Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. There's no better feeling than a personal win, and the State Farm Personal Price Plan can help you do just that. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Change options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility, vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned, and more sales going to Ching. So, if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Okay, tell me if this sounds familiar. You're sitting around with a bunch of friends talking about music when someone says, "Hey, what's that song with the thing at the beginning and the boom, boom, boom sound effects? It's got that guitar or, I don't know, maybe it's not a guitar. You know the one, it's easy," and then the friend gets frustrated when he gets a bunch of blank stares. If you've ever worked in a record store, you know that stare because you've done it with the customer who wants you to identify the song, the artist, and the album from her little acapella performance, and then she gets mad when you come up blank. Same thing happens with me and all the people who work on radio. A couple of times a week, I'll get an email like, "Hey, I'm hoping you can help me find a song," and then it goes on. I think it's from the 80s, but maybe not. There are some beats in the bass line with a melody that goes, "Oh, or here's something," and then the video, and I know if you've seen it, it has a bunch of dancers in it. Do you know the song? No, I don't. Some attach audio files of them plunking out notes on an instrument and some of them sing, and I've had some with people whistling and they want me to identify the song from that. But here's the weird thing, sometimes, just enough times, you actually are able to identify the song. It's like a tiny explosion in your head as your personal database throws up the correct answer somehow, and when that happens, it feels so good. You just solved a mystery, and you made someone happy in the process, and I love that feeling. Things have changed in this century, of course. Tracking down a mysterious song is easier than ever, thanks to listening apps like Shazam and Soundhound, or you can just enter some lyrics into a site like lyricfind.com. Even just throwing up a bunch of random words into the Google search bar can get you started. I found that crowdsourcing a song identification problem through certain websites like Reddit, for example, can sometimes be very helpful. But even with all this technology and the ability to tap into the minds of music fans around the planet, some songs just don't want to be identified, and this has become a serious game for music fans, challenge accepted, as they say. These mysterious songs that are missing from the musical record are part of a category that's been dubbed "lost wave." That's Big Wreck with the perfect track to start this particular episode of the ongoing history of new music. Singer Ian Thornley was coming out of a grocery store with a car roared by, playing a song that sounded pretty cool. All he caught, though, was three or four notes. "What was that song?" he wondered, and for the next week, those few notes were burned into his brain, and one thing led to another, and he ended up writing a, well, that song. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross, and we're going to talk about those songs, "lost wave," that strange category of songs that exist, but no one knows anything about them. It's not really a genre, because all these songs don't need to have anything sonically in common. They're just lost, nameless, unclaimed, the Jane and John Doe's of the music world. However, much glory and acclaim will go to anyone who correctly identifies any of them. We'll start by detailing some of these searches, and then engage in more crowdsourcing with this show in hopes that someone, somewhere on the planet, can crack these cold cases. Again, there's no prizes for this, it's just the possibility of a certain type of prestige. First, let's take a stab at some lost wave history. This is what the Internet has pieced together so far. The first modern lost wave song involves a song called "Ready and Steady" that was credited to an artist known just as D.A. Even though the song was thought to have never been officially released by a record label, some old singles charts say that it came out on rascal records. Billboard is the biggest compiler of charts in North America, and follows a complex methodology when it comes to determining which songs will chart. But somehow, this song that no one knew anything about made it all the way to number 102 on the Billboard singles charts on June 23, 1979, then it disappeared forever. It appears that "Ready and Steady" by D.A. was the only song without an official release to appear on any Billboard chart in the history of Billboard charts. There was never any other recording or release of the song. No one ever found a physical copy anywhere, and some questioned if the song ever really existed. Now, I can tell you that the story does have a happy ending, but first, we should have a listen to "Ready and Steady" before the mystery is resolved. Again, this is from D.A. released on rascal records, serial number 102, and it came out in the spring of 1979. Fortunately, there is a subclass of music fan who are chart nerds, the kind of people who are obsessed with the numbers and statistics associated with songs that appear on Billboard charts, and even they were stumped at first. It took decades, but the mystery was finally solved after someone thought to search through the U.S. copyright office. That person found