What Was the First-Ever Hidden Track? (Part 1)

For a while, it was almost fashionable to put an unlisted song on your CD.  Most stuck it at the end, sometimes deep into the silence after we thought the album had finished. 

Then there were a few who put it BEFORE the CD started.  You had to cue the disc up to track one and then skip back a track to find it. 

Those were cool, but not every CD player could access those songs at “track -1.”  But hidden tracks predate the CD.  There are albums with songs like this. 

The Beatles stuck “Her Majesty” without warning on original versions of Abbey Road in 1969.  The Rolling Stones placed “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” without warning at the end of Their Satanic Majesties Request in 1967. 

But there’s more to this story.  That’s next time.

Gallaghers’ Mom: “I Don’t Want a House From You!”

When Oasis hit it big with their Definitely Maybe album in the early 90s, they wanted to do something nice for their mom, Peggy. 

She, after all, had essentially raised them herself and her sons felt it was time for her to move out of her council house into something a little nicer.  But Peggy would have none of it.  “I live here and I’m staying,” she said. 

All she wanted was for someone to fix the squeaking gate at the front of her place.  Liam and Noel bought her a new garden gate with a gold number 5 on it—and that was pretty much all Peggy Gallagher really wanted.

The Secret History of Rock Show 026: Penny Off a Skyscraper (YouTube Version)

Are ready for two hours of, well, musical weirdness? I hope so.

On this episode: some tawdry tales of sex in alt-rock (don’t make that face; you know you wanna hear this stuff…).  We’ll also look back at 1996; and we’ll begin with a few medical mysteries of music. That and more on this episode of The Secret History of Rock.

Disclaimer:  Due to legal issues, we are not (yet) able to stream/podcast the shows. But we've got it covered: go here and click on the Secret History of Rock playlist (not the individual videos) that you would like to watch. We have every single episode available (complete with the appropriate music videos!). Click here for our Secret History Archive. 

A Situation Where Mono Still Rules

When you go to any concert, you see at least two sets of speakers on either side of the stage.  That’s because 99.99% of every concert you see is done in stereo. 

You got your left channel and you got your right channel, just like with your stereo at home or the ear buds with your iPod.  This is what mades U2's PopMart tour rather remarkable. 

When the band was designing the production, they wanted to make sure that the stage was wide open and as visible as possible.  That’s when they made the decision to forego the usual stacks of speakers on the left and right side of the stage, going instead for a large mono array of speakers hanging 100 feet in the air right in the middle. 

So that’s right: for the entire PopMart tour, Bono was in mono.  It wasn’t until the Elevation tour that U2 returned to mixing their live sound in stereo.

Beware the Crooked Accountant

A lot of people made a lot of money off the Britpop scene of the middle 90s.  You know, Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Frank Dixon.  Frank Dixon?  Who? 

Frank is–or rather, was–an accountant who had a lot of high-profile clients back in the day.  He handled the books for bands like Suede, Primal Scream and Echobelly.  And he handled them, all right. 

He was eventually convicted of stealing more than £1 million of his clients’ money to keep his company afloat.  Sounds like this guys was an awful accountant.  He fiddled with his books using his clients’ money, saying that he was using the cash to pay their tax bills. 

The biggest losers in all this was probably Suede, who lost at least a million pounds themselves.  The only thing that prevented Dixon from being caught was that most of his clients spent months touring overseas. 

Once again, if you’re in a band, make sure you can really trust the guy handling your money.