Reverse Speech and Pearl Jam

ExTReMe FrEAk

David Oates is the man who originally discovered reverse speech a little over 20 years ago. Since that time, many people have been working on this new study. I will explain a little about reverse speech, but not in depth. For more information, click on the hypertext that says "reverse speech."

Reverse speech is simply this. When we talk, not only do we speak forwards, but if you play a conversation backwards. If you record yourself speak, or having a conversation, then play it backwards, you can clearly hear yourself and others speak clearly. There are many conversation, when played backwards, contain another full length conversation. Here is what is known about reverse speech.

-Reverse speech happens subconsciously.
-The reversed message always relates to the forward messages.
-We typically speak in metaphors in reverse speech.
-When you are trying to tell someone something, but you seem as if you have lost your words in mid sentence, it usually has a reverse message.
-Studies are showing that children may learn how to speak backwards before they speak forward. Children as young as three months old can speak backwards (naturally).
-If a message is urgent enough, it will sound the same backwards and forwards.
-We usually respond in our forward message to what others say in reversed messages.

Now that that is out of the way, I will tell you my personal finding with the song "Pry, To".

I specifically listened to this song because I had heard people say it has a reverse message in it. My ear for reverse speech is pretty tuned up, and it is fairly easy for me to pick up on these messages (announciation is ussually pretty strange in reverse).

Here is what I have found.

It starts off saying "They'll always be in my eye" four times.
Then it goes on to say "Then to (dar'sail) I will save my life" four times.

I spelled dar'sail the way it sounds. Two seperate noises (dar and sail), but only one syllible. I am not sure what this means, but that is what is said. dar-sail maybe someone's name, or a slang term, a drug, I really don't know. But this messages appears to give credit to this dar'sail for influencing Vedder to save his life.

Though I have read in many places that he says "Man Peter Townshed you saved my life." However, There is nothing in there that sounds remotely like "Pete Townshed." Though it may sound like "man," on closer inspection, you will hear him say "then to".

Whether or not this reversed message had been put into this song on purpose or not, I don't know. I am in no way claiming that anyone purposely put this message into the song.

I might run through the entire Vitalogy album and look for reversals, I need to find time for this first though, as it takes awhile.

Thoughts?

Click the links below to listen to either reverse message
"They'll always be in my eye"
"Then to dar'sail I will save my life"

St. Nick

very interesting. I'll go read about reverse speech.

Spot In The Sky

any programs thatll play a song backwards i can check this out with?

ExTReMe FrEAk

Windows comes with "Sound Recorder" which can play anything backwards. You just need to rip songs into wav format. Otherwise I haven't found any, I've been looking myself.

a_gherkin

Congratulations, this is the most interesting thread in a long time on this board. I am certainly going to look into this theory...

Schwing

This is awesome...lot of songs have backmasking like I think Anothter one bites the dust when played in reverse says "Start to smoke marijuana" and there are other songs as well.

taffer

I was listening to coast to coast with george noory one night and he had a guy on that specialized in this sort of thing. Might have been the guy mentioned above. Anyhoo, his guest was saying how you could pick up hidden intents and such from playing things backwards. Interestingly enough he played some clips of some george bush speeches and saddam husseins name came up in them. This was before the war and my memory is a bit fuzzy but it was typical " saddam must die" type shit. Interesting.


As far as listening to songs backwards, I actually turned a bunch of pearl jam songs into backwards mp3's a couple years back. I like the way corduroy sounds. However, i'm sure most people would not have the patience or an open enough mind to listen to songs this way. But you could play a song backwards in a more conventional manner by using a midi file of a song and then use certain music programs to play them backwards or to play them using a technique called mirroring, which doesnt play a song backwards but changes the notes to the corresponding opposites on a musical scale. This really can give a whole new emotion to a song. And since music is a language of its own merits I wonder if you could apply some sort of analysis to it as you could the spoken word above.

ExTReMe FrEAk

Yeah, there are a bunch of songs and speeches in the examples section of reversespeech.com

Last year, I listened to entire Undertow album backwards over and over, sheerly to pick up on reversed messages. Suprisingly, there were many many messages in every song.