Back in my day, and in my neck of the woods, the notion that much rock music contained subliminal Satanic messages was pretty common.
I had several friends who, at some point in their lives, got saved by the Bible-thumpers and purged their entire record collections! (I actually wound up getting some damn good stuff for free that way, although gave much of it back when the inevitable backsliding occured.)
Off the top of my little doggy head, I can only think of 2 genuine backward lyrics.
One is from Pink Floyd’s Pink Floyd The Wall, wherein the listener is congratulated for finding the message and given an address to write to, and the other is from ELO’s Time, which states, “The music is reversible, like time – turn back, turn back.”
Anyone know of other genuine backward or otherwise subliminal stuff, inserted intentionally into commercially available recorded music?
Not music, but in the original Diablo game by Blizzard, if you extracted the creepy sound played when you got to fight Diablo, and played it backwards, it said “Eat your vegetables and brush your teeth every day.”
Weird Al Yankovic’s “Nature Trail to Hell (In 3D!)” off the “In 3D” album, the backmasked part says “Satan eats Cheez-Whiz”
J. Giles Band’s “No Anchovies Please” story off the Sports album, the backmasked portion says “It doesn’t take a genius to know the difference between chicken s**t and chicken salad”
There’s a section in “Pepper” on the Butthole Surfers’ Electric Larryland where it sounds like some backward masking has been inserted. Anyone know if this is a backward track or just Gibby having fun?
Yes. When you play Ringo’s repeated “Number nine” backward – which I’ve done – you hear something that sounds somewhat like “turn me on, dead man” if you know to listen for it, but it’s not a true backward mask. Here’s a good site for exploring the “Paul is dead” phenomenon.
DocJon, I may have flubbed the ELO line. I no longer have the rigged turntable and am working from my decades-old memory of the track. Thanks for the link.
Btw, there’s an outtake – on the Beatles’ “Anthology” set, I believe – in which John’s “cranberry sauce” remark isn’t slowed down, and you can clearly hear he’s not saying “I buried Paul”.
Also, on “I Remember Larry” (from the Bad Hair Day album) there’s a backwards message that says something like “Wow, you must have an awful lot of time on your hands.”
Universal Hall Pass’s “Katrinah Josephina” has backwards stuff, but it’s just the chorus played backwards, I think.
DocJon, I may have flubbed the ELO line. I no longer have the rigged turntable and am working from my decades-old memory of the track. Thanks for the link.
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The line, the title. . .got the band name right though. (grin)
Some sources cite the line as “BUT time is not. . .”. I don’t recall hearing the BUT, however.
I just remember this because one of the first things I did with my Commodore Amiga way back when was to sample some song bits and play with them.
Also found the guitar opening to Heart’s “Magic Man” was recorded & reversed for the song, with a forward opening lick added on to the beginning. I thought that was pretty cool, though obviously not lyrics-related.
The top of my head is not the sharpest spot on the planet.
I think I completely misrecalled the album because the buddy I used to do these backward renderings with “borrowed” my Time LP and never gave it back! So my little doggy brain did some misassociations.
Btw, he was one of the ones who eventually got saved and purged his records.
Both Backmask from Mindless Self Indulgence and Hold Your Head Up High from Bloodhound Gang have obviously reversed segments; but I haven’t bothered reversing them.
Iron Maiden had one, it was between two songs on the (IIRC) Flight of Icarus EP Picture Disk in 1983. If you turned it backwards, a guy with a Jamaican accent would say something about “De camel wit de TREE homps!” and belch afterwards.
Cool cite, cstamets! I remember actually hearing many of those, both real and spurious, notably the Beatles, Queen, and ELO’s “He is the nasty one. Christ, you’re infernal.” That last one was really creepy the first time I heard it.
Of course, according to the theology of the record-purgers, it doesn’t really matter that much whether a band intentionally inserted a backward message or not. Satan works in mysterious ways, too, and is putting subliminal thoughts in your mind through the music – he can do it just as well by playing the bands for puppets as by getting them to collaborate openly.
