I remember that one - weren’t they singing about carrots or something? {My memories are clouded because the only time I ever played it, my flatmate’s hot blonde friend, who was staying for the summer, walked into my room unannouced, hiked up her dress to reveal a distinct lack of knickers, and proceeded to screw my brains out. So maybe hidden tracks aren’t such a bad idea.}
Does anyone do the hidden tracks that make the timer count backwards, and can be stuck in the middle of a CD, without the annoying silence? The Ramones did this on Loco Live. “Carbona, Not Glue” is tacked on the end of “Pet Sematary”, but on some CD players, it’ll skip it if you have it on random. The only way to hear it is by listening to the CD straight through, or FF-ing through “Pet Sematary”.
Droolian: although this thread started in the Pit, it was moved to Cafe Society. Such comments are out of line here. You may insult the artists all you like, but you may NOT insult other posters. It is possible to have different tastes and different views from yours without being “spoiled crybaby whiners.”
When you post in Cafe Society, discussion is polite. Got it? If you have any doubts, read the Forum Rules, especially note Post #3 in that thread.
With MiniDisk players you could slice, merge, and move the track number of all your songs. Fit in your pocket too. When I bought mine eight years ago, the things were already eight years old and immensely popular in Japan–but no one ever tried to market them to the US until MP3 had appeared. And then they dropped the functionality… :smack:
It was great for hidden tracks. I also used it once to edit a song that had some cheesy chorus things that could be purged without causing any skipping sounds. 
Was a great song without that bit.
The Adverts did that on “Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts”: there were about four or five bonus tracks - alternate versions, B-sides, some good stuff - hidden at the start of the album: you had to play it, and then back Track 1 up for about 10 minutes before 0.00. I guess they were too punk to have regular bonus tracks.
I remember MiniDisk being marketed here in the US way before MP3s had appeared, they just didn’t sell.
I think I got one of those MiniDisks in some kind of promotion. A couple of the songs looked interesting, but I had no way to play the damn thing.
In the UK, minidisc players did brisk business among people who wanted to be able to make high quality live recordings with ease. I don’t know of anyone ever owning one for any other purpose.
I have only one CD that does this, but it was done openly, not as a trick. It isn’t a band but a CD of rock music designed for Tantric yoga meditation. Yeah, you think of meditation music as being all softy floating New Age windchimes, don’t you? Well, here’s some hard rock. Meditate this!
The Kali Meditation was recorded in Germany and went out under the name Shakti Gawain. She’s an author, not a musician. I bought the CD on a whim and planned to donate it to a library sale because I’m not that into it? But I kept it around for the novelty value. It has four tracks. Shakti’s instructions are to do a different type of meditation for the music on each track, and they form a sequence.
But the final track is over 9 minutes of silence. It’s meant to be the last phase of the meditation. So why keep the CD going for 9 empty minutes? Because of the gong aftrwards that signals the end. At least in the liner notes and track listing, Shakti warns us in advance about the silence.
They were HUGE in Japan, although they may have been superseded by MP3 players now - I think the major reason for their success there and failure in the West was copyright laws. Over there video stores - the big chains included - rent a huge selection of music CD’s, so you could borrow nearly everything you wanted for a few bucks, and rip it to Minidisc with near perfect quality and no degradation over time: in the days before everyone had a PC, a media player and a disc burner, it was a quantum leap from taping.
For me, the most irritating example of a hidden track came on Paul Weller’s first solo album. After the last song faded, there was a gap of something like 10-12 minutes, after which the listener was treated to … a brief reprise of the last song’s outro. You didn’t even get a full song for your trouble. :rolleyes: :mad:
I recall a lot of people here (myself included) not being too keen on the MiniDisc idea because it was a lossy compression scheme. “What if I’m one of the 1 in 20 who can hear the difference?” I thought. (I don’t remember if it was 1 in 20 or what, whatever they said at the time).
The whole mp3 concept showed that to be kind of silly. But I was able to hear it sounded fine to me with mp3s without springing for any new hardware.