Oddity Archive: Episode 240.1 - CD Frustrations & Easter Eggs
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- čas přidán 11. 05. 2022
- A casual chat…if only because the prospect of the sixth “Ben’s Junk” in a row was too much to bear.
NOTE: As of the making of this video, all the Easter Eggs mentioned are available for viewing/listening on YT.
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i hear if you play this video at -0:30 you get to see ben's whole face
there's a handful of videos that, if paused at the right time can show you Ben's full face. In doing this you should use the *, (comma key)* or *.(period key)* to navigate frame by frame.
I agree to ride Tyler Perry
That one Halloween episode for example
@@Kylefassbinderful You know the band Ben Folds Five? This is Ben's Full Face.
I love CD Easter eggs/hidden tracks. Something that’s mostly just gone now. On Sponge’s Rotting Piñata album, the CD would freeze after the last song and you had to hold down the rewind button to go back to the beginning of the hidden track. Pretty clever implementation of the concept.
T.E.V.I.N. from Tevin Campbell has a Hidden Track only available on the CD version called "She's All That".
On Brian McKnight's 1995 LP "I Remember You" there's a Special Hidden Track Remix Version of his 1994 Rendition of "Crazy Love": czcams.com/video/cotu3zUnX6U/video.html
TLC's 1994 Sophomore Smash LP CrazySexyCool had several Masters(Those Printed November 8,1994) include the Radio Version of "Digging On You" instead of the Original LP Version(Those Printed September 27,1994).
I found out one time, while writing my own CUE files, that you can put audio in the pregap _before_ track 1. If you put the CD into a player, it starts at Track 1, at 0 min 0 sec, which is index 01. But, you can stash as much audio as you want at index 00. You have to hold the rewind button to get to the beginning of it, then the player will count from the negatives to the start of track 1. Pretty neat little trick, since you would never know it was there unless you searched for it. (Or ripped the audio to a file.)
EDIT: OK, now I'm reading a couple other comments here from people who have CDs with audio in track 1's pregap. I've never seen this before on a pressed disc. Thought I had come up with something clever, but I guess there's nothing new under the sun. haha
The Soundtrack to the first X-Files movie has an Easter egg after the final track, a dance remix of the show's theme. At 10:13, the show's creator Chris Carter begins a three-minute spoken word piece called The Truth, in which he sums up the show's alien mythology up through to the movie.
The first few times I listened to the album, I turned it off after the music ended. But one night, I was listening in bed and I realized the track was still going even after the song had ended; I could still hear that subtle digital hiss that CDs have. Suddenly, I hear a guy start talking in very serious tones about the conspiracy and everything that had led up to that point. I remember being startled by it; it was late and pretty dark.
I'd be creeped out totally by that too.
The "Hello CD listeners..." part on Runnin Down a Dream is also funnily present on streaming versions of the song, such as on Spotify.
One of the more interesting Easter eggs is on the NOFX album "Punk in Drublic", where after the last song there are several minutes of silence before the guitarist comes on and does impressions of cartoon characters like Popeye and Snagglepuss.
CD rot is a lot less of a problem because of the baked-in cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon (error correction) code. That takes up like 20% of the usable CD data space which is why CDs are fairly robust. Laserdiscs as far as I know are "naked" with no error correction being an essentially analogue form. The rot is clearly less serious when you can lose up to 20% of the disc (as a whole) and still get near perfect playback. CD-Rs are more prone to a different kind of rot. Here it's not the glue but the azo dyes breaking down and basically "eating" themselves. So I guess that means there's "laser rot" and "dye die"?
Burned disc however, don't hold up as well. A while back I was backing up a bunch of stuff my parents burbed t
@@karolkozik5918 Never back up data to CD's. #1 it's not cost effective. #2 it's unreliable #3 the discs rot. Get a WD my Passport drive and be done.
