Friday, July 18, 2014

The GIGO Effect 1983

I found this among some other papers at an estate sale a while back.  The cheesy computer image on the cover caught my eye along with the fact that it dates from the earlier days of home computers.



It turns out it's sheet music along with a short play.


It's been too long since I've read sheet music to know what the song sounds like, but the lyrics are pretty bad.

Oddly, this music was originally copyrighted 1910 (unless that's a glitch, yuk, yuk, yuk.).  Most etymology sites point to 1962 as the earliest use of "glitch".

 "GIGO" of course, stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out" in reference to bad data into a computer will result in bad output.  And I think you'll allow that this sheet music proves that point.

20 comments:

  1. Had the announcer role in this play in the 6th grade ... thanks for the memory.

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  2. Oh wow! I was in the choir of this musical in 1983, 8th grade. It was the first year of this play, and I remember how none of us new what computers really were, apart from sci-fi movies. Very trippyz

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  3. I found a video of this play on youtube.. it brigns back so many memories.. https://youtu.be/pMu4S7jCnDA

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  4. I was in this play in grade school and still find myself singing "Garbage In, Garbage Out" every once in a while...Miss Rogers was our music teacher...one of my favorites! Thanks for the memory!

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    1. I don't know why. But the song from this play just popped into my head. Found your blog page googling it. We did this play in 5th grade, which I'm guessing would have been about 1984/5. Lol Fun memories! 🙂

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    2. Glad to bring back some fun memories, Lita. Thanks for stopping by!

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  5. I was in this play in grade school and still find myself singing "Garbage In, Garbage Out" every once in a while...Miss Rogers was our music teacher...one of my favorites! Thanks for the memory!

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  6. I was Mr. Rocks in our 5th grade rendition of this masterpiece!

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  7. The fifth grade at MacArthur Elementary, Mesa, Arizona,put on this play in 1985. I remember thinking it was pretty bad as a kid, my mom agreeing after the show, but can still remember a few bars of the music here and there. Thanks for sharing!

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  8. I had one of the leads in this musical in 5th grade(1983-84ish). Sadly I didn't parlay that into the promising career my family hoped for after I dazzled as Steve in this gem.

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  9. I was just talking about this with my coworkers after showing one of them how to program in Excel! I still remember the chorus of "garbage in, garbage out, that's what memory's all about". I think that was 5th grade, around 1992-93.

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  10. We did this one at Riker Hill Elementary in Livingston, NJ, when I was in 4th grade, so 1991 if it was spring. I always remember a snippet from the opening song, "...Wang and Commodore / Plus Hewlett Packard, Zenith, Heath, and maybe hundreds (?) more." Also some of the punchlines from the French song: "He's stolen six million this year!" and something like "You look like you just came in from a storm." This would have been three years before I actually started studying French. The next year, we did a musical where we were all personifications of weather. I think I played one of Sammy Solar's assistants.

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  11. Can you scan the rest of the pages?
    I'd love to see the rest...

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    1. When I come across it again, I will scan the remaining pages and post. I still have it somewhere.

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  12. I needed a suit for my role, and as Mom was a solo parent, I had to wear that three-piece, pin-striped suit (from BurlingtonCoatFactory) for every formal function for the next two years [1983-1985]. It may be part of the reason for going all MiamiVice after I outgrew that suit, which almost certainly contributed to my disdain for socks.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, James, and thanks for sharing the memory.

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