[intro sounds - which you may get bored of after this video] [Affirmative music] Now this video is a bit of a journey. A journey that starts with Vinyl, that stumbles
over, and then ends up in some kind of hellish pit of despair. But Vinyl is where we begin.... Big thanks to SquareSpace for sponsoring this video. More on that later! [Relaxing sounds] What a thing of beauty. The concept is so simple. A continuous groove spins on a turntable,
guiding a needle over an undulating surface. This undulation is fed back through an amplifier
and our ears get to enjoy the pure sound etched into the vinyl material. But what about if we play the record backwards. Well, for the most part, we just get the song
played backwards. Fairly simple. But we've all heard of the various messages
hidden within tracks. Play the record forwards, you barley notice
anything. But play it backwards and we get..... [indistinct music and sounds] Welcome to the show (slightly sped up) Welcome to the show [indistinct music and sounds] This is the album Secret Messages, released
by Electric Light Orchestra in 1983, and which intentionally includes various hidden messages
recorded in reverse. Somewhat in response to groups who claimed
these messages were pure evil. Like that scene from The Exorcist which reveals
itself when reversed. GIVE US TIME! This is a concept known as Backmasking, and
it has been used for decades. The Beatles were renowned for incorporating
it into their songs, with much of it, perhaps intentionally added to fuel the conspiracy
theories about Paul McCartney's death. Of course, sounds played backwards can sound
quite disturbing, even without these intentional messages, and along with the Exorcist element,
that's probably why many Christian groups in the United States decided it was connected
to Satanic causes. It even got to the point where, in 1983, a
California bill was introduced to prevent backmasking which "can manipulate our behaviour
without our knowledge or consent and turn us into disciples of the Antichrist". So, there you go. Something to watch out for. But what about in video games. I mean, some could suggest that the cassette
loading sounds from your typical 80s micro-computer sounded quite disturbing. Especially when it resulted in on screen messages
like this.... But what if we were to take some ZX Spectrum
code, record the audio, reverse it, re-record this new audio stream to cassette, and then
attempt to load it backwards into the machine. Well, I think you'll probably be even more
shocked than I was with the result.... *Loading Sounds* NEVER GONNA... Come on. I've taken you down this road before. You knew I was going to do this. I'm not even sorry. [Music to guide our journey] Now, the loading sounds may sound almost identical
when played backwards. But of course, the binary information to the
computer is now garbled. The Spectrum requires a specific format to
be able to load data. Very basically, a header is loaded, followed
by program data. If you reverse this data then not only do
you throw that out of the window, but of course, the data itself is absolute garbage. You wouldn't be able to able to create a coherent
program that loads both backwards and forwards. Not unless you hid a pre-reversed program
at the end of a cassette, that someone could find, mirror and then load. But of course, you knew that, and of this
isn't where this tale ends. What kind of sh*te video would that be? Because, that secret program idea carries
some weight. Just like backmasked messages in vinyl. [Loading sounds] This is the start of the song Thank You by
90s Scottish band Urusei Yatsura. [Music] The founding members, Fergus Lawrie and Graham
Kemp met in the summer of 1993 at the University of Glasgow. They had various very enjoyable, and very
90s albums, but on their album, Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura, released in the year
2000, they decided to hide a cryptic message. *taps keys* Yup, that Spectrum code right at the start of the song... If we take that little excerpt and feed it
into a Speccy straight, which is pretty straight forward from CD, you get this little program. [of course subtitles would be an excellent place to hide messages as well] [what if I told you the treasure was at the highest peak, but under a stone of ice?] [You probably wouldn't give a crap, that's what] YES. LICK HIS CLOVEN HOOF. This is a whole new way to hide messages in songs It's a simple little program, and perhaps
an unavoidable digital evolution of incorporating dark messages in backmasking. Many fans who listened to this song, likely,
barely batted an eyelid upon hearing those screeching binary sounds of 8 bit delight,