Laserdiscs rot because when the glue holding the two halves separates it tears apart and takes the foil data layer with it. This results in static on the image - or total loss of image. Very much similar to a VHS tape. I have a Smokey and The Bandit laserdisc where the first 2 mins of side B is gone. I also have a rare functional copy of "Eraser" on Lasserdisc that has not erased itself.
my favorite Easter egg is the pre gap track "Ferocious Sole" on Public Enemy's 'Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age'. Start track one and rewind and you'll get two minutes of Chuck D eerily amd accurately predicting the reaction the album would get upon release
Good lord, Ben. I'm going to be 78 years old for the remaster. Hopefully I still will be able to hear it then.
Pet Shop Boys' "Discography" is an example of manufacturing defects. After some time the CD developed very fine cracks which made a few tracks unplayable. Bought another new "Discography" and lo and behold the same problem happened. These were UK versions by Parlophone.
As for easter eggs on CD, I have a few to name:
The Offspring's "Smash" has intro, intermission and outro... But also a hidden track at the end, an arabesque version of "Come out and play".
Alanis Morisette's "Jagged Little Pill" has a hidden track at the end, it's being since named "Yout House".
Pet Shop Boys' "Very" has a little song at the end of the last track ("Go West") as well.
Oh yeah! Endless, Nameless! And yes, Kurt did in fact smash his guitar during the recording of said track….which stunned and surprised the band and Butch Vig…the producer…with the ferociousness and anger (and apparent ease at) which he took his Strat out! And there’s a photo online of the guitar broken, laying on the mixing desk - neck pocket still attached to the neck but not the body!
Hidden tracks (Easter eggs) aren’t exactly new, though. They were “accidentally” introduced by The Beatles, with their “Abbey Road” album, when the first run didn’t list “Her Majesty” on either the album cover or the album label. The 2019 Giles Martin remix’s cover recreates that goof up.
The German issue of REISE REISE by Rammstein (not the American issues) has a black box recording of the crash of JAL123 as a hidden track. It's pretty grim to listen to that coming out of your stereo. You need a vintage CD player with manual rewind to hear it. It's hidden in the pregap as a partition before the CD starts and modern CD players do not recognize it as a valid track.
I have "Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever" CD recently (one of my favorite albums!) and yes, I remember that peculiar Cassette and Vinyl B-side message Tom was informing. Also, have it on cassette as well.
I have some things of my own to say on the subject:
*The indexing comments remind me of Angels & Airwaves' debut "We Don't Need to Whisper." Just at the end of "Do it For Me Now," about a quarter-second of the first note of "The Adventure" has been indexed into the track. Yet, when playing "The Adventure" by itself, it doesn't SOUND like anything's really missing. Hmmm.
*Hidden track CDs of my own: "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield (thankfully, it isn't an XCP copy), "Strike While the Iron is Hot" by Orange & Lemons, "The Best of 1980-1990" by U2. I'd mention Weird Al's "Off the Deep End," but sadly, my copy doesn't have a hidden track.
*A personal memory: when Mandy Moore's "Silver Landings" was on its way to release a couple years ago, I was kinda hoping she'd stick a hidden track at the end: an a cappella cover of Willie Nelson's "Nite Life," of all things. But alas, the CD came out and it turns out it just ends after "Silver Landings." Oh well.
*I also forgot about the whole Tom Petty "CD listeners" message until watching this.
The Information Society album Don't Be Afraid has a modem sound at the end which you could decode to get a message that would help you find a website, where you could follow a scavenger hunt to find two extra songs.
My favorite secret track is "Foreshadowing (Over and Out)" on the Duncan Sheik album Humming. My least favorite is on the album 1977 by Ash - it's the band puking for several minutes. I didn't have a CD player yet when I got that album, and my roommate allowed me to play it on her stereo. We were doing our homework and didn't bother to get up and put on another disc when it ended, and it was quite a jolt when it came back on. She didn't let me play that CD on her equipment after that.
