
A Mysterious Song on the Internet (2019) - elorant
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/most-mysterious-song-on-the-internet-885106/
======
Vaslo
This reminds me of the search for Q Lazzarus. She and her band are famous (or
maybe some would say notorious) for writing the song played during Silence of
the Lambs when Buffalo Bill does his infamous "dance" in front of the camera.
For decades, folks couldn't find any information on her and weren't even sure
that she was still alive. Jonathan Demme, the director of Silence of the Lambs
happened to be in her cab one night and she played some of her music and he
really liked it. He put it into several of his films. It's someone's dream to
be discovered like that - and then to fall almost faster back into obscurity?

[https://www.stereogum.com/2009727/mysterious-goodbye-
horses-...](https://www.stereogum.com/2009727/mysterious-goodbye-horses-
singer-q-lazzarus-breaks-her-silence-30-years-later/news/)

~~~
tosser0001
When I was a teenager in Massachusetts in 1982 I bought the album "Tragic
Figures" by a band called Savage Republic on a lark, based solely on the hand-
printed album cover. It turned out to be very strange post-punk industrial
music. I almost fell out of my chair at the movie theater watching "Silence of
the Lambs" when the song "Real Men" from that album came on.

~~~
twic
There's an amazing demo called 'A Mind Is Born':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8)

Amazing principally because the whole thing is 256 bytes:

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-
born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/)

I never meet anyone who has even heard of the demoscene, let alone come seen
this particular work.

I was at a film festival watching a programme of short films, one of which was
the well-made AI-box escape romp 'Watch Room':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5uJNB7VU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5uJNB7VU8)

And similarly found my interface with my seat disrupted by the closing credits
using the music from 'A Mind Is Born'. This being a festival, the director was
there, so i could tell him how much i appreciated the reference!

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
Sadly Andrey Kolmogorov is dead. Because I'd loooove to see his face.

Fantastic, solid thanks for that, I love it for what it is.

Edit: technical question for audiologists. The underlying pulsing heartbeat of
this track, which is most clear right at the start, has a kind of 'furry'
quality to it. How is this done? I guess it's a sample of a ~60Hz sine wave
but I'm just guessing.

~~~
egypturnash
It’s a c64, there are no samples*.

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-
born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/) has a full breakdown of
what is going on.

What you call the “heartbeat” is, I think, what Linus thinks of as “drums”,
and is a rapidly descending tone in (probably) a rectangular wave - the c64
cannot generate sine waves, just sawtooth/triangle/pulse, and random noise
(and some combinations of these that were not intended by the sound chip’s
designer). In addition all three voices of the sound chip are being pushed
through its subtractive filter, which is a hard-to-emulate bit of analog
circuitry that gets noisier and noisier if you out more than one voice through
it.

If you really want a close look at what’s going on you could download the “SID
tune” version of it and run it through a c64 music player, most of these have
oscilloscope views and the ability to selectively mute voices.

------
Cenk
If you enjoyed this, you might also like Reply All’s recent episode:

Reply All #158: The Case of the Missing Hit

[https://overcast.fm/+TKZKtgdaw](https://overcast.fm/+TKZKtgdaw)

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-
case-...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-of-the-
missing-hit)

~~~
mrspeaker
Ha, I posted that a minute after you. That episode is a fantastic musical
story about finding a song that seemed to only exist in one persons mind. I
don't know anything about that podcast in general, but this episode is
delightful and has that same feeling as the Most Mysterious Song on the
Internet!

(Also, an "if you liked that, you might also like...": Finding Drago
([https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/finding-
drago/](https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/finding-drago/)) is a short but
excellent podcast series about searching for the author of a mysterious book
about Ivan Drago from the move Rocky IV!)

~~~
joegahona
I loved this episode and was really impressed with how much work went into it
-- all the way down to recreating the song with a band from that guy's head.

