Top 10 Famous Cases of Backmasking - Listverse Top 10 Famous Cases of Backmasking Andrew C. August 28, 2011 Backmasking is the process of reversing an audio signal and placing it in something meant to be played forwards. When played normally the message will sound like gibberish, however, when the song is played in reverse the original message can be heard. Some of the first instances of reversed audio were the result of The Beatles’ experimentation during the recording of Revolver. Since then, backmasked messages have turned up in all kinds of music with messages ranging from humorous to satanic. Today, reversing audio is a popular way to censor explicit words for radio. Here is a list of 10 famous instances of backmasking. 10 The Mars Volta Eunuch Provocateur The Mars Volta are a prog-rock band known for cryptic lyrics and messages. One instance that had fans buzzing was on the track “Eunuch Provocateur” on their EP Tremulant. At around the 5:30 mark the track transforms into echoing drums with an eerie guitar. A voice can be heard, but none of the words can be made out.

Fans found that when played in reverse the gibberish could be heard as “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”. The band used an old record that contained children’s songs for the samples. Also in the track, the phrase “Did mommy or daddy ever have to spank you?” can be heard when reversed. 9 Missy Elliot Work It Missy Elliot used backmasking for aesthetic purposes on her track “Work It” from her album Under Construction. The chorus of the track is “Is it worth it, let me work it, I put my thing down flip it and reverse it” followed by backwards gibberish. When the gibberish is played in reverse, it says “I put my thing down flip it and reverse it”. Missy sampled the previous line of the chorus and reversed it. In the same song at around 2:08 Missy says “Listen up close while I take you backwards” followed by the reversed message “Watch the way Missy like to take it backwards”. 8 Weird Al Yankovic I Remember Larry In the late 80s and early 90s, parents and special interest groups began accusing artists of using backmasking to hide disturbing and even satanic messages.

These accusations resulted in court cases over high profile artists. Weird Al poked fun at the issue and hid a humorous message about those searching for hidden messages on the track “I Remember Larry” off his album, Bad Hair Day. In the bridge of the song at around 3:14 Al’s voice can be heard speaking nonsense. When reversed one can hear “Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands”. 7 Queen Another One Bites the Dust In the early 1980’s, Queen was accused of hiding a reversed message in their song “Another One Bites the Dust”. Christian evangelists claimed that when played in reverse the lyrics “another one bites the dust” become “It’s fun to smoke marijuana”. Some believed since the song had other strange effects on it, it was possible the band had purposely used backmasking to hide the pro-marijuana message. A spokesperson for Hollywood Records denied that the song contained a hidden message. The message is widely considered to be unintended. Many cite this song as an example of phonetic reversal, where a word when reversed, sounds like another word. 6 Jay-Z Lucifer Jay-Z is a popular rapper who is often tied to many conspiracy theories.

Some popular theories are that he is linked to the illuminati/freemasons, and that he is satanic. While the theories about him are far-fetched, believers of these theories thought they found proof when the song “Lucifer 9” was reversed. Gibberish played normally was the message “666 murder murder Jesus 666” when played backwards. What many didn’t know was the track “Lucifier 9” was actually from Dangermouse’s The Grey Album. The Grey Album was a mashup of The Beatles (White Album) and Jay-Z’s The Black Album. Dangermouse chopped up Jay-Z a capellas and created the message over The Beatles “Revolution 9”. 5 Pink Floyd Empty Spaces Pink Floyd used backmasking to hide a message on their song “Empty Spaces” from the album The Wall. Gibberish is heard when listening to the song normally. When played in reverse a secret message is found: “-Hello, Luka… Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont… -Roger! Carolyn’s on the phone!

-Okay” The message is supposedly Roger Waters addressing people who look for hidden messages. Waters congratulates them and asks them to send a response to “Old Pink” at the “Funny Farm”. Before Waters can give the full address he is notified by someone that his wife, Carolyn, is on the phone. Many think “Old Pink” is a reference to former member Syd Barrett who had mental problems and was in a psychiatric hospital (“Funny Farm”). 4 The Beatles I’m So tired The Beatles self-titled 1968 album (White Album) was thoroughly searched for clues about Paul’s death rumors (see #2) by fans. One of the most noticeable pieces of supposed evidence was a backmasked message at the end of “Im So Tired”. At the very end of the song, as the music is fading out, John Lennon can be heard speaking incomprehensibly. When played in reverse, some hear the words “Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him”. While many saw this as evidence of Paul’s death the rumor was denied by the band. Paul McCartney also denies the rumors of his death.

3 Judas Priest Better by You, Better than Me In 1990, Judas Priest was involved in a court case which alleged subliminal messages in their song “Better by You, Better than Me” led to the suicide, and attempted suicide, of 2 men in 1985. Allegedly Raymond Belknap and James Vance drank beer and smoked marijuana for several hours while listening to Judas Priest. They then went to a church playground, where Belknap shot himself under the chin with a 12 gauge shotgun, dying instantly. Vance then tried to do the same. However, the gun slipped as he fired, blowing away the lower half of his face. He later told a reporter of a suicide pact he made with Belknap, saying “We had been programmed. I knew I was going to do it. I was afraid. I didn’t want to die. It’s just as if I had no choice”. He slipped into a coma three years later and died. The men’s parents filed a civil action which alleged that, when played backwards, the Judas Priest track encouraged listeners to commit suicide and “Do it”. The suit was dismissed.

*Note: I can’t hear anything that sounds like “Do it” 2 The Beatles Revolution 9 The Beatles (White Album) contained an avant-garde track titled “Revolution 9”. The track contained lots of effects and noise, and was noteworthy for how odd it was. In 1969, as the rumors of Paul McCartney’s death were spreading, Revolution 9 became an important piece of evidence to those claiming Paul was dead. A caller to a Detroit radio show explained possible evidence of Paul’s death, and convinced disc jockey Russ Gibb to play Revolution 9 in reverse. The repeated phrase “number nine” became “turn me on dead man” when played backwards. Listeners called in to the phone lines to voice their opinions, which further spread the rumors. When played in reverse many claim to hear other clues such as the sound of a car crash and someone screaming “Let me out”. 1 Led Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven In January, 1982, Paul Crouch accused many rock artists of hiding messages in their songs through backmasking. One example he pointed out was the Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven”.

When played normally one hears: “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now It’s just a spring clean for the May queen Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run There’s still time to change the road you’re on” When played in reverse Crouch said a satanic message could be heard: “Oh here’s to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He will give those with him 666. There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.” The band ignored these claims, however Swan Song Records issued a statement saying “Our turntables only play in one direction…forwards”. The alleged satanic message has become, arguably, the most famous instance of backmasking, adding to the mystery and legacy of Led Zeppelin. Many however, say it’s merely a coincidence, and is simply another case of phonetic reversal.

