This morning I finally figured out the second part of a question that has been in my mind for two decades. It is a question that would pop into my head and I would either immediately forget about it or make an attempt to find the answer, never with any luck. It isn’t even really a question, rather I just wanted to know the name of one dance/electronic piece of music back in some club in 1998; then an additional thought came to mind several years later as I tried to find the song.
In the club there was one particular song that really blew the roof off the place. It wasn’t particularly popular with the mainstream but the best clubs with DJs who were on top of really great music would always play it. It is a song that if mentioned, or even played today would not be recognized, even by people who frequented clubs back in 1998.
Anyway, I really liked this song and as we didn’t have smartphones back in 1998 I couldn’t just “Shazam” it and most DJs were too cool to be bothered by a regular patron wanting to know the name of the song.
Then the internet became mainstream and grew from something only found on college campuses and geeky households to something for the masses. I’d been fascinated with computers since our first computer, the Apple IIC back in 1993 and the explosive growth of the internet created an entire virtual world to get lost in and explore.
So what does this have to do with music and video games? Well, I really liked looking up things from my past on the internet, kind of like an archeologist of my own life: places, video games, pictures, friends and yes music where all things to be rediscovered through the internet! So I set out to find that song I could never identify by searching one the web. But not having a clue as to what it was called and only a flicker of a beat in my mind I didn’t have much to go on. I’d catch that flicker, forget it, catch it again months later and try my hardest to keep in in mind while I tried to find the song on the internet. Then the thought came to me that it kind of sounded like the music when you have to jump over the savages in the Atari 2600 game *Pitfall* (asterisk there for a reason).
But until this morning I couldn’t find the ‘savages’ from *Pitfall* on the internet no matter how many times I searched! So now I have two questions:
- What is the name of the song in the club?
- Why can’t I find any reference, let alone music, to the savages in *Pitfall?*
Well, four years ago I sat down and was determined to spend as many hours as it took to find the song. I went through tons of music, one link leading to another until I was very deep into some dark corner of the internet. I was racking my brain trying to find any keyword that might apply, typing in: euro, dance, electornica, 1998, clubs, atari, savages, Pitfall, music, DJ and on and on and on. I must have been searching for three or four hours and then….. on February 10th, 2013, there it was – a full 15 years after I had first heard it and wanted to know its name – there it was, in some deep, dark, forgotten corner of the World Wide Web.
Camisra – Let me show you
It was even more difficult to find because the beat I was looking for didn’t happen until four minutes into the song!!! So I might have even come across this song a couple of times and went right over it. Luckily I backtracked and started listening to the middle of songs. I was so ecstatic I even wrote a Facebook post about it – which gained very little interest because as I said, not many would remember it and it seems people forget the past very quickly anyway.
So I had found the song but I still didn’t understand why I now couldn’t find the ‘savages’ music from Pitfall. Again the question would pop into my mind over the years and I’d either let it drift out of my head or spend a few minutes searching, never being successful.
This morning however, I decided to download some gaming music from a really excellent gaming music site and sure enough the question about the ‘savages’ music popped into my head again. I searched and searched different websites but as before I didn’t have any luck until I read an article about a follow up game called Jungle Hunt which was created due to the popularity of Atari’s Pitfall
JUNGLE HUNT!!!!!!!!!
It wasn’t *Pitfall* that had the savages it was Jungle Hunt!!! I had totally forgotten about Jungle Hunt! This was a game I had played for hours on end but as childhood faded further and further from my memory as the years passed I had forgotten Jungle Hunt and merged it into my mind as being Pitfall.
So I searched for Jungle Hunt and sure enough, there was the music I thought had sounded like the beat in Camisra’s song.
And so, on April 2nd, 2017 I’ve finally solved an unimportant, but extremely persistent question(s) that have come and gone from my mind over two decades. I am happy.