~~~
RyJones
And how it infected the band members to the point they couldn't get away from
it. It's amazing how close the recreation was and how it compelled so many
people

~~~
RichieAHB
I woke up this morning with this song in my head after listening to it a week
ago and then playing it to my wife yesterday. I wonder how many brain-hours
that song has consumed already ...

------
zzzeek
There are millions of demo tapes and CDs from endless ad-hoc bands that were
never known, I have myself at least a dozen catchy songs that get in my head
from bands I've played in and some I can't even remember who they were, others
are on dusty old demo CDs and tapes from 1993 in my basement. The "catchy song
that can't be traced" is more than just one song in Rolling Stone, for me it's
a whole world of music that existed for only a few months somewhere decades
ago that lives only in my mind.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I've played stuff from Song Fight[1] in the car, or been signing along at my
desk and been asked about the songs. There's so much good, "catchy" stuff out
there if you take the time to look. At least w/ Song Fight I can usually trace
down the original artist.

I have the same thing w/ old tunes from MOD files. I have a couple melodies I
whistle that I know came from MODs I downloaded and listened to 25 - 30 years
ago but I have absolutely no idea which ones they are. I still have most of
that stuff (the benefits of kicking your data onto new media every few years),
but slogging thru all of it just to find a few bars of melody just seems like
a chore. I also thought that, if I ever chose to do that, I should record my
current interpretations of the melodies to see how they changed over the years
vs. how the original actually sounded.

[1] [http://songfight.org/](http://songfight.org/)

------
smohnot
If you like this, you might like "Searching For Sugar Man" a documentary where
2 guys in South Africa search for this legendary musician from the US who was
rumored to be dead.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man)

~~~
jacobush
And now the director of that movie is actually dead :-(

------
jmmcd
My "white whale of the internet" is a 4-track EP from mid-1990s by a band
called The Mark Kramer Band (not _that_ Mark Kramer) with track titles _Dust
Bowl Rain_ and _Wild Prairie Dog_. It sounded like a bluesier Jeff Buckley, I
think. I had a copied tape, so no pictures or other info, and of course it's
long gone. If you Google it you'll see my previous pleas on other fora.

~~~
all2
Mine is an odd, backwater website hosting a few tracks of surrealist noise
(music) by someone/some-people called "The Waxwing Slain".

I found it when I was 13 or 14 while I was trawling the backwaters of the
internet. I downloaded all the tracks and listened. It was odd, surreal,
satisfying to listen to. Eerie, even. I've lost the HDD those mp3s were on.
And the website has disappeared into the dusts of time.

~~~
egypturnash
[https://archive.org/details/MusicUnderTheMoon2018-10-16](https://archive.org/details/MusicUnderTheMoon2018-10-16)
contains a track with that title, by someone calling themselves The Golden
Oriole. Probably not your lost tracks.

~~~
all2
You are correct, that isn't it. It isn't nearly surreal enough.

Thanks for poking around, though.

------
StavrosK
Some people and I have similarly been looking for a classical piece that
appears in the movie Brewster's Millions for about ten years now:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/4nvuyp/tomt_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/4nvuyp/tomt_5_years_standing_string_quartet_song_in_the/)

------
twic
My much smaller version of this relates to the Italo-Disco classic
'Comanchero' by Moon Ray (Raggio di Luna in Italian). Here's the song, with
its distinctive 1984 video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_pLleIU41A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_pLleIU41A)

And here is a painstaking shot-for-shot remake of the video (but the original
audio - this is not a cover, just a fan video):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LuYwBckr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LuYwBckr4)

Who made this? Why?

~~~
rozab
Definitely a film school assignment.

------
davidpfarrell
I actually have my own personal Mystery Tune which I'm been trying to find the
owner of for years.