More Great Lists 2 Families Sue Heavy-Metal Band As Having Driven Sons to Suicide - NYTimes.com 2 Families Sue Heavy-Metal Band As Having Driven Sons to Suicide By LARRY ROHTER, Special to The New York Times Published: July 17, 1990 RENO, July 16— Two days before Christmas in 1985, a pair of young Nevada men shot themselves after listening to albums by the heavy-metal band Judas Priest. Today the rock group and CBS Records went on trial in Washoe County District Court here, accused by the men's families of having driven them to suicide. As the members of Judas Priest, dressed in dark business suits instead of the dark leather garb they favor on stage, looked on silently, lawyers for the families of Raymond Belknap and James Vance argued that the musicians had placed subliminal messages in several recordings, including the album ''Stained Class,'' thereby inciting the two troubled young men to try to kill themselves. Both the group and its record label are charged in a civil suit with the liability arising from the manufacture and marketing of a faulty product, as well as negligence and intentional and reckless misconduct.

''Judas Priest and CBS pander this stuff to alienated teen-agers,'' said Kenneth McKenna, the lawyer for Mr. Belknap's family. ''The members of the chess club, the math and science majors don't listen to this stuff. It's the dropouts, the drug and alcohol abusers. So our argument is you have a duty to be more cautious when you're dealing with a population susceptible to this stuff.'' 'Sad and Miserable Lives' During an opening statement in court this morning, however, a lawyer for Judas Priest and CBS, Suellen Fulstone, argued that the two youths had lived ''sad and miserable lives,'' and that the problems that led to their deaths began ''long before any connection with heavy-metal music.'' She also said that ''the risk that ideas may cause undesirable behavior'' in a small and unstable segment of the population ''is a small price to pay for a free society.'' Still, the unusual product-liability charges brought by the plaintiffs here are a source of new concern to record companies already worried about the recent arrest of members of the 2 Live Crew rap group on obscenity charges and efforts to put warning labels on recordings deemed to be harmful or obscene.

If successful, the product-liability suit would force record companies to screen lyrics or face the possibility of having to pay huge punitive damages in similar cases. In at least three previous incidents, in California, Georgia and New Jersey, fans of heavy metal have killed themselves after listening to the album ''Suicide Solution'' by the rock singer Ozzy Ozbourne, another artist who has recorded for CBS. The California case was dismissed before coming to trial when a court ruled that song lyrics were protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment. The Georgia case is still pending, and heavy metal is no longer a factor in the New Jersey case. Subliminal Messages In this case, however, lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that the young men were driven to shoot themselves by the subliminal messages the musicians placed in the music, such as ''Let's be dead'' and ''Do it.'' Though he has yet to decide whether the Judas Priest recordings had such material, Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead has ruled that such subliminal messages were not a form of speech and therefore were not covered by First Amendment protections. Lawyers for the Belknap and Vance families have contended that some subliminal messages were masked by being played backward in songs, an argument Ms.

Fulstone urged Judge Whitehead to dismiss as having no scientific basis. ''The courtroom is no place for reveries about the unknown capacity of the human mind'' to absorb such material, she said. The essential facts of the case are not in dispute. After smoking marijuana and drinking beer while listening to songs from several Judas Priest albums, Mr. Belknap and Mr. Vance agreed to a suicide pact, went to a nearby church playground, and shot themselves in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun. Mr. Belknap, 18 years old at the time, died instantly. Mr. Vance, then age 20, destroyed most of his face but survived, underwent several painful and costly reconstructive surgical operations, became a born-again Christian, lapsed back into drug consumption, and died late in 1988. Both Were Troubled Dropouts Both young men were high school dropouts with criminal records and both had problems holding jobs. Each also came from a family with a history of domestic violence and child abuse and had received counseling. In a letter to Mr. Belknap's mother some time after the shootings, Mr. Vance explicitly blamed Judas Priest for encouraging the incident.

''I believe that alcohol and heavy-metal music such as Judas Priest led us to be mesmerized,'' he wrote. According to testimony Mr. Vance offered in preliminary hearings before his death, the two youths were listening to a song called ''Beyond the Realms of Death'' when ''all of a sudden we got a suicide message, and we got tired of life.'' The song, whose lyrics were written by Judas Priest's lead singer, Rob Halford, include the lines: ''Keep the world with all its sin /It's not fit for living in.'' A spokesman for Judas Priest said today that no subliminal messages had ever been placed in any recording by the group. The musicians are expected to testify to that effect later in the trial, but declined to comment on any aspect of the case today, limiting themselves to signing copies of albums brought to the trial by some of their fans. Commerce Before Mayhem ''I don't know what subliminals are, but I do know there's nothing like that in this music,'' said Bill Curbishley, who manages Judas Priest as well as the Who and Robert Plant, the former Led Zeppelin lead singer.

''If we were going to do that, I'd be saying, 'Buy seven copies,' not telling a couple of screwed-up kids to kill themselves.'' With the agreement of both sides, the case is being heard without a jury. At the conclusion of the trial, which is expected to last about a month, Judge Whitehead is to determine whether CBS Records and Judas Priest owe damages to the families. Both sides have promised to appeal the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary. Outside the Washoe County Courthouse here, a small group of heavy-metal fans demonstrated, their music blaring from the radio of a pickup truck. ''Alcohol, drugs and a 12-gauge shotgun killed those poor kids, not metal music,'' read one of the banners they carried. Sonyd(CBS Records) Photo: K. K. Downing and Rob Halford of Judas Priest, who, along with other band members and CBS Records, went on trial in Reno. (Jennifer Rose/Retna) BBC - Seven Ages of Rock - Events - Judas Priest subliminal message suicide trial Judas Priest - 20th October 1978 Judas Priest were a major influence on many heavy metal bands.

Judas Priest subliminal message suicide trial 1990 On 23 December 1985, Raymond Belknap (18) and James Vance (20), after a long alcohol and drug binge, made a suicide pact to kill themselves with a shot gun. Where Belknap succeeded, Vance failed to take his own life and blew away the bottom part of his face leaving him grossly disfigured. When it later transpired that the pair had been listening to Judas Priest that afternoon, the parents saw someone they could blame for the tragedy. Judas Priest were taken to court in 1990 and the parents claimed that there were 'subliminal messages' in the music that encouraged the boys to commit suicide; such as "Try suicide," "Let's be dead," "do it, do it, do it." The band made a point of testifying in person at the proceedings, where they merely pointed that if they wanted to use subliminal messages in their music it would be tell the kids to buy more records. Related Pages Dr Timothy E.

Moore Psychologist Wrote an article for Skeptical Inquirer entitled 'Scientific Consensus and Expert Testimony: Lessons from the Judas Priest Trial'. David Van Taylor Subliminal message | Mind Control Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia E. W. Scripture published The New Psychology in 1898, which described the basic principles of subliminal messages. [1] In 1900, Knight Dunlap, an American professor of psychology , flashed an "imperceptible shadow" to subjects while showing them a Müller-Lyer illusion containing two lines with pointed arrows at both ends which create an illusion of different lengths. Dunlap claimed that the shadow influenced his subjects subliminally in their judgment of the lengths of the lines. Although these results were not verified in a scientific study, American psychologist Harry Levi Hollingworth reported in an advertising textbook that such subliminal messages could be used by advertisers. [2] Further developments Edit During World War II, the tachistoscope , an instrument which projects pictures for an extremely brief period, was used to train soldiers to recognize enemy airplanes. [1] Today the tachistoscope is used to increase reading speed or to test sight.

