![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/51tgxrbutql_sl500_aa280_.jpg\" "\\"51tgxrbutql_sl500_aa280_\\"")
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I’m a Christian child of the 80’s. \u00a0As such, I had the More Power To Ya<\/em>\u00a0album as a teen. \u00a0That album had a song titled “Judas’ Kiss” that had an interesting intro. \u00a0It was obvious that speech (or something) was being played backwards. \u00a0This was a tongue-in-cheek (and backwards) message from the band to the Christian community.<\/p>\n When played backwards, the intro said “What’re ya lookin’ for the Devil for, when ya oughta be lookin’ for the Lord?” \u00a0In the 80’s it was a pretty popular teaching (in fundamentalist circles certainly and maybe it was more widespread) that rock music had hidden meanings embedded in it that were influencing us all to do bad things. \u00a0I remember that the refrain “Another one bites the dust” was supposedly turning around to say “It’s fun to smoke marijuana” in our heads. \u00a0And there were supposedly other more evil sayings embedded in other songs — I remember “Hotel California” by the Eagles being a popular target.<\/p>\n The whole “back-masking” idea is pretty ludicrous, of course. \u00a0However, I remember being taught this in my church. \u00a0I explained it to my father and he quickly straightened me out. \u00a0He asked me to theorize a band playing on stage and having some backup singers that were chanting evil messages to me, but those messages were being spoken in German or Italian or some other language I didn’t know. \u00a0Would my brain be able to decode those messages and have them influence me? \u00a0“No, I guess not” I admitted. \u00a0My Dad quickly replied, “At least those are actual languages! \u00a0You’re talking about noise that isn’t even a language.” \u00a0That kind of pulled me off the looking-for-Satanic-messages-in-music bandwagon.<\/p>\n I don’t know what Petra actually thought of the whole back-masking goofiness. \u00a0But they did put that piece of backwards speech at the front of “Judas’ Kiss”. \u00a0And, of course, we all had to find out what it said! \u00a0I remember playing it backwards on my turntable to find out the secret message, and then laughing out loud when I heard it!<\/p>\n Anyway, I’ve recently embarked on a project to rip all my old CDs and tapes and convert them all to MP3s. \u00a0Today, I ripped the “Petra Means Rock” best-of collection which has a copy of “Judas’ Kiss” on it. \u00a0So I thought it would be cool to have a version of the song where the intro has been reversed so that you can clearly hear the backwards message. \u00a0This was trivial to do digitally, so my MP3 album of “Petra Means Rock” has one extra track on it now.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/record.jpg\" "\\"record\\"")
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