Songs: Hey Hey 64K

notes / gigs / releases

We bought it to help with your homework
We bought it to help with your homework
And the household accounts
If your Dad ever works it all out

Fighting in the playground for
The glory of C64
Shouting out in praise of its
16 Colour Sprite Graphics
And the One Five Three Zero C2N

SHIFT and RUN/STOP, LOAD RETURN
Wizball and Uridium
Way Of The Exploding Fist
Attack Of The Mutant Camels
The Bard's Tale and Pitstop and Elite (and your Mother said)

We bought it to help with your homework
We bought it to help with your homework
And the household accounts
If your Dad ever works it all out

Thumping from the SID
The Lost Ninja Trilogy
Inspired us to write our own
Songs and then our own games with
The help of Simon's Basic

Armalyte and Creatures 2
Said that we could do it too
All you need's a new idea
Punk for kids who felt left out
Here's three functions now form a software house

These bedroom revolutionaries, they called us geeky kids
Were learning new technologies that did not yet exist
And though we may seem retro when we talk about the past
It's good to know where you came from when the future's coming fast
And our time is here at last!

Hey Hey 64k
Got us where we are today
Twice as much memory as on Apollo
To plot our course into tomorrow

Hey Hey 64k
Got us where we are today
We found our forte's on computers
And that's our passport to the future

FOR N=0 TO 2
? "These Are The Days"
NEXT N

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

In early 2006 I got a call from a company who were bringing a replica of a Kempston Competition Pro style joystick that came ready loaded with hundreds of ZX Spectrum games which you could plug into your telly and play straight away. He'd just seen the Hey Hey 16K video, and was excited by the possibility of using it to promote his product. He said he could help us to make the video into a "viral". "I'm sure people would pass it on to each other - you could have thousands of people watching it!"

It was very nice of him to suggest it, and I felt a bit mean having to tell him that, actually, that had already happened and several million people had already watched it, but he still seemed keen so I agreed to meet with him to talk about it. I got Mr Rob Manuel to come along, as he has a lot more experience in this sort of thing than I do, and also because I thought this might be a way of getting some CA$H in, to finally be able to pay him for all the time he'd spend making the video in the first place.

We had a meeting which went rather well, but I still felt a bit bad about re-doing Hey Hey 16K in this way, as it felt that I was cashing in all the goodwill and fun we'd got from it's original release, just for the sake of a few quid. Thus I suggested that, rather than just re-release it, we use this as an opportunity to update the whole idea and do a sort of sequel instead. Everybody seemed quite keen so I went home and spent the weekend writing Hey Hey 64K instead. I was quite pleased with how it worked out, as I felt I'd got something NEW out if.

Before I took it back to the Joystick Guy I spoke to the mighty Mr John Esplen, our publisher, who said to be careful what we agreed to. "Often in these cases" he told me "they'll claim there's no money to pay for music, and they'll expect you to do it for free." Later that day Rob said almost exactly the same thing, so it wasn't really too much of a surprise when I was told that we'd be expected to record the song at our own expense, that Rob would be spending several days working for free, and that we would benefit from the "exposure" the song would received. As I say, we'd already HAD more exposure than we knew what to do with, so it was with some relief that we drew a veil over the whole affair, with our integrity largely intact.

Still, me and Rob had our dander up for another collaboration and thus The Gay Train video was born, which was a whole lot of other fun!