Subliminally yours,

Bleuebelle’s recent comment on coded messages in heavy metal music reminded me of the infamous trial involving Judas Priest. On their cover version of Spooky Tooth’s, Better by you, Better than me, it was alleged that the song made allusions to suicide. It was claimed two fans heard the message “do it” and they both shot themselves. One died instantly the other (dying much later) had horrific facial injuries. Judas Priest were found not guilty.

Subliminal messages in vinyl records are not a new concept. The Beatles, to my knowledge, were the first to use the technique of “backmasking” in some of their recordings. Basically, this means when you play the record backwards there is a hidden message. They were being deliberate about this and I‘m sure the messages were sweet. Other bands would have copied this. The metal bands were accused of raising/lowering the bar by leaving dark satanic oaths on their albums.

So a few friends and I sought out these hidden Easter eggs on our precious metal vinyls. They were difficult to find. The first thing that was challenging was trying to spin the record anti-clockwise at 33 1/3rd RPM. We had no way of measuring this. Random speeds occurred because our fingers either tired or speeded-up. The noise emitting from the speakers was all distortion, static and crackling. Though some one quipped the record sounds better than playing it the normal way. We gave up the ghost.

It was while watching an old episode of Columbo (I’ve far too much time on my hands) that I came across the use of subliminal images in movies. The murderer uses subliminal messages in a film to entice his victim outside the hall.
Films are recorded at twenty-four frames per second. This is judged to be the optimum a normal human brain can process. There have been instances of film makers adding subliminal images to their works. They use these techniques to manipulate your emotions. Usually, they place and ad for food in one of the frames and this will make you hungry. It could well be that I’m a twenty frame per second person as all the concealed cuts seem to have passed me by. Not that it stops me heading out for a hot dog.

Getting back to my old albums. There was a time when I was going through an unrequited love affair. My crush on this girl was so bad I vandalised the inside covers of my long players. Bending the packaging to make an oval shaped opening I would write in ink: JW L LY. It wasn’t until many years later when I’d already traded in the majority of my old albums that I remembered the messages. I wonder if any of the new owners has ever noticed them.