In 1997, I got the Matthew Sweet album Blue Sky on Mars and found it was problematic to put it on shuffle because each track goes a few seconds into the next song. I remember hearing at the time that this was done on purpose to prevent people from listening to the album on shuffle. I don't remember where I heard that, though. Besides the shuffle issue, it assumes that you will enjoy every single song on the album and not want to skip any, which is a pretty big assumption for any album.
TMBG's Factory Showroom has a hidden-ish track if you rewind the first track
I know off topic but my left arm was signed by Alan Frew when they did a concert here promoting that album. Told dad i was going to go find my sister and her friend ended up wandering into glass tiger's dressing room.
The Stone Temple Pilots Purple album has a funny hidden song at the end🤣
Regarding live album track division gripes, you can be glad you're (probably) not a Skinny Puppy fan. The original CD issue of their live album "Ain't It Dead Yet" has no track divisions at all.
(The same original CD was my intro to the band. I still can't identify a single song off it by name other than 'Assimilate')
A Robbie Williams CD my friend had featured an Easter Egg after the album ended. Me, her then boyfriend (who has now sadly passed away) and me were a bit drunk one evening in the early 00's, the music had ended and we had all started dozing off on the settee. Next thing this track starts up, creeped us all out🤣
3:40 i never knew CD-R's rotted that way. I had some that sat under my window and i swear it was from the sun accidentally shining through the window on them without my knowledge. U/V damage. That was what I presumed it was.
The Australian pressing of "Freedumb" by Suicidal Tendencies was pressed with the second track WAY louder than the others. You have to rush turn your stereo down every time.
reminds me of all those shitty TV commercials that jack up the gain to get your attention
Given your issues with the Ian Gomm CD, maybe it *was* made in East Germany.
The only CDs with hidden tracks that I have are Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants. This has 'Token Back to Brooklyn' where you have to rewind from the first track in order to hear it.
The other is 'Bite Me' which is on 'In Off The Deep End' by Weird Al Yankovic. The track appears ten minutes after the end of the final song, 'You Don't Love Me Anymore'. It certainly grabs your attention if nothing else!
I used to own "Off the Deep End", and never knew there was a hidden track on it.
Dang. I’ve only ever had that on cassette. Might have to upgrade next time I see it.
@@OddityArchive It's not really worth it as the track is eight seconds long and designed to shock people who forget to press stop after the last track.
Here it is in all its eight second glory: czcams.com/video/OFIi-H0gSdM/video.html
Thanks!
Compact discs weren't launched until 1982 at the earliest. That Fleetwood Mac CD would date to at least 1983 at its earliest. However the original vinyl LP of that album would date to 1980.
I never said otherwise.
@@OddityArchive When you mentioned the Fleetwood Mac CD, the first one you showed, you said that CD was from 1980.
I said the album was from 1980. Anyone dumb enough to think anything went straight to CD in 1980 gets what they deserve. And, yes, I am a tad salty this morning.
@@OddityArchive I made notes of what you said, picking up from: *" I'm not trying to single out this one particular album, this was just the first one I grabbed to have this problem, what I perceive as a problem at least. And this is kind of an issue on a lot of 'live' albums, especially original CD issues of 'live' albums. So the first one I pulled up was this one, "Fleetwood Mac Live" originally released in 1980 and my beef with it is....."* And there's your problem! Your words suggest the CD was issued in 1980 when you should've said: *"Originally released on vinyl in 1980"* which would've made things clearer.
@@neilforbes416 Lol, Oh Neil. 🤣
I recently got a 2CD album with Brandenburg Concertos from Deutsche Grammophon, and I can't stand how awfully some tracks were cut.
Some have over 5 seconds of silence before begginning, but most have a more specific problem.
When a piece ends, it doesn't end with a second of noises from the orchestra, but stops abruptly one second before the actual end, and last 0,25 seconds are on the next track. It sounds terrible.
