What IS it with the Hidden Track?

Subject: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 03:55 PM

Lately I have bought a few CDs that have what is affectionately known as a "hidden track." It's not listed on the cover, there's no notes about it, no nothing. What's the deal with that anyway? It's all right I suppose but I like to read all those notes about who wrote the song and who played on it and all that. What if someone put out an entire CD of hidden tracks? How would that work?

Also WHY are the manufacturers now putting that annoying little strip of tape along the top edge of the CD? As if the shrink wrap wasn't already hard enough to open.

Somebody's gotta wonder about these things.

KFC

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 04:01 PM

A friend of mine just bought a CD opener. I haven't seen it yet, but I would love to have one. What a pain it is to open these things.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 04:13 PM

Where can I get one??!!!?!!?!!

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 04:14 PM

I'll check into it, I'll probably see him this weekend.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: SeanM
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 04:35 PM

Hidden tracks started out back in LP days with the occasional "final groove" that some acts put on the terminal repeating groove... Beatles did one, and a few others escape my mind. But in any case, I think it pretty much grew from there.

Some friends of mine put hidden tracks on both their CDs. The logic changes from disc to disc, but for the first CD where the "hidden" is a full song, it was mainly because it really didn't thematically fit in with renaissance/filk/folk music but they REALLY wanted it on the CD anyway - and since the CD was going to be nearly exclusively sold at Renaissance Faire events, they opted to include it, but just not list it. Their second is just an outtake or two, along with a silly disclaimer. I believe their reasoning for that one is "beer".

M

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 05:02 PM

Beer is a good enough reason for me.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Gypsy
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 12:48 AM

That sounds suspiciously like the Poxy Boggards of whom you speak. And yes, the hidden track is well worth the listen. As they say, it is proof that they can do a Country Western song, too

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: SeanM
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:17 AM

Suspicion is correct, Gypsy. You win... er... I don't know, the right to tell the boys that they're getting talked about on Mudcat again?

Most 'hidden track' stuff that I've heard is from quirky pop stuff. Barenaked Ladies do one on most of their albums, Nine Inch Nails did a 90-odd blank tracks followed by two songs one... the list goes on.

M

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:33 AM

The only kinds of hidden tracks I dislike are those that ruin my listening experience. Because I'm easily bored, I like to put the cd player on 'shuffle' pretty much all the time. When they put 75 blank 5 second tracks between the "last" song and the hidden track, you might have to wait for a minute before an actual song begins.

I also hate it when they include the hidden track on the same track as the last song, but with 15 minutes of silence between the two. Besides boring me, this also startles the Hell out of me when I forget that there's a cd still playing, and the hidden track starts up. I guess I should quit bitching and just listen to the songs in order, eh?

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:44 AM

The one "hidden track" I remember was from a Beatles album - Abbey Road, I think:

Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl and she doesn't have a lot to say,
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl and she changes from day to day.
I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a bellyfull of wine,
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl someday I'm gonna mak her mine,
Ooh yeah, someday I'm gonna make her mine.

I got a kick out of that one, but it's become almost a cliche now.

Thos of us who are "of a certain age" may enjoy this Beatles Karaoke Page

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: sledge
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 03:29 AM

They really make a cd opener????

I've had one for years, called a penknife.

:)

Sledge

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: raredance
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 08:25 PM

Teenagers are pretty effective CD openers too, if you can remember where you saw them last.

rich r

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Gypsy
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:16 AM

Ooohhh, Sean, i LOVE prizes!

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 03:06 AM

Shuffle? 5 second tracks? 90-odd blank tracks? I really miss my turntable...

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Kim C
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:05 AM

The one that spooked me is on my Great Big Sea CD, Rant and Roar. There's like two minutes of silence between the last song and the hidden track. I didn't even know it was on there and one day I was cleaning the kitchen and just let the CD run out, and BOOM! there it was. Scared the s**t out of me. 'Course, this was one of the first pop albums I had bought in a jillion years so I was unhip to this new concept of the Hidden Track.