a track entitled "Ready and Steady" credited to composer Dennis Armond, D.A. Luchese, and Jim Franks. The song was registered in 1986, almost seven years after the chart episode. A little more digging revealed that Dennis was a mortgage broker living in California who fronted a part-time local band called "D.A. and the Dukes" and that he had died in the summer of 2005. Rascal records did exist. They were in Hollywood. It grew out of a company that existed only on paper and was owned by a relative of the band. And yes, Rascal did release a few other singles, but nothing ever again from D.A. So that was a bit of a dead end. But in 2016, the co-writer of "Ready and Steady" Joel Franks was found. He had another recording of the song to prove that he was the guy. So mystery solved, or at least part of it. How did this unreleased track nearly end up cracking the Billboard Hot 100? Well, it appears that an unknown record promoter who had connections with a major label somehow got it on the charts without any sales and without any airplay. Ow? We still don't know. But the original lost wave mystery, the identity of the song and the artist, has been solved. I have a few more musical mysteries that were eventually put to rest. And let's talk about how long will it take? This song turned up on a Russian bootleg DVD around 2007. It wasn't even a full version of the song, just a section that was looped in the menu of the DVD that listed other illegal DVDs. Shazam and Soundhound couldn't figure it out. It didn't seem to have a commercial release, but it was a nice song. And more people thought they wanted to know about it. Before we go any further with this one, we should have a listen. This is the original of what was dubbed "How Long Will It Take?" See, that's a nice song, but who did it? When? And where is the singer now? A Ukrainian music fan was intrigued and posted a snippet of the song online. It turned out that the song's lack of confidence bugged a lot of people, so the search was on. The best guest of the song's title was, like I said, "How Long Will It Take?" Or maybe just "How Long?" And the longer the mystery remained, the more people got into it. Some went as far as to post tribute videos to the track. Others did remixes and covers. Not bad for a song that nobody knows anything about. Finally though, "How Long Will It Take?" or whatever was called showed up where plenty of lost wave songs finally appear. Reddit. Then, 16 years after the first initial post from Ukraine, a user named the Arab era cracked it. Tracking the makers of the bootleg DVD didn't help. Then El Araraba did a search of the databases of performing right societies, places where the composers should have registered the song if they ever hoped to get paid. El Araraba found it in Canada, in the So Can database, and this led back to Reddit, and that led to a podcast that contained the full song. On that day, December 8, 2023, a 52-year-old woman in Vancouver named Paula Toledo saw her phone and email blow up. At first, she thought she was being scammed, and then people started sending money to her website. Now, that was more than weird, so she asked her son to check into it. He knew his way around the internet. It wasn't long before he came running back, "Mom! Someone is asking about one of your songs. People have been looking for you for 16 years." Paula Toledo did indeed record this song in a studio in Langley, BC in 2003. She licensed it to one TV show and one made for TV movie. Then she forgot about it. How did it end up on a Russian bootleg DVD filled with other pirated material? No idea. But now that the song is back, she's posted on Bandcamp and Spotify and Apple Music directing all proceeds to the Music Heels Charitable Foundation, which works in the area of music therapy. Happy ending, right? Well, not exactly. An unofficial duplicate of the song started showing up, which siphoned royalties to someone unofficial. That caused so much confusion that Paula's version was taken down by the streaming music services as some kind of Kafka-esque streaming fraud case. The good news is that everything was straightened out, and by May of 2024, the official proper version of Paula's song, "The Real One," now titled officially, "How Long Will It Take," was back online. Paula Toledo and "How Long Will It Take?" Last episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shoppay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned. If you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp online therapy. Connect with a credential therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHELP.com. This is an episode about the peculiar and fascinating world of "Lost Wave," songs that no one can seem to identify, yet capture the imagination of song sleuths worldwide. There are a few more stories of searches that paid off. Along with Reddit, there are a bunch of sites where Lost Wave detectives can go to discuss the hunt. For example, there's "What's a Song?" where we find a post from October 7, 2021 about a mysterious 17-second snippet that was found buried on a DVD backup disk. It was given the name "Everyone Knows That" because those words might have been in the lyrics. The leading theory said that the song originated somewhere in Spain, and that's because the uploader himself was from that country. Given the production style and the use of a Lindrum machine and Yamaha DX-7 keyboards, speculation was that the song was recorded any time between 1982 and 1999. Others suggested it came from a production music library. Maybe it was from some kind of TV commercial, or perhaps it was something that MTV