What's actually crazy is how relatively non-"lost" it really was. Once you know what it's called you can go find it on Amazon, and there's reviews from 2000 still just sitting there; it's probably been on sale this whole time. Someone put it up on YouTube in 2010.
It's funny how something can be so available and yet inaccessible at the same time. Reminds me a little of Borges' Library of Babel: what you want is there, but what does it matter if you can't find it?
There's a jingle completely missing from the Internet or any record I can find. It's the "Sport Chalet" jingle common on Southern California radios in the late 80's and early 90's. It goes "Sport Chalet!" in this heroic way, then "we take you to the limit!". It's very distinctive, and I've found people singing it on YouTube, but no recording of the original. It probably exists on someone's random cassette tape of radio from those days, and nowhere else. Remarkable!
Not music, but in the late 90s or maybe early 2000s there was an anti-smoking PSA involving an old man encouraging a baby to take its first steps. After much encouragement, the baby starts walking, walks over to the old man, and passes right through him as he fades into partial transparency.
The message then rolls that you shouldn't smoke because your early death will deprive you of important moments like this one.
This PSA made far more of an impression than most do -- for example, it's mentioned on Friends -- and I think about it often as an example of how the same basic argument can be made in weak or strong terms. It may have been too strong for its own good; I once asked a friend for help finding a video of it and the response was "Oh, I know exactly the commercial you're talking about. I won't help you look for it; I hate that commercial and I don't want to see it again."
Wow! The last time I looked was more than 2 years ago, so this video was uploaded since then. Thanks for posting. I don't recall the vocal being a choral group, but rather a very masculine solo voice, but it's definitely the same jingle.
