Originally posted by Danny@Aug 27 2004, 06:08 AM
I can confirm two incidences of back Masking.
Queen - Another One Bites The Dust
- Message is "We smoke Marijuana".
Learned from ruining many audio tapes at a teenager just for fun. If you make a tape recording of a CD (or when I was a teen, Vinyl) and then you take the tape apart and string the actual tape around the spools the other way around.. yep.. the tape plays backwards. Tapes used to cost about 50c in those days, and could fit one album per side.. so to us listening to albums backwards for 25c each was an awful lot of fun. This is how I discovered this one. It was ONLY this one, too. I listened to almost every album I had, every album my FRIENDS had.. my FAMILY.. and this was the ONLY unmistakeable mask we found.
THe REASON we were doing this originally is because I used to have the single vinyl of "they're Comming to Take Me Away, ha ha" and the B side was a recording of the song backwards! It was hilarious to us at the time. even the LABEL of the b side was PRINTED backwards.. as if the record was transparent and that is what the back of the label on the A side would look like. which brings me to my second confirmed Mask.
Napolean XIV - "They're Coming To Take Me Away"
- there are a few in here actually. the CLEAREST one is right at the end of the B side (which, therefore is the very start of the song when heard the right way round) the words "and that's the end" are heard. Meh.. nothing too controvercial or anything. I can't help but think the whole song was released originally as a JOKE about Back Masking. We had rascals in the music industry back then.. 
Anyone on a windows PC can listen to anything backwards now MUCH easier than my old Cassette Tape trick. Just open a song in Recorder, and you can set it to play backwards in one of the menu options!
If anyone else has CONFIRMED Masks, please do tell.
'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' is another Queen-song with a mask in it:
Lyric part forwards:
"...hitch-hike, and take a long ride on my motorbike until I'm ready..".
Same lyric part backwards:
"...to he** with the bible, all what I want is magic...".
Another exemple could be the song 'Jump' by Van Halen:
Lyric part forwards:
"...and nothing gets me down...".
Same lyric part backwards:
"...I leave satan on me...".
A couple of years ago I also played several songs backwards (with the help of a modified autoreverse-walkplayer; I haven't had that interest and the money to buy a professional
tape-machine). Even by testing out these exemples mentioned above one need a lot of imagination to hear out those backward-lines.
Several rock bands were amusing themselves obviously about the whole backward masking thing, i.e. such like Pink Floyd on their 'The Wall' album.
Play the song 'Empty Spaces' backwards, and you'll hear the following line:
"Congratulations! You just discovered the secret message. Please write to 'Old Pink', c/o The Funny Farm...".
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