Listmania #4: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Track

The first album I got with a hidden track on it was Smells Like Teen Spirit.  I thought the CD player was broken because it just kept on ticking after closing track Something in the Way finished... and then, wahey!  Endless Nameless was not exactly Nirvana's finest hour, of course, but it was a cool little extra nonetheless.  Even if it was pretty much nonsensical.

Although vinyl can be double-grooved to include a hidden track, the CD has been the main culprit because it allows for tracks to be hidden in several ways.  As well as the fairly stock-standard "hide an extra song after a whole lot of silence at the end of the last track", the other common tricks are:

• Include a track which isn't featured on the album's tracklisting (e.g. Iron Gland on the Alice in Chains album Dirt)
• Stick a bunch of empty CD tracks after the last song and then have an actual song as, say, track 99 on the CD (e.g. Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP which has 6 songs, then 91 empty 1-second tracks, then two actual songs at tracks 98 and 99)
• Include a track in the 'pre-gap' before each track on a CD.  Normally this is done before Track 1, so the hidden track is actually Track 0.  This means you have to start Track 1 and then manually rewind to get to Track 0 (which is often inaccessible using a computer's CD drive). 

Anyway, this list is dedicated to a few of my favourite hidden tracks.  Either because they're good tracks or because they were clever in some other way.  For a much longer list, check out Wikipedia, home to people with too much time on their hands. 

1. Blur - Me, White Noise (from the album Think Tank)
Track 0 of Think Tank is host to what is quite possibly my favourite Blur song.  Which in this case also annoyed the crap out of me because I couldn't rip it to my computer.  Anyway, Me, White Noise sees Blur once again partnering with Phil Daniels, who provided the vocals to Parklife.  Except, where Parklife was a bit mad in a sort of happy, cheerful, harmless way, Me, White Noise is totally batshit insane (which sort of parallels Blur's sound moving from cheerful pop-rock to all sorts of random Albarn-led experimentation).  It's set to an infectious, grinding beat, and sees Mr. Daniels ranting over the top with such gems as "If I had a gun I would use it" and "You look at the wall, and what does the wall say to you? I ain't the mirror, fuck off!".  Here's a live performance:



2. Probot - I am the Warlock (from the album Probot)
Yeah, I rambled about this in my last post, but what it comes down to is Dave Grohl + Jack Black in the style of Ronnie James Dio = win.  This one's hidden after a bunch of silence on track 11 of the CD and starts at 8:56.
 


3. Rollins Band - LA Money Train (from the album Get Some Go Again)
So Henry Rollins dumped his old band, got a new one, recorded an album, and hid this little ditty as an unlisted track (#14) on the album.  Most of the album is hard rock but this is a funk jam featuring Wayne Kramer (MC5) on guitar.  Rollins is scene-stealing on the mic with some hilariously satirical spoken word material.



4. Queens of the Stone Age - Feel Good Haha of the Summer (from the album Songs for the Deaf)
This (brilliant) album has all sorts of clever touches - most notably mock radio snippets featuring various musical personalities.  But there's also two hidden tracks - firstly an assortment of random noises hidden in the pre-gap before track 1 (known as The Real Song for the Deaf), and secondly a reprise of Feel Good Hit of the Summer appears at 5:45 of track 13, after some silence.  The thing about this reprise is that it replaces the vocals with laughter (hence why it's known as Feel Good Haha of the Summer).  It sounds dumb but it is actually quite good fun.

5. Type O Negative - various
Admittedly none of the examples I'm about to describe are hidden tracks per se, but frankly it would be wrong to omit Type O Negative from any sort of list relating to amusing exploitation of the CD format.  The emphasis being on amusing:

• Track 6 of Slow, Deep and Hard, entitled The Misinterpretation of Silence and its Disastrous Consequences is, in fact, silence and was designed to confuse listeners into thinking the CD was over.  Or broken.
• Track 1 of October Rust, entitled Bad Ground, is 38 seconds of low frequency hum, which sounds like an ungrounded wire.
• Track 1 of World Coming Down, entitled Skip It, is 11 seconds of the sound of a CD skipping (again obviously designed to confuse first-time listeners!).

Quite the comedians, those Type O boys were.  RIP Peter Steele. 

6. Nine Inch Nails - Physical (You're So) and Suck (from the Broken EP)
Hidden at tracks 98 and 99, after 6 songs and 91 silent 1-second tracks, are two covers.  The first is a sludgy, fuzzy cover of Adam and the Ants, the second is a cover of a song Trent Reznor originally recorded with Pigface.  The latter has actually been performed live on a number of occasions as well and appears on the And All That Could Have Been live CD/DVD.