and that's what perhaps makes it such a triumphant hidden message. I had a brief chat with Graham from the band
about it..... and it turns out it was actually drummer Ian, who wrote the program on a Speccy
he had stashed away. The idea was, that it would be a nice easter
egg, and given the band's appreciation of feedback and distortion, the loading sound
was a welcome addition. The REMMED out notes saying "Hi Nick, is Robin
there?" is just a running joke in the band, but the other included comments are also an
amusing and nice touch. But this is far from the only instance of
incorporating ZX code within an album. In fact, we can go all the way back to 1983,
and begin with Chris Sievey's single, Camouflage. Now Chris Sievey's story is worthy of a video
all of its own, but his he's perhaps most notable for his alter-ego, Frank Sidebottom;
a favourite of many a Sinclair magazine in the 80s. But before all that, during a break with his
band, The Freshies, Chris would buy himself a Sinclair ZX81 and release this song, in
that order. The upshot is that, side B of this 7" disc
actually contains three Sinclair ZX81 programs written by Sievey himself. So, here, it's not a method used to hide a
secret message. It's more of a marketing technique to give
the single added value. June 1983's Soundmaker magazine wrote; "The world's first computer-game pop single
is released by EMI records on Tuesday May 31st... Considering the cheapest computer game is
currently priced around £5, Chris Sievey's computer-game pop record, which sells for
the price of a conventional single, could revolutionise the music and home-computer
industries" of course, that assumes that every musician can, and wants to program a computer game for each single! Although, disappointingly it didn't perhaps
work as planned, as Camouflage failed to chart, despite this added value, and being a pretty
decent song. [Live music is live] Now, getting these programs off the disc is
actually a lot more painful than you would expect. Even though this data is recorded at only
about 250 baud, which allows for some error and distortion, Vinyls pose new problems compared
to tape. We get crackling, hissing, scratches, not
to mention the fact that a slightly incorrect vinyl cut could write off the entire program. I spent a long time cleaning the Vinyl down,
recording it as a wave. Playing with the audio settings. Tweaking the levels in post, and trying to
load it into am emulator, but with the limited time I had, it proved pretty fruitless. You can see in the ZX81 Tape Converter by
Simon Holdsworth, there are a lot of identified errors in the waveform. I mean, it's mostly there, but not enough
to load in. Thankfully sounghog09 actually managed to
rip a working version of this first program back in 2011. And actually. Well, it's pretty impressive. What you get is really a computerised music
video; a sequence of graphics and text which are timed to play with the song. I'll put a link to the video so you can check
it out further, but it must have taken quite a lot of Seivey's time to get that right. Soundhog notes that running in an emulator,
it didn't exactly sync up with the music however, so this video was edited a little to correct
that. *Camouflage plays* It's possible that by taping the first track on the B side of this single, which incidentally is illegal You can program it into your set, so that it prints out the lyrics! Even though David Hepworth pointed out it
was technically illegal, A June 1983 episode of the Old Grey Whistle Test actually featured
the single running on a ZX81, and it perfectly synced up. *Camouflage plays again* [Help, I'm trapped inside YouTube] [No really] [ZX81 loading sounds] The next program is called Flying Train, which
is a 16K ZX81 of the ZX Spectrum version that Sievey released under the publishing name
of "Random Records" which included a vocal track, and is now a highly collectable game. And the last program, FT, is the first level
of Flying Train for ZX81 owners, without a RAM pack. Anyway, I couldn't get these to load, despite
a lot of fiddling, but it's an ongoing project. In the mean time, if anyone would like the
data streams I extracted, I've added them in the video description. Maybe you'll have some luck with them. You can see why this marketing technique didn't
quite work out. -Spon- Talking about marketing techniques, I'd like
to take this moment to thank my sponsor, Square Space for making long ambling videos like
this infinitely more possible. I developed websites for years, and trust
me, going to a web agency is not a great experience for anyone involved. But with Square Space it is mind numblingly
