Meaning:
Something or someone that returns after a period of obscurity or absence. It
is normally applied to things that that were thought fondly of previously and
are making a welcome return - particularly pop songs.
Background:
Used first by US radio DJs when introducing old records. It isn't clear which
DJ coined this, and no one lays especial claim to it. A strong contender has
to be Jerry Blavat (`The Geator with the Heater'). Blavat's style was frantic
and he was known for his impromptu `stream of consciousness' verbal delivery.
Here's an example from an article about him in `The Progress', a Pennsylvania
newspaper, from 1967:
"Kings and queens, yon [sic] royal teens, this is your Geator with the
Heater coming to you on Big-Tahm Tuesday where we rock the big tick-tock,
where we got the class to beat the blast from the past"
The article began with a dictionary of `handy translations, straight from The
Geator', including:
Groove, blast - great
Golden Oldies - old rock `n roll songs
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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It was a beautiful morning when we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art aka
the MET on the east side of the NYC Central Park. The end of summer was mild
and a gentle breeze chased away the slightly muggy air.
I was a stranger to the city and didn't expect a Monday crowd. They had to
control traffic, letting in the same amount of people as trickling out. I saw
much fewer Asians than in the SF Bay Area and tried to practice visual
subdivision on the white majority as we waited under the Corintian columns.
Imagine my astonishment when blasts from the past hit us like lightning out of
the blue. A black 30-ish saxist at the bottom of the steps first blared out the
Chinese national anthem, followed by The Jasmine Flower, and Nan Ni Wan and just
as I suspected he could be a devotee to Chairman Mao, he did a political
about-face and switched to the once-banned decadent bourgeois The Four Seasons.
