Listener Mail: Santa Laughing Spreads His Wings

on parental leave. Um that we're about what ald you cover in these I know you talked about like playing records backwards and uh like I guess the Judas Priest rumors and all that. The big topics we covered were playing you know, the back mask gang and playing records backwards, so actual back masked content and then allegations of back masking the idea that oh, you know, the Led Zeppelin song has satanic messages and if you play it backwards,

that sort of thing. Um. We also talked about all these various tricks you can do in vinyl with the grooves, and uh that that was a whole other interesting area. But also we touched on some other things like having codes in music, um hidden images in musical data, that sort of thing. Anyway, uh So, this message is from Mike, following up on his previous message which we featured. Thank you for reading my letter about weird Al and backmasking.

This was the one that mentioned weird Al doing backwards messages such as Satan likes cheese. Whiz Mike says, just follow up with some comments about the song Bob. I saw a weird Al at Carnegie Hall last month, and he told the story of where this song came from. Paraphrasing here. It was two thousand two, a palindrome year, and everyone was obsessed with palindromes. I wondered if I

could make a song completely out of palindromes. So I looked up a bunch of palindromes online and when I put all the lyrics together, it was all just basically a random jumble, but it looks like it should mean something. That's when I realized I had written a Bob Dylan song. I think that's a little harsh on Bob Dylan, but but I get what you're saying. I get you a weird Al. Uh So, the song ended up being named Bob, which is another palindrome, and Weird l in his band

put together the music as a style parody of Bob Dylan. Uh. And then Mike includes a link to the music video as well as the lyrics. And I realized after I looked it up that I had seen this music video before, but I guess it's been a long time. So it's in the style of that that classic film version of Subterranean Homesick Blues where Dylan is like throwing off the Q cards that have like the words from the lyrics

in them. And I'm not gonna read all the lyrics of the song, but there are some pretty good ones, So hats off to weird al he uh. He has some like a Madam I'm Adam too who hot to hoo to no lemons? No melon too bad? I hit a boot um. Let's see what were the other good ones? Rise to vote? Sir, do geese God? Do nine men? Interpret nine Men? I nod? Rats Live on No Evil Star? Won't Lovers Revolt? Now? Race Fast Safe Car? Rats Live

on No Evil Star is pretty great? Like That's that sounds like it probably should be the title of a of a paperback science fiction novel from the nineteen seventies. Absolutely agree on one of the all time best Palin drums. Also some of the last ones there was a ufo tofu, we panic in a pew oozy rat in a sanitary zoo. And then the final couplet is is just chef's kiss. It's god a red nugget, a fat egg under a dog,

go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog. And Mike finishes this message saying thanks, oh well, well thanks make yeah, this is exactly what we're hoping to hear from folks. Even more information about curious songs and hidden meanings, though in this case it's like the hidden meaning is also the straightforward overt me, which is kind of kind of interesting.

May a moody baby doom a yam alright. This next one comes to us from Neil Neil Rights, and it says, Robin Joe, the discussion on hidden tracks from your play the Record backwards episode reminded me of one from Tools album ten thousand Days. This may be the most complex and creative secret track of all, since it required the

listener to play it using two devices simultaneously. Let me explain there are eleven tracks on the CD, but in order to access the hidden track, one must listen to track three Wings from Marie Part one, immediately followed by track eleven Virginie Thrace Uh. These two songs flow into one another nicely and add up to one song that is eleven minutes thirteen seconds in length. That's pretty cool, But the crazy part is that track four, ten thousand Days Wings Uh Part two is also eleven minutes and

thirteen seconds long. So in order to hear the secret track in its final form, one must queue up the track three, followed immediately by track eleven on one device and play those while also sinking them up to track four playing on a second device. When I learned this back in the day, I tried it with the CD player and a PC playing m P three's and my mind was blown. Thank you for all you do to keep my mind ever blown, yours, etcetera. Neil Uh, didn't

