Friday Night Video - Buddy Holly

Twenty years ago this month, we got our first "modern" computer. These things are a continuum, of course, but jumping from a 1992-era machine to a 1997-era machine was a gigantic leap forward, and it felt like the greatest thing in the world. (You know, for six months or so, until we started buying lots of upgrades)

One of the things that came bundled with the computer was the Windows 95 disc, and since software was so small back then, they used a lot of the space on the disc to show off cutting-edge new multimedia options. One of these was a silly little capture the flag game with 3D hovercraft, which was a bit dated by 1997, but still kind of fun. The one that really caught my eye, and my brother's, was the music videos included. One was something poppy and boring, but one was this week's song. I had never heard of these guys, and I wasn't yet listening to modern music, watching MuchMusic, or anything like that, so it kind of came out of left field. Heck, I'd never even heard of Happy Days. But it was a great tune, and we blasted it as loud as those tinny little speakers would allow, over and over, whenever we could get away with it. Fun times.

I didn't find out until like a decade later that this was the actual music video for the song - I always thought it was an oddball they threw together for the Windows 95 CD. I clearly underestimated their ability to use music videos as a tool for maximizing the number of cultural references that can be fit into a 4-minute period.