365 DAYS PROJECT

2003   JANUARY 12   #012

Michael Mills - Hidden & Satanic Messages In Rock Music

This 1981 Christian radio show (with host Michael Mills) exposes the threat of secret messages in your Rock and Roll! During the 45 minute radio show he covers a ton of artists... I'm playing 4 of my favorite segments on... Led Zeppelin, Kiss, The Beatles and Queen. Burn your records! Repent!

- Otis Fodder

TT-9:51 / 9.03MB / 128kbps 44.1khz
from 1981 Christian radio show

Michael Egan writes:
This brings back memories for me, as Battle Creek, MI is my home town and I remember Mr. Mills and his absurd crusade against rock music. He also claimed that Santana was a satanic reference, that Strawberry Fields Forever was about shooting heroin and all sorts of preposterous things. He got uncritical coverage in the B.C. Shopper and the Battle Creek Enquirer and News, citing all sorts of "facts". I wrote a 5 page letter to the latter paper, pointing out the many errors and unwarranted assumptions he made and they printed it in full. After that, he was a "prophet without honor" in Battle Creek and the paper refrained from covering anymore of his crusade. About a year later, he moved and I haven't heard anything more of him until today, when I checked your page for more "outsider" mp3s. It was the most religious fun we'd had in Battle Creek since a preacher in Pennfield got his parishioners to dump their TV sets in the church parking lot and start a bonfire with them, earning the disapproval of the township fire marshall. That happened in the late 60s - BC has advanced somewhat since then.

Charlie Lewis writes:
Years ago my missus worked at a psychiatric residential home where one of the patients told her how the government was communicating to her (the patient) through the NY Times -- and would proceed to show her underlined words picked out from throughout the paper that added up to these "secret messages." How is that crazier than Mr. Mills manually turning those records backwards, interpreting them as he wants (I sure don't hear the words he does), and then assembling little snippets of them in an order that suits his purposes? Why wasn't he locked up? Why did anyone ever listen to him? I think American parents, then as now (when they try to blame the metal bands their kids listen to before killing themselves or their peers), would much rather find some external evil to blame than look at themselves or society to try to understand their children. Very scary and sad. You'd think that by 1981, especially after the Beatles had been sanitized and sanctified by the likes of Tony Randall and Anthony Newley on network television, guys like this would have left the Beatles alone!

Peggy Sartoris-Belaqua writes:
I loved the way he unintentionally fucked with one of the recordings (Queen?) so that he could play it backward and forward for you. Do you think he went on to pursue a career as a dj? I know that I must be filled with the spirit of Satan, as I never quite hear what the evangelists seem to hear... I thought the Beatles were saying something about 'early deadmen,' and I thought Led Zeppelin said something about 'certain,' not 'Satan.' Well, I must go; no rest for the wicked.

Monica writes:
Had to say thanks (?) for taking me back to my middle school days with your track Michael Mills - Hidden & Satanic Messages In Rock Music, that's when I went to a Lutheran school and I'm pretty sure came Michael Mills to speak. Even my middle school mind was able to realize this guy was full of crap. I remember one of my teachers coming in to class the next day and saying how she threw out all her sons Olivia Newton John albums (mike mills discussed the carnal messages of ms. john in his talk with us- ha!), good god, (no pun intended).

Peggy Sartoris-Belaqua writes:
Last weekend I was playing around with the iTunes program on this computer and decided to convert some mp3s to aifs and make a 'regular' cdr, just to see what would happen. And they all came out fine -- except for Mills' track, which had these strange bleed-through blips of other tracks or something. Maybe Satan has figured out that backmasking isn't working all that well anymore. Anyway, I thought it was amusing and appropriate that Michael Mills' Hidden & Satanic Messages is the track that got 'corrupted.'