The Story (formerly known as "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night") is a formerly unidentified industrial/dark ambient song by British band The Passions, released in 1982 on the single "Jump For Joy". It was later featured on a CD reissue of their 1983 album "Sanctuary", released in 2019.
Search History[]
2010s[]
The song was first posted to the New Wave Outpost forums by user Guglielm on August 23rd, 2012, along with multiple other unknown songs. He didn’t provide any information about the songs.
On April 13th, 2013, Guglielm commented on a WFMU.org page for a playlist made by radio DJ Terre T. He said all of the songs were recorded off of WFMU "ages ago".[1]
A week later, Guglielm commented on a WFMU playlist made by DJ Bob Brainen, specifying that the songs were recorded 20-30 years prior, specifically between 1981-1984 or 1991-1993, off of WFMU.[2]
Guglielm reposted the song to WatZatSong on July 15th, 2013, without providing any additional information about it.
On August 14th, 2014, Guglielm reposted the song to WatZatSong again, saying “completely unknown”. It was theorized to have been released on vinyl.
The song’s lyrics originate from a joke where a character, usually named Antonio, tells another character a story that begins with the same opening line.
2020s[]
Over time, the song was reuploaded to YouTube by several users, such as Q, Ofrix, Tangy the toon, VisualConfusion, LostwaveFinder, S2h, and multiple others, amassing over 5k views.
On March 26th, 2023, Guglielm confirmed that he digitized all of his cassette tapes with the songs on them in the early 1990s and no longer had any of them anymore.[3]
On November 1st, 2025, the song was identified as "The Story" by The Passions after Discord user Mystic65 ran a different-pitched version of the song through Numerophobe's new fingerprints in WerZatSong.
Lyrics[]
It was a dark and stormy night
And the robbers sat in the cave
And the chief of the robbers said to Antonio,
Tell us a story
And this was the story...
[x3]
Gallery[]
