Friday, January 22, 2016

Another "young Faul" Photo

Mirror.co.uk is the online edition of The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid newspaper.  In a June 18, 2012 article commemorating Paul McCartney's 70th. birthday--and remember, there really was a real Paul McCartney who, if he had lived until 2012, which I don't think he did, would have been 70 years' old--they had a positively intriguing photo of the current Faul in a group student photo. 

There is no way of knowing where this was taken, when this was taken or even if it is a genuine group photo, but it definitely is an image of the young Faul, so again, you have to figure the man is getting the urge to get his own story out there. 

Other Voices, Part 21: The Pink Floyd's 1967 "Arnold Layne"

The Pink Floyd (later just Pink Floyd) was a London psychedelic rock-pop band.  Their first single was called "Arnold Layne", recorded January 29, 1967 and released in the UK on March 10, 1967.

It wasn't the first song I would look for backmasking on, but someone in a YouTube comment said there could be a Paul-Is-Dead clue in the video of the song and I listened to the song---and found backmasking.

The YouTube video of the song [see it at-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQTFRq1hjtM ] has The Pink Floyd assembling, disassembling, and dressing and undressing a 3-sectioned mannequin.  The only direct hint the song is about a Beatle is at 0:30-0:31 in the video where the mannequin is "standing" on the trunk of a Volkswagen BEETLE.

The song is about a cross-dresser who steals women's clothes off clotheslines, is caught, and spends time in jail for doing it.

My theory about what happened to our Paul is that the British government wanted him out of the group and arranged some sort of plot to get their hands on him.  It could have involved cross-dressing--or something else.

The song itself is a boring tune when you hear it forwards.  Backwards, it has a very nice melody.  So nice, I'm thinking The Pink Floyd was hoping it would be played backwards.

The producer of the song, Joe Boyd, said that the song was a complex recording with some tricky editing.  Boyd said the instrumental section, for example, was a separate effort that was spliced into the final mix.

The instrumental "separate effort section" at 1:15-1:29 is a very reminiscent sound-alike of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" from the Revolver album.

Put in context, here is what you hear backmasked on "Arnold Layne":
          At 1:12-1:14   -   Paul
               1:15-1:29   -   The "Tomorrow Never Knows" sound-alike segment
               2:22            -   Paul
               2:25-2:27   -   Paul would not

The Pink Floyd's Syd Barratt, who wrote "Arnold Layne", had mounting problems with the English social regime, so he probably knew enough about Paul's problems to want to comment about them.


                          P.S.  In the post just preceding this one, I give you complete instructions on how to convert a YouTube video-audio into an mp-3 audio, upload it onto the popular Audacity audio tool and reverse it so you can listen to all the "Other Voices" tracks I've found that are telling a ugly tale about what happened to our Paul. 
                                    If you want to go digging into 1960's British groups' tracks and find other backmasking, please let me know what you find.
                                                                         ---paulumbo

A Primer On How To Listen To Backmasked Songs

At present it is complicated to put audio in blog posts, but I'll tell you how I listen to YouTube video songs backwards.

  1. Download the audio tool Audacity at:  http://audacityteam.org/ .  As of this writing (January 22, 2016) you'll be downloading Audacity 2.1.1   .  It's free and it's easy to download.
  2. Find the song-video on YouTube.
  3. Click on the video.
  4. Right-click on the address bar (where it says https://www.youtube.com ---et cetera.)
  5. Click copy.
  6. Click the home button in the upper left of your screen and go to:  www.youtube-mp3.org and click on the sample video and X it out.
  7. Right click and paste the YouTube address.
  8. Click "convert video".
  9. It will say, "video successfully converted to mp 3".
  10. Click on download.
  11. At the bottom of your screen it will ask if you want to open or save the song.  Save it.
  12. It will tell you the download has completed.  Click the X on the right.
  13. Click X on the upper right of you screen, taking you to the Audacity icon on you start screen.
  14. Double click on the icon and click on the double square on the upper right of the screen to put the Audacity tool on the right of you start screen.
  15. Double click the files icon at the bottom left of your start screen.
  16. The "This PC" screen comes up with a list of 6 folders. 
  17. If the "This PC" screen fills your start screen, click on the square icon at the top right of the screen.  This will put that screen to the left of the Audacity screen on your start screen.  Double click on the downloads folder.
  18. Click on the song in your download list and drag it to the right and drop it in the Audacity screen.
  19. X out the download screen and click on the rectangle (maximize) symbol on the upper right of the Audacity screen.
  20. The Audacity tool will fill your screen.
  21. Click on "effect" on the top line of the tool.
  22. Click on "reverse" in the list.
  23. If the track is in stereo, I like to listen to it first in stereo and then in mono.  To listen in mono, click on "tracks" on the top line of the tool and click "stereo track to mono".
  24. Plug in your earbuds, click on the green triangle play button and listen the backward track.
It sounds involved, but once you get the hang of it, it is very easy to do, and you're unlocking the concealed messages that British groups were trying to communicate about our Paul during the mid-1960's.