Monday night I was watching one of those puff pastry celebrity wankfest biographies on the Osbourne’s. When it got to the bit about Crazy Train I smiled.
When I started at GoTo in autumn 1999 we were the tiny little ugly stepsister of the Internet, AltaVista was the king of search engines and Google wasn’t a verb yet.
We were something like 200 employees with all that crazy dotcom energy flying around and every Friday at 5PM someone would blast Crazy Train. I heard it all began a few months before I started by a developer fueled by too much caffeine and frustration at code.
For years the tradition continued even after Yahoo! bought us. It was a great way to say “Fuck, yeah! It’s Friday!” There were times however it was problematic if you happened to be on the phone with a customer.
“What’s all that noise?”
“Er. . . That’s Ozzy Osbourne sir.”
“Sounds like you’re having a party.”
In a way we were. We were having a party. And all good things must come to an end. When I left two years ago there was no Ozzy on my floor. I don’t know if there are still subversive pockets of it there or not.
Last night I was at work late and I downloaded it. First few bars of that guitar riff I grinned to myself at the sense memory.
EYEE!EYEE!EYEE!