I'm offering a cash reward for help identifying the song:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK8l0pkyiy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK8l0pkyiy0)

Its posted SoundCloud too:

[https://soundcloud.com/davidpfarrell/cool-unknown-
techno](https://soundcloud.com/davidpfarrell/cool-unknown-techno)

~~~
leviathant
I don't have a direct lead for you, but this sounds like it's tracker music
(music written on Modtracker, Screamtracker, Impulse Tracker, Fasttracker,
etc.) - I'd hazard a guess that it was recorded in the mid-to-late 90s.

Unfortunately, the only clue you have to its origin - "candyman" \- is the
name of a film being actively promoted right now, so it's going to be even
more difficult to chase down than it was even just a few months ago.

It's possible that the name of the MP3 is a reference to the person who wrote
the music, or it could be the name of the song they wrote. I've found at least
five different "candyman" musicians doing tracker music, demoscene music,
cracktro music, etc., the actual files are hard to come by, and the music I do
find is techno, but not the same genre.

I could see the tune you linked being played over the end credits of some
demoscene disk.

Anyway - I'm pretty sure that what you're listening to is an MP3 of a tracker
file.

Every little bit of information helps :)

~~~
davidpfarrell
I hadn't thought of that - I'll into the idea of musicians named "candyman" in
the tracker scene.

Thanks for the lead, and for having a listen of the track !

------
userbinator
_she was still concerned about the legalities_

I thought uploading to YouTube and seeing who tries to claim the rights might
be one way of identifying it, but then again, the flakiness of the automatic
copyright identification system would probably make that pretty useless for
even slightly obscure music.

~~~
skocznymroczny
Reminds me of the way at my workplace of identifying who does the machine
under given IP or webservice belong to - the easiest way is to turn it off and
see who comes to complain.

------
yumashka
The simplest way: make video, insert this song, post to youtube, see where
DMCA claim come from :)

------
SideburnsOfDoom
IMHO: probably a demo from a short-lived band that never made it big. It's not
bad, but not that striking and original either. It sounds familiar because
it's derivative of lots of things that were happening at the time. This is
common, many good bands take a while to find their own voice, so in the early
demos you hear echos of the bands and songs that influenced them.

~~~
kkotak
Exactly! I don't see why the obsession amongst all the people who are trying
to trace it down. There are millions of songs like this that are lost in
obscurity. In other news, I have a cool looking pebble that no one knows which
beach it came from. Off to starting a subreddit about it so people have
something to do with their time :)

------
andyjohnson0
Fascinating. In this time when everything is seemingly discoverable online,
these odd mysteries that seeking have no _link_ seem vaguely disconcerting.
But the pre-internet world was mostly like that. We just didn't know it then.

It reminded me of the search for "The Footage" in William Gibson's book
_Pattern Recognition_.

------
wgx
Back in the 1990s, I made music on my computer. My friend was a DJ on a late
night show and he’d play one of my tracks one night a week, just because he
could. If anyone recorded those broadcasts they’d have no way of finding out
who made that music.

This could be a result of a similar situation I imagine.

------
8bitsrule
Production, instruments, vocal ..sounds like eastern Europe/Russia region.

~~~
rwmj
(Obviously it isn't them, but ...) it sounded like Laibach to me, so yes
Eastern European.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> it sounded like Laibach to me

What? how does this

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=70&v=zPGf4liO-
KQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=70&v=zPGf4liO-KQ)

Sound like this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glu9wA4HjE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glu9wA4HjE0)

to you?

The guitar in the first sounds more this:

[https://youtu.be/_guOyN2wmkM?t=78](https://youtu.be/_guOyN2wmkM?t=78) Or, IDK
influenced by Foreigner and those kind of bands.

~~~
jerrysievert
to be fair, Laibach of that era (1984/1985) alternates between sounding like
Coil (State) and random new wave music (1st Generation TV), but is still
usually dominated by Milan Fras' vocal style.

so, I guess it's possible?

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
The "mysterious song" has a more of a generic "alternative guitar band" sound
to me, which Laibach never were.

