It's All Over Now
How Encarta Encyclopedia '96 Changed My Life
In interviews people often ask me what my earliest musical influences were. I always give some rote answer - Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Beatles? - and bore myself. But there’s something I had forgotten until recently. It was an experience with music that was formative in such a deep way it had become embedded in my being and so I had overlooked it for years. It was Encarta Encyclopedia ‘96. This was a CD-ROM that came with our Microsoft desktop computer.
This program included thousands of articles, an interactive map, a brain game called Mind Maze, and a collection of 1 minute live music video clips. This collection was what my brother and I studied day after day after day. I was 9 and he was 7.
I’ve tried looking up information to jog my memory regarding this list of artists, but I can find no sign that it even existed anywhere on the internet. So this leaves me with my strange and selective 9 year old self’s memory. Which is maybe more interesting anyway.
This is a list of all the artists I can remember - ABBA, Pete Seeger, Soundgarden, Bob Dylan, Andrews Sisters, Annie Lennox, Patti Smith, Eric Clapton, Tom Waits,
Iggy Pop, ZZ Top, Sam & Dave, The Chordettes.
Who chose these artists? Bill Gates? It seems so random now looking back.
And the ones I remember aren’t necessarily the best ones. I remember them because they were either good, outrageous, or just downright bad.
Except for this one that may have changed the trajectory of my life.
It was a black and white close-up of Bob Dylan singing 30 seconds of “It’s all Over Now Baby Blue”. The knowing, smirking, haughty, boyish tilt of his head and punctuating nods as he delivered the line “yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun,” just slayed me. I don’t think I knew what sexy was, but I was utterly magicked this figure, by that look, by his weird nasal pronunciation of “gun” & “fire.” I studied him. And I remember an acute pain, an ache in my heart from knowing I would never know him. For all I knew, he was dead. And if I couldn’t know him, I wanted to be like him, to do what he did that felt like magic.
Years later I saw the full video clip in Don’t Look Back. Dylan and Donovan are in a hotel room. Donovan plays a pretty lame song. His chorus, “I’ll sing a song for you, that’s what I’m here to do, to sing for you,” is mostly embarrassing in anticipation of whatever Bob has up his sleeve. Dylan is jittering in his chair waiting for Donovan to hand over the guitar. He’s like a racehorse behind the gate. In his mind he’s already left everyone else behind in the dust.
He takes the guitar, transcends the out of tune strings, & proceeds to blow every person present away with “It’s All Over Now.” The context explains his swagger in that clip I watched as an 9 year old. And only works to solidify Bob Dylan as first beloved in my heart.
Some other key artists and performances from Encarta Encyclopedia were:
Iggy Pop - I wanna Be Your Dog
This one my brother and I could. not. believe. You could be on television with a song about wanting to be a dog. The little hop, hip squiggle at the end was the true coup de grâce.
Andrews Sisters - Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy
Phony military propaganda. We must have sensed it even as kids - they were like cheesy children’s teachers - I think the only reason I kept watching was because the one on the left looked so much like my Aunt Liz I thought it could have been her.
Tom Waits - Burma Shave - This line was oft-quoted by us “baby I’ve always been a sucker for fellows who wears a cowboy hat” His voice. How. Was he joking? And the jazz music accompaniment just added to the absurdity. And has potentially contributed to my lifelong aversion to jazzy bass.
Eric Clapton - I Shot the Sheriff - I feel my reaction to this one as an 8 year old really fortifies my current self-perception of being a discerning music listener. This just seemed off. It was bland, blah…inauthentic? For what this lacked in soul I guess they were trying to make up for by the 20 people onstage. Maybe I just knew there was no way this white guy who looked like an accountant knew anything about being tracked down or shooting a sheriff.
Sam & Dave - Soul Man - Just obviously great.
Patti Smith - Because The Night - I remember thinking her vocal affect was strange, but the build up and kicking in of the chorus was undeniable.
The Chordettes - Lollipop - This inspired us to learn how to do that finger in the cheek popping sound that the dapper man does. Also, weirdly I just remember how grumpy the woman on the far right seemed compared to the others.
Pete Seeger - Little Boxes - Profoundly nerdy. Now that I understand what the song is about and the commentary on societal conformity I feel bad about such a brash and damning label.
This exploration into music was my first act of musical discernment. I had visceral reactions to these artists in a way that my adult self might curb due to learning the “greatness” of this one or that. But also, it reveals a child’s taste. What embarrassed me then I might find radical now. What I found captivating then, might make me cringe now. But perhaps the biggest lesson was that these people were free to be themselves. To do weird things with their voices, wear wild clothes, or no shirts at all, for men to wear makeup and women to lead a band of men. And they were obviously famous for it.
I’m pretty sure everyone thinks that things were better when they were young. For me, Encarta Encyclopedia ‘96 is one of those things. Not because it had the most extensive musical library of the greatest artists of all time, but because it was a physical item that fate placed in my lap. It contained just enough to light my child’s mind up, but not so much that it rendered me paralyzed with options (ie. youtube, netflix, the internet.) As someone who didn’t have cable TV, had probably never seen a music video before, this disk was a revelation. The nature of my limited media access at the time enabled me to suck the select contents of this random CD-ROM dry. And I believe the time I spent studying these artists, whether I liked them or not, planted a quiet hope that maybe someday I too could become a performer with my own peculiar way.
Love this- reminds me of how little media my sister and I had growing up, so the media we did was so special! My grandpa had all of pinks albums so we were raised with her in a way haha
That's such a great memory. Music or film stuff like that can really hit you when you're young and your brain is super receptive. I saw the Subterranean Homesick Blues film with the cardboard signs when I was kid and thought Dylan was the coolest person ever.. (way back in the days when the family tv was a small black & white thing!).