the Flaming Lips have an album like this? It was this Zayrika or one of those that the idea was, you would like have four different CDs playing all at the same time in four different CD players. I well, I'm not super familiar with when it comes to the Flaming Lips. I'm basically basically only familiar with Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots, but I am well aware of this. Um gosh, it's kind of a I think it's more

like a sort of a conspiracy theory. Uh With ten thousand Days, I'm I'm a little unclear myself because I to remember when when fans started talking about this, regarding ten thousand Days in the way it was kind of like you got excited and then it was a letdown because someone's like, there's a secret track, and you know, you were excited to hear it, and then they said, well, you have to build it yourself out of my playing

on two devices. And then I did it once, probably in a very similar method, and I was like, Okay, that's that's all right. Um, But I myself wasn't blown away, but I thought maybe the idea was pretty cool. And I actually looked back into it for the first time in many years when we're prepping up these episodes, and I couldn't tell I saw some like fan discussions where some people were saying, there's nothing to it and it's

just a coincidence. Uh. So I'm I'm not sure. Certainly the numbers do seem to line up, but I'm not sure if that means that it is clearly a super hidden track, as it sometimes referred. I mean, if it sinks up perfectly, like if it's same tempo and same key, it seems like it could be hard for that to be by accident. Yeah, I mean I didn't. I didn't really analyze it a lot when it came out, and um,

I just I had assumed it was intentional. But like I say, it looks like maybe there is some discussion back and forth on the matter, so I'm not sure if it's settled within the fandom. M hm. Also, it does mean really it's too difficult. I shouldn't have to build my own track, and it also it seems like also it's like I shouldn't have to remix the music

to find the secret. But I guess that's kind of like what the idea of the back masking is, like, force people to get in there and mess around with it, use the audio technology at their disposal. So I don't know, I'm not sure which way it goes. Isn't it only fun if they make you do some work like if it the hidden track is just the last track on the c D? Is that yeah? Track that I mean?

That was one of the interesting things that came out of that discussion with Seth in those episodes, because I'm I was mostly only familiar with CD hidden tracks, which was for the most part, just a matter of letting the obviously super long last track on an album run its full course, that sort of thing. He didn't actually

have to work for it. But some of the Vinyl things that that we discussed in those episodes, the vinyl secret tactics, some of those do require a bit of skill to pull off, and there maybe a little more hidden in plain side. Well, I think that gets a referenced in the next message, So I'm gonna read this one from Dan. Dan says, hello Robert and Seth. Seth, if you're listening, this one's also for you. I listened to your two episodes on Backwards Recordings and I absolutely

love them. I share Rob's annoyance with hidden tracks on CDs. I never understood the point of them, as I used to listen to CDs on my desktop computer through the Windows Media Player app, which would say in the track listing hidden track if the CD you were playing had

a hidden track. Cool um. It was also a bit of a pain because if you wanted to make a copy of a CD for a friend and the hidden track took a long time to get to, you wouldn't be able to fit it in on the c d R, as they only had an hour and ten minutes worth of space. A good example of this is the Deft Tones album Around the Fur, in which the song Deman starts playing twenty minutes after the end of the last song m X I don't know this album. Yeah, I'm

not familiar with this. Also, if you're looking for more examples. In a recent interview with Terry Gross, weird Al talked about how he recorded some backmaske songs on his early albums Okay. Similar topic has come up before, but yes, see, if you play one song backwards, it says, Wow, you must really have a lot of time on your hands.