simple. Choose what your site is about. Select your goals, and SquareSpace will serve
you up a whole swathe of options to suit you. It's then incredibly simple to customise your
site, and realise your business or showcase idea. It even makes getting a custom domain a doddle. Head to Squarespace.com/nostalgianerd for
a free trial and, if you're happy save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Back to vinyls. -Spon- [Peaceful music over the top of horrendous loading sounds] But Sievey wasn't the only one to cotton onto
this new realm. Just a month later Buzzcock's frontman, Pete
Shelley would release his second solo LP, called XL1. It reached number 42 in the UK Albums chart,
so nothing blistering, but again contained Spectrum code, on both the Vinyl and cassette. The Vinyl version actually has a lockgroove
before the Spectrum code, so your nan isn't scared to high heaven when it sounds like
the end of the world is pouring from the Amstrad TS35 in the corner. But for practicality, I've got the cassette
version, which makes more sense all round. Again, last track on side 2 is where you'll
find it, but this time, it's a program designed to accompany the entire album. A bit like an extended version of the Camouflage
Computer Music Video. As you can see, given we're now in colourful
Spectrum territory, it's a much more enticing affair. You can see they got it to work perfectly
on The Old Grey Whistle Test once again, but you have to be careful with this one. -the musical portion of this album is now complete. Computer codes follow- After listening to the tape message, If you
just type LOAD followed by quotation marks, as normal. It actually won't run at all. Instead you need to type LOAD "" CODE. This tells the Spectrum to load the first
machine code file it finds. If you don't do this, then the Spectrum will
just throw up flashing search borders, and you will be lost. It does tell you this in the instructions. But I for one. Did not bother reading them. Anyway, once loaded it asks you whether you
are listening to side 1 of the album, or side 2. Side 2 requires loading a bit more code, but
then you can enjoy the lyrics and effects which really look like you've got a migraine. Shelley spoke to Electronic SoundMaker Magazine
in September 1983 and detailed how, although he had ordered a Sinclair Spectrum in 1982,
it didn't turn up until 1983, when he had started writing XL1 - Sinclair was of course,
notorious for some late product deliveries at the time. He then became obsessed with the Pause function
and wrote a program which recorded the length of time between key presses. This allowed him to listen to a song, and
time relevant actions on screen to accompany it. Consulting a friend called Joey from Machester
University, a machine code routine was then created to define various graphics in time
with the album. Pretty neat, almost an evolution of Sievey's
work. [Groovy baby] But there's more. In November of the same year, none other than
the Welsh singer Shakin' Stevens released an LP called The Bop Won't Stop, reaching
the heady heights of 21 on the UK album charts. Perhaps learning from the difficulties of
others, the vinyl version is devoid of it, but on the cassette version there's his very
own, "Shaky Computer Game". Positioned at the end of side 2, just after
the last track, "It's Late", we get a voiced introduction, by Shaky himself.... Ooooo, it's late.... Hi! This is Shaky. If you've got a Sinclair Spectrum 4-8 K computer. Why don't you try my game? The program follows shortly. If you haven't, please fast forward to the end of the tape, so you can listen to the album, again. I'm not entirely convinced that last part is "good advice" and given
that he calls it a Spectrum 4 - 8, it becomes clear that his knowledge of the machine was
somewhat limited, making this perhaps, the clearest indication of being a marketing gimmick. Anyway, this introduction is followed by the
sweet tones for "The Shaky Game" which we can, of course, just pop into a Speccy and
load up. Developed by Olympic Software, which seems
to be the only game they produced, and perhaps we should all be thankful of that. We begin with some introduction text; "It's late, close to midnight. You have to help me reach the ole house of
vampires before my fuel runs out. Watch out for the flying bats - they will
drive you crazy" So that's the premise, and of course it is,
flying bats, driving, a maze, what else would you associate with a Welsh version of Elvis? *buzzing of flies* I tell you what. This isn't going to sell records. *buzzing* (is Shaky in a shit**ng wind up car?) In fact, it's on shaky ground. (some kind of terrible Krusty impression?) I'll get my coat *buzzing intensifies* *screech* *skdaskdlasd* [Melodious music] So, by 1984, you might think that record companies
