Timbuk 3---The Future's So Bright

When I attended college, I majored in History and minored in English. I had close to a minor in Music, too. I still knew a good number of science types, and being in their orbit was...broadening. They tended to be casual about certain details. But they knew what they liked.

When Timbuktu 3 released The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades, it was supposed to be a grim warning of impending nuclear holocaust. But no one understood that; instead, people decided it was about youthful exuberance and having big plans. It was about looking at a great future. Certainly the physics students I knew loved it. The song described their lives. They had at least one crazy teacher who would get tired of sitting in the classroom, and move the class to the local student hangout. He paid for a blackboard to be installed there, and my husband would eat steak fries and learn physics.These men and women understood the song. They looked forward to good jobs that paid well. The world needed to look out, because they were coming and they were going to unleash all that knowledge to help everyone. The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades was their theme song.

Why Timbuk 3 believed their song would sound grim to a generation that enjoyed the movie Revenge of the Nerds and Thomas Dolby's song She Blinded Me With Science mystifies me. We sang it, we played it, and we turned it up when it was on the radio. My husband and I still sing it and remember when he was in grad school. Our future was bright then and stays bright today.