Ben owns Gish! My favorite Pumpkins record. Excellent taste. Funnily enough, I'm Going Crazy was almost as literal as it got. Apparently Billy needed therapy after Gish got made because the band was just under that pressure. They've always been kooks.
Some anecdotes of my own with some of what you mentioned:
1) The only pressed CD I've ever had that has failed on me was a copy of the Black Keys' Magic Potion (so fairly recent for a CD, 2006). It just developed these horrific stuttering problems no matter what you did, real CD player, ripping. The CD itself looked fine, but I had to chuck it. It's pretty common, I need to replace it. (Meanwhile, all my 80's and 90's CDs still play fine...)
2) One of my favorite bands, a little group called Starflyer 59, had some nasty mastering problems with their 90's CDs. Gold, their second album, has basically no silences at all between songs, to the point where the feedback on the first song actually cuts out into the guitar intro of the second. I don't recall Silver, their first, having particularly long silences either, but at least the songs faded out properly.
3) SF59's fourth album, and probably their most famous, The Fashion Focus, has some really horrific indexing problems. One of the two real rockers on the album, Too Much Fun, has this nasty guitar chord start during the OUTRO of the previous tune, the title cut, which is this lovely little piano lounge-type song. It makes Too Much Fun itself start wrong as well, natch. I actually went back and corrected that one myself for my iTunes copy since the album is so good and the error is so unfortunate.
4) The Tom Petty bit reminds me of the third Shellac album, 1000 Hurts. The CD (and by extension, the MP3/streaming releases) start off with this very deep voice talking about the specifications of the CD ("44.1KHz sample rate, 16 bit word length, set reproducer for reference level"). I think it was meant to be a take on an engineer speaking the specs of a reel of tape or maybe some kind of calibration tape, since the album art is stylized after Ampex tape boxes. On the vinyl, you get an entirely different message talking about the specs of the vinyl instead. I think that's a nice touch. Sadly, the vinyl message isn't on CZcams, I don't think.
I wish bands would've indexed the silence before a hidden track and the hidden track itself as different tracks to the last song on the album. I know a few albums do that (like the one-disc versions of Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP), but most have it tacked onto the last song on the album. Maybe that would've given it away, but I always cut out the silence and make the hidden track its own song in iTunes anyway because it's annoying otherwise.
two albums from my favorite band, Barenaked Ladies, have easter eggs. The first one comes on the 1996 live release "Rock Spectacle" at the end of the song "If I Had $1000000". If you let the album play after it concludes, at around the 6 minute mark (6 minutes and 9 seconds, to be exact), they included two of the random band banter that occurred during the shows the album was culled from. One being a story about a "lovely old lady", and the other being a story that turns into an impromptu song about a family member of one of the guys in the band. The other comes on their 2000 release "Maroon", once again at the end of the album. Tacked on to the final track of the album, "Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel", is a bonus track titled "Hidden Sun, which is written and sung by the band's keyboardist and was written, IIRC during his battle with Leukemia in 1998-99
And you thought backmasking on vinyl LPs was bizarre. 📀
Sarah McLachlan album "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" opens with the song "Possession" and after the last song ends, there's silence for a minute or two (I forgot the exact time) and there's another piano version of Possession hidden at the end.
After watching this i went to Spotify and i listened to that Tom Petty track “Running Down A Dream” on “Full Moon Fever”. It’s on there at the end of the song just like you said…😄 I know i’m not the only one that did that after watching this episode…
If it's of any interest, something was happening in Japan in 2011, there was some sort of issue with the white CD-Rs being sold. I have 6 or so CD-r's from 2011 from Japan that are completely unreadable, but visually completely fine. I have around 150 CD-r's ranging from 2002 - 2022 and everything else is fine, 2011 consistently has issues. The one I have next to me right now is Princo but I don't believe that's consistent.
When you comment on the live album where they talk about the next song at the end of the previous song, I know there was a solution to that but I've only seen it on an old Deutsche Gramophone CD recording of symphonic works and there was an index part if I remember correctly. It only worked on my Technics component CD player from the early 90s. Each track could have several index points, sort of like of you imagine a track ad a chapter in a book and the index as a page.
