I was listening the Marillion's This Strange Engine. I'd had the CD for a couple of years, but for the first time I neglected to turn the CD player off after the last track.

To my astonishment, after about 9 minutes of silence, some very infectious laughter started coming out of my hi-fi accompanied by a rather nice piano piece.

Has anyone else found any Easter eggs hidden in music?

Hmmm, I think I heard something about someone being dead, but it's probably nothing...

Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill & The Miseducation Of Lauren Hill both have 'hidden tracks at the end'

The X-Files soundtrack has a hidden track as well.

Also, on Mary Carves the Chicken's eponymous first album, there's a hidden track. Actually, it's not really hidden, I think they just forgot to put it in the liner notes.

The Grateful Dead box set, which re-issues all the early studio and live albums with plenty of bonus material. also contains a number of hidden easter eggs on the discs which aren't listed anywhere on the packaging.

Pearl Jam's Ten.

Nirvana's Nevermind has a hidden track, "The Endless Nameless". The Throwing Copper album by Live has an uncredited track on it called "Horse". It's one of my favorite cuts on the CD.

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band has what's known as "Sgt. Pepper's Inner Groove" at the end. Originally this was on the vinyl record. It would kinda repeat over and over - annoyingly. It's on the CD now.

U2's Best of 1970-1980 has a hidden track of "October" after "All I Want is You."

Sarah Brightman's "La Luna" has the hidden track of "Moon River."

Sparrow, I'd forgotten about "October" being included on Best of... (Are you sure you got the years right? Bono and the boys are only a few years older than me. In 1970 they'd just be hitting puberty.)

The first time I'd ever encountered an easter egg or hidden song was on a cassette. It was John Mellencamp's Big Daddy tape. The unlisted track was Mellencamp's cover of the Hombres' "Let It All Hang Out".

I seem to recall some unlisted tracks on the tape of "Chicago III". Of course, it was really hard to tell, since they all ran into one another.

The long out of print 2-CD Moby Grape anthology Vintage contains a couple of surprises tacked on at the end of disc two. There are some studio tapes of the band joking around with Arthur Godfrey, who appeared as a guest vocal artist for one of the tracks of the Wow album. Also, there is an original radio spot for 1971's Truly Fine Citizen album.

Are you sure you got the years right? Bono and the boys are only a few years older than me. In 1970 they'd just be hitting puberty.Benn

Probably not. I didn't have the CD within arm's reach of me when I made the original post, hence the error.

I made my post yesterday at a public library. Now that I'm at home, I can look atn my copy of the dic. The correct years are 1980-1990.

I forgot (and I'm sure others want to forget, too) but Guns N' Roses' The Spaghetti Incident? has an uncredited final track on it. I can't remember the song's title (and don't care enough to look it up), but it was written by Charles Manson. The Gunners got a lot of flack for that song. Not enough to save the album, mind you. (The worst Guns N Roses CD, period.)

I just recently played Cheap Trick's box set, Sex, America, Cheap Trick. I'd forgotten that all four discs on the box set has an easter egg. Disc one has a radio promo for the band's first album (Cheap Trick) on it. Disc two has a series of funny out-takes from a radio bumper the band was recording for an Ill-annoy (Illinois) station. Disc three has some pre-concert chatter on it. Disc four has an instrumental reprise of "The Doctor", or "Funk #9" as it was originally called.

The latter egg reminded me of the one on Offspring's Smash CD. At the end of that disc is an instrumental version of "Come Out and Play" ("You gotta keep 'em separated.")

n.p. - Lynyrd Skynyrd - Lynyrd Skynyrd (So, I've been playing my box sets. I need to. I tend to neglect them. It's been fun listening to them again.)

Source Tags & Codes by And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead has a nice little instrumental stuck on the end, and De Stijl by The White Stripes has a weird bit of dialouge from some unidentified movie (I assume) at the end. Also, Crimson & Clover by Tommy James & The Shondells sneeks the fade out of the title track on the end again (a little cheep if you ask me).

This isn't an easter egg in the sense of those aboves, but it's an egg within the (fast fading) pre-DVD sense of the term. Anyway, the opening chord of Cheap Trick's "Stop This Game" from their George Martin-produced All Shook Up album is the closing chord of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" played backwards.

At the end of the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", you can hear someone (perhaps Mick or Keith?) loudly saying "Yeah!" On my copy of Sticky Fingers, the song cuts off at this point. However, I've also heard at least one version of this song (on the Stones seventies hits compilation Rewind) in which you can also hear the speaker go on to say "That sounded f*****g good!"

