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Post by pbirdchat on Jul 25, 2008 9:09:35 GMT -5
One of the chapters of Beatledom that really captured my interest and fanned the flames of my new found interest in the band was the Paul is dead hoax.
I think it was brought to our attention in our grade school music class that several clues were on album sleeve's and in the songs themselves. I was floored by these revelations and quite frankly a bit creeped out. I remember being at a neighbors house going over the clues and being very scared when it was time for me to walk the short distance home in the dark.
Years later in college, I was in radio and TV broadcasting, so I had access to turntables that could be taken out of gear and manually played backwards. I recorded all the audio clues on to reel to reel tape and photographed the visual documentation and converted them to slides. I then used this for an audio visual speech that had to be completed for one of my classes.
We were graded mostly on our graphics, and use of A/V material, but my content was so good and interesting that the student were riveted just like I was when I was a kid.
I think the Paul is dead hoax would be a great idea for a DVD project. Maybe I'll make my own. Darren D'Rito
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Post by Cosmos on Jul 25, 2008 9:26:55 GMT -5
;D LOL...that brought back some memories. My older brother had a B.I.C. belt-drive that would "slip" and play a perfect 33 1/3 backwards occasionally when you cued it up. I also took advantage of this anomaly and made a cassette recording of all of those songs that I could get hold of at the time. The "Gen-X-ers" will never know warped fun like that ! (Though I'm sure now, that someone will probably say they've done the same thing with a computer)
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Post by pbirdchat on Jul 25, 2008 10:00:06 GMT -5
Warped fun indeed! "X-ers" may do something similar on the computer, but it will never match the intensity of cueing up the track on a turntable and brrrrrrrriiiiiinnnngging iiiiitttt uuuuup to speed! That sound was creepy when you knew "Turn me on dead man" was about to blare through the speakers. Or playing the end of A Day In The Life backwards and hearing the car plummeting over a cliff with sirens following. Whew! Darren D'Rito
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Post by Steve Marinucci on Jul 25, 2008 10:23:59 GMT -5
One of the chapters of Beatledom that really captured my interest and fanned the flames of my new found interest in the band was the Paul is dead hoax. I think it was brought to our attention in our grade school music class that several clues were on album sleeve's and in the songs themselves. I was floored by these revelations and quite frankly a bit creeped out. I remember being at a neighbors house going over the clues and being very scared when it was time for me to walk the short distance home in the dark. Years later in college, I was in radio and TV broadcasting, so I had access to turntables that could be taken out of gear and manually played backwards. I recorded all the audio clues on to reel to reel tape and photographed the visual documentation and converted them to slides. I then used this for an audio visual speech that had to be completed for one of my classes. We were graded mostly on our graphics, and use of A/V material, but my content was so good and interesting that the student were riveted just like I was when I was a kid. I think the Paul is dead hoax would be a great idea for a DVD project. Maybe I'll make my own. Darren D'Rito If you're into newsgroups, the alt.binaries.beatles newsgroup recently had a posting of a multi-disc set of Paul Is Dead audio files. Included, of course, was the WABC aircheck that started it. There's other stuff, too.
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Post by pbirdchat on Jul 25, 2008 11:18:01 GMT -5
Hello, Excuse my ignorance, but was is this page you're taking about? Can I download or buy this set of material? Darren D'Rito
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Post by John S. Damm on Jul 25, 2008 11:33:02 GMT -5
As a kid, we had a portable Sony record player that had a neutral speed(like on a car) so I could play my Beatles' records backwards. The player had a 45-N-33 with a knob to adjust the speed or put it into "N." I played the White Album backwards hearing all the cool stuff without incident(and undoubtedly scratched my Apple labelled, but unnumbered White Album).
Years later I was married and on a Saturday night I was telling my then young stepsons about the Paul-is-dead story. It was like telling a scary campfire story with special effects. I have a Technics turntable that can be spun backwards and I did the "turn me on dead man" from "Revolution 9" with no problem which still freaked out the boys but of course I was used to it.
I then go to the end of "I'm So Tired" and I must have turned the volume up too loud but as I played it backwards, a litttle slow of hand, out of my speakers comes the most demonic sounding slowed-down voice, "Paul is dead now, miss him, miss him" and then this earpiercing feedback screams out of my speakers causing the big picture window to literally rattle and hum! It was truly frightening and bizarre even to me, who has heard that bit a hundred times but not with that feedback.
Sam was only little and he cried out, "I'm scared!" and he ran up the stairs as fast as his little legs could take him to join his mother who was already in bed and even the older boy, about 11 at the time, had to sleep on the floor in the bedroom(because Sam was already in the bed). My wife, who was awoken, was ticked at me wondering what in the world I had done to scare the boys so bad(she thought that I had shown them The Exorcist, an off-limits film for the boys back then).
I had to sleep on the couch because there was no room and she didn't believe me the next day about what we heard! Nonetheless, the weird effect produced was scary as hell(even to me) and the boys and I still laugh about it today even as we look over our backs to make sure that there is no demonic presence in our room!
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Post by pbirdchat on Jul 25, 2008 11:50:04 GMT -5
Wow, that IS weird. What caused the feedback? I've given my teenagers the Paul is dead tour. Both of them really got into it and I think it gave the Beatles more credibility somehow in their minds. They both have Beatles on their ipods and consider themselves fans. Darren D'Rito
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Post by John S. Damm on Jul 25, 2008 12:15:18 GMT -5
Wow, that IS weird. What caused the feedback? I think that I had the volume too loud and my speakers were too close to the turntable or pointed towards it as I was first spinning the record the right way to get to the end of Lennon's gibberish at the end of "I'm So Tired." I turned up the volume to hear exactly where he stops and "Blackbird" kicks in. It was a very weird, disquieting experience plus the fact that I was spinning it backwards too slowly so it had that demonic, slow sounding voice anyway. ;D
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JMG
Very Clean
Posts: 412
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Post by JMG on Jul 25, 2008 14:05:22 GMT -5
Oh yeah. The 'Paul Is Dead Hoax' was great fun! They had us all scurrying to our turntables, playing the LP's backwards, searching for clues with a magnifying glass on the album covers and pictures. They even had magazines devoted to the subject.
Shows how HUGE The Beatles were back in their day. It's hard to imagine anything like that happening today. Most people would just shrug and walk away.
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Post by winstonoboogie on Jul 25, 2008 22:13:18 GMT -5
Both of my sons found (on their own, mind you!) a web site with all the "clues", including some I'd never heard of! Apparently Paul was going to a date with Lovely Rita when he blew his mind out and lost his hair... Anywho, I'll be incommunicado for the next week, as we are going on vacation! So, until then, keep the home fires burning, and "rock on- anybody!" ;D Tom (aka W. O'B.)
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Post by rockwizard on Jul 27, 2008 14:43:37 GMT -5
GENIUS. Sheer GENIUS. We all know the best way to boost sales of a catalog is mention the death of a bandmember. Some bands can learn from this on how to keep sales going(if the Beatles ever needed any help in that area!).
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