Dec 012010
How often have you had that experience of thinking the album/disc/tape was over and then out of laziness or inattention just didn’t turn it off. Your distraction ended up with pay dirt: that secret, unlisted track that emerges when you least expect it. It feels like no one else in the world knows about it but you (and the producer). Tonight, the secret track showed up while I was washing dishes and listening to Gonjasufi‘s A Sufi and A Killer. And Mr. Royale has regaled me with the exquisite joy he felt when he discovered”Train in Vain” on The Clash‘s London Calling.
What are other secret tracks that you have discovered? Should there be an appropriate vocabulary word for this secret world?
There’s a secret track on the Zombies box set – I can’t remember which disc, though. As soon as the disc starts playing, wind backwards and the numbers go negative. The track is hidden there.
I truly dislike the secret track. On an lp, it’s obvious and it just bugs me that they didn’t put the title on there. On a cd. why should I be forced to fast forward through twenty minutes of silence to hear a song I don’t know the name of? Or watch the cd player cycle through 200 2 second tracks to get to track 218 to play some boring blues riff?
Take pride in your stuff, and put it out there like you mean it!
I’m pretty much with you, 2K, although I did think “Train in Vain” was done well on the initial vinyl release. The fact that the song was kind of different for the band made its secret appearance a little more exciting. Plus I was a teenager.
There’s some secret track stuff after the Aimee Mann album I like, I’m With Stupid, that nearly gave me a heart attack when it first came on. If I ever wanted to hear those secret tracks I’d have to fast forward forever.
Whenever this topic comes up I’m reminded of an interview I read with Pere Ubu’s David Thomas in which he complained about CD sequencing and wished he could release a CD that loaded songs in random sequence and wouldn’t allow people to skip or otherwise fight the random sequencing. I forget why he felt this was important, but it was kind of funny in the typically dick-ish way he comes off.
When I was in college, I rushed out to buy ZZ Top’s “Eliminator,” based on the strengths of the albums that preceded it. I sat on the floor in my dorm room, bitterly disappointed, as I heard the “new” Zeez sound unfold (think “Legs,” rather than “La Grange”). At the end of side two — remember, this was the first time I’d ever heard the album — I clearly remember thinking: “maybe I should just sit here for a bit; I feel certain there’s something extra at the end of this record.” Not that there ever had been on any other ZZ Top record. Anyhow, I sat there as the needle headed into the inner groove. To my surprise, there *was* something hidden in there: a telephone-quality recording of Billy G saying “oh, mercy!” Of course, since this was the inner groove, the album kept saying “oh, mercy” over and over again until you lifted the needle.
I always wondered how I knew to wait for something during that listening session. Weird.
I’ve always thought they were called hidden tracks, and I hate them too.
Not a secret track, but some friends of mine were in a hardcore band. They put out an album (produced by a very young Butch Vig no less), that had a message scratched into the blank vinyl part past the inner groove. The message was a Jed Clampett quote, “If you’re too busy to go fishing, you’re too busy.”
I love those messaged etched into records. I was in a band that, unfortunately upon my insistence, had this message etched in: Help! I’m trapped in a record pressing plant!
Depeche Mode had messages etched into many of their vinyl releases. I wonder if they still do…
I’m not a fan of the hidden tracks either, though it’s funny when it turns out to be a key song, rather than a throwaway. Train in Vain is one, Stone Roses’ “Fool’s Gold” is another.
Trip Shakespeare’s album “Lulu” ends with about 20 minutes of crickets and nighttime sounds, which is quite nice, really.
Side 1, I believe, of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain ends with an endless inner groove of “crickets.” I remember falling asleep to the album shortly after buying it and waking up to that same sound hours later.
At the end of AC/DC’s Highway To Hell album, the lovely and talented Bon Scott says the line(s) made famous by Robin Williams’ Mork from Ork: “Shazbot. Nanoo Nanoo.”
There’s then a brief chord (E, I believe) played softly to end the record.
Still pretty cool.
I don’t like hidden tracks either, especially when they play games with you, like the 200 one-second tracks (was that Camper Van Beethoven?).
Train in Vain (which I just realized is a stupid title for that song) was just a situation where the sleeves were already printed, but they were able to add the just-recorded song before the LPs were pressed.
HVB: What if I told you that the “Oh, mercy! Oh, mercy!” runout groove on Eliminator turns into “Steer? Ram? NO! Steer? Ram? NO!” if you play it backwards?
Blur, a band I otherwise love, has pulled both versions of the worst kind of hidden track tricks: The US version of Modern Life Is Rubbish has 49 empty tracks on the CD before you get two hidden songs. Ten years later, Think Tank did the even more annoying version, hiding a nearly seven minute song before the album’s first listed track.
Radiohead had a sort-of hidden track on Kid A, but they were more into hiding notes in the packaging. Kid A had a booklet hidden under the CD tray, and OK Computer has a “secret note” printed on the inside of the CD case’s spine, as well as hidden messages and pictures throughout the notes booklet that make reference to the lyrics. One of their EPs had what was once a working phone number hidden in plain sight right below the title on the cover, which I’ve since wondered whether it was inspired by that ridiculous “hidden phone number” theory re: the cover of Magical Mystery Tour.
What was that Who Sell Out track in the main post? I have owned this on vinyl since I was a wee lad and I know that the record ends on a lock groove (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twPz0qoXeXo) but I’ve never heard this instrumental Armenia before.
There’s a million of these hidden tracks. The can be great: Marah’s If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry buries possibly the best number they’ve ever done behind “Sooner or Later (Reprise)” and the drunken collapse version of “I Don’t Know” unlisted at the end of their rarities disc is priceless to anyone who buys into the whole Replacements schtick.
And there are jerk offs like the CVB mentioned by Big Steve (in their defense, “Eurotrash Girl” is track #69 on Kerosene Hat) and Urge Overkill have 20 mins of dead air between the last track on Saturation and some echoey noise. Thanks, jerks!
Never mind the Who question, I just read the Youtube comment and it is on the Deluxe CD Re-issue.
To be fair, hidden tracks don’t bother me in and of themselves — although they are kinda pointless now that most people put their CDs into computer drives and can find out exactly how many tracks are really on the album. As others have mentioned, it’s the 30+ minutes of dead air that truly irks me.
I think we’re all ignoring the invisible 800 pound gorilla here. John Cage set the standard for hidden tracks with his masterpiece 4’33”. He hid that shit REAL good.
Jon Oswald of Plunderphonics Fame has a great hidden track trick: he puts it in a leader to the first track. To get to the hidden track, you’ve got to hit the manual reverse scan button on your cd player and reverse to the beginning. Unless you do that, it is invisible. Doesn’t show in the time total, the number of trackes etc. He used this trick on the MetaRemix of multiple versions of Dark Star called Greyfolded.
I love “Endless, Nameless,” found on some of the CD copies of NEVERMIND, the classic album by Stone Temple Pilots.
I, too, hate the dead air, and often don’t find that the waiting was worth it. Are there any tracks that you were really glad you found?The Gonjasufi that I mentioned in the original post was, meh. But I liked that it was there.
I go away for a few days and the cranky old men start coming out bitching about stellar Neil Young performances and hidden tracks. What’s not to like about a hidden track? It’s a surprise if nothing else.
The end of Beck’s Odelay there is this loud electronic repetitive noise that is dreadfully awful. And I LOVE it. Freaked me out the first time I heard it.
Didn’t know about Train in Vain. I bought that in 80 maybe? It came with the album as a 45.