7. Clutch - 05 / Gifted and Talented / David Rose (from the album The Elephant Riders)
Not content with the old trick of hiding a song on the last track after a bunch of silence, Clutch upped the ante by including one of three songs as a bonus track after The Dragonfly at 7:34.  The three songs were 05, David Rose, and Gifted and Talented and which one you got depended on which pressing of the album you got.  Unless you were in Japan in which case you got all three.  Lucky Japanese.  All damned good tracks too.



8. Korn - Twist (acapella) (from the album Life is Peachy)
Whilst I was never a huge Korn fan, I always had a soft spot for Twist, a glorious 51 seconds of gibberish over thumping bass and a typically eerie detuned guitar line.  To his credit, Jonathan Davis is probably the only man who could pull this off.  Anyway, there's also an acapella version hidden after some silence at the end of track 14.  In this case, removing the instruments just makes the vocals sound even more mental.



9. Mastodon - Pendulous Skin (from the album Blood Mountain)
Track 12 of the album starts with the song Pendulous Skin, continues with 16 minutes of silence, and then at 21:25, we get this hilarious fan letter from none other than Josh Homme:



10. Deftones - Damone (from the album Around the Fur)
At first glance, closing track MX at 37:19 appears to be longer than the rest of the album put together.  That is, however, because most of that is silence, with the bonus track Damone beginning at 32:35.  It's a good song.  I don't know if it's worth sitting through almost half an hour of silence for, though.

11. Stone Temple Pilots - My Second Album (from the album Purple)
Part song, mostly pisstake.  There's some silence on track 11 after the final listed song, Kitchenware and Candybars, concludes, and then at 4:55 there is this cheesy lounge jazz number performed by Richard Peterson.  Ironically, the song references the "12 gracious melodies" motif - which is also displayed on a cake on the album's back cover.  Without this bonus song, there would of course only be 11 songs.  Very funny ha ha.

Listmania #3: Epic!

In an effort to return the word 'epic' to its appropriate use, not the 'kids of today' version, whilst recognising some kick-ass music, today's blog is dedicated to some epic songs.

1. Iron Maiden - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (13:34)
Actually this satisfies the 'epic' criteria in not one but two ways - it's both heroically long and it references Coleridge's epic poem of the same name (to the point of borrowing lyrics, in places).  Anyway, this is one of Maiden's greatest moments - both in terms of songwriting and musicianship - taking countless musical and dynamic twists and turns neatly bookended by a similar opening and closing theme.



2. Kyuss - Spaceship Landing (11:15)

Until the reformed line-up put out some new material, this is the final Kyuss song on the final Kyuss album, and I'll be damned if it isn't an absolute ripper.  Way to end it on a high note, boys.  The chorus riff might be the best one they ever wrote, especially when you get John Garcia howling 'Whoa yeah, you're a fucked up man, with a fucked up plan' over the top.  Some great solo work from Josh Homme too.



3. Dream Theater - The Count of Tuscany (19:16)

Frankly, this list would be incomplete without a track by Dream Theater, who deserve special mention as the 'band that most frequently defeats the point of using shuffle on my ipod when I go for a run'.  For god's sake, the AVERAGE song length of Dream Theater songs in my library is eight and a half minutes.  Anyway, this is one of my favourites, the last song from their most recent album (and sadly the last to feature Mike Portnoy but LET'S NOT GO THERE).  Stunning intro and a glorious outro and in-between you get all sorts of typically inventive Dream Theater stuff too.



4. Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (18:37)

Whether or not this constitutes a song, spoken-word, story-with-guitar or something else entirely (talking blues, according to Wikipedia) is debatable.  But it is a classic.  Based (loosely) on a true story, this was a brilliantly-done satirical protest against the Vietnam War draft cleverly wrapped up as a hilarious tale about littering gone wrong.  And 27 8x10" colour glossy photographs.



5. Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) (13:40) and (Parts VI-IX) (12:31)
Originally intended to be one full song, Floyd split this in two and it opens and closes Wish You Were Here (although there also a couple of edits on Echoes and A Collection of Great Dance Songs which mix and match various parts).  Although they didn't explicitly write it about Syd Barrett, it is a tribute to the former singer who sadly went off the rails.  Bizarrely, during the recording of the album, a near-unrecognisable Barrett wandered in off the street. 




6. Temple of the Dog - Reach Down (11:13)
Temple of the Dog was a supergroup formed from members of Soundgarden and others who would go on to form Pearl Jam, to pay tribute to singer Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone.  Who died of a heroin overdose, which was quite popular in the Seattle scene at the time.  Anyway, this Chris Cornell-penned number is the most rocking and longest track on the album, featuring some cool vocal harmonies and an extended shred-fest from messrs McCready and Gossard.




