Playlist: In Honor Of All The Returning Students, We Go Back To… School

“High school seemed like such a blur, I didn’t have much interest in sports or school elections,
And in class I dreamed all day ’bout a rock ‘n’ roll weekend” – Social Distortion, “Story Of My Life”

Although it’s only August, which usually heralds the dog days of summer, it is also that time of year when students are getting ready to go back to school again. I know most colleges start next Monday so that means all the co-eds are back in those college towns enjoying orientation, er, I mean that week of keg parties before school kicks off… well, at least that’s how it was when I was in college. Ah, that freshman first taste of freedom and cheap beer! I think all the K-12 kids go back to school either at the end of the month or right after Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer in the U.S. and our celebration weekend for the working man. When I start seeing all those commercials of little kids dancing in front of lockers in their new, “hipster” back-to-school clothes, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. I always seem to think of that Springsteen lyric, “Hey little heroes, Summer’s long but I guess it ain’t very sweet around here anymore.” Actually, if I’m being honest, summer never felt long to me… or perhaps better said, long enough. Not to argue with The Boss but summer does fly by.

My approach to school was more like that of Social D, quoted above. I was never a joiner. I didn’t like going to school. My hate of school started early. My parents, thinking they were conditioning me for getting up early the rest of my life, enrolled me in the morning session of Kindergarten that started at 8 am, instead of the afternoon session, which began at noon. I hated getting up so much my mother had to dress me while I was laying in bed and force me out the door. But then I’ve always had a curious relationship with sleep… The conditioning didn’t work…I’m just not a morning person, to this day. My parents screwed me out of one last year of sleeping late. My birthday was late in the school year (August through May) and so i was always one of the youngest and most immature in my grade. Although the Rock Chick might suggest I’m still one of the most immature people around.

After starting elementary school proper (1st Grade), it was just six years of getting up early, marching through whatever kind of weather to a utilitarian 70s building styled after a cross between a penitentiary and a modern day dental office. My school looked like a office building in a Soviet satellite country. There are many rock songs and stories about crushes on teachers… most my teachers looked like concentration camp guards and were hung up more on discipline and conformity than teaching anybody how to think. My school experience was nothing like Plato’s Academy. My sixth grade teacher was a “crush worthy,” fiery, red head but she was sheer hatred for children bundled in a tight sweater. I incurred her wrath more than once. It was like something out of a Pink Floyd song. The best part of elementary school was probably recess, which bounced between a supervised game (kick ball, dodge ball) to an unsupervised Hellscape where the kids who were youngest in the grade (me) hid from the kids who were older in the grade (everyone else). There was a kid in my grade whose name was Thayne… which begs the question, was he descended from Vikings?

Junior high school was incrementally better but I had to ride the bus, the yellow “death wagon,” to get to a different building farther from home. Talk about rough ride… one of the kids we rode the bus with was later convicted of homicide. There was one crush worthy teacher at Jr High, but she was (and this is true) let go because she’d been photographed at a “Male Stripper” show in the local paper. So, no Kathleen Letourneau fantasies for us. One thing that marked Jr High and High School as “better” was our sudden interest in girls (!) and occasionally… their interest in us…which led to a few embarrassing moments at the chalkboard. Thank God, for un-tucked, long shirts. Is there anything that leaves a mark quite like a high school crush? “And they called it puppy love…” At least I had a ride to school by high school, which meant no more riding the bus, thank God. While I wasn’t a “high school loser,” I was not “popular.” I was in that grey “middle” made up of the faceless average. We were the “extras” in someone else’s high school movie. I turned to rock n roll and booze to get me through. I’d like to say I was more infamous than popular but I was neither. It’s just how school was for me.

My outsider attitude kept me from really embracing high school. I didn’t play sports after freshman year… I was 110 lbs and 10 of that was hair. Everybody else was suddenly bulking up. I looked at school like working at a factory. I punched in, did my time and then bolted. Towards the end of high school I always had an after-school job so it was home, homework, work. Every so often I’d get detention – which surprisingly didn’t happen more, as I was a complete miscreant – and I’d see that there was this whole other world at school after the last bell. Kids were there doing projects, making posters for the football game, athletes at practice. I can only wonder now how my life might have changed if I’d just… signed up for something. If I hadn’t treated school like being an indentured servant? I was busy working for dough to buy beer, gas for my car and vinyl records with. I was a great student and as long as my grades were up, my parents sort of left me alone. “Don’t crash the car or get anybody pregnant and you can go to college.” Maybe if I’d slowed down…and got involved in something constructive? Who knows?

