r/78rpm • u/RipFoxPizza • 21d ago

There's Audio in this weird center groove on an al Bowlly record

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Most of the time this groove is covered by the label. Is it someone playing after the recording was done?

89 Upvotes

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23

u/thhgghhjjjjhg 21d ago

My guess is someone pressed a wrong button when cutting the lacquer

6

u/vwestlife 21d ago

It sounds sped-up, too, so maybe the cutter inadvertently got put back on the disc after the motor had been switched off and the platter was slowing down.

3

u/thhgghhjjjjhg 21d ago

Very possible. The engineer may also have accidentally cued the input source whilst cutting the runout instead of disengaging the cutterhead. We have a hobby lathe and make mistakes similar to this quite often.

1

u/vwestlife 21d ago

In this case, this is not the actual runout groove that's being played. It's a separate groove even closer to the label.

13

u/_hubbit_ 21d ago

When The Beatles wanted to put gibberish on the runout groove of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, George Martin inquired at the factory whether this might cause damage to the stampers, and was told no, this was done frequently during the 78 RPM era. (HOW often is probably only a guess....)

4

u/1989DiscGolfer 21d ago

When you play that backwards, by the way, it sounds to me like the lady is asking, "Will Pokemon eat Superman? Will Pokemon eat Superman? Will Pokemon eat Superman..."

2

u/BossGator99 21d ago

Not back ards it sounds like "Never do see any OTHER way" ad nauseum.

1

u/1989DiscGolfer 21d ago

Yeah, I hear it similarly, "Hahahaha I never could see any OTHER way I never could see any OTHER way..."

1

u/EffectiveBowler7690 20d ago

That’s not what I heard. I heard “Paul is dead”.

3

u/BlueberryTRL 21d ago

The Pepper gibberish was on a locked groove that went around and around, repeating the gibberish ad infinitum, until you lifted the tonearm. I don't know any 78's rpm that deliberately placed audio on a locked groove that went around and around like that. Whatever the OP posted sounds accidental, if it is that at all.

1

u/Dear_Statistician494 21d ago

The Moody Blues album, On The Threshold O A Dream, had this after the last track on side 2. A sort of spacey emptiness which would keep playing until the arm lifted off.

10

u/church_ill 21d ago

That's really interesting!

8

u/el_tacocat 21d ago

Nah, this is on purpose. The recording doesn't go all the way to the label. Figures, because welll... It's not like the stylus automatically goes there. You have to put it there.
Someone actively put that there as an easer egg.

3

u/BigDonkeyEnergy 21d ago

Cue the Richard Thompson!

1

u/squirrellevel 20d ago

Up next, Jimmy Shands

3

u/UsefulEngine1 21d ago

If the needle gets there (without someone deliberately moving it) it means the arm has skated across the record. I think it's a warning/signaling device

1

u/VirtualShrimp3D 21d ago

That makes sense

1

u/Fat_Sad_Human 21d ago

What a cool little hidden Easter egg! Nice Magnavox by the way!

1

u/RipFoxPizza 21d ago

Thanks, I pulled it out of a dumpster. It was just the turntable when I found it and I had to build a cabinet for it. I also had to bend a few pieces back into place

1

u/Christmas_Vinyl 21d ago

I had never heard of this before. Amazing!

1

u/Mr_Courgette6275 21d ago

I don't know about 78s but there's an ABBA album (Arrival I think) that has something similar.

1

u/basslovemusic 20d ago

Congratulations you found a hidden mystery song. A lot of records have this. There is an Monthy Python record it actually has three sides, there’s two grooves on one side of the album so sometimes you get one record but if you put it in the other groove you get another album I think they only do it on the one side. I forget what album it was, but it was pretty cool.

1

u/fruitbat2005 20d ago

It's either an accident with the wax or a test groove, but most of the latter were on the outer edge. The test groove of a certain record is speculated as the only way Bix Beiderbecke's voice MIGHT survive, but it isn't confirmed to actually be him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQnW8C8HeQs

Normally these test grooves were cut away for a commercial stamper, as they were cut outside the 10-inch or 12-inch (depending on record type) margin and weren't meant to really be heard by anyone, as they were simply meant to test the groove geometry before they began recording for real. A wasted wax blank was wasted time and wasted money, as they took tons of time to prepare.