Anybody remember the controversy around 'backwards masking' from the '80s? For those that don't know, the case was made that rock bands were intentionally encoding messages in their recordings that could only be heard when the record was playing backwards. The televangelists naturally used this to say that Rock was evil and the messages were satanic.
I remember when I was a kid that it was rumoured that Pink Floyd did such a thing on purpose and my next door neighbor and I wanted to test it out. We recorded The Wall to cassette and then took the cassette apart and flipped the tape over and right to left so that it would play backwards when played normally on the tape deck. I remember that we could clearly hear a message.
So...I decided to try this out again because it is easy to do that with an audio editor. Sure enough, the message is there and easily heard. The song Empty Spaces (around 1:12) has a passage that is unintelligible when played normally. Using Sound Forge, if you select that section and use Process->Reverse you can hear it.
It says: You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont... [ I think Chalfont is a town in England]
A Google search finds a few sites that lists all the songs that are supposed to have satanic messages (Stairway to Heaven) or other messages. Most of them take a huge stretch of the imagination to hear what they claim is said, but the Floyd message is clear. Anybody remember any other songs that were said to have such messages? Dissecting the songs with an audio editor is a great time waster...