[3] In 1957, market researcher James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. Vicary coined the term subliminal advertising and formed the Subliminal Projection Company based on a six-week test. Vicary claimed that during the presentation of the movie Picnic he used a tachistoscope to project the words "Drink Coca-Cola " and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey theater increased 57.8 percent and 18.1 percent respectively. [1] [4] It was later revealed, however, that Vicary lied about the experiment. He admitted to falsifying the results, and an identical experiment conducted by Dr. Henry Link showed no increase in cola or popcorn sales. This has led people to believe that Vicary actually did not conduct his experiment whatsoever.

[5] Vicary's claims were promoted in Vance Packard 's book The Hidden Persuaders, [6] and led to a public outcry, and to many conspiracy theories of governments and cults using the technique to their advantage." Subliminal messages in movies and media ". Retrieved on 2008-05-21.[ citation needed ] The practice of subliminal advertising was subsequently banned in the United Kingdom and Australia , [2] and by American networks and the National Association of Broadcasters in 1958. [4] But in 1958, Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the message "telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, and found no increase in telephone calls. In 1962, Vicary admitted that he fabricated his claim, the story itself being a marketing ploy. [7] Efforts to replicate the results of Vicary's reports have never resulted in success. [1] In 1973, commercials in the United States and Canada for the game Hūsker Dū? flashed the message "Get it".

[6] During the same year, Wilson Bryan Key 's book Subliminal Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising. [4] Public concern was sufficient to cause the FCC to hold hearings in 1974. The hearings resulted in an FCC policy statement stating that subliminal advertising was "contrary to the public interest" and "intended to be deceptive". [4] Subliminal advertising was also banned in Canada following the broadcasting of Hūsker Dū? ads there. [1] A study conducted by the United Nations concluded that "the cultural implications of subliminal indoctrination is a major threat to human rights throughout the world." [8] Edit Used in advertising to create familiarity with new products, subliminal messages make familiarity into a preference for the new products. Dr. Johan Karremans suggests that subliminal messages have an effect when the messages are goal-relevant. [11] Karremans did a study assessing whether subliminal priming of a brand name of a drink would affect a person’s choice of drink, and whether this effect is caused by the individual’s feelings of being thirsty.

His study sought to ascertain whether or not subliminally priming or preparing the participant with text or an image without being aware of it would make the partaker more familiar with the product. Half of his participants were subliminally primed with Lipton Ice ("Lipton Ice" was repeatedly flashed on a computer screen for 24 milliseconds), while the other half was primed with a control that did not consist of a brand. In his study he found that subliminally priming a brand name of a drink (Lipton Ice) made those who were thirsty want the Lipton Ice. Those who were not thirsty, however, were not influenced by the subliminal message since their goal was not to quench their thirst. [12] Subconscious stimulus by single words is well known to be modestly effective in changing human behavior or emotions. This is evident by a pictorial advertisement that portrays four different types of rum. The phrase "U Buy" was embedded somewhere, backwards in the picture. A study (Key, 1973) [13] was done to test the effectiveness of the alcohol ad.

Before the study, participants were able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad, none found any. In the end, the study showed 80% of the subjects unconsciously perceived the backward message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular rum. Though many things can be perceived from subliminal messages, only a couple words or a single image of unconscious signals can be internalized. As only a word or image can be effectively perceived, the simpler features of that image or word will cause a change in behavior (i.e., beef is related to hunger). This was demonstrated by Byrne in 1959. The word " beef " was flashed for several, five millisecond intervals during a sixteen-minute movie to experimental subjects, while nothing was flashed to controlled subjects. Neither the experimental nor controlled subjects reported for a higher preference for beef sandwiches when given a list of five different foods, but the experimental subjects did rate themselves as hungrier than the controlled subjects when given a survey [14] If the subjects were flashed a whole sentence, the words would not be perceived and no effect would be expected.

In 2007, to mark the 50th anniversary of James Vicary's original experiment, it was recreated at the International Brand Marketing Conference MARKA 2007 [15] . As part of the "Hypnosis, subconscious triggers and branding" presentation 1,400 delegates watched part the opening credits of the film PICNIC that was used in the original experiment. They were exposed to 30 subliminal cuts over a 90 second period. When asked to choose one of two brands 81% of the delegates picked the brand suggested by the subliminal cuts. Studies in 2004 and 2006 showed that subliminal exposure to images of frightened faces or faces of people from another race will increase the activity of the amygdala in the brain and also increase skin conductance . [16] [17] In 2007, it was shown that subliminal exposure to the Israeli flag had a moderating effect on the political opinions and voting behaviors of Israeli volunteers. This effect was not present when a jumbled picture of the flag was subliminally shown.

[18] Audio File:Sox Satanic Subliminals.png Backmasking , an audio technique in which sounds are recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forwards, produces messages that sound like gibberish to the conscious mind. Gary Greenwald , a fundamentalist Christian preacher, claims that these messages can be heard subliminally, and can induce listeners towards, in the case of rock music , sex and drug use . [19] However, this is not generally accepted as fact. [20] Following the 1950s subliminal message panic, many businesses have sprung up purporting to offer helpful subliminal audio tapes that supposedly improve the health of the listener. However, there is no evidence for the therapeutic effectiveness of such tapes. [21] Subliminal messages have also been known to appear in music. In the 1990s, two young men died from self-inflicted gunshots and their families were convinced it was because of a British rock band, Judas Priest . The families claimed subliminal messages told listeners to "do it" in the song "Better by You, Better Than Me".

The case was taken to court and the families sought more than US$6 million in damages. The judge, Jerry Carr Whitehead, ruled that the subliminal messages did exist in the song, but stated that the families did not produce any scientific evidence that the song persuaded the young men to kill themselves. In turn, he ruled it probably would not have been perceived without the "power of suggestion" or the young men would not have done it unless they really intended to. [22] Subliminal messages can affect a human's emotional state and/or behaviors. They are most effective when perceived unconsciously. The most extensive study of therapeutic effects from audiotapes was conducted to see if the self-esteem audiotapes would raise self-esteem. 237 volunteers were provided with tapes of three manufacturers and completed post tests after one month of use. The study showed clearly that subliminal audiotapes made to boost self-esteem did not produce effects associated with subliminal content within one month’s use. [23] Criticism Edit The effectiveness of any subliminal message has been called into question time after time and has led many to come to the conclusion that the technique does not work. As Anthony R.

