdan

I challenge anyone to make a tape, LP, or any other form of media that contains a forward, intelligible ENTENCE OF SPEECH which is equally intelligible when played backwards, as outlined below.

This MUST be an INTELLIGIBLE SENTENCE OF SPEECH BOTH WAYS, ie; it must occupy and contain intelligence on the exact same position on the media when played in either direction. If the sentence “It’s all a myth” is embedded (and can be heard) at location X on the media when played in direction A, then, an equally intelligible sentence MUST be heard at location X on the media when played in the reverse direction (B). Both sentences must be able to be easily interpreted by a non-biased panel of listeners (ie; an “A/B” test).

If you don’t have an A/B panel available to you, then you can simply use a child. If a 10 year old can definitively discern and repeat the sentences (in both directions) without influence, then you can rest assured that an A/B panel will hear it as well…

Anyone can record a song and insert backward speech into it at any point in the song. However, this backward speech must be masked when it is originally played in the forward direction (by mixing sound into it, etc…).

In other words, the speech in the forward direction will not be intelligent when reversed (and vice versa), provided that it is the SAME speech played in both directions ON THE SAME POSITION ON THE SAME MEDIA.

People say that song X on album Y says Z if it is played backwards. BUT, does song X on album Y contain intelligible speech AT THOSE PRECISE positions when played in reverse???

I think not…hence my original challenge.

This is every bit as bogus as UFO’s, Loch Ness, or Bigfoot.

Makes for a good story, though. Just like UFO’s, Loch Ness, and Bigfoot…

JJ Richard

What the heck are you talking about and trying to prove or disprove? Are you saying there is no such thing as backwards masking? I am totally confused by your challenge…


Yer pal,
Satan

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Richard is offering a challenge to all those idiots out there to make a true effort at a science for a change in this whole ‘backmasking’ fiasco. I, and most people here, judging from this thread, think it’s self-evident that if a block of speech makes sense when played one way it will be little more than ‘phoneme salad’ when played in the opposite direction. Hence, any resemblence to actual speech when a block of speech is reversed is entirely coincidental and not a little subjective. It’s kind of fun to poke fun at those less intelligent than yourself but when they make outrageous claims like ‘backmasking’ things get too easy. How about this: Read off a favorite quotation, block of text from a book, poem, even your name into the standard audio recording system in Windows 95 and then play it in reverse. See if there’s any part of it that sounds coherent. If nothing else, this will be good for a few laughs.

If I remember right, Rob Halford later in the trial changed his testimony and said that “do it” was intentionally put into the song. Even better since they were aquitted. Even if backward stuff is in rock songs, it doesn’t make kids do stuff.

Yeah, this kind of thing has always pissed me off.

Why the hell don’t they worry about the songs that say these things FORWARDS??? I don’t get it. Call me crazy, but I think these people could stand to buy an Eminem CD.

On Denis Leary’s “No Cure For Cancer” CD, the final track, “Voices in my Head” has this in it.

In the beginning of the song, Leary whispers “There’s a secret message at the end of the song. Play it backwards, play it backwards, play it backwards.” At the end of the song, you can hear a voice saying “Number nine, number nine, number nine” amongst all the other talking, but when I played it backwards I didn’t hear anything special really.

I mostly agree with Satan… [never thought I’d hear myself say that]

However, I have heard the theory put forth that it might be possible for thoughts to be put indirectly into the subconsciousness via backmasking. This theory came from an expert in artificial intelligence. Here was his reasoning - I’m paraphrasing:

If the brain really does behave as a neural network then one assumes that it can be trained in similar fashion to today’s artificial neural networks. In many networks, the order of the training pattern is irrelevant. Therefore, it may be possible for information to be communicated indirectly in reverse, without requiring translation.

Whether you would have conscious knowledge of this information, or whether this information would have a directly recallable impact, that’s another matter.

I’m not sure I agree with the principles, though I could find nothing technically wrong with his reasoning.

To JJ Richard’s challenge I offer this time tested example. This is pretty easy to try out with most computers; you just need some sound editing software that can reverse the data.

Record the following phrase: “Say yes”
Reverse it and play it back and it sounds like: “Say yes”

OK, I’ve got a bunch of stuff to add to this, but not much time, so I’ll see how I go.