Now what I want to know is, what's up with the Enhanced CD? If I play them on my computer at work I have to bypass all this stuff on my screen - that I don't have time to look at - just to play the music.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 05:24 PM

Kim
The Euphoria String Band did in on our CD Way Out West In Kansas as a joke.
Jim

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Matt_R
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 10:42 PM

On the Verve's album Urban Hymns, there is 15 minutes of silence between the last track and the hidden track. But I did have that same experience, Kim, with Hootie & The Blowfish's Musical Chairs which I'd had for over a year before leaving it play and discovering the great hidden track. I was like "What is THIS?". Now I ALWAYS let new CD's play through...I LOOK for the hidden tracks with enthusiasm. It seems a lot of the new British rock albums (which I am a total junkie for) have hidden tracks. I live for 'em!

--Matt (listening to a Bluetones album)

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 02 Mar 01 - 03:42 AM

My rich uncle Jim has a letter opener. He comes round on Mondays Wednesday and Fridays. He's a cd opener as well, but only unoffically.

Steve

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Rev
Date: 02 Mar 01 - 09:05 PM

My favorite kind of hidden track are the ones put at the BEGINNING of the CD. When you hit play, and the first track comes on you have to pause it and put it in fast reverse, the disc reverses through a hidden track, and when it's done, the album starts for real. Not a lot of albums have this, but I think it's ingenious, REALLY hidden!

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: GUEST,Bard of Avalon
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 03:08 PM

We have been working on a "CD extra" which seems to be the same thing as the "enhanced CD" that Kim C mentions - an audio CD, with extra image files, which are accessible on a PC disc reader.

However, we've not yet managed to get the image files and audio files to play simultaneously automatically ... does anyone know how to do this?

Jenny & Pat

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: SeanM
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 12:34 AM

I don't know if you can actually get the CD audio and ROM tracks to play simultaneously. It would seem to be asking the CDROM drive to perform two tasks at the same time - i.e., reading from the 'audio' portion as well as reading from the CDROM portion.

I have seen CDROMs that accomplish nearly that function, but they're useless as straight audio CDs. Basically, the program on the CD is a player of sorts that utilizes MP3 or other encoded files as part of the whole program.

M

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: SeanM
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 01:02 AM

Errr... shoulda looked before I lept on that one.

After saying I'd never seen an ECD that could also play the music, I deigned to take a look at my newly purchased copy of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?".

And put it in the computer.

And found that it has a fully functional jukebox, complete with random play, pause, etc. for the full CD's worth of music.

Whoopsie... sorry.

If it helps, the message on exiting reads that it's from Macromedia, the company responsible for Flash, Dreamweaver, Director etc... you might get a good lead looking on their site.

M

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: GUEST,Bard of Avalon
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 03:04 PM

To Sean M... Many thanks for the tips re CD extra!

Jenny & Pat

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: Tracie
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 05:20 PM

Lucy Kaplansky has a hidden track on "Flesh and Bone" from 1997..it's BEFORE song 1...you have to search backwards to find it. Which would make the hidden track actually song 1 and song 1 would be song 2...but whatever.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: GUEST,Timothy Cameron
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 07:34 PM

I once read that the hidden track thing was started as a way to prevent people from easily taping CDs. The thinking was that CDs sound much clearer than vinyl LPs, so that the quality of home made cassettes taped from CDs was going to threaten sales of pre-recorded cassettes. Since the tape quality used by the major labels was (and maybe still is) cheap and inferior, they were probably right about the sound quality. So in the early 90s, some artists tried releasing albums that were over 45 minutes in length, in other words, longer than one side of a 90 minute cassette. Problem was that some bands didn't have 45 minutes of decent material, and for a while there it seemed that there were a lot of albums that ran out of steam two-thirds of the way through. Then somebody got the idea that they could still have 30 minutes of music, but by putting a 15 minute blank space before the last song, the total length of the album would run longer than one side of a cassette. It wasn't a perfect foil, since industrious types could always hit the pause button on their cassette decks while the blank space played out, but the majors felt it was just enough of a deterent to prevent at least some "home piracy". Every rock album I bought in the 90s had the annoying dead air effect, to the point where now it's parodied by people like Adam Brodsky, whose latest CD has a 20 minute break before the last song, but during this break, he pops up every few minutes to say "Um, you can turn off the CD now, there's no hidden track", or "Really, I mean who do you think I am, Soungarden? There's no hidden track", and then of course, the hidden track appears. Anyway, sorry that was so long winded, but it seemed sort of relevant.

Subject: RE: What IS it with the Hidden Track?
From: GUEST,radio 3mf.m. folkin around
Date: 16 Mar 01 - 06:53 PM

the hidden track first came to the fore around the sixteenth century.