Pratkanis, one of the researchers in the field, puts it: “It appears that, despite the claims in books and newspapers and on the backs of subliminal self help tapes, subliminal-influence tactics have not been demonstrated to be effective. Of course, as with anything scientific, it may be that someday, somehow, someone will develop a subliminal technique that may work, just as someday a chemist may find a way to transmute lead to gold. I am personally not purchasing lead futures on this hope however.” [24] Instances Edit In 1978 , Wichita, Kansas TV station KAKE-TV received special permission from the police to place a subliminal message in a report on the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill) in an effort to get him to turn himself in. The subliminal message included the text "Now call the chief," as well as a pair of glasses. The glasses were included because when BTK murdered Nancy Fox, there was a pair of glasses lying upside down on her dresser; police felt that seeing the glasses might stir up remorse in the killer. The attempt was unsuccessful, and police reported no increased volume of calls afterward.

[25] Before the re-election of French president François Mitterrand in 1988, a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days.[ citation needed ] The subject was also prominently featured in the 1999 film Fight Club . Pictures of the main character, Tyler Durden , flash onscreen at various points during the earlier parts of the film, before Durden is introduced. [26] Also, Durden is shown at his job as a projectionist, splicing pornographic flash frames into a film he is showing. [27] A picture of a penis flashes before the end credits. [28] During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign , a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS.

[29] [30] The FCC looked into the matter, [31] but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.[ citation needed ] In the British alternative comedy show The Young Ones , a number of subliminal images were present in the original and most repeated broadcasts of the second series. Images included a gull coming into land, a tree frog jumping through the air, a man gurning[ vague ], and the end credits of the movie Carry On Cowboy .[ citation needed ] These were included to mock the then-occurring matter of subliminal messages in television. Although they may fall foul of the FCC guidelines, these images do appear in the U.S. boxset DVD Every Stoopid Episode. Chris Morris famously used subliminal messages to display a half-frame of the last episode of Brass Eye , stating "Grade is a cunt" in reference to Michael Grade , the Channel 4 executive responsible for the heavy editing of Morris's show [32] . Shaun Micallef 's Australian 'Micallef P(r)ogram(me)' shows contained strange subliminal messages that can be seen on the DVDs. As they are of random, humorous statements, questions, etc, they are not regarded as advertising.

They were usually images of politicians, as is the case with his more recent Newstopia . In Warner Brothers' 1943 animated film "Wise Quacking Duck", Daffy Duck spins a statue which is holding a shield. For one frame the words "BUY BONDS" are visible on the shield. The December 16 , 1973 episode of Columbo titled "Double Exposure", is based on subliminal messaging: it is used by the murderer, Dr. Bart Keppler, a motivational research specialist, played by Robert Culp , to lure his victim out of his seat during the viewing of a promotional film and by Lt. Columbo to bring Keppler back to the crime scene and incriminate him. Lt. Columbo is shown how subliminal cuts work in a scene mirroring James Vicary 's experiment. [33] [34] A McDonald's logo appeared for one frame during the Food Network 's Iron Chef America series on 2007-01-27 , leading to claims that this was an instance of subliminal advertising. The Food Network replied that it was simply a glitch.

[35] In Formula One racing, the paint scheme of many cars would carry messages intended to look as if they were of banned tobacco products in many Grands Prix where tobacco advertising was banned, though many of these were jokes on the part of the teams (for example, Jordan Grand Prix ran Benson and Hedges sponsorship as "Bitten and Hisses" with a snake-skin design on their cars). A similar procedure was used by NASCAR driver Jeff Burton after the AT&T Mobility advertising was banned by a court order in 2007. On November 7 , 2007 , Network Ten Australia 's broadcast of the ARIA Awards was caught out for using subliminal advertising in an exposé by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). [36] In June-July 2007 , Sprite used a type of obvious subliminal message, involving yellow (lemon) and green (lime) objects such as cars. The objects would then be shown inconspicuously in the same setting, while showing the word "lymon" (combining the words lime and lemon) on screen for a second at a time.

They called this "Sublymonal Advertising." The previous year, Sprite used a similar advertising campaign, but this time it was tied in to Lost Experience , an alternate reality game . In Brainiac: Science Abuse , there is an experiment carried out to see if viewers would react to subliminal messages. One was shown during an experiment to discover which substance provides the best skid; the message appeared when a brainiac hit a bale of hay. The second message appeared across a T-Shirt of a brainiac saying 'Call your mum', and the third said 'scratch your nose' when a sound wave hit the Brainiac logo. At the end of the show, people were shown in a theatre watching that episode. The test showed that the messages barely impacted the audience. The subliminal content in this episode was legal, as its presence was announced at the beginning and end of the episode. In Week 11 of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart in which candidates have to create an ad for the Delta's former low-cost commercial airlines Song , the team Matchstick used a 1/48th of a frame image at the bottom-right corner with the Song Airlines logo.

Allegations Edit Some groups have made claims that subliminal messages can be found in various forms of popular entertainment, such as the supposed use of "backward messages" in rock and roll songs. Many of these purported messages are Satanic; for example, if the Led Zeppelin song " Stairway to Heaven " is played backwards, lyrics including "Oh here's to my sweet Satan" can supposedly be made out. However, it has been proved that it simply sounded that way because of Robert Plant's voice, as somebody sang the extract from the song which had aroused controversy, and backmasked it. It sounded, quite simply, like nonsense, proving the message was unintentional. [37] Queen's " Another One Bites the Dust " contains (backwards) a pro- marijuana message: "Stop to smoke marijuana", or "It's fun to smoke marijuana". [38] These two messages have not been confirmed by the artists (and denied by some band members), and have not been proven to exist by fully respected sources. In February 2007, it was discovered that 87 Konami slot machines in Ontario ( OLG ) casinos displayed a brief winning hand image before the game would begin.

Government officials worried that the image subliminally persuaded gamblers to continue gambling; the company claimed that the image was a coding error. The machines were removed pending a fix by Konami. [39] Fictional references Edit While their ultimate efficacy is somewhat controversial, subliminal messages have a long history in television shows, movies, and novels. Governments are often depicted as employing subliminal messages in propaganda. The novel "FREEZE FRAME" by B. David Warner depicts the election of a corrupt president candidate using subliminal advertising to sway the votes in his favor. The movie Josie and the Pussycats described a long lasting plot whereby the U.S. government was controlling trends by inserting subliminal messages in popular music . Furthermore, towards the end of the film, a government agent shuts down the operation, saying that subliminal advertising works better in films. The words "Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever" are then spoken rapidly in voice-over and displayed quickly on screen, with the words "Join the Army" in smaller letters below it.

And in the 2005 science fiction movie Serenity , the Alliance uses subliminal messages broadly disseminated in commercials and other video to cause River Tam to go berserk. It only works on River because she was subjected to Alliance training and conditioning. Many references deal specifically with the military. An episode of The Simpsons involved Bart and his friends joining a boy band, the Party Posse. While watching a video for the Party Posse, Lisa notices the phrase "Yvan Eht Nioj" being repeated continuously by belly-dancers. She plays the video in reverse and finds that it means "Join the Navy". Also, an Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster can be seen in the video frame by frame. The joke was that the United States sends subliminal messages in order to recruit people. In addition, the art of "superliminal messages" was demonstrated to Lisa; a Navy representative leans out a window, sees Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson , and shouts "Hey you!