Another one says Satan loves Cheese Whiz. Finally, in keeping with the episode subject matter, I have a recommendation for weird howse cinema trick or Treat a heavy metal sploitation horror film from six about a dead heavy metal singer who sold is sold to Satan and it's brought back

to life by playing his final album back Words. I've never seen it, but I remember Robert, Joe and Christian talking about it during an episode of Trailer Talk Ozzie, I guess that means Ozzy Osbourne has a small acting role as a televangelist, and to a lesser degree, Gene Simmons plays a sleazy radio DJ. That fits. Also, Glenn Morgan and James Wong from The X Files have writing credits. Might be worth consideration. Happy Crampus, Knocked Dan Ps, Demon

Cleaner Rocks. I guess maybe the thing about the Kias song, Yeah, that came up, not so much a secret track, but I brought up how talking about annoyance with hidden tracks, about how on the c D for the Kaias album, Welcome to Sky Valley from the track Demon Cleaner is awesome, but it is the third song on the second track on the album, so it's like it only has I think three tracks in a hidden track, but track number one three songs, track number two three songs, track number

three four songs, so it kind of keeps you from jumping around too much in there. Yeah. Yeah, Black Sabbath's first album was like that, and they cram a lot of songs into one track or or just called them one song even on the record. Yes, Seth brought that he may referenced y'all's discussion on Rusty Needles Record Club about about Black Sabbath, and Uh, yeah, I didn't know

the full story in that either. I had run into that situation though, where if I wanted to play uh say, war Pigs, um, some versions of the album have war Pigs in there with a bunch of other stuff, so harder to zero win on the song you want if you were trying to listen to that song on your own terms. Oh but Trick or Treat, that was the main point. Uh six film Trick or Treat not to be confused with the with the more recent Trick or

Treat film, which was also a lot of fun. But this one is very much a metal sploitation film, and I have been kind of eager to at some point cover proper metal splitation cinema on Weird House. Oh well, we could, we could certainly give that a look. I it's funny you're saying I mentioned this movie now. I can't remember if I've seen it maybe I have. Back when we were doing Trailer Talk, this was like a YouTube series we did. Uh. We weren't in the habit of all of us watching all the films that we

would reference. Oftentimes each fist would watch one film, so we weren't really supposed to spend that much time with him anyway. It was like the show was supposed to be like fifteen minutes or something, so that was really cool. I think we were streaming that on Facebook video nice mats communicating. So yeah, I don't have a very clear memory of this film. I do remember at least watching

the scene where Ozzy Osbourne is a TV evangelists. But yeah, there's a There are a number of metal splitation films from this period, some of which I've seen, some of some that I haven't. Uh, And there's oh man, there's some some wonderful stuff in there. Well. That could go

on a list of great TV evangelist cameos. Uh. The other one I'm thinking of is in the West Craven movie Shocker, which stars Mitch Peleggie, another X Files connection, as a serial killer who does a an evil magic spell that turns him into electricity after he goes to the Electric Chair. That movie has Timothy Leary as a televangelist in it. Very nice. Just some comes to us from Daniel. Daniel says, I just listened to your two part episode on backwards masking and hidden info in music.

I remember in the late eighties when there was the Satanic music uproar. My cousin had a you Tube record that our parents did not like. I remember the night they came out to our place to play this record backwards on my record player, as mine was the only one that would play backwards. They all set around listening intently for anything that sounded like any speech. After some time, there was a reverse phrase that sounded a bit like I believe that was That was that the album had

to be forced burnt in my metal forge. What what? Uh? Yeah? My initial read on this was, I guess this is a forge just for burning metal albums. Um so I can certainly handle you two album. I mean it can handle some pretty heavy stuff, so you two is gonna go up like a matchstick. But anyway, my metal forge, it must be some sort of like metal working forge,

I guess. But M Daniel does add uh quote. I had many weird things as a kid, I didn't feel comfortable with my forage being used to destroy my cousin's property against his will. I remember that night thinking how stupid it was. The I believe phrase was obviously coincidental, even to my ears, and anyways, what's wrong with the phrase I believe to a Christian. Nevertheless, I had to

shut up or I would have been in deep trouble. Also, as a radio presenter and producer here in Australia of twenty years, I've done many of those weird tricks myself, especially time stretching, inverse fourier, the aphex twin trick, slow scan and narrow band TV frames and many others. Anyway, I'll definitely continue to listen to your show to yours, Daniel, Oh thanks, Daniel. Oh, yeah, it sounds like you you

come from, uh maybe a similar culture to me. I I knew many kids when I was in middle and high school who got got in incredible trouble for like having a wage aboard and stuff. But I don't recall any terror about back masking in particular. I think maybe that was a little bit before my time. Yeah, I don't remember any of this back masking stuff so much. In my like immediate um, you know, church environment growing up.