College was one of the best times of my life… after a tough start that was coincidentally one of the worst times of my life… like Dickens. I really did expect something out of Plato’s Academy in college… an intellectual exchange of ideas. Sadly, state colleges are just grade factories. I was more involved in things on campus, you had to be to build that resume, but that outsider attitude held on with in me. And if I’m being honest, it’s probably stayed with me my whole life… So I guess I learned something in school after all. I have to admit, it all sounds like a bit of a missed opportunity. Although, if I’m being honest, I certainly had a lot of fun…but like Seinfeld, those records are sealed until 25 years after I’m gone.

As usual when thinking about any subject, my mind turns to rock n roll. And I have indeed compiled a playlist based on songs about school and the school experience. It’s all here from the good, the bad and the naughty. As usual this playlist can be played straight through or you can shuffle the songs. You can skip what you don’t like. If you have a song about school – or a story to tell – share it in comments and I’ll add the track to the playlist. As always our playlists are designed around hits and lesser known songs in an attempt to put something in your ear that either hasn’t been there before or hasn’t been there in a long time. Enjoy…this playlist as you find your house suddenly devoid of the little ones and you can finally pour something strong, turn up the music and chill.

1. Supertramp, “School” – Only Pink Floyd has more hateful songs about school than Supertramp. This spooky track was the perfect place to start. School always felt like the death of free thinking.
2. Stray Cats, “She’s Sexy And 17” – Ah, the only reason to go to school…to be around that strange creature, the opposite sex.
3. Steely Dan, “My Old School” – College students lament a drug bust on campus, swearing never to return.
4. Social Distortion, “Story Of My Life” – Indeed it is the story of my life.
5. Beastie Boys, “Fight For Your Right” – “… You wake up late for school, man you don’t want to go…”
6. Van Halen, “Hot For Teacher” – Never felt this way, but good for David Lee Roth to help us articulate this phenomenon.
7. Velvet Revolver, “Just Sixteen” – Another teenage, high school crush song.
8. MC5, “High School” – Perhaps their most accessible song? “The kids want a little action,
   The kids want a little fun.”
9. Bob Seger, “Understanding” – A positive track from a bad Nick Nolte movie.
10. Paul Simon, “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard” – Not at school, but school adjacent. Something heavy went down and the radical priest had to get them out of trouble.
11. The Beach Boys, “Be True To Your School” – I hate the Beach Boys, but I had to include this one.
12. James Brown, “Don’t Be A Dropout” – A PSA of a song from James Brown.
13. Prince, “Teacher, Teacher” – It’s Prince, it’s gotta be sexy.
14. Peter Gabriel, “Games Without Frontiers” – While I know this is a metaphor about nations at war, it certainly could be about the Hellscape that was recess some days with different clicks clinging to life on rickety, rusty jungle gyms.
15. The Runaways, “School Days” – Hard RAWK! from naughty girls! My favorite kind.
16. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, “Get Out Of Denver (Live)” – More of a road song but in the middle there’s the appearance of “a Baptist preachin’ southern funky school teacher” who might have been a drug dealer. From one of my favorite live albums.
17. Chuck Berry, “School Days” – The ultimate and one of the first school songs.
18. The Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays” – School, puberty and social media are hard enough to deal with, let alone introducing guns and violence to schools. I don’t know how kids do it these days. “Nobody’s gonna go to school today.”
19. Rush, “Subdivisions” – I grew up inside the lyrics of this song.
20. Jethro Tull, “Teacher” – Sometimes we learn more outside of school. You can learn from any teacher if you’re willing.
21. Muddy Waters, “Good Morning Little School Girl” – I think this would be a crime nowadays. If you’re out of school, don’t date someone in school… “Keep your hands off the kinder.”
22. Elton John, “Teacher I Need You” – Am I the only one who didn’t have a crush on a teacher? Although, there was a chemistry teacher in high school once…now that I think about it.
23. Arc Angels, “Paradise Cafe” – It’s hard to be a local in a college town and watch the moron college kids drink their education away. I know, I was one of the morons.
