New update on the backmasking page. It’s a clip from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Nature Trail to Hell.
Categories
Category: backmasking
Categories
The Case for Advertising
Recently Ponyboy at Glassdog.com gave a fairly scathing rant about BoingBoing’s slippery slope decent from sans ads to (depending on what you consider an ad) “between nine and nineteen ad slots”. He complains that BoingBoing has sold out while at the same time it continues to pretend nothing has changed.
I can’t really compare myself with BoingBoing in influence or blog credibility (if there is such a thing) but I feel like I can totally relate. For years I’ve had a pretty big draw in my Stairway to Heaven Backwards site, but I’ve always resisted putting ads on it. I felt that it would be selling out. But the thought persisted. Perhaps I even used BoingBoing as my role model. If they can do it, I justified, then so can I. It didn’t take long until I convinced myself that a few context sensitive ads wouldn’t actually hurt that much anyway. Besides I would only be collecting money to help pay for the site.
And that’s great for the time being. Right now I can justify the ads by telling myself they are here for the greater good of keeping the site alive. However when I finally raise enough money to pay for hosting and DNS costs, I have to admit that I won’t want to take the ads down. It’s just too easy not to.
I think BoingBoing is in the same boat. They started out with the best of intentions; they really believed that their ads were only there to cover costs; they really believed that they were a necessary evil in their fight for survival. But once the ads were up they realized that hey, tasteful advertisments on a site are not the worst thing in the world. In fact maybe they are even setting an example of how the websites can survive and even generate money after dot com bubble burst.
Put yourself in the publishers place. Money is tight and yet you must find away to make ends meet. After some agonizing you realize that ads on your site are the best route to take but you feel like you have to sell your soul in the process. You close your eyes and take the plunge but then when the dust settles you realize advertising is not so bad. You still have that strong justification that “it’s all for the greater good” running through you head. Then the day comes that everything is paid for, the site has become self sufficient and you can rest easy knowing your baby is safe. But the money continues to roll in. It’s at this point that something inside you changes. Your very soul turns around and says, “Hey this extra cash will allow me to finally get that BowFlex™ I’ve seen on late night TV.”
I have to agree with Ponyboy that BoingBoing probably should admit to themselves the real reason the ads are there to stay. It has caused me to reevaluate my thoughts on the subject and I’ve realized that the writers of BoingBoing, like me, know that when all is said and done — 90 days on our new exercise equipment will mean bodies that are sculpted to perfection.
Categories
My Salt Lake Tribune Interview
Yay! Today The Salt Lake Tribune published the article about backmasking in which I was interviewed.
Enter “backmasking” into the Google search engine and nearly 9,000 sites pop up. One of them is “Stairway to Heaven: Backwards” (https://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm ), a site established by Jeff Milner, a 25-year-old student, part-time lifeguard and bed salesman.
“As a kid, a cousin of mine told me he took his ‘Stairway to Heaven’ record and played it backwards hearing some kind of satanic message,” Milner says. “I never had a chance to hear it myself… Then when the technology came along to do it on the computer, I jumped at the chance.”
He copied the song from the 1971 Led Zeppelin album onto his hard drive, then used the Windows Sound Recorder application to reverse it. He found what sounded like lines about the devil.
Update: I’ve posted the complete contents of the Salt Lake Tribune backmasking article in the comments.
Categories
New Backmasking Address
I just finished copying my backmasking page to the new domain. You can now use https://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/ for all your flash watching HTML 5, backmasking listening, enjoyment.
Some time ago I received an email from a professor at York University. He asked if he could use part of my Stairway to Heaven backwards site / idea for a class. Here is the conclusion of his experiment.
Jeff-
I have now given my lecture on perception, and the Stairway to Heaven was a real hit. Before I played it backwards, (and after they had listened forwards a few times), I distributed sheets of paper with the “words”. Half the class got the Satan stuff, and the other half got my own words, which have nothing to do with Satan or religion. I realized at the outset that my words did not fit quite as well as the Satan ones, but some lines fit very well. The demo went perfectly – those who had the Satan words could “hear” the backwards lines very well, and those who got my words, could hear at least some of my lines well. Interestingly, those who “heard” my words had a very difficult time hearing the Satanic words later on when I played it again.