That certainly was a kind of thing you'd see on TV and uh and maybe there were still reverberations of that moving along. But as far as you two goes, like you two was put forward is like this is the band you should listen to look at, like they would sing some of these songs in like church coffeehouse environments. So so yeah, the idea that you two, of all people, were, we're secreting away some sort of hidden satanic message is just so ridiculous. That is kind of sinister. What is

he the edge of what is bono backwards? Oh no, no, oh, that's that sounds satanic. Yeah, it's like a it's like ancient Egyptian deity worship worshiped by Alistair Crowley. He came up in those episodes. Crowley was into the playing stuff backwards,

listening to music backwards, listening to language backwards. Yeah, yeah, it's It's an interesting topic though, because what one of the things we keep coming back to, It's like so much of it is, especially in this example that was shared it here is if you listen to backwards audio enough, particularly backwards speech, you will find something that sounds enough like what you're looking for, you can't at least fall into the category. And that's just just how it goes.

I mean, when you're listening to singing that is basically speech and playing that backwards, you're still gonna hear some syllables, yeah, yeah, and some of those are gonna fall together closely enough

to give you an idea of some other phrase. But yeah, one of the just crazy things about it, not to just completely dive back into the whole topic again, but you know, some of these were like like accusations that like A C d C was including back masked um stuff and say Highway to Hell, where they're already like saying, you know, hey, we're rocking for Satan, Like why would you need to hide anything in there? That's the forwards message? Yeah. Also E C d C is not trying to be spooky,

they're like they're like party boys. Yeah. And and then the other thing too, It's like, if you are going to hide something in the lyrics to for your song, just hide them in the lyrics. Like if you're using language again, you have all the tools of language at your disposal. You can just go wild with that. You don't have to have some awkward bit of phrasing that is somehow incorporated backwards in your music. Okay, one last message for today, uh Adam writes in with just a

series of weird House suggestions. One of these I've seen too, I have not. The list goes Laser Blast, next one show Kasugi Theater, five, Dynamite, Shallon Heroes, and then Warrior from Shallon. Uh. Those second to sound like kung fu movies, I have not seen them, but always up for for a kung fu movie, especially a weird one. Laser Blast, however, not only have I seen many times. That was one of the first movies that we watched after we we we brought our baby home, uh a month ago, so

my wife and I we watched it around Thanksgiving. Very nice, very nice. Yeah, that's what I've seen in MST three K form many times over the years. I've never watched it just straight up, So that would be that would be fun experience for Weird House at some point if that one checks out for us. So Leonard Malton gave

it two point five stars, right. Uh. Yeah. The premise of blazer Blast, if you're not familiar, is that a sort of a young lad who likes to drive around in a cool wizard van Uh finds a piece of alien technology in the desert which attaches to his arm like you kind of techno leech, and begins to change him into an alien. So it allows him to blast bullies and other various enemies of his with uh supernatural or not supernatural, just high tech power. But it also

turns him green. He kind of becomes a hulk. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a fun flick. And Roddy mcdowal's in it, yea. And Eddie Deason from Greece. Oh yeah yeah, Eddie Deason. Yeah yeah, it's got a it's got a fun cast. There's somebody else of note. Um, Oh yeah, Dennis Berkeley, isn't it. He's the the big bearded man. Are you ready for some football? Yeah? That one? Okay? Should we wrap it up there? Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap

it up. But we'd love to hear from everyone. Keep the messages rolling in as we roll through the holidays. Here reminder that Loostener Mail airs every Monday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed our Core Science episodes on are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Monster Fact or Artifacts short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we do Weird how Cinema episodes. That's when we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.

Huge thanks to our audio producers for this episode. That would be Max Williams and j J Pauseway Uh. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.