would have realised, the addition of Spectrum code was doing nothing to help their sales,
but apparently, the Strangler's did not. The eighth album released by the group, Aural
Sculpture, contains those same, harsh tones, and actually faired a little better in the
UK charts. Maybe the pubic were coming round to the idea Reaching number 14 in November 1984. Familiar story: Exclusive to the cassette
release, track 7 of side 2 contains a problem entitled Aural Quest, with a quick introduction
for the less savvy. *clicks* Hello, this is Dave Greenfield. This is a taped message from The Stranglers. You have reached the end of the ablum, Aural Sculpture, but NOT, the end of the tape! *piano* A high pitched sound after this message is, in fact, the computer code for an adventure game entitled, Aural Quest! *piano strike* Specially designed for the 48K Spectrum computer! We hope you have as much excitement, adventure! and pleasure, as we did creating it for you! Good luck! Good bye! [Piano notes] Now Aural Quest is actually a text adventure
written by the band's keyboard player, David Greenfield. He used The Quill Adventure System by GILSOFT
to create it, a game creator also used to develop Dracula, Castle of the Skull Lord
and Bored of the Rings, among others. In this outing, you are the band's tour manager,
and your quest is, well, it's terrible. Your task it to find and return a massive
ear statue; an essential part of the group's act. Whilst you're at it, you need to collect promoter
payments and haul it all back to London. Thanks to an online walkthrough you can do
it fairly quickly, but god help you without it. *tapping and beeps* WHAT? For f*cks sake. Interestingly, there are actually two different
versions of this. The later version looks somewhat more polished,
but still yields the same terrible gameplay. Come on guys, at least allow me to answer
the damn phone! [Bass line] OK, we're back to vinyl for this next 1984
release by the British punk bank, Inner City Unit. Again, this record features a lock-groove,
and you can even see where the difference in the Spectrum data part to the rest of the
vinyl. It looks smoother, and that's mainly due the
consistent nature of the groove compared to actual music. Now, after a lot of cleaning, I first tried
capturing this data digitally again. This didn't want to load in the emulator,
so I thought I'd try loading it straight into a Spectrum. A 128K+ model no less. [Loading infused with punky background music] And YES. SUCCESS Friends. It actually loaded. OK, now this is an interesting one, as it's
not a game, more of a database of information. It's kind of like a DVD extras section, and
on it we find all sorts, ranging from general information about the band, lyrics of songs
on the album, even a nutrition guide, which details the best eateries according to the
band. Such as Bob's Cafe on the A45, Coventry, which
apparently is a Juke Box bar Par Excellence, or Ace Cafe on the A1, Barnet, listed as being
good because "Derty derty derty specialist of the house babys head".... interestingly
this one is still open. Maybe I should make a video where I just visit
all these places.... especially as you get FREE SAUCE in Toddington Services. Other standout features include a Light Show. Which resembles something from the Dorling
Kindersley Spectrum coding book, and if you click on their Discography enough times, you'll
sometimes get a random message which says "Cryptic, eh?"... I love it, an Easter Egg WITHIN an Easter
Egg. -intentionally blank- Interestingly, there are at least two versions
of this program as well. My vinyl copy loads with the program name
of "Program Cut 171084", but there's also a copy floating around on the internet which
loads as "IDIOTSPROG". That version, which I will presume is a later
release, also seems to include a page where you can check your machine's status, which
is, well, interesting, but also quite a bizarre addition. [Circus style music] Which brings me onto the last vinyl I'm going
to look at. This time, it wasn't actually a released single,
but instead a give-away disc included with the October 1984 issue of Computer and Video
Games Magazine. These flexi-discs were sometimes given away
in magazines, simply because they could slip perfectly into a magazine, and even be bent
without coming to harm. It also means, that they can be even more
painful to load, especially if you have a heavy needle that will simply drag the flexi-disc
