The History of the Guitar Pedal

From blues-rock luminaries like Jimi Hendrix and Jack White to obscure but talented new artists like the ambient musician James Li, effects pedals have allowed guitarists from different generations and genres to explore new soundscapes and find their own unique sound. But how did it all begin? How did electric guitarists first discover the best ways to modify their signal?

The roots of guitar effects pedals can be traced back to the 1930s when the guitar amplifier first started gaining traction. At the time, the typical amp offered just 10 watts of power, until Leo Fender introduced the Super Amp in 1947. Guitarists who purchased the Super Amp very quickly discovered that turning the volume all the way up resulted in a fuzzy, distorted sound.

Years earlier, this dirty, fuzzy tone was already popularized by Western blues legend Junior Barnard. Combined, Barnard’s percussive playing style and his use of two instead of one set of guitar pickups allowed him to produce some of the earliest, truly dirty licks in the blues genre's history. As more electric guitarists figured out that they could achieve Barnard’s tone by just turning the Super Amp’s volume all the way up, the distortion effect swept the nation. Fender responded by turning the power up and releasing 50-watt versions of the Super Amp.

Riding this wave of distortion headfirst, Ike Turner and his guitarist Willie Kizart showed the world the potential of distortion in 1951 when they recorded “Rocket 88,” which Time Magazine argues is a close contender for the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll record in history. Depending on who you ask, on their way to the studio to record the song, Kizart’s amp either fell off the top of the car or was damaged when rainwater leaked through the trunk where it was stored. Either way, Kizart immediately fell in love with his damaged amp’s gritty, fuzzy new sound, and recorded it for posterity.

Apart from being hailed by many as the first true rock ‘n’ roll song, “Rocket 88” started a wave of musicians and sound techs attempting to imitate Kizart’s seminal distortion for decades. One of the more successful attempts was by sound tech Orville Rhodes who built a basic fuzz pedal for The Ventures, an instrumental rock band from the ‘60s.

Realizing the massive potential of this idea, Gibson guitar developed the Maestro Fuzz-Tone pedal, which is behind Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richard’s iconic tone in 1962’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Capitalizing on that development, in 1966, Arbiter Electronics released the now legendary Dunlop Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, which Tonebox’s pedal review notes was the effect that was behind the classic tone of Jimi Hendrix himself. And while distortion, fuzz, and overdrive gain pedals comprise a truly seminal part of guitar effects history, they were far from being the only effects units being developed at the time.

The first standalone guitar effects unit ever manufactured was the DeArmond Tremolo Control, which was released in 1946. Its key component is a vial of electrolytic liquid, which is shaken up and down by a small electric motor and spindle. Ran through the signal, the movement of this liquid cuts and allows the signal to pass in uniform speeds, resulting in the tremolo volume modulation effect. This shimmering guitar sound has also been instrumental in the earliest days of electric blues and rock ‘n’ roll, as heard in the tremolo-driven works of luminaries like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. Today, the tremolo vibrato lives on through guitarists like Jack White and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Another seminal effects unit was Market Electronic’s Echoplex delay, which was released in the early ‘60s. Inspired by the work of renowned engineer Les Paul in the field of multitracking and tape manipulation in the ‘50s, the Echoplex delay, in turn, paved the way for the Roland RE-201 delay and reverb effects unit. And both effects have been well utilized by the likes of St. Vincent, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, John Mayer, Mac DeMarco, and other well-known innovators in guitar history.

While there are many other pedals that deserve to be included in the earliest days of guitar effects, the aforementioned pedals were some of the most seminal effects units in history. Today, the thousands of standalone units for overdrive, delay, reverb, fuzz, tremolo, boost, wah, and other effects continue to augment the impact of both analog and digital effects on the development of contemporary music.

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Article for swimintothesound.com
By Jen Bawl

Blogger, amateur guitarist, and music historian Jen Bawl is fascinated by how guitar effects have changed and evolved over the years. When she’s not online and looking for new and innovative musicians, she likes to dig up music history through old vinyl records, links, and stories from the web.