Join the Navy!" And in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle titled "Reese joins the Army (2)", one of the drill sergeants comments about the other's restored confidence in the Army "I guess the subliminal advertising's working after all." his fellow drill sergeant then matter-of-factly states "the army doesn't use subliminal ads" and then the pair slowly turn and look at each other. Not too different from the joke in The Simpsons episode mentioned above, this episode was a joking reference to the low military recruiting numbers in 2004 suggesting that the U.S. military uses such things in a tactic of desperation. And in an episode of Babylon 5 , during a scene which represents a public service announcement for Psi Corps , the words "TRUST THE CORPS" and "THE CORPS IS YOUR FRIEND" appear on screen for four frames. J. Michael Straczynski wanted the audience to recognize the subliminal message; "I had my staff find out what constitutes subliminal material--and it's two frames per second, which is illegal, you can't do things at that speed--so I went four frames per second".

[40] An early episode of the X-Files deals with a small town plagued by killings where the perpetrators are influenced by messages appearing on ATMs and other electronic devices. Mulder refers to the use of subliminal messages in several instances. The Family Guy episode Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington jokes about subliminal messages for smoking in television. It shows an old black and white TV show whose dialogue is repeatedly interrupted by a suited man stating "Smoke" and later "Are you smoking yet?" in a monotone voice. Later in the episode, when Peter is arguing with his bosses about smoking, the same man interrupts while saying "Smoke." The advertising element is mocked in Terry Pratchett 's Discworld novel Moving Pictures , when, to please a sponsor , a movie producer inserts a still image lasting several minutes of a serving of spare ribs . The producer claimed that if showing just a few frames would have a positive impact, imagine what showing it for longer would do. Subliminal psychological influence is also referenced frequently by the British mentalist Derren Brown who alleges their use as the basis of many of his effects. Often, these claims are just decoys to divert attention from the real workings of his effects [41] .

In an episode of the animated TV show "Kappa Mikey" Lily and Gonard made the public do their bidding by using subliminal messages in a cheese stick commercial. The television show Chuck has a plot which is based around subliminal encoding. The main character receives an e-mail in which thousands and thousands of pictures flash right before his eyes, resulting in an ability to 'mind flash' on certain things, for example a ring or a picture of someone. See also Judas Priest Discography at Discogs Judas Priest Profile: Judas Priest is a pioneering British Heavy Metal band and was a forerunner in the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal’ movement, laying the groundwork for the speed and thrash metal of the ’80s and ’90s with numerous classic LPs. The band was formed in Birmingham, England in 1969 by guitarist John Perry (who died shortly after and was replaced by Earnest Chataway), bassist Bruno Stapenhill, drummer John Partridge, and singer Alan Atkins . In 1970, guitarist Kenneth K. K. Downing and bassist Ian Hill (2) joined, replacing Chataway and Stapenhill.

Later, in 1972, Rob Halford and drummer John Hinch joined to replace Atkins and Partridge, respectively. A second guitarist, Glenn Tipton , was also added to the line-up in 1974 as compensation for its record company’s (Gull Records) suggestion to add a horn section to the first album, Rocka Rolla. The band featuring Halford, Downing, Tipton and Hill would go on to record 14 albums from 1974 through to 1990. Priest went through a considerable amount of drummers between its formation and 1980 when Trapeze drummer Dave Holland joined and stayed until 1988’s Ram It Down. In early 1990 Racer X drummer Scott Travis joined the band and recording began on its Painkiller album. In mid 1990 the band was taken to court over the attempted suicide of two young boys in Reno, allegedly driven by subliminal messages on its Stained Class album. The case was eventually thrown out of court and in September 1990, Painkiller was released.

Halford left the group in 1993 to pursue a solo career but the band was determined to find a suitable replacement vocalist. Tim "Ripper" Owens, an Ohioan tribute band singer was chosen after a lengthy auditioning process and the band recorded 4 albums (2 studio, 2 live) with Owens. In 2003, Judas Priest’s 1990 line-up was restored when Rob Halford returned to the group after rekindling the relationship during work on Judas Priest’s 4-CD career retrospective “Metalogy.” In 2004 the band played Ozzfest and released a CD of new studio material entitled Angel of Retribution and an accompanying live DVD in 2005, enjoying a successful world tour that year. This was followed by the 2CD concept album Nostradamus in 2008 and the release of its fifth live album in 2009. Sites: rock music facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about rock music The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press rock music, type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world. Origins of Rock Essentially hybrid in origin, rock music includes elements of several black and white American music styles: black guitar-accompanied blues; black rhythm and blues, noted for saxophone solos; black and white gospel music ; white country and western music ; and the songs of white popular crooners and harmony groups. Emerging in 1954–55, rock music was initially referred to as "rock 'n' roll." After 1964 it was simply called "rock music." The change in terminology indicates both a continuity with and a break from the earlier period; rock music was no longer just for dancing. After 1964 the music was influenced by British groups such as the Beatles . The 1950s—Bill Haley and Rock 'n' Roll The first rock 'n' roll record to achieve national popularity was "Rock Around the Clock" made by Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955.

Haley succeeded in creating a music that appealed to youth because of its exciting back beat, its urgent call to dance, and the action of its lyrics. The melody was clearly laid down by electric guitar; the lyrics were earthy and simple. Haley abruptly ended the ascendancy of the bland and sentimental ballads popular in the 1940s and early 50s. He also succeeded in translating black rhythm and blues into a form that adolescent white audiences could understand. Blues, and rhythm and blues, were too adult, sexual, angry, and solely identified with black culture to be acceptable either emotionally or commercially without adaptation. Major record companies had for years been producing records for black audiences called "race records." The emergence of rock 'n' roll signified a slight weakening in resistance to black culture.

The unadulterated black rock 'n' roll that Haley transformed can be heard in the sexually adult work of such artists as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ( "Work with Me, Annie" ) or "Big" Joe Turner ( "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" ), the latter song adapted by Haley for white audiences and the former transformed into "Dance with Me, Henry." Rock 'n' roll was for and about adolescents. Its lyrics articulated teenage problems: school, cars, summer vacation, parents, and, most important, young love. The primary instruments of early rock 'n' roll were guitar, bass, piano, drums, and saxophone. All aspects of the music—its heavy beat, loudness, self-absorbed lyrics, and raving delivery—indicated a teenage defiance of adult values and authority. Influential performers of the 1950s include Chuck Berry ( "Johnny B. Goode" ), Little Richard ( "Good Golly Miss Molly" ), Sam Cooke ( "You Send Me" ), Buddy Holly ( "Peggy Sue" ), Jerry Lee Lewis ( "Great Balls of Fire" ), and Carl Perkins ( "Blue Suede Shoes" ).