Easter eggs are a pain in the butt as far as I'm concerned. When I've got three CDs loaded in the machine I want to lie back and listen to the music and have the discs change over automatically after the final track. But when there's an Easter egg hidden minutes after what's meant to be the last track I've either got to wait through several minutes of silence or stir myself to reach the remote control and flip the carousel round to the next disc, or forward-wind to the hidden track! It's all too too much effort (deep weary sigh)!

Starsailor's Love is Here has a brief easter egg of the band laying down the backing vocals for the 'final' track but one of them dissolving into giggles.
Martin Grech's Open Heart Zoo has a really nice complete song, though its lyrics leave you a bit depressed: "I am ill; I am deathly ill ..."!

I've sorta got mixed feelings about these things. I mean, the whole sense of discovery coupled with the bonus material is actually a pretty cool thing. On the other hand, if you like to slam a bunch of discs in the CD player and hit shuffle then the "easter eggs" are a real monkey wrench because they don't have their own track and you have to deal with the 10 or so minutes of silence...(perhaps that could be a new topic- discs that work well together in a shuffle...)

Nevermind is a good example because it could either give some "polish" or some "edge" to a mix, depending what it's teamed up with, of course. I rarely use it because of the silence, however.

Paul Weller has an interesting one: the end of the song "Kosmos" sounds like a record player needle hitting the end groove and continues that way for about 15 minutes after which a soft voice pleads "Bring Back Vinyl".

Whiskeytown's Pneumonia also has one. It's a great disc too, if a bit slow tempo-ed and really does benefit from being matched with more up-beat discs.

Nova Mob actually has 2 of them, and they're arguably better than most of the rest of the disc (which is really good in its own right).

I think in general, I'm not too fond of easter eggs on CDs. I love 'em on my DVDs, but when it comes to my CDs... Well, they're problematical because I like knowing the names of songs. Most, if not all, musical easter eggs, or hidden songs, are untitled. It takes a bit of research to learn the names of the songs. For instance, the hidden track on Nirvana's Nevermmind is called "The Endless Nameless}. The easter egg on Live's Throwing Copper is called "Horse". Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill has two eggs on it: one is a remmix of "Oughta Know". That's the easy one. After that, is an acapella track. Dig around, and you'll find it's called "Your House".

Admittedly, the situation was worse pre-Internet. Still, as long as I'm looking over the booklet that comes with the CD, I'd like to know what the names of all the songs on it are. Don't make me go online to learn it. Jeez.

By the way, Miko, it's good to hear from you again, bro. Welcome back!

np - The River - Bruce Springsteen

The kind of Easter Eggs which are tacked on to the end of a last track after a few minutes of silence are problematical also if you're trying to make a compilation or mix tape and just want the song. Also you can't tell the exact correct running time just by scanning the track, you have to figure out where the actual song ends. I don't mind if an easter egg is tracked seperately, but this is annoying and messes things up. Who thought this would be a cute idea?

Benn- thanks for the welcome. As far as the song title research goes I agree that it usually isn't handled properly. At least the titles should be included in the press kit so that sites like AMG All Music Guide can list them. As it is, a lot of the discs I've searched just have a track listed with an empty space instead of a title.

Todd- as a prolific mix disc maker myself I totally sympathize. The beauty of using a disc as source material is the precision of the info, and these things throw all of that out the window.

In this information age, Easter eggs really aren't even fun. I mean, the information about them is so easily accessible that they're hardly hidden. Before the Internet, what few there were (that I knew of anyway) were so cool when you stumbled on them or were told about them. Now, with CDs and especially DVDs, it's just a marketing gimick.

Kind of related (and possibly mentioned somewhere else)....

If you have vinyl albums, check out the non-grooved space between the tracks and the label. Sometimes the quality inspector inscribes a little ditty or picture there. I've most often seen a smiley face.

Weird Al often did that on his vinyl records. Off hand, I can't remember anything that was written on those inner grooves.

np - On Your Feet, Or On Your Knees - Blue Öyster Cult

"It's all one song." - Neil Young

Rammstein's US edition of Sehnsucht had their cover of Depeche Mode's "Stripped" as a hidden track.


The Japanese edition of Mutter had "Hallelujah" as a hidden track. *pout*

I don't know where else to put this, but - Alanis Morissette has released an all acoustic version of "Jagged Little Pill," titled (what else?) "Jagged Little Pill Acoustic." Unfortunately, (and does anyone know why?) it's only available at Starbuck's stores, for the ripoff price of $15.95. But, Alanis superbly performed "Hand In My Pocket" on Letterman last night, and I had to get the CD regardless.

I had heard that the Alanis/Starbucks deal is only for the first six weeks of the new CD's release. However, the HMV record stores in Canada have pulled all Alanis CD's from their shelves in protest. More on that story here.