Knope – Broken Couch | Track Premiere

You know what would sound great right now? A gig. As of today, I am 179 days without a concert, and there’s nothing I want more than to be packed into a sweaty basement drinking cheap beer and screaming along to songs that I love with dozens of other fans. I miss tipping $5 at the door, I miss the comforting sight of people smoking on a porch, I miss coming home with armfuls of new t-shirts that no one at my day job will understand… hell, I even miss my earplugs. 

While we’re still a ways away from any of these feelings returning, we’re lucky to have a new Knope song that captures the energy of a gig better than anything I’ve heard over the course of quarantine. 

Following up their excellent collaboration with Kicksie back in January, “Broken Couch” is the first single off the band’s upcoming EP An Exercise In Patience. Beginning with a thrashing volley of guitar, bass, and drums, I can practically see the pit opening up within the first few seconds of this song. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel the hands on my back as if I’m in someone’s basement being pushed against a wall of strangers illuminated by the soft glow from a string of multi-colored Christmas lights. 

Within seconds, lead singer Jack David bursts into the track, spitting bile at things completely out of his control before recounting a tale of teenage abandonment that becomes the foundation for the rest of the song. “I kinda felt like I was wasting your time,” he explains, grappling with decade-past trauma as the instrumental gnashes beneath him. 

Guided by an even-keel bassline, mathy guitar taps, and swift drumline, the song propels itself forward in time, introducing new characters and events that find the roles reversing as David now feels like he’s the one wasting someone else’s time. Eventually, the song returns to where it started. Now in search of some form of closure or acceptance, David finds himself returning to the scene of the first verse with a new outlook, arriving at the conclusion “I kinda feel like you've been wasting my time,” achieving some form of redemption before the song quiets to a close, leaving us to fill in the rest. 

The fact that Knope is able to pair this heartfelt narrative (complete with a clever lyrical through line and three-act structure) in just under three minutes is a testament to their ability as writers. The decision to pair this sentimental storytelling with such an energetic instrumental is an arresting contrast that will have you coming back for multiple re-listens, hungry what comes next in the EP. On the bright side, at least we all have some time to memorize the lyrics before our next communal basement singalong, whenever that may be. 

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“Broken Couch” drops on all streaming platforms tomorrow, and Knope’s upcoming EP, An Exercise In Patience, will be available everywhere on 9/16 through Chillwave Records.

Follow Knope:
Bandcamp | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

How Spotify Made Music Disposable

“You can’t record music every three or four years and think that’s going to be enough.” That was a sentence uttered in an interview earlier this year by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. Widely derided by musicians and fans alike, this sound bite brought the “Streaming Discussion™” back to the forefront of music circles on places like Twitter and Reddit. While very few artists are happy with the financial arrangement between themselves and Spotify, this statement breathed new life into the unrest at the heart of this agreement. This suggestion of “just release more music” also brought to the forefront a litany of problems with the current economic model that platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have used to make millions off of the backs of artists. 

It’s no secret that these services are notoriously stingy, offering up fractions of a penny per stream, but a less-discussed byproduct of this model is how it has literally devalued art and made music more disposable in the process. 

The pandemic (and general state of the world) has obviously caused irreparable damage to our collective mental health and finances alike, but musicians have been hit especially hard. Robbed of the outlet of touring, this has been an unspeakably horrible year for musical artists. Album rollouts have been disrupted, tours have been postponed, and musicians are struggling to make ends meet more than ever before. 

As creators flock to alternative sources of income to keep themselves afloat, the music industry as it stood at the beginning of the year will look very different than the one we see on the other side of this. Groups like Ratboys have taken up Twitch streaming; promoting their merch, prompting donations, and forging direct connections with fans along the way, all while promoting their (excellent) album that released in the weeks before quarantine. Bands like Mannequin Pussy, Prince Daddy, Glass Beach, and Diet Cig have taken to Patreon offering exclusive covers, merch discounts, and access to Dischord channels as benefits. On top of all this, Bandcamp has made a monthly tradition of eschewing their own cut of earnings, the end result being fans putting more than 20 million dollars directly into the pockets of artists, labels, and charities over the course of the summer. 

