Remember when ambient music was Enya and the X-Files theme song, and you could get your favorite mood music from a 1-800 number, instead of streaming it straight to your phone? Remember when my mom actually listened to this on a semi-regular basis, but always skipped the X-Files song, even though it was the only one I cared for, because that show was cool? Good times.

I didn't remember that the Twin Peaks theme was on here, though. I think they missed the irony of those soothing dulcet tones from northern Washington?

Fuck "Tubular Bells" though. Read the rest

Twenty-five years ago, three grand could buy you a sweet desktop computer, complete with 8MB (not GB) of RAM.

In 2017, Gilbert Arciniega posted this home movie from June 1995 of his family opening that $3,000 computer, with the caption:

This is a computer my brother decided to buy back in 1995. As he had always wanted one. VERY EXPENSIVE back in this day! It was a Compaq Presario CDS. He went to Good Guys to buy it. I think it had 75 mhz and 8 mb ram. And a CD rom drive. I do remember he said he paid about $250 for the printer! And $500 for the monitor.

Talk about a time capsule!

(Digg)

screenshot via Gilbert Arciniega/YouTube Read the rest

YouTuber thepeterson makes video montages that pull together clips from pop culture days of yore, highlighting what movies and TV shows the masses were watching, what they were listening to on the radio, and what video games they were playing. In the latest one, June 1998 is put into the spotlight. Prepare to take a (possibly nostalgic) trip down memory lane to see what was "in" twenty years ago this month.

(Tastefully Offensive) Read the rest

Here's a gem from 1999: This is a self-aware Scooby-Doo-themed parody of the popular low-budget "found footage" horror flick, The Blair Witch Project.

It's called The Scooby-Doo Project and those meddling kids at Cartoon Network got away with it too.

In 2016, Paste reported this:

The Scooby-Doo Project. The odds are good that, even if you are a huge Adult Swim fan, you are hearing about this for the first time. It aired, it would seem, one day only, on Halloween in 1999. The special debuted in chunks spread out during commercial breaks of a Scooby-Doo marathon, before airing in its entirety at the end of the marathon. And yet, in spite of these humble beginnings, what we have in The Scooby-Doo Project is essentially an Adult Swim show that aired two years before Adult Swim debuted.

Scooby Doo would eventually feature in the Adult Swim lineup, when the gang appeared in an episode of Harvey Birdman. The joke was that Scooby and crew were arrested for marijuana possession, and were being defended by Harvey. The plot, of course, is based on a longstanding joke that presupposes these kids and their dog were bigtime stoners.

Another project that came out in 1999 was The Blair Witch Project, so you probably know by now where this whole thing is going. Blair Witch was a huge cultural phenomenon when it came out, but it has largely been forgotten now. Still, the film was important and influential in its own way, because it was a super cheap found footage horror movie that turned a huge profit.

Ready to feel really old? In this React video, a group of older teens -- they all seem to have been born right around the year 2000 -- put on headphones to listen to select music from the 1990s. Their task is to guess the song's title and the artist behind it. It surprised me a little that more of them knew Los Del Rio's "Macarena" than Alanis Morissette's "Ironic." (Though, honestly, I didn't recognize all the songs either and I lived through the 90s.) Read the rest

YouTube channel Squirrel Monkey has imagined what it would be like to stream movies through Netflix on a 56K modem in 1995. It's a hoot, whether you lived through the ancient days of early computing or not.

Previously: If Siri existed in the 1980s Read the rest

Looking remarkably like the Mogwai creatures from the 1984 film Gremlins, Furbies first hit the market in November 1998, becoming an instant success. In just the first three years of production, over 40M of these fake fur-covered robotic toys were sold. Since their early days, the Furby has been re-introduced a few times.

That means there are a lot of Furbies collecting dust on this planet.

Well, musician and inventor Sam Battle of Look Mum No Computer salvaged over 44 of them and attached them to an organ. Watch the video to hear a cacophony of "Furbish" music (?).

I won't lie, as noisy as it is, I totally want a Furby Organ for myself. Read the rest

Between 1988 and 1990, Tacoma musician John Purkey says Kurt Cobain gave him demo tapes. Now, he's shared those early Nirvana cassettes on YouTube.

Spin reports:

One tape includes Bleach demos recorded during the band’s first ever session in 1988 at Reciprocal Studios in Seattle, with Melvins drummer Dale Crover on the drums. Another features Nevermind demos recorded with Crover’s short-lived replacement Chad Channing, who left the band during the making of the project and was replaced by Dave Grohl.

The audio is raw, and many of the demos have seen the light of day via the numerous Nirvana compilations released after Cobain’s death, but the collection and backstory is interesting. Purkey played in several Tacoma bands during Nirvana’s early years and watched the band develop from scratch. He kept the cassettes in a metal box, hidden inside a second metal box, for years, he says in an accompanying video.

(Dazed) Read the rest

Things have been turned upside down (see what I did there?) in the world of Stranger Things as the good folks at Bad Lip Reading have dubbed over original scenes from the show and created a funny sitcom version of it (Wonder Years, anyone?). It's 18 minutes long and worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of the popular Netflix series.

(Neatorama)

Previously: Watch this Bad Lip Reading of Trump's inauguration day Read the rest

Vanilla Ice's legacy lives on through the Game of Thrones cast as they "sing" a portion of his 1990 rap hit, "Ice Ice Baby." This music video is apparently a promotion for the show by TV channel Sky Atlantic.

And, what the heck, here's the original music video for comparison/amusement sake:

(reddit) Read the rest

When artist and pop star David Bowie launched an Internet service provider firm in the heady dot-com runup days of 1998, a guy named Ron Roy helped Bowie run the ISP. Days after the music icon's death from cancer at age 69, Ars Technica interviews Roy about how "BowieNet" came to life, and why Bowie wanted to be in the ISP business in the first place. Read the rest