7. Clutch - Big News I / Big News II (11:12)
Alright, I'm pushing the boat out including this on account of how it's two separate songs.  But those two separate songs are almost always played back-to-back live with an extended jam in between.  And that's how it pans out in the video below, from a Seattle show in 2005.  And frankly, it's kick-ass.  The first part has an insistent rumbling bassline, a great chorus and a whole lot of carry-on about nautical antics and whiskey, whilst the second is more up-tempo.  And even cooler, if you live in NYC you could hear them play said song about drinking and boats whilst drinking, on a boat.



8. Smashing Pumpkins - United States (9:53)
At a meager 9:53, this might be shorter than some of the other songs on the list but it's still thoroughly worthy.  This song singlehandedly justified the release of the otherwise-rubbish alleged-comeback that was Zeitgeist.  The intensity just broods and builds throughout before things really step up just at around 6:30.  And even more impressive is the fact that despite having a complex, busy shuffle beat to it and multiple tempo changes, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin recorded the entire thing near-flawlessly IN ONE TAKE. 



9. Endless Boogie - Jammin' With Top Dollar (10:22)
Another band who could quite happily fill a list like this all by themselves, the aptly-named Endless Boogie have done a number of wandering psychedelic jams but this is one of their best, along with Empty Eye.  It follows the standard Endless Boogie formula of extended groove with gibberish vocals and rambling solos alternating over the top, but it's a little more direct and hard hitting and less meandering.



10. The Mars Volta - Tetragrammaton (16:42)

It's nothing new for the Mars Volta to write long songs.  What's surprising is that they actually wrote a really long song with a minimal amount of random inexplicable bizarre ambient noise to pad it out.  I mean there's a few quiet bits, but they still have actual guitars not random shrieking.  And the usual Mars Volta stuff - sinister yet incomprehensible lyrics, Omar shredding like a madman, and more mood and tempo shifts than an afternoon in a time machine at the asylum. OK yes they're weird, but it does produce some pretty cool results.  Sometimes.



11. Herbie Hancock - Chameleon (15:45)
Let's be fair, jazz guys were playing long, rambling epics LONG before rock musicians were.  So, shouts to this particularly groovy Herbie Hancock number from 1973's Head Hunters which has one of the funkiest basslines of all time (even though it was actually played on a synthesiser).  Period.

Listmania #2: A few good videos

Someone reminded me today about the Fatboy Slim track Weapon of Choice.  A lot of the late-90's "big beat" stuff has dated really badly - as a lot of dance music does - but that track, which featured Bootsy Collins on vocals, still sounds pretty damn cool. 

One of the great highlights about Weapon of Choice, though, was the video which featured Christopher Walken and which can be viewed here (boo you, Skint Records, for disabling embedding).

That little reminder was possibly a happy coincidence in terms of timing too, as a decent part of last Saturday evening was spent watching, no appreciating, classic 1990's music videos on 63.  So here it is, a Listmania dedicated to a few of my favourite music videos.

Propellerheads - Crash!
So, while we're on the topic of late-90's big beat music videos, here is this little gem from one-album wonders the Propellerheads. It features Messrs. Gifford and White in a kitchen making breakfast.  With Elvis.  In time to the music.  In a comedic manner.  Look, just watch it.

There's no high science here - it's just a goofy, fun concept which works well with the song.

Soundgarden - Black Rain
Directed by Brendon Small of Metalocalypse fame, this cartoon video has some insanely cool art direction.  And Soundgarden control a huge green robot that fights a weird blue alien thing.  Hey - I didn't say it made any sense.  But for sheer 'hell yeah that's cool' factor, this one's a winner.



Foo Fighters - Big Me
Frankly, this list would not be complete without a Foos vid because they have produced a number of stunners.  But I'm gonna opt for Big Me - a great spoof of the Mentos ads - which was arguably responsible for countless subsequent incidences of b-grade movie spoofing, aerial cross-dressing and Lemmy-related antics.


Smashing Pumpkins - Rocket
Whether or not this is actually a great video, I'm not sure.  But there's something about the way the song's upbeat sound combines with the visuals to create something very fun and nostalgic.  I mean, what kid didn't dream of building a rocket and flying it to the stars?  Well these kids actually did it.  They were obviously also clever enough to cross universes Fringe-style to an alternate reality where Billy wasn't such a complete douchebag and so the classic Pumpkins line-up never disbanded.  Now that's what I call low-percentage.


Nine Inch Nails - Only
Simple, but unbelievably fucking cool - this one has to be watched to be fully appreciated.  Directed by David Fincher, and featuring quite possibly the coolest use of Pin Art of all time.  Rob Sheridan's NIN work is always fantastic too but this is simply exceptional.