Then you have Spotify, where it takes 229 streams to make one dollar. Their solution to this? Silly bands, it’s so obvious: simply make more music. Fill their playlists, servers, and coffers with your art if you want to be successful in the musical landscape of 2020.

Near the beginning of quarantine, Spotify gave artists the option to add “donation” buttons to their pages, which, on the surface, seems like a nice gesture, but ultimately proved to be an unsuccessful endeavor. It’s something Spotify can point to and say, “look, see, of course we care about the bands!” Then turn around months later and say things like, “maybe if you were shoveling more coal into our content furnace, you wouldn’t be struggling so much to make ends meet.”

I’ve written before about how “disposable” streaming services have made music, but never went into detail articulating what that meant to me, and this feels like the perfect time. 

At the dawn of commercial music, you’d go to a store and buy your music in the form of a large piece of plastic that you’d bring home and listen to. As time went on, the size and shape of that plastic changed from vinyl to tape to cassette to CD, but the process always remained the same. Soon you could take your music on the go, listening in the car, on a boombox, a walkman, or a portable CD player. At this point, you might be thinking, ‘okay, yeah, thanks for mansplaining physical media to me,’ but this process actually had an impact on how we viewed and interacted with the music itself. 

Due to the financial (and physical) investment you just made, when you bought an album like this, you were going to listen to it, and you were going to listen to it a lot. At a certain point, it almost didn’t even matter if the record was bad or not, because you just sunk $20 into it, and now it’s going to be on your shelf forever. You were going to listen to it over and over and over again. 

My first collection of childhood CDs was pretty appalling. It ranged from stuff like Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan to Eiffel 65, Aaron Carter, and the Baha Men. Hell, I owned multiple Baha Men CDs. You can probably think of one Baha Men song off the top of your head, but I listened to the deep cuts because I had no other alternatives. If “Who Let The Dogs Out” released in 2020, it would go viral, get the band millions of streams, and then fade out in a month or two. People wouldn’t listen to that song and think, ‘Gee, I wonder what else these guys have to offer’ and then jump into the rest of their discography. 

Even in the mid-2000s, once iPods and mp3 players became widely accessible, your digital music library still had some semblance of connection to who you were as a person. The songs sitting in your iTunes library were all files that you ripped from your own CD collection, bought from Apple, were sent by friends, or obtained through more… nefarious means. It felt like every album, and sometimes even every song, had a story and a purpose. Everything was in its right place, even if it was just a 5mb file sitting somewhere deep in the tangled web of folders on your hard drive.

Now, streaming services have done a lot of good. Having a majority of this century’s auditory output one scroll away is an unspeakable achievement, but it’s a double-edged sword. The flip side of this is that it leads artists to game streaming numbers, create insanely bloated tracklists, and beg fans to fake streams. Those aren’t telltale signs of a sustainable business model. 

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The byproduct of this process for fans is that music is not held with the same reverence when viewed through this platform’s lens. If you’re a capital “M” Music Fan, you’re likely following hundreds, if not thousands of artists from different genres and backgrounds. This is rewarding because it means you have something new to listen to every Friday, probably too much in fact. When there are five to ten new releases to listen to every week, things become buried so quickly that you might not even realize it. 

An artist as big as Taylor Swift can now surprise release an album to critical acclaim and fan approval. It can break records, dominate social media feeds, and feel like a genuine event, only for it to fade from all memory not even a month later. I enjoy folklore, but it’s no longer part of the “culture” as of September 2020, so therefore I’m not thinking of it and not streaming it unless I scroll far back enough in my library to see it. 

You could argue that’s just because it’s a bad album or otherwise unmemorable, but I’ve found this happening with every band, even ones I love dearly. Earlier this year, The Wonder Years, my favorite band of all time, released an acoustic EP that I spun for weeks and weeks but haven’t listened to more than twice this summer. That would have been unthinkable in the era of physical media or iTunes. 