There was a very good documentary on the Judas Priest case called Dreamer Deceiver which I have on tape somewhere. The first time I saw it, when I was a heavy-metal head, I thought it was quite funny, and the family were completely pathetic, and the band were brilliant, blah blah blah. I watched it again a couple of years ago, and found it quite sad. The boy who survived the suicide pact had very little of his face left, and he seemed torn between loving his mother (who was being used by her church to prove a point about rock music), and knowing what actually happened (being that they were stupid young kids who took too many drugs and decided a shared suicide would be a good idea).

(BTW, cooldude, are you sure about Halford changing his testimony? I don’t remember hearing about this - he only said they’d used backwards drum and guitar effects, like a million other bands.)

As far as backwards messages (deliberate and otherwise), there’s a reference to Syd Barrett NOT put on by the band, on Pink Floyd’s The Wall record, and at the beginning of the Iron Maiden song Still Life, there’s a message to the effect of ‘Don’t mess with what you don’t understand’ backwards. Curiously, I had a record player that could be put on zero speed, so it was easy to wind backwards, and I tested it on a Disney record, and what do you know? The first 30 seconds I found a message. The first few lines of ‘In My Favourite Dreams’ spun backwards gave a message sounding very much like ‘Ooooh fear my little Satan’ (good advice for all Dopers <g> ). Nobody had suggested anything to me about what it should say, and it seemed quite clear to me, so this is a strange one.

Finally, many years ago when I was in a pretty bad band, we were recording on a four track, on which if you turn the tape over, it plays backwards, and we found all sorts of messages (no evil ones - mostly about food and such things) on our own songs - as the lyricist, I could be fairly sure that I didn’t deliberately put them there, and the contrived way I was writing suggested there wasn’t too much of the subconscious influencing them.

HenrySpencer.

First let me say that I can’t believe anybody on THESE boards could possibly believe this stuff however I must say that melodically " a Day In The Life" played backwards sounds pretty damn good.

A friend of mine used to have one of the old quad units and we played around with this just for giggles.
Say “Ninny Ondum Un” (IIRC) and play it back. What do you get?

Nothing. what’s it supposed to sound like?

JJ Richard sez:

Awhile back, my buddy and I were screwing around with his cassette four track (in the manner mentioned by pldennison above) whilst stoned, and we came up with a whole list of phrases that, when played backwards, came out pretty disturbing. Much like Chinese, the trick is to get the inflection right. You can replicate it on your windows sound recorder if you have a mic to plug into your computer. First, make a list of dirty words, repeating each one a few times, and then play them backwards. Some of them are garunteed to sound like SOMETHING. Play around with it a little, and you can get something that’s coherent in both directions.

As I said before, we were pretty THC-addled at the time, and the only specific example I can remember is that the phrase

“old man kill ya”

when said with the right inflection, stress, and timing, comes out

“I like NAMBLA”

say it like:
oldMANKILLya
rising and falling about a half octave with an equivalent modulation in stress. for you musical types, “old” and “man” are quarter notes; “kill” and “ya” are eighth notes.

Not exactly the queen’s english, but a pontentially kickass delta blues song.

correction: the Pink Floyd song containing the backward message is ‘Empty Spaces’ You can hear it just before the normal lyrics start - (very obvious backwards lyrics). And, yes it says, “Congratulations! You’ve just decoded the secret message. Please send your answer to ‘Old Pink’ in care of the Funny Farm”

I have an old cassette player which broke in a very interesting way. When you press the button that is supposed to flip the output from Side 1 to Side 2, it doesn’t do that – instead, it will play what’s on Side 1 backwards. Quite a handy little device. I used it to help a friend of mine decode a Frank Zappa song (the name escapes me) in which the words were recorded backwards.

I also seem to recall a George Carlin album which, on its front cover, proudly states that there are no backwards messages on the album – all messages from Satan are recorded forwards in plain English.

Mothra–I think the artist that was sued for hiding backwards messages was Ozzy Ozborne. Since I just saw the repeat of his “Behind the Music”, I’m really sure of this. My wife and I crack up when the goofball attorney chants the supposed backwards message:

“get the gun…get the gun…shootshootshootshootshoot”

Ozzy’s comment? “I’m speechless.”

those people who listen to tapes (which have been recorded at maximum b volume)for the voices of the dead?
Seems I heard of some guy who claims to have heard Hitler on some tapes…anybody care to comment?