Topic: False memories

[popcorn]

The first time I watched Speed was round some kid’s house on VHS in the 90s. It opened with a thrash metal band playing onstage. The vocalist screamed “SPEEEEEED” and vomited onto the crowd. The audience members headbanged in slow motion as the vomit sprayed over them. The SPEED logo appeared and the film began. I assume this is a false memory.

[idunnosomename]

Speed (thrash metal vomit film)

[Ptolemy Ptarmigan]

vomited onto the crowd. The audience members headbanged in slow motion as the vomit sprayed over them.

Sure it wasn't Speedie?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU8Lwixj6mk

[non capisco]

I have a fairly vivid memory of waiting for the first ITV broadcast of Star Wars to start in 1982, getting impatient because there was something about Duran Duran on, specifically the video for 'Save A Prayer' which seemed to go on for fucking ever. Simon Le Bon and his lads arseing about with elephants. Bun this shit, I want them two robots.

This had been trailed for weeks and I remember my dad going "You are gonna love it." Distinctly remember sitting there all giddy, waiting for it to start as soon as this Duran Duran shite finishes. They're all standing in front of a temple in the sand. One of the Taylors lifts up a young giggling child. Get on with it, I want explosions and robots.

Seriously, how long is this 'Save A Prayer' song anyway? They're still dicking about laughing and falling off elephants, this bunch of Thatcherite fucking wands. I am a four year old man who has recently kissed his days of incontinence goodbye but I swear I will resume the practice of shitting myself again out of sheer spite if Star Wars doesn't start in a minute.

How'd you explain this then?



According to the internet that's the LWT schedule for Sunday October 1982. James Galway, the flute guy, not Duran Duran. And yet it WAS Duran Duran on before Star Wars in the London broadcast area, as sure as C3PO has two gold legs!!!![1]

1.	This is a joke because he doesn't, he has one silver leg. What I should have said was 'as sure as Jaws' girlfriend in Moonraker has braces'

[worldsgreatestsinner]

James Galway could have run short. Broadcasters would often shove something on to fill a few minutes when needed. Surprised it was Duran Duran though because the song had peaked in the charts in September 82 and was on its way out by the time October came around. According to the charts it was down to 34 at the beginning of October.

[Ptolemy Ptarmigan]

James Galway could have run short. Broadcasters would often shove something on to fill a few minutes when needed.

I read somewhere that HTV used to show the short promo for The Butterfly Ball (Roger Glover and Ronnie James Dio) when they had space to fill between programmes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW9OYsMn4ds

[Bence Fekete]

This fun lady I used to work with at the pharmacy mentioned something about serving celebrities on facebook, which spawned this ill-advised attempt at chummy cordiality: 


ME: Remember when you served Ian Botham vitamin C tablets?

Er, nope...

How about that time you went up to Raquel from Coronation Street and she got all haughty and said 'I've done other things you know'?

Who??

Ok, you were definitely there when distressed Huw Edwards bought Zovirax?

I have no idea what you're talking about

Right, I've remembered now. Charlie from Casualty, it was a Friday!

Go away

[Jockice]

As mentioned in the school uniforms thread my mate Richard turning up for a non-uniform day in the first year at secondary school wearing a suit and tie. I didn't know him well then - I was in 1L, he was in 1C - but remember thinking he must be really posh. However, we were in the same class for the next four years and he wasn't posh at all. His dad worked in a brewery. And when I asked him about the suit to school incident a few years ago he totally denied it. So one of us has this very wrong, I have a feeling it might be me, even though I can still see him in the playground in all his spendour while everyone else was in casual garb.

And one that I've previously mentioned from the same period. Patsy Gallant's 1977 hit single, From New York To LA. I have a very distinct memory of watching her perform this on Top Of The Pops. She was a statuesque black woman with close-cropped hair, wearing a black trouser suit studded with gems and just standing there singing it without moving from the mic, like the diva she obviously was. Then a few years ago I had the song in my head so called it up on youtube. And got this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohEJPjyi-U

[jamiefairlie]

Didn't we do this thread before?

[icehaven]

I grew up in Coventry and I've a very specific memory of being in a pram and seeing the new cathedral during it's constuction when it was little more than foundations. As it was completed and opened in 1962 and I was born in 1979 the memory is impossible, so I think it's a combination of seeing photos of it being built and maybe going past it when I was very young and seeing it with scaffolding on or some repairs being done etc.

[BlodwynPig]

I have a fairly vivid memory of waiting for the first ITV broadcast of Star Wars to start in 1982, getting impatient because there was something about Duran Duran on, specifically the video for 'Save A Prayer' which seemed to go on for fucking ever. Simon Le Bon and his lads arseing about with elephants. Bun this shit, I want them two robots.

This had been trailed for weeks and I remember my dad going "You are gonna love it." Distinctly remember sitting there all giddy, waiting for it to start as soon as this Duran Duran shite finishes. They're all standing in front of a temple in the sand. One of the Taylors lifts up a young giggling child. Get on with it, I want explosions and robots.

