“From the Beginning” was a song by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and was written by Greg Lake. I first heard it when I was attending Carolina, UNC-Chapel Hill, in 1972, the year it came out. This was always a melancholy song to me. I equated this song with my sense of “being out of place,” at Carolina. Hector’s, Silent Sam, the Ratskeller, Aycock Dorm, the Pit, Debbie, Chemistry and the Bell Tower.

I would get a couple of egg rolls from Hector’s, “Famous since 1969,” on the way back to my room, 318, in Aycock Dorm. The surface of the egg roll was crispy, and I loved getting the packets of Duck Sauce and Hot Mustard, and eating them.

On the way back, I would walk by “Silent Sam.” And the legend, which few probably believed, was that Silent Sam got the name because he would shoot his rifle each time a virgin walked by;-) Hector’s is no more, and Aycock Dorm had a name change after George Floyd, and Charles B. Aycock was determined to be a racist… former Governor of North Carolina.

There was a small bar in the basement, at the back of the Ratskeller. *For some reason I can’t recall it’s name, but it did have one. There was at least one “Foosball” table and a Pong Machine. Pong was the first video game I ever played. It was a simplistic game, extremely crude by today’s standards.

Don’t recall why I started listening to “From the Beginning,” tonight on YouTube, but I was mesmerized by it and have listened to it many times just tonight. I even watched about four different “reaction” videos by podcasters listening to this song for the first time.

Funny, but I watched the reactions by the women on the screen more than the men. I think that is because the song is sung to a woman as an apology. But, I don’t think these reviewers really focused on the lyrics as much as the music, but I think the lyrics are as important as the music, and the music is beautiful.