24. The Godfathers, “Birth, School, Work, Death” – I’ve now used this song for work and school.
25. The J. Geils Band, “Centerfold” – A guy into porn sees his high school girlfriend in a magazine and proceeds to seduce her.
26. 38 Special, “Teacher, Teacher” – A song about high school from a band that was popular when I was in high school.
27. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Girl’s School” – Dedicate one to the ladies of Stephens College.
28. Pearl Jam, “Jeremy” – You can’t talk about school anymore without the specter of violence rising and that drives me to despair. We can’t protect kids?
29. AC/DC, “School Days” – It’s a cover of the Chuck Berry track already here, but they sound so different I was hoping nobody would notice I doubled up.
30. Van Halen, “And The Cradle Will Rock…” – “Have you seen Junior’s grades?” Grades were never my problem.
31. The Police, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” – The teacher crush story told from the viewpoint of the uncomfortable teacher… the proper response. We recently looked back at Synchronicity…
32. Sammy Hagar, “Fast Times At Ridgemont High – Live” – Sadly had to use a live version of this rocking track from the movie of the same name and it sounds like a bootleg but it’s too good to leave out.
33. Pink Floyd, “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” – This and the next track are perhaps the greatest school songs ever. I love the use of the helicopter to make it sound like a police state. From one of my favorite double-LP, concept albums, The Wall.
34. Pink Floyd, “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2” – “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control.” Says it all.
35. Don Henley, “Johnny Can’t Read” – Our poorly funded schools and underpaid teachers sometimes fail. Especially where athletes are concerned.
36. The White Stripes, “We’re Going To Be Friends” – The best song here.
37. Aerosmith, “Walk This Way” – “I was a high school loser, never made it with the ladies…” Peak Aerosmith.
38. Sam Cooke, “(What A) Wonderful World” – “Don’t know much about history, Don’t know much biology, Don’t know much about a science book, Don’t know much about the French I took…” Sam Cooke was a genius.
39. Cheap Trick, “Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School” – These days this sounds more like a criminal confession.
40. Supertramp, “Bloody Well Right” – “So you think your schooling is phoney, I guess it’s hard not to agree. You say, “It all depends on money And who is in your family tree.” This is very true in America.
41. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – This makes me think of school more from the video… and the vibe.
42. Bob Seger, “School Teacher”* – (*Not on Spotify). Another lusty teacher-crush rocker. From one of his curiously unavailable early LPs.
43. Ramones, “Rock N Roll High School” – I think I’d have enjoyed going to rock n’ roll high school!
44. Motley Crue, “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” – Miscreants being miscreants!
45. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Teach Your Children” – Parents are just as responsible for teaching the children as teachers… from CSNY’s fabulous Deja Vu.
46. Nirvana, “School” – “No recess… no recess.”
47. Starcrawler, “Tank Top” – Some mean girl stuff here. From their great LP Devour You.
48. Warren Zevon, “Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School” – Dancing school sounds harder than real school. I love Warren Zevon.
49. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Catholic School Girls Rule” – A lot of people like a woman in uniform. Blame Britney Spears.
50. Pink Floyd, “One Of The Few” – Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.
51. Fiona Apple, “Shameika” – A story about being bullied. The struggle was real.
52. The J. Geils Band, “Homework” – Peter Wolf re-did this great blues tune. I like both versions.
53. The Beatles, “Getting Better” – “The teachers who taught me weren’t cool.”
54. Alice Cooper, “School’s Out” – While school is about to start, I thought I’d leave one ray of hope… eventually, “school’s out for summer…” It’s the circle of life.

Those are some of my favorite songs about school. While my experience wasn’t great, maybe yours was better and you have a favorite track that reminds you of those heady, young days. Leave it in the comments section and I’ll add it on the Spotify playlist.

Good luck to all you kids and young adults heading back to school. And from all you parents now freed from summer break, enjoy the silence.

Cheers!