around with it rather than floating beautifully across it. Released as a promo for the Thompson Twins
"Doctor, Doctor!" single, we get this this short intro, and then the loading sequence
begins. Doctor, doctor! Hi, it's the Thompson Twins here! I'm Ellela, I'm Joe! and I'm Tom, and you're listening to the computer game version of Doctor, Doctor It's a Pop Music adventure, all about us, with lots of prizes, for the first people to solve the puzzles and phone Computer & Video Games with the answers We've got T-Shirts, albums, posters and for the first person to solve the adventure, two tickets for our next concert, and an invitation back stage after the show, so that we can congratulate you in person! Ayyyyy. Now, this is
another one which needed a LOT of cleaning, and even then, I could only get a copy to
load so far. Handily, this is another one with an image
available on T'internet, and yeah, it's obviously an Adventure game. Written by David Shea no less. These flexi-discs didn't hang about for long,
not least because of the sheer difficulties in loading from vinyl. The recommended way, and easiest for most
people, was simply to record the program to cassette on your hi-fi, and then slot that
into your Spectrum, but I imagine the success rate was still pretty low, even with a spanking
new disc. Anyway, I'm not going to sit here and play
this. But you can, the links to download it are
below. This sort of thing wasn't just limited to
us "CRAZY" Brits and the ZX Spectrum of course. The 8-Bit show and Tell YouTube channel shows
a Commodore 64 program recorded on the 1984 album, Electric Eye by the Christian rock
band Prodigal. This time the data is actually recorded on
the run out groove, so as you can imagine, it was even more tricky to capture, but with
skill Robin managed it to show this very short little program. His channel also talks about another program
hidden on the 1986 self-titled LP, HeartWare. Another C64 program, this time a game called
PIGGY's FATAL TRIP, I suggest you go and check out his videos which I've linked below. There's also hidden data on albums such as
the 1990 101 Damnations album, by Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. This time it's right at the start of the track,
A Perfect Day to Drop the Bomb. But I'm saving this for another day. It appears to be Spectrum data, but recorded
without the header. It circles back to what I explained earlier. That header data really is essential for the
Spectrum to understand what's going on. [Pleasant radio music] So then, one last little secret. Fast foward to 2017, and to celebrate 20 years
since its release, Radiohead released a special edition remaster of their 1997 album, OK Computer,
called OKNOTOK. It's a cool package. Containing 3 Vinyls - well, it would do in
normal circumstances, my version which I'm opening here for the first time was actually
missing ALL of the vinyls, so that's great isn't it. But you also get a couple of books, and more
significantly a C90 cassette tape filled with Demo tracks. It actually does say RadioHead on this cassette,
although it's pretty difficult to see on camera. [MELODIOUS BEEPING] You might be mistaken for thinking the first
track on this cassette is about to launch into a Spectrum program, but it's actually
the last track on side two. It's an incredibly short program, which boils
down to a short introduction about the band members being inside your computer, followed
by a random text and colour generator. It actually works quite well, in the context
of Radiohead music, and if you leave the cassette running after loading, you get this little
symphony which kind of works well alongside the on screen visuals. [BEEPS AND STUFF] OK, errr, Computer? So, it's pretty crazy where you can find computer
programs lurking. It's testament to the versatility and robustness
of audio based loading. Of course, it can be a pain at times, and
corruption and distortion can sneak in even on cassette, as we all know too well, but
it's pretty fun to discover and be able to load these hidden wonders some 37 years on. Of course, it's not a medium versatile enough
to allow loading backwards, but then you knew that before you clicked, didn't you? SURELY. Anyway, thanks for watching, and, have a great
evening. [MUSIC BEATS] There are no secret messages hidden anywhere in this video. Seriously, none. You've got better things to be doing anyway. Seriously, don't look. It will make me think less of you as a person. Toodles. Penne is the best shape of pasta. Except for Action Man Bow Tie. Maybe in the future, we can talk about how this evolved into putting software on....CD.... NICE.
