h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do they even do these any more? I'll write in the past tense, anyway. You see, there used to be a thing where the album would appear to be over, and there would be several minutes of silence... only for a special bonus song to be found at the end of it all! Many of them were pretty mediocre, but there were a few genuine gems.
So, what were/are your favourites? And do they still do them?

"Her Majesty" on the Beatles' Abbey Road was originally a hidden track, with no mention on the record cover. Later editions listed it.

It's not so easy to do hidden tracks on a CD because people tend to have things on shuffle so they won't want a long silence.

On the other hand, CDs have the ability, rarely used, to have extra tracks that are only played if you let the CD run through the tracks and don't jump around. For example, if there is a track 3 and a track 4, you can have a 3.5 that is only played if the player plays the end of track 3 and then continues playing. It will play 3.5, then 4. If you go straight to 4 you don't get to hear 3.5.

Gnomon, I have heard about that from time to time, but never witnessed it. I wonder if there are any tracks on CDs I have had for years that I never noticed I was missing...
In terms of the end-of-album ones, a couple that spring to mind for me are "Deeper Underground" on the Jamiroquai album 'Synkronized' (admittedly a single beforehand, used in a film soundtrack, but hidden on the album and a top tune), and "Tightrope" from Papa Roach's 'Infest'. In the latter case, I remember a metal fan friend of mine saying that he was not particularly interest in Papa Roach, but genuinely really liked that song, so I am not alone.

Cool old Guy searching his albums
"Never noticed this on any CD (not in simple nor advanced players) Have one example on DVD though.

It is the 'Hitchhikers to the Galaxy' movie DVD, there is a hidden track with the cartoon 'Deep Thought' is watching. You only find it using the random sequence or searching for the specials indeed. "

I remember a CD with one of those extra tracks. It featured a voice saying "if you had bought the LP version, this is where you'd have to get up and turn over the record. Enjoy these few seconds" or words to that effect. If you selected the individual track you'd never hear this.

It's done using index marks within the track. When you tell a CD player to play a track it starts at index 1. When it plays itself following on from the previous track it starts at index 0. This is sometimes used to put a few seconds' gap between tracks.

LPs had a couple of features not easily reproduced on CD:

Pink Floyd's Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast had a dripping tap at the end which went round the central circular groove so that if your turntable didn't automatically stop, the drip went on for ever.

M's Pop Music is reputed to have had a double spiral groove so that there were two songs on the one side and you couldn't pick which one you played - it was a random choice.

I don't tend to shuffle - it just messes with the music of my youth

I accidentally shuffled The Magic Flute once. That was weird.

Hidden tracks are hard to hide on CDs as basically every CD player that is not too old to function will have a display displaying the play-time of the songs. So when it says that the song you are hearing is 13 minutes long but obviously the song has just finished at 4:13 you can kinda conclude that there is something going on...

Rammstein's 2004 album "Reise Reise" has a hidden track *before* the first song. You can only access it by starting the first track and then rewinding past the starting point. You will then hear a 36 second recording of the last moments of Japan Airlines flight 123, which crashed on August 12, 1985, killing 520 people.

Amy McDonald has one on one of her records, something about Caledonia. It always makes me cry, even though I'm not Scots. And on one Robbie Williams one there's a hilarious little song. I'll look them up when I get home.

Santana's 'Supernatural' has a hidden track which starts at 8:00 minutes into track 13.

One of the cleverest concealed messages was the last line of 'Mr Blue Sky' by ELO. Most people think it's 'Mr Blue Sky...yi', but the electronic voice is actually singing 'Please Turn Me Over' (it was the end of vinyl side 3).

Back in 1980, Mad Magazine released a vinyl single in one of their quarterly Super Special editions as a featured bonus. The record had 8 separate tracks so depending on where exactly you dropped the needle on the record, you got a different ending to the song "It's a Super Spectacular Day." Of course, you'd here the same version multiple times before you heard all eight.

http://youtu.be/myyc812X1_I

"I accidentally shuffled The Magic Flute once. That was weird."

I am not sure what that is a euphemism for, but whatever it is, you should be ashamed of yourself!

Another hidden track I like is at the end of 'The Man Who'. My Wikipedia researches indicate that it is called "Blue Flashing Light", and it's a haunting song about domestic abuse.

"'I accidentally shuffled The Magic Flute once. That was weird.'
I am not sure what that is a euphemism for, but whatever it is, you should be ashamed of yourself!" [Just Bob]



"The Magic Flute" makes no sense anyway. Mozart and Schickaneder labored to make the plot cohesive, but only made it worse and worse . I enjoyed the scene in Ingmar Bergman's film version where the Queen of the Night was caught backstage smoking a cigarette .

haha, Bob, you made me snort over my cornflakes!

The Magic Flute makes perfect sense as a mad fantasy. The most recent one I was was marvellous.