The Late 1950s and Early 60s—Elvis, Motown, and the British Invasion The greatest exponent of rock 'n' roll from 1956 to 1963 was Elvis Presley , a truck driver and aspiring singer from Tupelo, Miss., whose plaintive, wailing, dynamic delivery and uninhibited sexuality appealed directly to young audiences while horrifying older people. As rock 'n' roll became a financial success, record companies that had considered it a fad began to search for new singers; they generally succeeded in commercializing the music, robbing it of much of its gutsy, rebellious quality. In the late 1950s, for example, there was a fad for sentimentally morbid songs such as "Laura" and "Teen Angel." At the turn of the decade Detroit became an important center for black singers, and a certain type of sound known as "Motown" [motor town], named for Motown Records, developed. The style is characterized by a lead singer singing an almost impressionistic melody story line to the accompaniment of elegant, tight, articulate harmonies of a backup group.

Popular exponents of this style are the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Rock music again surged to popularity in 1962 with the emergence of the Beatles, a group of four long-haired lads from Liverpool, England. They were initially acclaimed for their energy and appealing individual personalities rather than for any innovations in their music, which was derived from Berry and Presley. Their popularity inevitably produced other groups with unusual names. One of the most important of these was the Rolling Stones , whose music derived from the black blues tradition. These British bands instigated a return to the blues orientation of rock 'n' roll, albeit in ever louder and more electric reincarnations. The Late 1960s and Early 70s—Rock's Golden Age Folk Rock An important transformation of rock occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan , noted as a composer and writer of poetic folk songs and songs of social protest like "Blowin' in the Wind," appeared, playing electric guitar and backed by an electrified rock band.

A synthesis of the folk revival and rock subsequently took place, with folk groups using rock arrangements and rock singers composing poetic lyrics for their songs (e.g., the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," "Eleanor Rigby" ). The Byrds' arrangement of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a folk-rock classic. Performers like the Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Donovan; and the Lovin Spoonful sang a kind of music designated "folk rock." Protest Songs and the Drug Culture In the 1960s music mirrored the tensions of the Vietnam War era and played an important role in American culture. The verbal content of rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and, increasingly, drugs. Many groups, among them Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, tried to approximate in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, producing long, repetitive, occasionally exquisite songs with surreal lyrics (known as "acid rock" or "hard rock" ). In 1967 the Beatles again made history with their album Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, in addition to including drug-oriented songs, presented a body of interrelated pieces that constituted an organic whole. This is considered the first "concept album." Subsequent products of this trend were rock musicals such as Hair (1968) and rock operas like Tommy, composed and sung by the Who. Rock Comes of Age By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz , while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll. From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969.

Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder. By 1970 several of rock's top performers—Janis Joplin , Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix —were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music. The Late 1970s to the Present—Punk Rock, the Music Video, and Middle-aged Rockers A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the form of punk rock, which was a response to the stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. The music was filled with contempt for previous styles; its fast-tempoed songs, usually propelled by electric guitar, featured irreverant lyrics often obscured by the clangerous music.

Evident in Great Britain, performed by such bands as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk also quickly became popular in the United States, played by the Ramones and other American groups. By the early 1980s, it had changed rock music considerably as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and other groups adopted political protest themes as the core of their music. During the 1980s music videos became a popular form of promotion and entertainment. In the late 1980s, however, several bands, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam, continued to follow the path of early punk rock by focusing on political themes and celebrating their own lack of technical virtuosity. Punk persisted into the 1990s with such bands as Green Day and the Offspring. Also in the 90s the continuing popularity of older bands, such as the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, bore witness to the enduring appeal of this form among both the young and the increasingly middle-aged. The appeal of older and past rock bands was also evident in the fanfare surrounding the opening (1995) of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

Meanwhile, a young audience made rap music , with its pounding rhythms and strong, sometimes shocking spoken lyrics, a popular phenomenon, and other young rockers, largely club-goers, made the dance-based, electronically sophisticated techno another, though less pervasive, popular form. Bibliography See C. Gillett, The Sound of the City (1970); C. Belz, The Story of Rock (2d ed. 1972); M. Jahn, Rock (1973); A. DeCurtis, ed., Rock and Roll and Culture (1992); P. Romanowski et al., ed., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (rev. ed. 1995); P. Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History (1996); F. Goodman, The Mansion on the Hill (1997); B. Ward, Just My Soul Responding (1998); D. Clarke, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (rev. ed. 1999); J.

Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 (1999); J. Stuessy and S. Lipscomb, Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development (4th ed. 2003). Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Rock and Roll Beginning around 1955, rock and roll, a music of outlandish performers, amplified guitars, and aggressive lyrics, replaced jazz and pop standards in commercial prominence. It is often discussed as the charged collision of two racially separate genres: African-American rhythm and blues (R&B) and white country music. Yet it is more accurately viewed as a different hybrid. These outsider musical styles, and the often working-class, Southern, and/or black performers who championed them, were embraced by teenagers who were often middle class, Northern, and white and who had emerged in the affluence of that decade as an economic force to be reckoned with.

As controversy raged about Elvis Presley 's gyrating hips and the "leerics" of hit songs, a music industry veteran argued that the music had only become controversial because "the [white] pop kids started buying the R&B disks and playing them at home" (Martin and Segrave, p. 17). Youth Culture The union of youth culture and popular music has periodically sent shockwaves through American society ever since: variants include hippies, teenyboppers, punks, metal-heads, rappers, and ravers. As the U.S. model of consumerism has spread worldwide, phenomena akin to rock and roll have cropped up time and again–from subcultures like the English mods and skinheads and the French yeh yehs to the emergent sounds of Jamaican reggae, South African mbaqanga, Balkan turbofolk, and Algerian rai. Music, and the styles of clothing, language, and behavior so closely linked to it, has provided adolescents with the essential basis for a common sense of identity. Yet rock and roll has evolved with every decade, and so have the youth phenomena associated with it.

The teenagers of the 1950s were categorized as juvenile delinquents (the boys) or insipid sock hoppers screaming for manufactured idols on the television show American Bandstand (the girls); either way, a decadent, selfish breed compared to the generation that had withstood the Depression and fought World War II . Sociologists, and the media that followed their lead, looked at rock and rollers as deviants or as innocents manipulated by mass culture. In retrospect, however, rock had a radicalizing effect on these children, listening to brand-new transistor radios in their bedrooms and learning to identify with musicians from society's most marginal groups–the heavily pompadoured Little Richard, for instance, who sang in a falsetto taken from the Southern drag-queen club circuit. By the 1960s, the subterranean energies that had fueled rock and roll's rise were bubbling over. The children of the baby boom, that demographic bulge lasting from 1946 to 1964, were hitting their teenage years.

Rock and roll, formerly a genre devoted to fun and loudness, had now become rock, a more serious Anglo-American art form with cultivated links to politicized folk music and the hippie generation's notion of youth as a self-consciously oppositional counter-culture. New heroes like Bob Dylan , the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, essentially akin to the boomers in background, inspired them to pick up electric guitars, grow their hair long, and experiment with sex and drugs. Woodstock, a three-day antiwar festival that drew hundreds of thousands to upstate New York in 1969, epitomized how sixties rock offered a mass cultural vision of authenticity and community. Yet soon after, as the Stones played a different festival in Altamont, California , a young black attendee was murdered by Hell's Angels bikers who had foolishly been hired to protect the stage. Rock had lost its innocence, and as the music's popularity grew in the 1970s and 1980s it became a far more standardized industry. Young female teenyboppers were encouraged by teen magazines and AM radio to consume airbrushed pinups like Donny Osmond and the Bay City Rollers.