or someone else may have used back in the day. For whatever reason, the music detectives went after this one hard. It wasn't long before the song had a long, Reddit thread with 47,000 members, and the story of the search even made it into the mainstream press, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, others. This is what all the consternation was about. This is the original snippet that was posted online. Now, it doesn't seem like much, but since everyone loves a good mystery, the search went wild. Then, in August 2023, a Reddit user named Hayskarlit tried the performing rights database search trick using another possible name for the track, which was ulterior motives. That person ended up with the Socan database in Canada again. This was the thing that worked, and there was quite a backstory. For the answer, we begin in the mid-70s with Christopher St. Booth, who was part of a Vancouver glam band called Sweeney Todd, a group that once featured a sixteen-year-old Brian Adams on vocals, but who was later replaced by Nick Gilder. They had a major hit in 1976, which won them a general award. Sweeney Todd broke up in 1978, and Chris and his twin brother, Philip Adrian Booth, ended up in Encino, California, picking up odd jobs as production assistants. At the time, they were pretty desperate and would do anything for money. Then a friend who made porn said, "I need music for one of my new films. Can you do it?" Sure they can, so they did, and because the money was good, Chris Booth ended up writing a lot of music for porn, carefully and properly registering the copyright of the music with Socan, the Canadian Performing Arts Organization, because, you know, you got to get paid, right? Fast forward to 2024. A Reddit user named OneTruth5867 heard a song that sounded very similar to "Everyone Knows That." It was then up to another user named South Pole Ball to identify the song's writer and performer, which takes us to the Socan database search again. At the end of the route was Chris Booth, the writer of the porn music. The searchers then watched every porn film featuring Chris Booth's music until they found the song in an obscure movie from 1986 called "Angels of Passion." At one hour and seven minutes and 31 seconds into the action, there it was, and it turns out that the song is called "Alterior Motives," and here's the whole thing. The cardinal noises from the porn film have been removed, not by the song's creators but by fans. The lost wave mystery song once known as "Everyone Knows That," but correctly entitled "Alterior Motives" by Christopher Dave Booth and his brother. They're available anywhere except in that 1986 porn film called "Angels of Passion." When news of the search and mystery reached Chris, he was completely baffled. He might end up releasing it, but Chris doesn't have all the constituent parts of the song anymore. He has some, but not the guitar and synth bits. Maybe he can reconstruct it. And no, he does not have the master recording. It's in the possession of a friend who died. Meanwhile, what of Chris and Philip Booth after 1986? Well, they went on to specialize in movies about ghosts and exorcisms. Now, you've probably noticed by now that for some reason, a lot of lost wave songs have roots in Canada. I cannot explain that. And here's another one. This one drove me crazy for a very specific reason. If you are old enough, you'll remember sitting next to the radio with your tape deck on Pause, waiting for your new favorite song to come on. Then you would quickly unpause the tape, record the song, and then try to pause it again before the annoying DJ started talking. That was fine, as long as you remember the name of the song that you were taping. However, memories grow foggy over the years, and even though you were the one who recorded that mixtape from the radio, you forget the name of the song and the artist. Many years later, that tape is rediscovered, and you realize it features all these songs that you once thought were really cool but can't identify anymore. This is one of those situations. In the spring of 2024, I got an email from someone who asked for help in identifying an unknown song that had been floating around the internet for years under the assumed name of Ride This Wave Forever. The clip that had been taped from the radio, this is how the clip ended, and listened for the DJ voice. That's me. I was the guy who played it on the radio, and given the era, sometime 1991, I would have been the person that selected the CD, put the CD in the machine, played it, and talked about the song after it ended, and then put the CD away. Do you think I have any memory of this? Absolutely not. The solution was to post it on my website, which is a journal of musicalthings.com, and lo and behold, the mystery was soon solved. The song is actually called Wave Station, and the band is called Wave Station. They first released the song in 1991, which is the version I played on the radio that day, and then re-released the song in 1994 on an album entitled Mona Lisa. So yes, this is yet another Canadian group. In this particular case, Wave Station was a couple of brothers based out of Toronto. Wave Station was hot for a minute and then disappeared for years. I have since talked to one of the brothers, and no one is more surprised than him that this old song has been the subject of a massive online lost wave search. And when I went to look at my CD library, there it was. It was sitting there the entire time. This is the demo I played on the radio. Yeah, the evidence in 1991. Canada's Wave Station with a song called Wave Station. It's a lost wave