Thanks again so much for your [help]. It has really helped me make a very important point about the nature of perception and how we actually construct our percepts.
Cheers
Jim
Categories
Song Meanings
Songmeanings.net is a site dedicated to trying to parse what artists were trying to say through their lyrics. It contains the lyrics to close to 200,000 songs credited to about 15,000 artists and allows visitors to weigh in with their opinions about what it all means. I found the Stairway to Heaven interpretations of note. (If you can stand surfing through the idiotic posts of 300 stupid morons for a few gems). I still like my intrepretation best.
Categories
More Backmasking Songs
Because of my backmasking page, I’ve been getting a lot of emails with requests for other songs that have backwards messages as well people sending me lists of songs that apparently have just that. Here are some excerpts (for those of you that care).
- Cradle of Flith – “Dinner at Deviant’s Palace” When played backwards, you hear the lord’s prayer
- Missy Elliot’s song – ‘Work It’
- The song Karate by Tenacious D. At the end reverse the last word he says and it says, “donkey crap” quite clearly.
- Led Zeppelin – Stairway to heaven
In the end of the song there is an inverted message which goes something like this:
“Because I serve Satan, God denies my and there is no escape” (I’m not sure about the exact words, because this was never played on that cassette; they only told that it existed). - Styx – Snowblind
A inverted part:
“Satan is moving our voices” - The Beatles – Number nine
“Let me out, let me out, let me out” and then continues: “Turn me on dead men” or “let me under men”, in the cassette that was described as a suicide message or something like that =). - And something else funny: if you found a .mp3 where the crowd is calling kiss back like “kiss kiss kiss, kiss kiss kiss”, it sounds backwards 666, 666 etc.
- ELO – Eldorado
There is a part which goes inverted like this: ‘He is nasty one, Christ your infernal’. - ELO – Fire and High
There is some babble which is inverted: ‘The music is reversible, but time is not, turn back, turn back, turn back’.
And along those lines another email message goes into that last one more specifically:
“Hey man, I really dig the site dedicated to backwards messages in songs. I was spinning Face the Music by ELO, and i found another hidden message. In the first track, Fire on High, during the halleluia chorus part in the intro, there is jumbled speaking, meant to sound freaky. If you spin the album backwards, it says ‘Turn back now. Turn back now. The music is reversible.'”
And to finish off someone commented about one of the song clips I have on my site.
“I think that your clip of John Lennon’s Imagine, when reversed, actually
says, ‘Oh Beezelbub. Must have me.'”
Categories
Another Backmasking Update
I’ve added the following songs to my backmasking page:
Imagine – John Lennon
Kiss, Kiss, Kiss – Yoko Ono
My Name Is… – Eminem
Pokemon Rap
As well I’ve made some minor changes to some of the older clips. Feel free to comment on my backmasking page here.
Because I’ve noticed some people searching for the “full lyrics to Stairway to Heaven reversed” and probably find my backmasking page lacking in that regard, I will post an email that I received this morning, partly here and partly in the comments. (It’s too long to include the whole thing on the main page.)
Well, you have certainly caused a stir here. It seems that everybody is flocking to your site. Nice work. I must tell you, though, you have it wrong. Here are the lyrics to the part that you have on your site:
So here’s to my Sweet Satan.
The other’s little path
Would make me sad,
Whose power is faith.
He’ll give those with him 666.
And all the evil fools,
they know he made
us suffer sadly.I have discovered that the ENTIRE Stairway To Heaven is a full and COMPLETE backwards message. EVERY word from start to finish is undeniable and distinguishable.
Categories
Backmasking
I’ve decided to add a little something to my backmasking page. So for now I’m working on adding Britney Spears — Hit Me Baby One More Time, Queen — Another One Bites the Dust, and The Beatles — I’m So Tired. I might be tempted to add more after these ones are completed and online. This post would be a good place to comment on other songs you’d like to hear backward samples from (of songs that are known for backmasking).
Update May 23rd, 2004: The new backmasking additions are up.
Update: June 9th, 2004: I just added Pink Floyd’s “Empty Spaces” to the backmasking page.