I was in a waiting room the other day, when a song played that I hadn’t heard since I can’t remember… One of those moments that causes you to drop what you are doing and really hone in on the tune… When was the last time I heard this? How could I not know it? How could it have been so long since the last time that I’ve heard it? And how was I going to figure it out what it was? In most circumstances, one could just ‘google’ some of the lyrics to find it, but this was an instrumental! Was I going to have to download a special app for my phone and attempt to hum it out? I gave serious consideration to asking a group of people nearby about it, but I just couldn’t go through it… “Excuse me everyone, sorry to interrupt; but does one of you happen to know the name of this song that’s playing right now? Thanks!”

I tried to retain the memory as best I could, but I was having trouble holding on to it. To make matters worse, I began to confuse it with a similar sounding song by a somewhat obscure trip-hop artist I discovered on Pandora. A sort of cinematic-orchestra meets samurai Wu-Tang? Like a DJ in my own head, one song began to blend and blur into the other. But what was I going to do?

Fortunately, there’s this fancy technology called the ‘Internet,’ and I was able to take a blind-chance in one of its search engines! And sure enough, there was a connection!

I never thought I would find it, but the mystery song turned out to be “Love is Blue,” by a French conductor named Paul Mauriat. However, it turns out that he was just covering the original himself! Regardless, the song turned into a gigantic hit in 1968, but is probably not something you’ve heard on the radio lately. The mystery was put to rest when I stumbled upon an interview by Onra, the trip-hop artist (and fellow Frenchman), where he admitted using samples in his trip-tastic track; “I Wanna Go Back.”

Well now it’s time for show-and-tell, so here it finally is in all its glory:

Have you heard this before? Did you already know what it was? This is a live version by the previously mentioned Paul Mauriat. In fact, this was his final performance of this song 30 years later in 1998 at his “Sayonara Concert” in Japan. Anyway, I think this performance deserves a spot in an Internet Museum somewhere, and is guaranteed to brighten your day… enjoy!