Something about the riffs makes me want to say "Foreigner" (or that school of
80s US hard rock) which again, is a genre that Laibach never imitated
(although they might just have parodied).

~~~
jerrysievert
> which Laibach never were

again I point to their 1984/1985 work, which had undertones of sisters of
mercy in a couple of their songs. generally not their signature work, but
somewhat close in some cases.

> Something about the riffs makes me want to say "Foreigner"

personally I was more thinking something like xymox or sisters, without the
haunting vocals of either (it actually reminded me most of a local band from
the late 80's and early 90's, but definitely not them). but I guess we hear
what we want from it :)

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> thinking something like xymox or sisters

I would agree with that suggestion more. As in it sounds derivative of those,
not that it could be one of those bands. It definitely suggests "local band"
to me.

Although, what I was thinking of might be the guitar riff at 10-12 seconds in,
not totally unlike this from 1982
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM&feature=youtu.be&t=65)

Again, in the sense of it might be derivative of that. Any kid who had a radio
in 1982 would have heard it.

------
tokamak-teapot
For twenty years I kept daydreaming the melodies and ‘feel’ of a couple of
songs I’d heard at the ends of a cassette tape that had another album (by a
different band) taped over the rest.

I probably heard about 40 seconds of 2 different songs.

I couldn’t remember any lyrics, and couldn’t remember the melodies well enough
to play on an instrument - just the basic way they ‘felt’.

Eventually I heard one of them again and ... well, SoundHound or Shazam
existed by then and saved the day. I’d been hearing part of Big Empty and also
the hidden track from the Stone Temple Pilots’ album Purple.

I understand the need to know!

------
omnibrain
That reminds me of all the obscure stuff DJ Shadow incorporated into his
Boiler Room set, especially for me the song starting at 25:50
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArSb3lCc28&t=1552s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArSb3lCc28&t=1552s)
\- you can understand the whole text very well but google yields nothing.

------
nidhalbt
The easiest way to get the answer to a question on the internet is to post the
wrong answer. Simply record the song with your band and claim it's yours.

If nobody comes up to claim it, then the original authors died, and couldn't
make it to the final recording. You would have to look for bands whose members
died together at the same time.

------
davidpfarrell
Growing up, an impossible to find tune was "I'm old enough to rock and roll"
from Iron Eagle.

I used to hit up the internet a couple times a year trying to find the track.

Finally, Rainy created an official release:

[http://www.raineyonline.com/id17.html](http://www.raineyonline.com/id17.html)

------
exogen
The subreddit dedicated to this song maintains a spreadsheet of possible leads
and sound-alikes.

Personally, the first thing that came to mind when I heard the vocals was Type
O Negative. Sounds a lot like Peter Steele, but I'm sure a lot of vocalists at
the time were going for that style.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> I'm sure a lot of vocalists at the time were going for that style.

Well, that's the thing. It's not identifiably any band that I have heard
before, but it's generically like a lot of them. What's the point of listing
all the influences of this band that didn't make it to the big time?

It sounds familiar because it's derivative of lots of things that were
happening at the time. New bands take a while to find their own voice, so in
the early demos you hear the bands and songs that influenced them. Some (maybe
most) never make it past that.

I can picture it as a band played gigs for a year around their home town, made
a demo or two, one of which got played on local radio and there it is. It's
not in any way uncommon.

------
elldoubleyew
This looks like hoax to me.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
I disagree. it sounds like a real, OK sounding single or demo from some
unknown band in the mid 80s. The fascination with it now is the odd part.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
To be clear, I expect that there were lots of local bands in the mid 80s
playing decent-but-generic songs like this to appreciative local audiences.

Most of them are lost to the mists of time. This one is not. Others here have
said the same in comments: "There are millions of songs like this that are
lost in obscurity. "There are millions of demo tapes and CDs from endless ad-
hoc bands that were never known"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22637580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22637580)

------
nineteen999
I don't know how/why it's listed there, but it is listed now on Shazam as
"Like the Wind" by Antwon01 on Shazam.

------
zimpenfish
Honestly wouldn't surprise me if it eventually turned out to be part of a
long-term ARG for Half Life 3 or something.

------
zw123456
Probably Satoshi Nakamoto :)

------
gjmacd
Article headline is really incorrect, should be "The Most Unremarkable
Mysterious Song on the Internet."

There's a reason why people didn't put their name on it.

