tomputer

I originally thought that hidden tracks on albums were just tracks added at the end of the album and not listed on the sleeve notes but after doing a bit of reading it seems the history of why artists put hidden tracks on their albums is, in some cases, quite interesting. For example to avoid controversy (Guns n’ Roses, “Look at your game, girl”, The Spaghetti Incident?) by “hiding” the track or to sneak a track onto an album that might cause legal or copyright violations (Ramones, “Cry Baby Cry“, Loco).

The methods by which tracks were hidden on vinyl records is also more interesting than I realised: I knew about the method of hiding tracks at the end of an album often separated from the “final” track by an extended period of silence (on vinyl this is sometimes visible by a different density of the groove). I wasn’t aware of the “double-groove” method though, which to me is a more genuinely “hidden” track and quite ingenious. Continue Reading »