When I was 15, my family took a trip to the UK. I was pretty obsessed with the country since my two favorite things in the world — my Commodore 64, and later my Amiga — were actually celebrated there. I would buy import British computer magazines (at Rich’s Cigar, still do) and pore over them infinitely at the dinner table.
One of my favorite things to do on my Amiga was write music in trackers, a unique, note-by-note way to write tunes that was half-music, half-programming.
When in England, I requested a stop: the offices of CU Amiga magazine. We showed up and rang the buzzer and someone thoughtfully let us in and we sat around a table and talked — 15-year-old me, my Dad (thanks Dad), and the magazine’s technical editor, Mat Broomfield. Eventually, I pulled out a disk with one of my Amiga songs I’d written, just to share.
Mat surprised me: “Hey, how about we make this the tune of the month, and put it on the next cover disk!”. I was thrilled. And nervous. (The song was unfinished.)
They mentioned something about a free subscription to the magazine (it never showed), and I never saw the actual issue itself (importing was spotty), so I assumed it just never came together, and eventually forgot about it.
Until last year. It all came flooding back. Did I dream this? I nervously Googled.
There it was, thanks to the internet: the September ’91 issue coverdisk.
I quickly found and bought a DVD of every issue of CU Amiga. It really happened:
Then, Cut to Yesterday
Rob Beschizza, out of Boing Boing, read my post about The Incident music:
https://twitter.com/Beschizza/status/268396821976588289https://twitter.com/Beschizza/status/268473218480885761@Beschizza It is totally true. The internet remembers all. Tune of the month! It's not a good song. 🙂 http://t.co/8Ecpe1cH
— Cabel (@cabel) November 13, 2012
https://twitter.com/Beschizza/status/268474453757927424@Beschizza Bloody hell, that's it. The flute was from Beast. You might be the only other person on earth who's heard this song. AMAZING.
— Cabel (@cabel) November 13, 2012
To summarize: not only did the magazine actually publish my dumb song, but a 13-year-old Rob Beschizza remixed it, and as internet pals we had no idea until yesterday that we shared this connection.
You’re pretty cool, universe.
(For the curious, here’s the song on SoundCloud, and the original mod. I’m warning you: it’s not good. The middle portion is wholesale ripped off from the TurboGrafx game Ys, and I have no idea why it goes all Russian at the end, I think I got bored. But, it’s now a piece of personal history.)
Finally, Consider This Postscript
Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic, and I met because I was looking for the ProTracker software used to write this Amiga music, and he had a copy. Were it not for Amiga mod music, Panic would not exist.
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