Here is an absolutely bizarre discovery, thanks to dedicated reader Paul W., to perk up your Sunday morning: 35 years ago a Christian rock band encoded a Commodore 64 program on a vinyl album, and this YouTuber managed to retrieve and run it.
The album is “Electric Eye” by the band Prodigal. They hid the program in the runout groove, which also has “C-64” and other things etched on it. And sure enough, 8-Bit Show and Tell managed to record the analog audio of that program, transfer it to a magnetic cassette, and load-asterisk that sucker.
It’s just a simple BASIC program, containing quotes from Albert Einstein and Jesus Christ. Most of the video goes through the transcription/translation process before getting to the good stuff. At the end, the host also tracks down the band’s guitarist, on Facebook, to ask about the Easter egg’s creation.
Backmasking secret messages and leaving notes in the runout groove (which keeps a turntable’s needle from running all the way to the center label) is a time honored tradition of recording artists, but this, if it isn’t a first, is quite an unusual variation on it. 8 Bit Show and Tell has a download link for the program for those who want to see for themselves on emulators or, if they have one, the original machine.
Prodigal, comprising guitarist Rick Fields, bassist Mike Wilson, drummer Dave Workman, and the late keyboardist Loyd Boldman, was active from 1975 to 1986. The band’s songs touched the progressive and new wave genres, and the performers were credited with taking Christian music beyond of the field’s more typical themes of evangelism and worship.
Correction: Whoops, I messed up the loading syntax for a Datasette recorder. No “,8,1” necessary as that is only for a floppy disk drive. As a longtime VIC-20 and Commodore 64 user, I should have known this.
The next level of puzzles.
Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.