No mention of cd pre-gap tracks? My word...
Don’t have any. Guess I should’ve at least mentioned it.
Blind Melon - Soup
@@OddityArchive It is a bit rare, but there are a few that have them before the first song, and a couple (like Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile) that have one in between certain tracks
I surprisingly have disc rot on a bluray of of American Psycho. It looks yellow exactly like that CDR. It refuses to play.
I've marked my calendar for 5/21/2056. I can't wait for the remastered edition of "Greetings..." to drop!
August 8th would be more accurate (the original release date was 8/8/2006). May 21st was apparently the day I did the remastering.
Whoo! Glass tiger
Holy shit. You have a "cut-out" copy of Gish? Hold onto it.
Endless, Nameless was only on "lucky" copies of Nevermind. Mine did not have it. When I first heard about it, I didn't believe it until my friend proved me wrong by playing his copy for me. Now, it's on every new copy of the remastered versions.
From what I understand, only the first pressing omits that one.
@@OddityArchive I thought it was the other way around. Oh well, either way, my original copy didn't have it.
I seem to remember reading somewhere it was supposed to be there all along, but that first run of CD’s was a mistake.
@@OddityArchive That actually sounds very familiar. The 90's are little hazy for me. Too much Mountain Dew & LSD.
I remember that thing on the Tom Petty album! Full Moon Fever is a pretty good album.
One thing I know some bands would also do was put in a bunch of tracks of silence before you can get to something. Tool's Undertow and Coheed and Cambria's Silent Earth 3 albums are both ones that have multiple tracks of silence before the last one...for Tool, they put the last track at #69. For obvious reasons.
Korn "Follow The Leader" begins with several tracks of silence AND has easter egg after the last song featuring Cheech Marion.
Bought two used cd copies of 小泉今日子 今日子の清く楽しく美しく VDR-1162 from Japan, both of them could not be ripped properly 😡 Acquired the VICL-18229 reissue and had no problems.
My Nevermind CD doesn't have a Hidden Track(Easter Egg)
That might not be a bad thing that extra track sounded like it was just a mess from the description Ben gave of it.
I am not a Nirvana fan though TBF.
“Endless, Nameless” is readily, officially available on YT if you wanna hear it.
@@OddityArchive Thanks Ben. I think I might pass on this one though.
Matt Pinfield had a hidden track on Limp Bizkit's Significant Other that allegedly got him fired from MTv
"yes, you *can* have too much Ben's Junk"
hot.
The only CD's that I have that have Easter eggs on them are the Napoleon Dynamite Original Motion Picture Soundtrack & a CD that has songs from the 1990-96 PBS kids game show, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? The latter of which also has a authoring error as well.
have you ever got a cd with negative counting bellow 0:00 from the beggining of the track?
The Who Collection Vol 1 Polydor/Impression (Japan pressing) and Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits Polydor ( German pressing) both from the early eighties have all sorts of errors on them. Clipped off intros and just plain old crappy sound, the latter comprising the entire Hendrix disc.
Antichrist Superstar has 99 tracks, which is cool until you want to put it on shuffle mode
Beck had an album like that too.
Only hidden track I ever found was on the Scorpions "Face the Heat" CD after the last song the cd keeps playing silence for few minutes then the track "His Latest Flame" (Elvis) covered by the Scorpions
Gahh, indexing errors are so frustrating. Oddly, my only album with indexing errors is actually a download - Grimes' "Visions" album from iTunes has the exactly the same thing you talk about where the first note of each track is cut off. My CD version (Japan import) thankfully doesn't have that...
The UK WEA pressing of *Mike + The Mechanics* does not suffer the same fault as yours.
8:26 clearly mr. Benson Oddity hasn't heard of them young whippersnappers Måneskin!!!