Seriously, how long is this 'Save A Prayer' song anyway? They're still dicking about laughing and falling off elephants, this bunch of Thatcherite fucking wands. I am a four year old man who has recently kissed his days of incontinence goodbye but I swear I will resume the practice of shitting myself again out of sheer spite if Star Wars doesn't start in a minute.

How'd you explain this then?



According to the internet that's the LWT schedule for Sunday October 1982. James Galway, the flute guy, not Duran Duran. And yet it WAS Duran Duran on before Star Wars in the London broadcast area, as sure as C3PO has two gold legs!!!![1]

1.	This is a joke because he doesn't, he has one silver leg. What I should have said was 'as sure as Jaws' girlfriend in Moonraker has braces'

Wasn't Credo one of the characters in Star Wars?

[JesusAndYourBush]

I've got loads of music-related ones.  The two I can immediately recall right now.

1. David Bowie on TOTP singing China Girl.  Bowie is on top of a Chinese girl, on top of/on the back of a large motorbike.  Bowie dry humps the Chinese girl all through the song and kisses her in between verses when he's not singing.

2. Sarah Brightman/Hot Gossip - I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper on TOTP.  All through the song a car is driving round in big circles in the studio while doing a side-wheelie, remaining up on two wheels while driving round in big circles throughout the song.  I suppose for this one I could have seen a car doing a side wheelie in some sort of magician/showoff/stunt type show and they might have accompanied it with this song.

[Jockice]

Another false memory from school. But this isn't mine. My girlfriend (who for those of you who don't know, I went to secondary school with but never spoke to because I was too shy) claims that she had previously been to junior school with a boy called Peter Pearce who then came to the same school as us and was in the same class. There was nobody of that name at our school. I would have remembered. I've asked other people from my year and they say the same as me. But she is absolutely adamant. According to her we even sat near each other. There were more girls than boys at our place (it had been all-girls till the year before I started) so if we were not only in the same year but the same class and he had such a distinctive name there's no way I would have forgotten.

I'm not denying she may have known a Peter Pearce but he probably went to the city's other Catholic comprehensive.  It's like Robert Robinson in This Country, except she hasn't tracked him down to prove he exists.

[Jockice]

Didn't we do this thread before?

I don't think so.





Or do I?

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Oooh mate I have a real problem with false memories and they're often super pervasive and make life a very difficult thing to experience. I like W.G. Sebald's work pertaining to the collective amnesia and false-memories which make up history. Generally memory and the unreliability of it is one of the most terrifying things for me to imagine.

[Rizla]

Hey.

Hey, check this out.

Listen right.

This whole COUNTRY, yeah?

This whole COUNTRY is a false memory, right?

Our entire EXISTENCE in this whole COUNTRY, mate.

Right?

This whole COUNTRY mate. Our whole EXISTENCE.

False memory mate.

[bgmnts]

I literally have no idea what happened through most of my childhood beyond a few fleeting glimpses, some stuff I am sure probably didn't happen. I didn't know you could so easily forget that stuff without severe trauma induced blocks in your head.

This is why journaling is so important, your brain will fuck with you any chance it gets.

[spaghetamine]

i have a very confusing memory of having some kind of spontaneous mystical experience as a child where i floated through my bedroom wall and went into a kind of portal/tunnel (way harder to explain than that but it's the best I can do) and saw things  “as they truly are”, for lack of a better explanation-, i am 99% sure this is a false memory created by caning too many drugs in my late teens and early twenties, if i think about it too much it starts to feel like my brain is tying itself into a knot

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

At the end of the game Quake, you see the main character with his helmet off, eating a pizza.

[Chedney Honks]

I recently reminded my mate of the summer afternoon when we learned about about the Mandela Effect and we had our minds blown. He just stared at me blankly.

[Jockice]

I'll just make my obligatory mention here of the mate who claims he saw me get thrown out of a nightclub despite doing nothing wrong. The thing is that something similar did happen but at a different nightclub to the one my friend claims it was in. And he definitely wasn't there that night because that was a school disco and he went to another school and I only vaguely knew him then so wouldn't have invited him.

Yet he still claims he saw it happen and the only reason I deny it is that I'm embarrassed. As if. All I can think of is that I've told him the true story and he decided to tell other people and change the location, somehow ending up thinking he was a witness. Weird.