Boys read Rolling Stone, listened to FM radio, and learned about arena rock, the cartoonishly heavy metal sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The music's cross-racial alliances faded as black and Latin disco and funk separated from white singer-songwriter earnestness. MTV, a cable network relying on music videos for its programming, appeared in 1981, linking rock to television around the clock. The youth market was bigger than ever. Stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna , Prince, and Bruce Springsteen enjoyed global popularity. It was now possible to find kids in virtually every location on earth obsessed with the same musical icons. Divisions As rock aged, however, cracks unsurprisingly started to appear in its dominance over youth culture. Punk, a movement from within rock that began in the mid-1970s, gradually became the music's oppositional wing, inspiring an audience that still looked to rock to behave as the antithesis of manufactured pop music. From the Sex Pistols in 1977 to Nirvana in 1991, often called "the year punk broke," a generation of college students used punk much as an early generation had used folk music, positioning themselves outside a corrupted mainstream.

Alternative rock, a commercial variant of punk that briefly held sway in the 1990s, was epitomized by the Lollapalooza festivals, a post-baby boomer Woodstock of sorts. Then it splintered, a victim of its own anticorporate mainstream contradictions. But rock was now simply one established genre among many competing for the younger demographic. Rappers replaced rock stars as icons of youth rebellion: although Eminem was white, most of the other major performers were African American, including Public Enemy, N.W.A, Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur. Country music, including Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks, courted suburban youth with a slicked-up twang. A new breed of boy bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys, revived the teenybopper for the MTV era. Dance beats appealed to a subculture of ravers, whose consumption of the party drug Ecstasy terrified parents who had grown up experimenting with marijuana to the sounds of rock.

Nerds more inspired by their computers and video games than by the radio down-loaded songs on MP3, much to the chagrin of the music industry, which saw album sales plummet at the turn of the century. Globally, local music inspired by rock and its affiliated sounds but taking a particularly homegrown slant, has steadily rolled back the dominance of American music. Rappers can be found in Wales , Senegal , and South Korea; an alternative rock scene exists in Singapore ; Japanese reggae bands have created a vibrant scene out of the Jamaican sounds of dancehall. The story gets steadily more complicated, but certain basic patterns never change: emotional affiliation across lines of identity; the tension between the pop marketplace and subcultures driven by a notion of personal authenticity; and the endless ability of new cohorts of young people to cobble together new blends of sound and style. See also: Adolescence and Youth; Media, Childhood and the. bibliography De Curtis, Anthony, and James Henke, with Holly George-Warren, eds. 1992. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music. New York: Random House. Frith, Simon.

1982. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll. New York: Random House. Frith, Simon, Will Straw, and John Street, eds. 2001. The Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hebdige, Dick. 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Martin, Linda, and Kerry Segrave. 1988. Anti-Rock: The Oppositionto Rock'N'Roll. Hamden, CN: Archon Books. Mitchell, Tony, ed. 2002. Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the U.S.A. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Eric Weisbard COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. ROCK AND ROLL ROCK AND ROLL was originally a youth-based musical form. It is hybrid in origin, drawing from African American musical forms, such as the blues and gospel, as well as from white country and folk music. The path of rock and roll is inextricably linked to one of race in America, and as such, its history is complicated and contested.

Although widely debated, Jackie Bernston's "Rocket 88," pressed in 1951, is often cited as the first rock and roll record, and it stands as an apt starting point for understanding the form. Breston was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, center of the delta blues. Sam Phillips, who would introduce Elvis Presley to the world on his Memphis-based Sun Records label, produced "Rocket 88." At the Sun Records' studio, blues singers such as Howlin' Wolf and B. B. King created music that younger white artists like Presley incoporated into their country-based styles. The result was a cultural revolution feared by many white adults because of its black origins and its overt sexuality, while at the same time fervently embraced by American youth. Presley was undoubtedly at the center of this revolt. Covering many black musicians' songs, including Junior Parker's "Mystery Train" and Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog," Presley, a Mississippi native, recorded his first hits in the mid-1950s, and he dominated music charts for decades. His performances departed radically from the staid white ballad singers of the era.

Presley swung his hips so wildly that when playing for television's The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, it showed him only from the waist up. Presley's appearance caused a sensation and broke all of television's single-night ratings up to then. Black artists also recorded rock music that appealed to teens, white and black, throughout the 1950s. Chuck Berry, perhaps the greatest of the rock and roll poets, created enduring standards such as "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), and Little Richard topped charts with hits such as "Good Golly Miss Molly." Richard also stunned audiences with his frantic, explosive performances, earning him wide popularity among youth while drawing the enmity of the white establishment. By the late 1950s, another distinctive sound that would last through the 1960s emerged at Detroit's Motown Records, a black-owned recording studio. The Motown sound was characterized by a lead singer delivering melodic story lines accompanied by the elegant, tight harmonies of a backup group. Popular Motown artists included the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Diana Ross and the Supremes.

By the end of the 1950s, rock and roll, made by and for youth, had become big business, and the lyrics turned increasingly to safe topics, namely a host of teenage problems—school, summer vacation, cars, parents, and young love. Rock and roll seemed to stagnate at the end of the 1950s. Presley had joined the Army, Berry was in prison, and Little Richard was in (temporary) retirement. Some mourned the supposed loss of rock and roll's original rebellious, gutsy quality. By the mid-1960s, however, the popularity of the music soared again with the emergence of a number of British rock groups. Known as the "British Invasion," this era began with the debut of the Beatles, who dominated American popular music charts after their 1964 smash hit, "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Influenced greatly by Sun Records' artists, the Beatles were followed by other British recording groups, including The Who and the Rolling Stones, whose music derived from American blues. These latter British bands initiated a return to rock's blues orientation, albeit in louder and more electric incarnations.

Another important transformation in rock and roll occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan, noted folk and protest singer, appeared playing an electric guitar, backed by an electrified band. While many were outraged over his bastardization of acoustic folk, others were enthusiastic. A synthesis of rock and roll and the folk revival followed, becoming known as "folk rock." By the mid-1960s, rock and roll, which was no longer perceived as just for dancing, became known simply as rock. In the 1960s, rock mirrored the social and political tensions of the Vietnam War era. The spirit-possessed performances of Otis Redding (crossover gospel singer) to the hyperkinetic screams of James Brown ("Say it Loud—I'm Black and I'm Proud," 1968) asserted black pride, gave expression to the Civil Rights Movement, and stunned white audiences. Motown artists also employed the African American tradition of "masking" messages within their songs. Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston's hit, "It Takes Two" (1967), for example, was a love song as well as a masked call for desegregation.

