Introduction
Last October I wrote a post about Steve Terreberry, aka Stevie T., youtuber and musician from Canada.
And I have to say that, despite his childish attitude in the great parts of his videos, I admire him, especially when he debunks the urban legends about the back-masked subliminal messages in the rock songs.
Just one week ago he created another video – probably the fourth of the series – where he debunks some other songs accused to carry “satanic messages” backward, recording with a mic and using also a vocal recognition app in his smartphone.
The result was just fun and great, especially during the debunking the “subliminal message” in the Carly Rae Jetson’s hit “Call me maybe”: at minute 5:53 it came strangely the sentence: “Will you seduce a moose” ( is Carly Rae zoophilic? LOL )
But in this video he goes further ahead, as at the minute 6:40 he talks about the book “Backward masking unmasked” by Jacob Aranza.
Aranza’s fake claims
But who is Jacob Aranza? He’s just another guru of the anti-rock psychosis between the ’80s and the ’90s, just like Bob Larson, Rebecca Brown, The Peters brothers, Leo Meller and so on.
According to that source of treasures named “American Loons”:
Jacob Aranza is the evangelical pastor who, in the early 80s, was perhaps most responsible for popularizing the concept of “backward masking”, the idea that many rock songs had messages that could be heard if the record was played backwards, and that glorified Satan, drug abuse, or the occult. The idea fit directly into the Satanic Panic of the time. Among the most famous contenders were “Stairway to Heaven” (praising Satan), “Another One Bites the Dust” (“start to smoke marijuana”), and, most legendarily, Judas Priest’s “Better By You, Better Than Me”, which allegedly led two Nevada teens into a suicide pact. The allegation was dismissed by the court.
Among the less celebrated and more curious items described by Aranza were songs by Patti Smith with concealed lesbian messages and the Captain and Tenille, which allegedly attempted to get kids hooked on ecology!
Aranza described the phenomenon first in his book “Backwards Masking Unmasked”, and – due to its popular success – followed it by “More Backwards Masking Unmasked”, in which he made such well-researched claims as “75% of the rock and roll today (top 10 stuff!) deals with sex, evil, drugs, and the occult.” The whole rock phenomenon is Satan’s Agenda, and the history of rock really the realization of his (Satan’s) musical 4-step plan for the complete and utter corruption of American youth. According to Aranza:
– Step One (1955–65) pushed sex;
– Step Two (1965–70) added drugs, rebellion, and anti-establishment attitudes
– Step Three (1970–80) attempted to popularize music having an “addicting sound with loud, violent tones” (who knows); and
– the Final Step, which would happen in the 1980s, would “pronounce rock stars as messiahs” and involve full-blown satanic services where all kids would sell their soul to the devil.
Well, as an italian actor said in a play, it’s such fascinating to explore the abysses of the human psyche. Leo Meller and Rebecca Brown were nothing comparing to this guy, who is strangely still active.
But back to Stevie T., at minutes 6:49, he analyses the part in which Aranza talks about the “satanic messages” in Eagles’ hit “Hotel California”, and – as we must notice as healthy common people – there’s nothing that can scare some feeble-minded.
Conclusion: we need more debunkers
But even if that “subliminal message” psychosis has been debunked a lot of time, there’s still someone who still spreads that stuff.
One example is Joe Schimmel, the head of Good Fight Ministries, another association of deranged fundies, who claims that:
Miley Cyrus’s fame and fortune is for instance to blame on having (non-metaphorically) made a “deal with Lucifer.” Apparently she has also been “baptized into the Illuminati” and is currently teaching people how to have sex with Satan. She is not the only one. Schimmel tastefully weighed in on Robin Williams’s suicide, too, saying that Williams killed himself because he was possessed by demons, just like lots of other “famous celebrities.” Indeed, the whole reason they got famous in the first place was because Satan has possessed them and given them talent to glorify himself and “promote evil and darkness and increase mankind’s rebellion against God.”
…….Much of his work is explained in the potential cult classic “Rock-N-Roll Sorcerers of the New Age Revolution”, available on VHS, where he shows how all rock music, broadly construed, from Elvis and the Beatles to Michael Jackson and onward, is rooted in the New Age movement and the occult. According to one Amazon reviewer “[t]his is not just some crazy pastor ranting about sex, drugs, and rock’n roll.” At least the reviewer sensed that someone might potentially raise precisely that concern. The work is, of course, exactly some crazy pastor ranting about sex, drugs and rock’n roll. There is also the 10-hour series They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll(“Rock’n roll sorcerers” might be part of that) in which Schimmel “reveals just how Satan has been effectively using popular music to undermine Gods plan for family and ultimately heralding the coming of the Antichrist and his kingdom on earth,” which shows “hundreds of artists” being “used by Satan to destroy many lives” such as “Elvis, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, U2, Creed, Madonna, Britney Spears, DMX, Tupac, Tori Amos and many more.”
Well, just a great pile of paranoia, even if I have to say that Miley Cyrus is more a “wh*re” than an “artist”, but when it goes too fat it goes too far.
Nowadays in the new era of urban legends Internet need more debunkers.