track, but now positively identified after a search that lasted years. Here's the result of another successful hunt. A song was given the name "On the Roof," and it was the subject of another search for a very long time. And judging by the instrumentation, it had to have come out sometime in the 1980s. Let's just have a listen. That song remained unidentified until 2013, when a Swedish radio station played it in hopes that someone would figure it out, and someone did. The actual name of the song is "Stay the Second Time Around" by a Swede named John Lindell. He had long moved on from music, and had no idea that so many people were concerned about finding a song. But another lost wave mystery solved. Here is another lost wave story with a happy ending. In 2016, a user on 4chan asked for help with a demo EP ripped to a CDR that he'd found in a British charity shop. It had the title of "Death Metal," and was apparently released in 2000 by a group called "Panchiko." So, what's the problem? We have the title, we have the artist, we have the track listing. It's all there. Why is this a lost wave song? Well, for whatever reason, the 4chan music community became obsessed with trying to find out more about this band. Again, we look at this CD, and there were four guys identified only by their first names, Owen, Andy, Sean, and John. That's all the info there was. The fact that the disc itself was in bad shape, it suffered from something called "disc rot," which happens when the layers of a CDR begin to separate. It was loaded with distortion and skips. In 2017, the "Death Metal EP" was uploaded to YouTube. This is what the search needed. After about 200,000 views and endless discussions by fans, someone noticed the barcode on the CD's cover, finally. This turned the search back to the charity shop, which was in Sherwood, in Nottingham. Like I said, one of the band members was named Owen, but he used an unusual spelling – O-W-A-I-N. Maybe the answer to all this would be as easy as searching for musicians in Sherwood named Owen who spelled their name that way. Boom. Owen Davis was tracked down via Facebook in January 2020. He was shocked that Panchiko had been the target of this search. He contacted two other members of the band and got everybody back together. No one had the original master tapes, but a friend had a copy of the EP in good condition. Four tracks from that CD were remastered and released. And there have been many gigs, a couple of international tours, and a proper debut album. But let's get back to this mystery record. This is Panchiko with the title track of "Death Metal," the EP from 2000. Once lost, now found Panchiko and the title track of that death metal EP that disappeared for so many years before it was found and properly identified through a search on 4chan and YouTube. Like I said, Panchiko is back together and playing again, and the only person missing is John, the original drummer. No one can seem to find him, so that's the next search. So far, we focused on songs that were once lost but now found. What about some current mysteries? Well, here's where you and crowd-sourcing come in, stand by. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Searching for your next car? Taunts settle. Thrive. At CarMax, it's easy to shop online or in person. With upfront pricing and tools designed to help, finding a car you love has never been easier. Plus, you can sell or trade in your current vehicle with an online offer in minutes. No strings attached. They're shopping now to find a car you'll love at CarMax.com. CarMax. The way it should be. Since 1979, TireRack.com has been helping people find the right tires for how, what, and where they drive. They sell only the best, like the full line of good year tires. Test results, ratings, and reviews are there to assist, or try the Tire Decision Guide to get a personalized tire recommendation. Tires ship fast and free to you or to one of over 10,000 recommended installers. In many areas, they offer a mobile tire installation. Shop goodyear tires at TireRack.com. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the ancient podcast from HistoryHit. Twice a week, leading experts and academics delve into our distant past and discover secrets thought lost to the sands of time. "Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians, to the Celts, to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were." That's the Ancients from HistoryHit. This is a show on Lost Wave, songs that have been floating around the internet begging for someone to identify them. Now that we've seen that these mysteries can be solved, here are a few that no one has figured out yet, so maybe you can help. This mystery originates from the days of Napster when people went online and just downloaded everything they could. The problem was that many of these downloads contained incorrect and incomplete metadata. Some don't even have the fields for the song titles and artists filled out. This was a problem with the song that people thought might have been a new-ordered demo, but it wasn't. The lyrics may indicate that the track is called "I Don't Want to Live in Your World" or it may be called "Plastic Pearls." The recording date seems to be around 1998. This is all we've got. "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want to Live in Your World," "I Don't Want Okay, I like it. I would like to know more. Anyone? Let's try this. It's a recording made from the radio we think in Seville, Spain in 2005. So apologies for the poor quality of the recording because this is, this is all we got. That might be called "cast away from