The lyrics of other rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and drugs. Groups, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, approximated in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, creating a genre known as "acid rock," featuring long, repetitive songs with surreal lyrics. During the later 1960s, rock festivals became a fixture of American popular culture and a site of important protest activity. The most famous of these was Woodstock (1969), held in rural New York. The 1970s and 1980s also witnessed turning points in rock music. The "punk rock" of the mid-1970s was a response to the perceived stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. Emergent among British bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk quickly became popular in the United States and has had a lasting influence on rock music. Funk and disco also emerged in the 1970s. Both were based largely on the polyrhythmic grooves of Brown and his band, the JBs.

Disco, which flourished in gay communities, was met with a strong backlash, fed by homophobia as well as by the racism that has always challenged rock and roll. Funk coalesced around artists like Stevie Wonder, the one-time child prodigy of Motown. But George Clinton's Parliament and Funkadelic groups likely left funk's most enduring influence. Not only did Clinton's music create enduring social commentary, his beats became among the most sampled in rap music, a dominant musical form of the 1980s and 1990s. Whether rap is actually rock is debated, but it clearly captures the earlier rebellious and socially conscious energy of Little Richard and Motown. The music video of the 1980s, played on cable network's Music Television (MTV), changed how rock was promoted and consumed. Artists such as Madonna successfully exploited this new medium, combining sexual provocation and steely business acumen to win huge commercial success. Initially considered a passing fad and vilified as the devil's music, this now highly varied musical form is well entrenched and widely popular around the world among all ages.

In 1995, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was opened in Cleveland, Ohio, where it receives thousands of visitors each year. BIBLIOGRAPHY Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology COPYRIGHT 2001 The Gale Group Inc. Rock Music Soon after rock music began making an impact on youth during the 1950s it was denounced by parents, clergymen, educators, and others in positions of authority. The new music was antitraditional, antiauthoritarian, and disparaging of adult influence over teenagers. Pastors denounced it as evil—the product of Satan. Rock music of the 1950s, however, did not prepare people for the upheaval of the 1960s and the open defiance against societal mores. In particular, the Rolling Stones' image as a "bad boy" band continued the identification of rock music with antiestablishment values in contrast to the "tamer" persona exemplified by the Beatles. In 1967 the Rolling Stones released Their Satanic Majesties Request.

This was a harbinger of future events—two years later on December 6, 1969, some 300,000 young people gathered for a free pop music festival at Altamont Raceway, California , featuring the band. The crowd heard Mick Jagger singing "Sympathy for the Devil" while Hell's Angels, who had been engaged as bodyguards, beat up spectators and clubbed and kicked a man to death. After the event, no one was willing to take responsibility for the debacle. Some rock bands turned up the power on their electric instruments and created the sound known as heavy metal, a name that seems to have been derived from a line in the 1968 Steppenwolf song, "Born to Be Wild." One performer, Alice Cooper, moved into shock entertainment by integrating the occult, sadomasochism, and animal abuse in his act. The shock element developed from an unplanned event in 1969. During a concert in Detroit , Michigan , Cooper released some chickens into the audience at the close of his act. The audience killed them and tore them to pieces, a fact subsequently noted in the press.

A new connection between rock music and the occult was made in the late 1960s by another British band, Led Zeppelin. Formed in 1968, their first album went gold the next year. Guitarist Jimmy Page had a strong interest in magic and the occult and upon attaining fame and fortune purchased the house on Loch Ness once owned by Aleister Crowley. Crowley's advocacy of drugs and sex magic had already earned him a reputation as a supporter of black magic and Satanism (though he was into neither), and that image began to follow Page, Led Zeppelin, and the bands that followed their lead. In 1970 Black Sabbath followed on the heels of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. In spite of lack of interest from radio stations and the music press, their first album hit the charts and remained for 13 weeks. Other albums followed that kept the band popular for the next two decades. While its predecessors had some ties to the occult, Black Sabbath actively cultivated an image of evil and darkness—its name suggestive of a satanic mass and its use of black in their stage clothing and album covers. Lyrics explored mystical fantasy themes.

Among the early members of the band was Ozzy Osbourne who would leave in 1979 and cultivate a more graphic satanic image. Through the 1970s and 1980s, heavy metal was on the edge of the larger rock community as music expressing teenage rebellion in both England and the United States . As such, it was music enjoyed for a relatively few years before its followers reached adulthood. The music survived because there was always a new crop of teenagers entering the market each year. However, due to the rapidly changing audiences it was difficult for many bands to survive on top for more than five to seven years. In order to capture the attention of an audience with an increasingly short attention span, some bands moved into the most graphic portrayals of sex, sadism, and Satanism, themes that played predominantly to male teenagers. Satanist themes dominated heavy metal lyrics and images, horrifying pastors and parents (even those raised on Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones). These people saw heavy metal music as both a direct attack upon the mind and morals of their children and a new low in cultural degeneracy. Performers such as Ozzy Osbourne were singled out for particular criticism.

After leaving Black Sabbath, Osbourne formed a new band that later released the albums Talk of the Devil (1982), Bark at the Moon (1983) with Osbourne as a werwolf on the cover, and Ultimate Sin (1984). Incidents in which teen delinquency was tied to listening to heavy metal rock received wide publicity and Osbourne was accused of instigating crimes and suicides. Another band drawn into the Satanism/antiSatanism controversy was Judas Priest. They were accused of releasing albums that contained subliminal messages encoded into the songs via a process known as backward masking. A Reno, Nevada , couple charged that their son attempted suicide after listening to their Stained Glass (1978) album, which they argued contained subliminal messages ordering the suicide. The courts dismissed the case but not before rock music received a significant amount of negative publicity. More contemporary groups that actively cultivated the satanic image include Slayer, a relatively unknown band on the rock scene whose albums covers include an inverted satanic pentagram as their logo and other satanic symbols (such as an inverted cross) and whose lyrics cultivate satanic and black magic themes.

Slayer was considered extreme, but other bands such as the obscure Possessed to the more widely recognized Motley Crüe (Shout at the Devil, 1983) also drew on satanic symbolism. Contemporary rock has been criticized especially for the values it incorporates. However, to date, no valid evidence has been produced to link even the more objectionable form of heavy metal music as a causal agent to specific patterns of antisocial behavior or to long-term negative effects among devoted fans. Sources: Aranza, Jacob. Backward Masking Unmasked: Backward Satanic Messages of Rock and Roll Exposed. Shreveport, La.: Huntington House, 1983. Clifford, Mike, ed. The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock. New York : Harmony Book, 1992. Godwin, Jeff. The Devil's Disciples: The Truth About Rock. Chino, Calif.: Chick Publications, 1985. Rascke, Carl A. Painted Black. San Francisco : Harper & Row, 1990. Scott, Cyril. Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages. Reprint, London: Rider, 1950. Stuessy, Joe.

Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994. Tane, David. The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society Through Musical Energy. New York: Destiny Books, 1984. Wedge, Thomas W. The Satan Hunter. Canton, Ohio : Daring Books, 1988. Cite this article

Question: UK band involved in a US court case - Subliminal messages 80s?
Answer: Judas Priest