(I sure wish I hadn't.)
I didn’t know they were Italian.
Great Volume level
Across Ur videography that's quite an issue, as most others
That's perfect for mobile and (semi)desktop Please Ben be the one!
Like a good CD..........
Edit
If: slightly louder not otherwise
I actually prefer the track dividers to start at the beginning of the songs on live albums rather than at the end of the previous song.
Also, when you showed me the Mike & The Mechanics album, you were totally flipping me off. Why? What did I do?😮
I am not sure where you live that all these CD's are getting damaged like this but it is everything to do with your environment and how you store them. I have over 300 CD's and only 2 ever died. One mysteriously broke itself in half inside the case, another was the Twister soundtrack which somehow became transparent and no player will read it.
I have the same gripe with concert cd indexing. blah.
there is a hidden track on tools undertow album track 69
Is there a recent version of CD Architect for Windows 10 that's safe to download? Free? I have songs on my laptop at various volumes/mastering. Can CD Architect automatically through an option/feature equally level the volume of a playlist/bunch of random songs? I've been looking for a program which does exactly that.
There's still the paid version for download through Amazon...which Benny-boy recently had to re-purchase because he's too dense to save his codes.
I can’t remember which CD it was (it’s probably in my basement, which means I’ll never find it again), but it had a “hidden track” at the very end. Problem was, between the last “real” track and the hidden track were about a hundred blank tracks, each a second long. Playing the CD on shuffle was kind of annoying. It might have been somebody like Ministry but I can’t remember.
Now I want to venture into the basement to try to find it…
Ah - found it on Wikipedia - Ministry’s “Dark Side of the Spoon” - has the real tracks, then five blank tracks of varying size, then a bunch of blank four-second tracks until the bonus track 68 or 69.
Nine Inch Nails - Broken has the same thing, there's Tracks 1 to 6 of Music then Tracks 7 - 97 are 4 Second Silent Tracks followed by 2 more Tracks of Music.
@@stephenhester9804 THAT’S the other CD I was thinking of with the 100 tracks. Thanks - that’s been bugging me all day.
CD and DVD rot is real. DVDs just will not read at a certain point and I did try several different players.
CDr is very dubious. Some of mine did the same ad ypurs, except a couple quit playing. Nice to know I am not the only one that still uses CD architect.
DVD rot is a definite issue. As for CD rot... I've really only noticed it on CD-Rs, and some brands are a lot more prone to it than others.
The German Line label was pretty hit or miss as were a lot of the budget reissue labels like Castle, Charlie, Decal, Big Time, et.al. The CD format was cheap to master, as a result, a lot of titles were reissued, albeit in a ham fisted manner, often not using the master tape, but a copy, a copy of a copy not to mention the occasional "needle drop". To remedy this a lot of labels, some times the same labels (I am looking at you Castle) did eventually go to the master tapes (so they say) and remastering and noise reducing the life out of the recordings.
Part of what gave CDs a bad rap was poor mastering. A CD is possible of reproducing a very accurate facsimile of the original source, however as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out".
Yeah, I’ve got a Castle CD of Bonnie Tyler’s “Natural Force” (a.k.a. - “It’s A Heartache”) which sounds like it was mastered from a cassette.
All the troubles you've experienced with these CDs, If you'd have been able to get hold of *Australian-made* CD copies of these albums, made by *Disctronics Ltd.,* you'd never have experienced those problems at all.
@Dark Dragon 772 Either there was more than one Disctronics, or Distronics was a multinational company. Either way, I concur with Neil wrt the quality of Disctronics (Australia) CD pressings.
@Dark Dragon 772 Disctronics operated in Australia as well, manufacturing on behalf of all Australia's indigenous labels as well as for overseas labels set up here.
As much as I used to enjoy Taylor Swift's Easter eggs, it’s gone too far now. Just give me the damn song and tell me what it means straight up 😖
Ben won’t subject us to that chicanery I’m sure.