Way back in 1990, I had a Yellow Sony Sports Walkman. I played the holy heck out of it. I played it so much that it broke… but in a very interesting way. It had autoflip, right? In theory, it would play side one of the tape and then the other side. (Both sides of the tape without opening the Walkman? Madness!) Well, my broken Walkman played one side of the tape and then it would play the same side backwards.
Now, having grown up well within the “Backwards Masking” panic of the early 80’s, I first only used it on that one part of Stairway to Heaven but, eventually, laziness got the better of me and I found myself listening to the various sides of my albums backwards because I didn’t want to bother flipping the tape.
And you know what? I found that that was a way to explore music even moreso. Like, I doubled all of my albums. Led Zepplin certainly wasn’t coming out with any more music (and we were years away from Coverdale & Page
I mean, I had the same vocalist, the same guitarist, the same bassist, and the same drummer *BUT* this was a song by them that I’d never heard before. Granted, it was in a language I didn’t speak… but I could get over that. (It wasn’t just Led Zepplin either. Pink Floyd’s guitar solos are brilliant backwards, Depeche Mode’s songs are happy and upbeat (seriously!) when played backwards, and the only thing you have to get used to is the fast part happening at the start and the song slowing down as it approaches the end.)
Anyway, while doing some research for something else entirely, I stumbled across Kashmir backwards on youtube the other day and listened to the whole thing and all of this came flooding back.
Check it out. It’s a new Led Zepplin song.
So that’s my recommendation for you this week.
I did try to push the “Play” and “Reverse” buttons at the same time in an attempt to listen to “Shout at the Devil” backwards but it didn’t work. Pity.
When I was small, I used to listen to records “creatively”. Say, punch an off-center hole, which results in cyclic speeding up and slowing down, or play them at the wrong speed. It turns out that a lot of baroque slow movements improve at 78, because the bass line is more interesting than the main melody.