here," but again, no one seems to have any idea who that might be. Songs in the Key of Z was released. It was a compilation of what's known as outsider music, material made by people who feel that they are musical but don't realize that they just aren't. There is, however, much joy in their music making and it's infectiously fun. Songs in the Key of Z featured an unknown artist that's been given the title Curly Toes. No one knows the name of the artist and it's claimed that this was found on a tape by someone who is digging in a dumpster. In the decade since the release of the album Songs in the Key of Z, there were no leads. Let's listen. I'm your Curly Toes and Pink Ribbons and bows and just for you, no pantyhose. No pantyhose. Now if you were confused by that, I do apologize. Sometimes the world of Lost Wave is stranger than you can imagine. Okay, let's try this. Legend has it that a real to real tape was found in a flea market in Philadelphia. It contained a series of songs by unknown musicians that appeared to have been recorded in the 1960s. The song titles were listed and two photos were found inside the box, other than that, nothing. Eventually, this tape made its way to a label called Distortion Records, which released the songs under the name Unknown Mystery Sixties Group. There have been two other volumes since. Now, there have been some questions as to whether this unknown sixties group was real or if it's the creation of some guy in New York who made it sound like a sixties record. Whatever the case, Unknown Mystery Sixties Group, is still a mystery. Here's one of their songs. It's called Birdhouses. Birdhouses from, well, we'll just call them Unknown Mystery Sixties Group. We're going to end with what has been called the most mysterious song on the internet, which sometimes goes by the titles, like the wind, blind the wind, and the sun will never shine. Sometime in the 1980s might be 1984, a teenager only known as Darius X recorded a song from Knight Deutscher Rudfunk, a West German radio station in the north of the country. It's a new wave type track that ended up on Darius's tape alongside Depeche Mode, The Cure, Simple Minds, Cori Hart, and a few others. Any mentions or descriptions of the DJ on air who played the song were not included on the recording. So what was this thing? A snippet first appeared online in the early 2000s with an appeal to ID the song. No avail. Contacting the radio station and apparently the DJ who played it proved useless. The mystery was revived in 2019 when a Brazilian teenager heard about it from a Spanish fan. A snippet was uploaded to YouTube and a bunch of subreddits. A full version, similarly unlabeled, was eventually uncovered. Over the years, the song has circulated to, I don't know, hundreds of websites, and I've received dozens of emails about it. Recordings of the song were even spectrum analyzed in hopes of getting to the bottom of the problem. No one on planet earth, or in this section of the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way has been able to identify that song so far. However, there are some theories. The first is that it was a demo sent to the radio station in northern Germany, played once, and then thrown out. Another is that it's a singer from Vienna named Christian Brandy, along with his partner Ronnie Iruni, who recorded both German and English versions. That lead was investigated, but debunked. A shizam user says the app returned with the artist result and won't know E. I don't get A-N-T-W-O-N-0-1. But that led nowhere. Meanwhile, the song has been covered by multiple bands and widely distributed. But no one is closer to figuring out the truth. The most mysterious song on the internet will remain that way unless someone has a breakthrough, or the artist finally steps forward. If you want to dig deeper into the strange world of Lost Wave, the first place to go naturally is the internet. Start with the Lost Media Archive, which has been looking for your lost song since 2012. There's also the Lost Waves dash finest dot fandom dot com, which has a long list of songs from all over the world that people are trying to identify. You can also try WhatZatSong.com, which is a great place for discussion and research. I'm warning you though, these rat holes are deep. Very deep. And once you get started, you may be lost waving for a while. There are hundreds of ongoing history podcasts begging to be downloaded from any platform you care to use. They are all easily identifiable and very easy to find. Please rate and review if you get a chance. More music news and information on my website, a journal at musicalthings.com along with its daily newsletter. We can meet up on all the social media platforms and my email is allen@allencross.ca. Again, if you know anything about these songs that we're trying to find out, let me know. I will give you credit, by the way. And don't forget about my true crime and music podcast Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. It's available everywhere, too. Technical production for everything is by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross, and until next time, happy lost waving. Every season of Survivor starts the same way, build the challenges, and we hide the advantages, and then we turn it over to the players. I am ready to forge my own path. And no matter how many times we do it, I'm still surprised. Survivor has evolved all these advantages, all these twists. It has to be victory or glory is death. That's why we watch, because every season of Survivor is a new adventure. Survivor. New season, Wednesdays on Global. Stream on Stack TV.
