What Did We Do Before the Internet?

I have always had a thirst for knowledge. Granted, it isn’t the kind of knowledge that can be transformed into practical use, such as accounting or automobile repair. No, I refer to finding answers to such trivial questions such as “Who sang that song?” and “Why do dogs walk around in a circle before lying down?” The beauty of the Internet is that I present such a query to a vast number of readers who can deliver the answer quickly and efficiently. I wish it had been around when I was a kid. But as an adult, I use the Internet continuously as a way to enjoy the instant satisfaction of finding out (a) What that movie was called, (b) Who that singer was in that one band who had the song about the Fox on the Run, (c) Where Oxnard is, (d) Why the moon goes through phases, etc.

For the last week or so, I have had a melody rattling around in my mind. I have known this song from infancy. Yet I realized I had no idea what it was called, and because I have only known it as an instrumental, I’ve had to hum it to all my friends. To my surprise, only a few people could even recognize the melody, and nobody knew what it was. So I got my Casio keyboard and recorded a very crude version of it:

http://members.aol.com/brettster/mysterysong.wav

Then I posted that link to a real “think tank” forum on Usenet, and in a few short hours, somebody came up with the title. It’s a Civil War-era tune known variously as “Kingdom Coming” or “Year of Jubilo,” written by Henry C. Work. The one remaining conundrum is: why do we all know it? Was it used in cartoons, or a TV show? Or were we just exposed to it in our elementary school music classes? There are some mysteries that even the Internet can’t shed light on.

Here is a much better clip of the song:

http://www.33rdband.org/sounds/kingdom.mp3

How has the Internet directly affected your life?