I think the problem here is two-fold. First, it’s platforms like Spotify who capitalize on the hype of something like folklore to generate more users, streams, and engagement for their platforms. Second, I think we’re experiencing an era of unprecedented acceleration in every facet of our lives. Perhaps a product of being sequestered in our homes for six months, our sense of time is skewed beyond repair. Things that happened mere days or weeks ago feel like months or years. How can I remember that an emo band I like put out a new EP two weeks ago when I’m busy filling my brain with social media rot, political discourse, and the horrors of the modern world. 

I’m not begging for the return of the monoculture here, we’ll never return to an era where one band dominates the hearts, charts, and minds of millions of Americans, but it’s frustrating to watch an artistic medium that I love so dearly be treated as a passing fascination. Yeah, cool album you just put out, but what’s next? Artists release one thing, and fans are immediately clamoring for what’s next. It’s harder than ever to fully-digest art as we used to, and streaming platforms like Spotify aren’t helping. 

This is the difference between sipping on a glass of finely-aged whiskey and slamming shots of bottom-shelf vodka…. Not to compare my childhood Baha Men CD to a bottle of whiskey, but you get the point. Dozens of albums came out this year that impacted me in the moment and then faded from my immediate consciousness over time simply because they became buried in the never-ending scroll of my digital streaming library. No matter how much I love an album, something will come out in the next few days that covers it up and pushes it further down the screen. I’ve learned to keep a database of new releases and a shortlist of my favorites, but that’s because I run a music blog, I am far from the average use case.

At the end of the day, most people are perfectly fine throwing on a Spotify-created playlist and vegging out to whatever the algorithm sees fit. I know active listening will never become a truly lost art, but I feel awful for artists who put hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and incalculable amounts of effort into their art only for it to be swallowed up by the streaming beast and fade into obscurity within weeks. This is yet another reason why vinyl and cassettes are enjoying a resurgence because people are hungry to reconnect with art. 

Try as we might with petitions, outreach, and just roasting them on twitter, Spotify isn’t going to change any time soon. This is the norm for the foreseeable future, and it kind of sucks. It sucks for artists, and it sucks for fans. In fact, it sucks for everyone involved except the people at the top making millions of dollars off the blood, sweat, and tears of every artist at the bottom of the pyramid. 

Streaming services treat music just like that; a service. Spotify will continue to exploit artists in order to fuel their machine, so as fans, we need to break out of that routine whenever possible. There’s no preciousness anymore unless you bring it, so let’s bring it. Go support an artist’s Patreon, go start a thread on twitter, go buy a shirt on Bandcamp, go post a makeup selfie inspired by a band’s album art. Those are only a few ways to connect with artists, but they go farther than you probably realize; you never know how much your support snowballs. As long as there are passionate fans supporting artists, sharing music, and spreading songs that they love, streaming services will never truly be able to make music disposable, try as they might. 

The Divine Refuge of Welcome to Conceptual Beach

Where do you go when you need an escape? It was probably easier to answer that question before 2020, but that’s what makes the concept of personal sanctuary all the more essential right now. Between the ongoing global pandemic, a just-now-ramping-up election cycle, and a fascist government that’s systematically brutalizing and murdering its own citizens, most days it feels like there’s abject horror in every conceivable direction. 

Some days the scale of pain and unrest is too much to bear; it’s unending and feels like it’s only getting worse. While everything I’ve just listed is a fact of day-to-day life in 2020, it’s important to counter that sense of grief and hopelessness with something, anything, to keep yourself going. We’ve reached a point where it’s simultaneously ‘every man for himself’ and ‘we’re all in this together.’ You have to find your escape and hold onto it for dear life while also keeping close to the people you love to make sure they’re doing the same. 

Taking a break from the always-on rage-filled indignance of the world has transformed from a skill to a necessity over the past few months. Finding the balance between staying informed, using your voice, and taking time to unplug is an invaluable skill that’s nothing short of essential in 2020. On Welcome to Conceptual Beach, Young Jesus use lush instrumentation, dreamlike lyrics, and wandering improvisational passages to depict the ethereal world that lead singer John Rossiter has constructed as his mental refuge from the world. 

Beginning with a steady drumline and Perfume Genius-like augmented vocals, opening track “Faith” acts as an introduction to this world, the sonic equivalent of a plane descending from the clouds to its final destination. As the band layers on bass, guitar, and synth, the track becomes increasingly abstract, yet still somehow measured and orderly, like a Pollock painting. Splotches of distortion and dissonant stabs of guitar eventually all coalesce into a dreamlike ascension around the three-minute mark, providing a springboard for Rossiter to launch into a soaring, uncontrollable cry. And just like that, you’ve planted your feet firmly on the sands of the Conceptual Beach. 

Over the course of the next four tracks, the band pairs Rossiter’s vocals and their Matt Berninger-like ache with instrumentals that alternate between Peaer-style mathy emo and Wild Pink’s heartland indie rock. However, to pin Young Jesus down to one style or list of influences would be a great disservice, this is one of the few bands that have managed to pull off the enviable transition from “emo band” into something wholly unique and unclassifiable. There’s a heavenly saxophone solo on “Pattern Doubt,” and a hypnotic whammy bar chord on “(un)knowing.” There are tight riffs and jazzy improvisations. There are poetic lyrics, abstruse monologues, and mesmerizing mantras. There are bouts of chaotic stimulation punctuated by stretches of meditative silence. All of these artistic elements assemble to form an eclectic collection of sounds, concepts, and ideas that prove to be fruitful ground in bringing to life this ethereal land of sea and sand that exists in the band’s shared vision.

“Meditations” is a jazzy gut-punch that opens with fluttering woodwinds, swirling angelic vocals, and long strings of hammer-on guitarwork. As the haunting 7-minute journey comes to a rest at the midway point, the instrumental settles for a beat switch that works up to one of the most interesting passages of the album; a hypnotic repetition of “I wanna be around and live it” that begins as a whispered curiosity but works its way up to a cosmically affirming shout.

Lead single “Root and Crown” is the album’s most traditional-sounding cut, clocking in a playlist-ready two-minutes and 52-seconds. This song acts as the album's de facto mission statement, as Rossiter croons a fourth-wall-breaking soliloquy to the listener. 

Every record needs a thesis, needs a crisis, or campaign
All my feelings need a reason, need a righteousness or blame
What if living wasn't of the mind?
The root and crown don't doubt the wintertime

Simultaneously a thought-provoking criticism of art, emotion, and the eternal tie between the two, these lyrics are some of the most poignant on the entire release. As these thoughts are being delivered, a velveteen acoustic guitar progression and singular synth note guide these revelations, eventually entwining into a peaceful end that gives the first side of the album a sleepy yet existential resting point.

While the record has already been fascinating, purposeful, and unlike anything I’d ever heard up to this point, where Welcome To Conceptual Beach really shines is its final suite of songs. Both “Lark” and “Magicians” span the record’s back half, clocking in at 12 minutes and 10 minutes respectively. These tracks aren’t quite a curveball, but still manage to subvert the listener’s stylistic expectations, breaking format while simultaneously building off everything that had come before them at that point in the tracklist.

“Lark'' utilizes a shimmering and sunny instrumental to guide the listener through the lively sounds of crowded rooms and a spoken-word monologue. The song’s final verse ends shortly after the four-minute mark, leaving the instrumental to simmer down to the pace of a completely-still lake. From this point, the band unfurls a jaw-droppingly gorgeous and jazzy instrumental that sounds completely improvised. As the bass thumps, guitar glistens, and drums shake, the listener is left to meditate on what they had just taken in. The instrumental rises and falls, allowing the mind to race alongside the track, cresting at the same pace, projecting whatever thoughts, problems, or reflections it needs to upon the canvas of the song. 

Near the 8-minute mark of “Lark,” the band falls into a melody that mirrors the top of the track. Now sounding triumphant and unburdened, the song carries the listener off with celebratory uplift and amazement. While the first half of the track was chaotic, messy, and trapped in its own head, the outro gives the impression that everything had happened that way for a reason. It’s the sound of a life sorting itself out. It’s proof that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the optimistic take that the universe always bends towards justice and harmony.

Closing track “Magicians” picks up right where “Lark” left off, continuing this newfound sense of optimism but looking outward, viewing the world as it stands and looking forward to what lies ahead of us in that moment. Rossiter sets the scene within the first few seconds, depicting his past life, current existence, and possible futures.

I’m born at 29 occasioned by magicians
I felt the only life’s the life you lead alone
If every older guy’s a broker or casino
I thought I’d roll the dice or play ethnographer
And as a baby I was huge and quite judicious
I’d tell you every lie that is or ever was
But in divulging every secret or suspicion
I came to crying and to hate my life alone

After this first verse, the band falls back into a winding instrumental stretch, almost as if by accident, like the narrator was lost in his own train of thought, battling his anxieties before our very ears. These stretches reminded me immediately of the more grandiose tracks from Sharks Keep Moving, who have penned some of my favorite songs of all time. Within the space of two minutes, the Rossiter has regained his composure and finds himself grappling with his current realities before gently landing on the topic of love.

In every phone I find a reason to get bitter
But every critic’s got some things they’re not proud of
I count myself among the chief of all these critters
I count myself more often than I count the stars
But there are magicians making love and doing dishes
I make my way to magic or belief in love

Again, a chorus of soaring background vocals leads to the song “collapsing” into another improvised instrumental stretch where intermittent guitar strums, bass notes, and drum taps play off each other, giving the listener space to think, feel, and be heard. Eventually, the track winds down near-nothingness; single guitar notes float in space surrounded by long stretches of dark silence. Right as you think the album is going to end, the band comes back with one more fragment of a song to wrap the album up with.

First, the guitar catches its own rhythm, joined quickly by a rolling drumline, and eventually the bass. As this track picks up steam, it builds to a soulful guitar solo that paves the way for one final patch of lyricism that closes out the record. Rossiter enters with a literal whisper singing of cosmic pain and redemption.

You know it, the way it moves and
You think about it every single day
The sun and the greater bruise
The bridge when every day begins to fade

I know it, the way you move and
The holiness of what we did today
Our love is the aching news of
It’s everlasting and it’s single day

You know it, the way you move and
The holiness of every single day
Our love is the greater bruise
The bridge to everlasting every day

These final words are interrupted by a frisson-inducing riff that comes in loud and beaming as if being broadcast down from the heavens. Towering above the mix, this is one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever heard put to record and an absolutely perfect way to end the album. It sounds holy, it sounds pristine, it sounds like a perfect moment.

Welcome to Conceptual Beach is a world-class record that emphasizes everything I’ve found to be important in 2020. The fact that within 40 minutes the album moves from defeatist lyrics like “That’s how we live / Between pain and hopelessness,” to the relative optimism of it’s final two tracks is an awe-inspiring journey.

I’ve lost track of the number of things that have gone wrong this year, but Welcome to Conceptual Beach stands as an album-length memorial to the things that have gone right. This record is a monument to the moments of love, happiness, and peace that exist between the sadness and pain. Having that space to escape is an invaluable bit of real estate, and with this record, Young Jesus proved that sometimes the most rewarding thing is letting other people in.

Lamenting the Death of The Hidden Track

Not to sound like a copypasta, but I listen to a lot of music. Even before quarantine, I spent most of my waking hours with something playing on my phone. Now that I’m inside all day and have very few real-world obligations, music is playing from virtually the minute I wake up until the second I fall asleep. This means, yes, I’m on my emo bullshit more than ever before, but it also means that I have the time to revisit lots of older albums from my childhood.

As someone who was born in 1993, I grew up in a time where CDs reigned supreme. My parents had hundreds, if not thousands of CDs, which was probably where my obsession with music began. We listened to music in the car, at home on our stereo, and in my room on my personal CD player. Once I got my first iPod back in 2004, I eventually just started ripping every CD that I had even a passing interest in, quickly building out an expansive library of MP3 files to satiate my voracious musical appetite. 

Now that I have more hours than ever in the day to listen to music, I’m breaking out of my typical emo/indie rock rotation and revisiting more classics from my childhood. Albums like Barenaked Ladies’ Gordon, Presidents of the United States self-titled record, and Relient K’s Two Lefts Don’t Make A Right… But Three Do. I’m not necessarily going to bat for the artistic merit of any of these records because my mind is too clouded with the pleasant glow of nostalgia to listen to them objectively. What I will say though is in revisiting all these 90’s and 2000’s albums, I was reminded of a trend that seems to have been forgotten completely: the hidden track. 

It may seem goofy to explain, but for the sake of anyone under the age of 20 reading this, “hidden tracks” were essentially bonus tracks buried at the end of an album, usually after a long period of silence. The experience of discovering these hidden treasures was almost always notable. Whether it was being jolted awake by the chuggy stoner rock riffage of “Endless, Nameless” or being blindsided by the Daniel Johnston-ey weirdness of Green Day’s “All By Myself,” the hidden track provided artists with an outlet to deliver die-hard fans some of their weirdest, most left-field easter eggs. 

While vinyl records and cassettes had their own novelties, the hidden track was a unique byproduct of the compact disc format. The expansion from a vinyl’s 44-minute running time to CD’s 74-minute running time meant that artists had nearly double the amount of time to play with. This was even an increase from cassette tape’s roughly 60-minute running time. While some artists utilized CD’s entire time allotment, the average running time of an album still hovered somewhere between the 40-60 minute range. That meant a large chunk of extra time at the end of the CD for literally anything else. 

The experience of listening to an album, reaching the end, and sitting in silence for a few minutes is a near-lost art. The surprise of an additional piece of music that wasn’t listed on the back of the album is all but dead. 

The hidden track began to mean less as soon as iTunes and other music digitization meant all the raw MP3s and their running times were exposed. This meant that the final track with a suspicious 10-minute running time was a little less sneaky than the artist originally intended. It also meant you could just skip straight ahead by clicking on the timeline in your music player of choice. Sure, you could do this on a CD too, but that “first listen” surprise is gone forever. 

Even now, most of these songs exist on streaming services, but they’re just listed as their own song without any pause or gap in between the album’s intended closer. This is especially frustrating because it’s not the true “ending” of the album as the artist intended. For the most part, hidden tracks were meant to be throwaway jokes, weird little callbacks, or fun bits of studio chatter, they were not real songs, but now streaming services treat them as such.

Sometimes there are legitimately great tracks hidden at the end of records that, for whatever reason, the band just didn’t feel like highlighting on the tracklist proper. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever To Tell is a landmark album for many reasons, but why something as great as “Poor Song” was tucked away unlabeled at the end of “Modern Romance” will forever be a mystery to me. 

Tracks like “Poor Song” were the exception rather than the rule, and if you need evidence, look no further than practically any one of Blink 182’s albums. It’s hard to accurately articulate the strange mixture of shock and confusion of being nine years old and hearing “When You Fucked Grandpa” while listening to Take Off Your Pants and Jacket for the first time… hell, I still get blindsided by that one. 

The digitization of music has arguably brought more good than bad. It’s easier than ever to discover a new artist, share songs with your friends, and even get your own music out into the world on a massive scale. On the flip side, losing physical media means the average listener views music as more disposable and less unique. This is all on top of the fact that there are now even fewer opportunities for format-based easter eggs like hidden tracks.

I’m not going to pretend that the death of hidden tracks is as terrible as artists being paid fractions of a penny per stream, but it’s something that still hurts as a lifelong music nerd. Things like this are why vinyl had a resurgence because it gave artists the opportunity to go above and beyond with their art. Same thing with cassettes… that’s more of an affordability thing, but there’s no denying how cool it is to fold out a new J-Card for the first time. Hell, I’ve even seen people getting back into VHS in 2020, so who knows what the future holds. Hidden tracks may have become a forgotten art form, but I have faith that the next generation of musicians will find something even cooler to replace them with. 

Apropos of nothing but being stoned, I recently watched 2002’s Scooby-Doo and was struck by the movie’s depiction of early-2000’s cool. It was all radio-sanitized pop-punk, spiked hair, and frosted tips. I remember thinking, “these college kids are so cool” when I watched the movie back in 2002, but now it’s just a hilariously-dated time capsule. In other words, hidden tracks had their time, and that time has passed. Much like frosted tips and chain wallets, maybe it’s for best that we leave them in the past.