Backward Masking

Justen

Send Lawyers,Guns & Money
So I'm listening to PF The Wall for the zillionth time tonight and the song "Dirty Woman" comes on, during which there is a fairly unmasked bit of backward masking- you know the scourge of satan from the seventies. Now I know if you spin it backwards it says very clearly "congratulations, you have found a secret message." I also remember spinning back Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" during the chorus and hearing (very clearly) "its fun to smoke marijuana, marijauna, marijuana"

So has anyone else spent any time playing around with this? I remember a lot of religious groups playing a bunch of records during the early 80's they said were backward masked, but I no longer remember them- I think it might be fun to rip them onto my computer and bring them into a audio editing program, reverse them and strip out auxilary frequencies and see if I can hear anything. Which of course makes you wonder if the BM is preserved in cd versions, or if it was something only doable on vinyl.

Maybe I need to get Pete's collection of beat up vinyl and a junk turntable so I can "experiment"!
 
I recall seeing some reports on TV about someone who developed a computer program where he can detect people lying when played backwards. All sorts of subliminal messages etc. Don't know how much there is to this or if it's just so much crackpot science.

Anthony
 
My friend and I back in 1980 left our city to go job hunting in Edmonton. Anyways we had to sleep on the floor at his sisters place. Well it was my friends practice to sleep with the radio on. I couldn't sleep because of the radio, but it was interesting cause that night they were playing backwards masking songs on the radio. I remember two of the songs were Bat Out of Hell 'Two out of three ain't bad' and Stairway to Heaven. The lyrics were 'satan my sweet satan' and 'I love satan' if I recall correctly.
I don't know what to think of it all,but needless to say I never listen to 'Bat out of Hell' anymore.
 
Just to be totally anal, the song with the back masking on side two of the first album is "Empty Spaces" and the next song is "Young Lust".

Secondly, reverse playback of back-masked messages is utterly trivial on PCs. I know Soundforge 4.5 can do it. I think you can get a demo version from Sonic Foundry's website. There are probably other programs that will do the same job on cnet.
 
Forgive me, but this thread inspired me to cull this from IMDb's memorable quotes section for the film "Little Nicky"(starring Adam Sandler in the title role):

[Ozzy Osbourne record playing]
John: "Hey, Nicky, can you tell us what Ozzy's tryin' to say here?"
Nicky: "Well, Ozzy, was always very straight forward with his message, but wrap your minds around this."
[Pulls out a Chicago album]
Todd: "I love Chicago."
[Nicky plays the album backwards, "I command you, in the name of Lucifer, to spill the blood of the innocent..."]
Peter: "Wow! Chicago kicks ass!"


:lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
The rest of the film was okay, but that scene- and its last line, uttered to stoner-metalhead perfection by Peter(played by Peter Dante)- is a friggin' riot! ;)

I don't really have anything more to contribute to this particular conversation, except that its often hard enough to discern lyrics in records being played forward! :tongue:

BTW, that was a pretty cheeky ploy on PF's part.;)

Cheers.
:beerchug:
-AlphaLima
 
While we're on the subject of hidden messages, recently I noticed my spell checker already knew that "Illuminati" was spelled correctly. Either part of the conspiracy or some twisted programmer at work. Just one of the many spooky easter eggs hidden in code.

Don't get me started on the people who are convinced that the UPC bar codes on all retail products today are the mark of the beast as they all contain 666 within the code.

Anthony
 
Originally posted by gonzothegreat
Just to be totally anal, the song with the back masking on side two of the first album is "Empty Spaces" and the next song is "Young Lust".

You are of course, correct!

So far the onset of old age is not fun...I can't remember sh*t! I'm destined to become Grampa Simpson- who are you? What are you doing here? Who am I?
 
The piper's calling you to join him

The catch with Stairway to Heaven is that the lyric that sounds like it hides a back-mask of "here's to my sweet Satan" will sound like that even if it is not coming from the album. If you sing the line "There's still time to change" to the melody of the song and digitize it, or even just sing it into a Talk Back toy or a Casio keyboard - when you play it backward it sounds vaguely like "here's to my sweet Satan". Probably just a phonetic coincidence.
 
My favorite backward masking was on the Waitresses "The Smartest Person I Know". The message says (more or less, it's been a while) "People who worry about backward masking are idiots"

Al
 
If God can insert codes into the Bible then its logical to assume that Satan will try a few creative tricks of his own. Hence backwards masking, no great mystery.
Who knows what the spirit world is capable of doing. We are mere mortals who know nothing.:)
 
Don't forget the grandfather of all backwards masking, "Revolution #9" by The Beatles (actually John & Yoko).
The inane bingo parlour announcer, endlessly repeating "Number Nine...Number Nine...Number Nine..." when played bass-ackwards says "Turn Me On Dead Man...Turn Me On Dead Man..." I have a wave file of this if anyone wants to hear it.
 
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