[Registering to lurk]

And one that I've previously mentioned from the same period. Patsy Gallant's 1977 hit single, From New York To LA. I have a very distinct memory of watching her perform this on Top Of The Pops. She was a statuesque black woman with close-cropped hair, wearing a black trouser suit studded with gems and just standing there singing it without moving from the mic, like the diva she obviously was. Then a few years ago I had the song in my head so called it up on youtube. And got this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohEJPjyi-U

I can't account for your Patsy Gallant confusion, but that Top of the Pops description is a dead ringer for this performance by Grace Jones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mj1wtDsjxE

[Jockice]

I can't account for your Patsy Gallant confusion, but that Top of the Pops description is a dead ringer for this performance by Grace Jones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mj1wtDsjxE

Good point but I don't think I've got them confused. I knew who Grace was through reading the music press, which I didn't do in 1977. Whereas I don't think I ever read about Patsy anywhere and knew nothing about her apart from my imagined TOTP performance. I was stunned when I discovered what she really looked like.

Incidentally, the first NME I ever bought had The Pretenders' Brass In Pocket as Single Of The Week. And not long after that I read in Record Mirror that Grace Jones was a socialite. I remember thinking that she didn't look like the sort who'd be into left-wing politics.

[Billy]

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones at the cinema. Anakin and Obi-Wan are about to be executed on Geonosis. Anakin flatly states “I have a bad feeling about this”, and then a beat as Obi-Wan looks at him with a baffled expression, as if it’s a really weird thing to say at this point of severe danger. Cinema audience burst into laughter and it’s the big comedy moment of the film.

Years later I was somewhat weirded out when I saw the film on TV and none of that happens at all, it’s just the famous line and then a cut back to the action. Obi-Wan isn’t even in shot, it’s Anakin and Padme. Maybe there was a sketch show parody that had the above, maybe the cinema audience just laughed at Anakin’s line anyway and I invented the comedy double-take in my head, maybe it was just some mad dream I had later that night. Still funny the way I remember it though, and it was a bit of a relief when the equivalent comedy memory I had for Episode III (Yoda pushing those two guards away) actually did happen as remembered.

[JesusAndYourBush]

The whole "Mandela Affect" can be explained by the memory having a sort-of 'autocorrect', combined with your memory not bothering to remember trivial shite properly, instead just remembering key points.  These key points mean you extrapolate the memory, filling in the gaps in the most logical manner, but sometimes the most logical version isn't the correct one.  C3PO had a silver leg!  Who gives a fuck, there's so much going on you never noticed his leg, who gives a shit about the leg. The Apollo 13 quote "Houston we have/we've had a problem" - really? You misremembered 2 words, who gives a shit, it's not important, why the hell would you remember that?  Loads of them are related to spellings of products and it's almost always the ones that have weird spellings.  Again, it's the brains autocorrect at work.  r/mandelaeffect is always good for a laugh, although its often not clear who's for real and who's just trolling.

[johnlogan]

Not sure if this counts, but a friend from school reminisced about being at my house when we were teenagers, and Nick Berry was on television, for some reason.[1] Apparently, I started saying that he had a false ear, and pointing it out every time it was on camera.
I have no memory of this whatsoever, yet he was really insistent that it was something that happened. Does the absence of a memory count?

1.	This is apparently something that happened in 2006 or so, answers on a postcard as to what work Nick Berry was still gettingat that point.

[St_Eddie]

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones at the cinema. Anakin and Obi-Wan are about to be executed on Geonosis. Anakin flatly states “I have a bad feeling about this”, and then a beat as Obi-Wan looks at him with a baffled expression, as if it’s a really weird thing to say at this point of severe danger. Cinema audience burst into laughter and it’s the big comedy moment of the film.

Years later I was somewhat weirded out when I saw the film on TV and none of that happens at all, it’s just the famous line and then a cut back to the action. Obi-Wan isn’t even in shot, it’s Anakin and Padme. Maybe there was a sketch show parody that had the above, maybe the cinema audience just laughed at Anakin’s line anyway and I invented the comedy double-take in my head, maybe it was just some mad dream I had later that night. Still funny the way I remember it though, and it was a bit of a relief when the equivalent comedy memory I had for Episode III (Yoda pushing those two guards away) actually did happen as remembered.

Are you somehow mixing your memory up with this moment from the movie?

[Jockice]

As mentioned in the school uniforms thread my mate Richard turning up for a non-uniform day in the first year at secondary school wearing a suit and tie. I didn't know him well then - I was in 1L, he was in 1C - but remember thinking he must be really posh. However, we were in the same class for the next four years and he wasn't posh at all. His dad worked in a brewery. And when I asked him about the suit to school incident a few years ago he totally denied it. So one of us has this very wrong, I have a feeling it might be me, even though I can still see him in the playground in all his spendour while everyone else was in casual garb.

Of course if this had happened a couple of years later there is the possibility of pupils turning up to own clothes days wearing suits, due to the mod revival that was massive for a while. I couldn't believe at the time that some of my friends started wearing ties voluntarily.

However Rich was never a mod and my memory is of him being the only pupil in the whole place wearing a suit. In either late 77 or early 78. It's very specific. Even though it never happened.

[greenman]

Wasn't Credo one of the characters in Star Wars?

Credo shown first.

[Jockice]

Ignore . Forgot I'd already posted it