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From: Lippard@his-phoenix-multics.arpa (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: messages (etched & hidden)/\"Paul is dead\" rumor
Message-ID: <9723@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 3-Apr-85 22:23:28 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.9723
Posted: Wed Apr  3 22:23:28 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 8-Apr-85 00:13:55 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 69

For anyone not tired of them yet, here are a few more
etched messages:

Circle Jerks "Group Sex"
   side 1: "Bong ludes"
Circle Jerks "Wild in the Streets"
   side 1: "Horn in cheif out"
   side 2: "Take over and shine on"
Roy Harper "The Unknown Soldier"
   side 1: "To Kate with love  Roy"
T.S.O.L. "Dance With Me"
   side 1: "Jack is Comedy"
   side 2: "I won!"
T.S.O.L. "Beneath the Shadows"
   side 1: "Nanny, nanny, billy goat!"
   side 2: "Do what you [underlined] want"


Hidden messages:  It seems to me there are the following
different kinds:

1.  Recorded at a different speed (e.g.  Jimi Hendrix "Third Stone from the
    Sun").
2.  Recorded normally , then put into the music backwards ("backwards
    masking") (e.g.  message in "Empty Spaces" on Pink Floyd's "The Wall").
3.  Recorded by a performer saying something backwards (e.g.  "natas!" on a
    live album by Black Oak Arkansas).
4.  Recorded normally, played normally, words played backwards have a
    different meaning (e.g.  Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", the Kate
    Bush example Doug Alan mentioned).

The first three types are obviously intentional.  I would guess that 90% or
more of type 4 is unintentional (and usually not really even there).  I
originally thought that it was all bogus, but the Kate Bush message is
evidence that it has been done intentionally.


Regarding "Paul is dead": I've seen a lot of pieces of "evidence" that Paul
McCartney is dead, but I'm not convinced that it was deliberate.  I've seen
reasonable explanations for most of it.  I find the coincidences between the
assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy and the coincidences about Dutch Schultz
and the number 23 to be more impressive, and they were clearly unintentional.

Here are a few (from a list of 25 in The Book of Rock Lists, pp. 454-456):

11.  On The White Album track "Revolution 9" there is a voice that repeats
"number nine, number nine".  If you play this segment backward, it becomes
"turn me on, dead man".  (John claimed that at the beginning of each take, an
engineer would announce, "This is EMI Recording Studio Number 9." Lennon said
that he simply took the end of the phrase and added it in the final mix.
According to him, the "turn me on, dead man" revelation was a coincidence.)

12.  On Lennon's song "Glass Onion", he says, "And here's another clue for you
all/The Walrus was Paul." In some societies, the walrus was an image of death,
but this is most important as Lennon's acknowledgement of the rumor.  [Looks
like the rumor had already started at this time and this was just a joke.
This is a possible explanation for much of the later stuff.]

18.  At the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever", Lennon can be heard saying
what sounds very much like "I buried Paul".  (Lennon claimed that The Beatles
would often say wild and crazy things while in the studio, and that what he
was really saying was "cranberry sauce".) [It sounds more like "cranberry
sauce" than "I buried Paul" to me.]

21.  In the "Your Mother Should Know" sequence of the Magical Mystery Tour
movie, "Paul" wears a black carnation; the others wear white ones.  ("Paul"
has explained that they ran out of white carnations.)

Jim Lippard (Lippard at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA)