The Greatest Hidden Tracks Ever Hidden on a CD?

The Information Society was an electro band best known for their 1988 hit “What’s On Your Mind.” Success-wise, they were pretty much one-hit-wonders, but they should also be remembered for some of the cool non-musical stuff that they put on their albums.

In 1992, they released an album called Peace and Love, Inc., which featured a mysterious 12th track labeled “300bps N, 8, 1 (Terminal Mode or ASCII Download).”  Playing it on either CD or vinyl just resulted in a bunch of noise.  What was going on?

Nerdy types recognized it right away.  The title gave settings for an old-school computer modem.  If you set things up the right way and played the track down a telephone line to a fax machine, you decoded a text message.

SO WE'RE SUPPOSED TO PLAY IN CURITIBA IN 18 HOURS, BUT OUR BUS IS BEING HELD
HOSTAGE BY THE LOCAL PROMOTERS. THEY'VE FORMED SOME UNHOLY ALLIANCE WITH THE
BRAZILIAN COUNTERPART OF ASCAP; THE PRS. APPARANTLY THE PRS HAS THE LEGAL POWER
TO ARREST PEOPLE, AND THEY WANT A PIECE OF THE NATIONAL TOUR PROMOTER'S MONEY.
THE LOCAL SECURITY FORCE, "GANG MEXICANA", HAS BEEN BOUGHT OUT FOR 1800
CRUZADOS AND A CARTON OF MARLBOROS EACH. THE ONLY FACTION STILL OPERATING IN
OUR DEFENSE IN "BIG JOHN", OUR PERSONAL SECURITY MAN, AND HE'S HIDING IN HIS
ROOM BECAUSE A LOCAL GANG IS OUT FOR HIS BLOOD BECAUSE OF A 1982 KNIFING
INCIDENT IN WHICH HE WAS INVOLVED. OUR 345-POUND ROAD MANAGER, RICK ONLY HAD
THIS TO SAY: "YOU WANTED THE LIFE OF A ROCK STAR!". 

It goes on for quite a bit.  You can read the whole thing here.

In 1997, they did it again with their album Don’t Be a Afraid.  Track 10 is labeled “White Roses 1.1 (300-N-1 Terminal Mode or ASCII Download.  On the disc, it appears to be nothing but 56 seconds of white noise.  Doing the modem trick again reveals text data involving a crazy scavenger hunt where the goal was to collect 16 “ARJ-compressed” (I have no idea what that means) password-protected files.

Put together, you get the complete track “White Roses” in a .wav format that runs a little over seven minutes.

Don’t bother trying to jump in with the scavenger hunt because most of the sites have since disappeared.  However, you can hear the final results here.

Cool, huh?  Is anyone doing this kind of thing anymore?