APL Blossom Time

APL Blossom Time is a song about APL's early history written to the tune of The Battle of New Orleans by Michael S. Montalbano, under the pseudonym "J.C.L. Guest". It was performed at APL81 by Jim Brown and others, and the lyrics were published in the APL Quote Quad issue following that conference's proceedings. It has been widely cited both as documentation of and a part of APL's history. Montalbano published an annotated version of the lyrics at IPSA's 1982 user meeting.

After Montalbano shared his lyrics with guitarist Jim Brown, Brown surprised him by gathering a band including Larry Breed, John Bunda, Diana Dloughy, Al O'Hara and Rob Skinner to play the song at the APL81 conference banquet. The audience of over 1000 sang along, reading Montalbano's lyrics projected from overhead tranparencies. This performance, with an introduction by Brown, was recorded on cassette tape and distributed by Bob Armstrong. Brown also recorded a studio version of the song with Mike Wheatley, John Bunda, and Brian Duff; it was published as a 45 RPM single by APL Press, with the live version on the reverse.