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Silicon Pan Valley: "The Apple Boogie"
Delving through the Internet Archive (although motivated by the worry the court case now under way it’s caught in will shut the site down or at least purge great swathes of content from it), I came across a collection of audio files sourced from old cassette tapes. At first glance nothing really managed to catch my eye, but as I scrolled down I did happen to notice something called “The Apple Boogie,” with a case cover in “Garamond Narrow.” Taking a closer look I realised the tape must have been songs played at “Apple events” in the 1980s; two of them I’d even known about before. A few amused thoughts of “IBM company songs” came to mind.
Once I’d listened to it, though, I did have something of a reaction like “1980s pop, but not good 1980s pop.” Songs recorded for internal use by a single company perhaps shouldn’t be judged by conventional standards, and yet I did have a few thoughts to the effect of “had this tape been widely known, it just might have wound up an unintentional weapon in ‘platform wars’” and “and was Microsoft, say, focused on more important things at the time (before it spent a grand sum on rights to ‘Start Me Up’ in the next decade, anyway?)”
So far as the two songs I’d known about before, the Ghostbusters theme still sounded catchy as “Blue Busters” for all that I was aware of the whole “alas, the original Macintosh was a low-powered challenger when it came to ‘getting on every corporate desk in America’” judgement of posterity. (That songs from the “Steve Jobs and John Sculley era,” including one that mentioned “insanely great,” were stil being offered in the “John Sculley era” did get my attention, though.) “Apple II Forever,” although mislabeled on the Archive, appears to have raised unwarranted hopes among Apple II users that would start to really sour not that long after this tape was made. Still, perhaps it does transcend the generic boosterism of a number of the other songs.
Once I’d listened to it, though, I did have something of a reaction like “1980s pop, but not good 1980s pop.” Songs recorded for internal use by a single company perhaps shouldn’t be judged by conventional standards, and yet I did have a few thoughts to the effect of “had this tape been widely known, it just might have wound up an unintentional weapon in ‘platform wars’” and “and was Microsoft, say, focused on more important things at the time (before it spent a grand sum on rights to ‘Start Me Up’ in the next decade, anyway?)”
So far as the two songs I’d known about before, the Ghostbusters theme still sounded catchy as “Blue Busters” for all that I was aware of the whole “alas, the original Macintosh was a low-powered challenger when it came to ‘getting on every corporate desk in America’” judgement of posterity. (That songs from the “Steve Jobs and John Sculley era,” including one that mentioned “insanely great,” were stil being offered in the “John Sculley era” did get my attention, though.) “Apple II Forever,” although mislabeled on the Archive, appears to have raised unwarranted hopes among Apple II users that would start to really sour not that long after this tape was made. Still, perhaps it does transcend the generic boosterism of a number of the other songs.