Blast from the Past

Happy Thursday!!! Now if you'll let me, I will share with you, via metaphor, an experience I had late last night.

Pretend that when you were little, there was a girl who lived on your street that you played with quite often. But while you were still of a tender age, this friend up and moved away, leaving you with distinct but limited memories of your grand times together.

Later, when you're an adult, you have a buddy who has on occasion told you stories about this cousin of his. Like about how she's influenced his life and the cool things she's done and whatever. You come to regard this cousin as a pretty remarkable person.

Then one day your cousin says that she's gonna be in town, would you like to meet her? Of course you would, she's like your buddy's hero.

So you walk in the door, not knowing what to expect even though these stories have built her up in your mind (and you're afraid just a little that perhaps it was all talk), and before you can even think about what's happening, the overwhelming certainty hits you that this is not the first time you've met.

You recognize her. You're not meeting her, you're seeing her again. You know her. And suddenly you have the backlog of second hand information plus this new first hand observation tacking onto your distinct yet limited memories because this is the girl you grew up with.

This girl's name, ladies and gentlemen, is Layla.

That would be, of course, Eric Clapton's (of Derek and the Dominos) "Layla." How much have I heard about this song in the past few months, or since Beatlemania hit? Written for/about Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's wife, it comes up, you know? And it's like, Clapton, whose legend looms large to begin with.

I came across this phrase last night: "the unmistakable riff of 'Layla,'" and suddenly wondered just how unmistakable it was. Had I heard it before, perhaps, and just not known who it was by? Would it actually be as great as stuff by Clapton is supposed to be? So I manned up and punched it into youtube and in the first second of the song I literally gasped. I knew that riff.

Another story. My brother had a silly old Mac (although at the time certainly it was in its prime), upon which were a number of silly old computer games. The best one, was, of course, Tetris. (It also had Welltris, which was like, Soviet themed 3D Tetris)

I played this Tetris quite a bit, back before I was better than my brother at it. At certain line amounts you would go up a level, the background would change, and things would speed up a notch. I remember level 5 or 6 was blue and very pretty, but a highly rare sight. Part of why I play Tetris so fast is because in this version, if you weren't pressing on the down arrow when the piece landed, you didn't get any points. So I always send my pieces straight to the bottom, or else I feel like the move wasn't worth it.

But the best part about this Tetris, however, was its soundtrack. There was a loop, probably only two, three minutes at the most, made up of a bunch of audio clips. My brother had constructed this loop, through what means remains a mystery, but every time you played Tetris, this is what you heard.

There was a whole section of background music from the anime Ranma 1/2, which was always my favorite section. I think included in there was a portion of the gamelan riff of Tetsuo's theme from Akira (the part you hear whenever they're looking at Tetsuo's readout in the movie. I had a similar Layla experience when I saw Akira for the first time.) At some point everything stopped and John Cleese announced, "And now for something completely different."

There was another Monty Python clip in there, from Holy Grail, (in the video at 1:21). And I know the riff from Sweet Home Alabama featured...maybe it was even the initial clip? I feel like I'm missing some others, but these are the ones that still stand out.

Those, and, as you may have guessed by now, the opening riff from Layla. So, yes, I suppose that it IS that unmistakable. But it's also got this insane little, um, what to call it....it's near to my heart, but only for the reason that it was liked by my 15 year old brother enough to be included in a medley to play Tetris by.

If there's any that you remember putting in there, Kevin, do share. I miss that game so much. That computer's long since been thrown away. :<

Speaking of memory lane, we were searching down old kids shows of which we had vague recollections, the crown jewel of them all being this fine video. Yeah. I watched that in my formative years. Oh, the 90s, what have you done to us?!

Segue. You know how history is so awesome? Like things happen, which cause other things to happen and then everything works out in one specific way? This is also of interest when it comes to story telling, but with history it's so much more epic. Imagine this:

If a boy named Klaus Voorman had not met a girl named Astrid Kirchherr, the Beatles as we know them would not exist.

Because, if he had not known her, then, after tracking down the source of rock 'n roll music echoing into the Reeperbahn, he would not have invited her to go with him next time. Then she would not have met Stu--Stu would not have met them! The French existentialist haircut would not be introduced and re-introduced to the lads from Liverpool, or to the world a few years later. Maybe Stu would have stayed with the band instead of leaving--maybe they would have been more affected by his death or maybe he wouldn't have died at all! In either case, the musical tension between Paul and Stu would have kept up.......................

Things would have been different--the WORLD would have been different, had two German youngsters not met. Crazy. Everyone has a place in the puzzle, no?

-Steph