High School

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The lyrics really do limit it to being something that would be important to you in high school, though, says Vic Funk of Thurston Moore's "Psychic Hearts". While I'm not sure that I ever really identified with the lyrics to this song in a big way, I don't really see that its lyrics about loving and wanting to avenge a girl who's been rejected and abused are more adolescent than those of "Teenage Riot" or "Cotton Crown". The question I want to ask is: Is there music that was only important to you in high school? What kind of music is it? What qualities made it important in high school and irrelevant now? Are there certain moods or sounds you associate strictly with high school? Are there things you don't want to feel anymore? Does all this apply to musical sounds as well as lyrics? Also mention what exactly "high school" is where you are. This makes a difference, e.g. experiences from Grades 7-11 ("high school" in Quebec) are different from those from Grades 9-13 ("high school" in Ontario until the past year).

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wore a Stone Roses t-shirt almost every day (don't worry clean people - I had three to cycle through) during my sixth form (grades 12/13) and listened pretty incessantly to the Roses, Orbital and Massive Attack. All three of whom I still love to bits some 6/7 years later. I was never cool enough in 'high school' (or UK equivalent) to listen to stereotypical 'high school' music about 'high school' issues, and I never got invited to those impossibly decadent and hormonally-fuelled teenage sex parties, so I read George Orwell and played football instead.

Now university was a different matter entirely...

― Nick Southall, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Meaning you wanted to get invited to Orwell reading sessions but just had to make do with sex parties?

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Something like that. There was some tequila, and some bisexual performing arts students, and some cocaine, and a drug dealer called Howard, and a sculptor called Rupert and...

You know 'Then She Did...' by Jane's Addiction? The string arrangement and the dynamic of that song always used to make me feel really woozey and sick and spaced-out. I felt like that A LOT at university. And I didn't play football for three years...

― Nick Southall, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually, the first line of Idlewild's 'I'm Happy To be Here Tonight' kind of sums up 'high school', even though I was at uni before I heard it.

"The world is in my chaos dream but I am not invited..."

Once again, still love it now.

Thinkign about the actual question for once, when I was 15 and smoking far too much dope, I thought The Levellers were dead important and serious and deep and meaningful, man, especially when laying on my mate Geoff's loft floor and toking on an enormous bong.

Drugs are bad, kids. Really, really bad.

― Nick Southall, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is an excellent question. I think pathos tends to go down easier when a person's all I-just-got-my-driver's-license-and-I'm-young-and-desperate-and-beautiful-and-the-whole-world's-gonna -burn. Wherefore the Violent Femmes, when they were new and I was a junior in high school, seemed like gods. Now that same album sounds good and all, but at the time it felt like something almost otherworldly in its greatness. I wonder if the same thing isn't true of the first Smiths album for people who either a) grew up in England or b) are truly hopeless Anglophiles. Not that I don't love the Smiths. I do. Just wondering if they don't have a particular meaning for people who were sixteen, clumsy, shy and English when the "Reel Around the Fountain" 7" hit the shelves.

― John Darnielle, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Is there music that was only important to you in high school?"

I don't really listen to JFA anymore, but I thought they were the bomb in high school, with lyrics like: "you're a preppy, a preppy, you're so fucking lame, you all look the same..." and "I hate Johnny D., he's such a fucking geek..." Those kind of lyrics speak volumes to a hostile 15 year old...

― Andy, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

high school music = more angry than angsty college = more angsty than angry

case in point: song most in rotation on my stereo in grade 11 was "radio friendly unit shifter" by nirvana. song currently in heavy rotation on my stereo is the solo guitar version of "i'm confessin' that i love you" by marc ribot

of course, that could be just me.

― Dave M., Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

that should read: "high school = more angry than angsty
college = more angsty than angry"
this is what happens when you don't post for over a year.

― Dave M., Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hey Dave, welcome back!

― Sean Carruthers, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My high school music was first Top 40 and then classic rock. Probably a good thing in context, actually.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

John - I was, well, fifteen clumsy and shy when I first heard the Smiths and they'd just broken up, and I fell hard - so yeah, it's probably equivalent. I think actually for people who got into them right at the start there might have been a lot of disappointment and resentment as they got bigger and changed their style somewhat.

― Tom, Friday, 26 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Thanks Sean! I'll try to poke my head in from time to time.

― Dave M., Saturday, 27 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is there music that was only important to you in high school? What kind of music is it? What qualities made it important in high school and irrelevant now?...Also mention what exactly "high school" is where you are. This makes a difference, e.g. experiences from Grades 7-11 ("high school" in Quebec) are different from those from Grades 9- 13 ("high school" in Ontario until the past year).

I was in high school (on the East Coast of USA) from 1986-90. Classic rock, for the most part, with a detour into alternative stuff. Here's a chronology of some of the stuff I dug (I remember the period well):

Freshman year (1986-7): Boston (Third Stage was just released), Jesus Christ Superstar, KISS Ace Freheley solo album (borrowed it from a classmate; first time I had heard it since I was really little), general progressive rock catalog of Yes, Genesis, ELP and Pink Floyd (all basically stemmed out of the success of Yes' 90125 from a few years earlier; also, Floyd was very much in the profile at this time, with Momentary Lapse of Reason, so I became interested in their back catalogue), Lone Justice's Shelter I remember listening a lot too, as well.

Sophomore year (1987-8): Guns and Roses (the acoustic/live album), The Cure, The Smiths, R.E.M., Metallica's "And Justice for All", continuation of progressive rock exploration (particularly King Crimson's stuff)

Junior and Senior year(1988-90): I throw these two years together. Music my friends and I would listen to feverishly during this time: Led Zeppelin (all of their albums, but especially II, III, Physical Graffiti, and In Through the Out Door), some Prince, Public Enemy, The Doors (most frequently played: The Soft Parade), Jimi Hendrix (again, all three albums) Frank Zappa (most frequently played: Absolutely Free, YCDTOSA I, Broadway the Hard Way), classic Little Feat, Supertramp (especially "Famous Last Words"...). Dead Milkmen for comic relief.

Meanwhile, during those later years, I think I mostly ignored the stuff that was making the charts: Paula Abdul (very big at that time), the proliferation of hair metal bands (Poison, Warrant, Skid Row--these mostly annoyed me more than anything else), and C + C music factory-type stuff. Also Billy Joel was high profile again for "We Didn't Start the Fire"--blech!

And today? I would say, personally speaking, I rarely (if ever) discard from my heart music that I once loved. Partly because I'm nostalgic, partly because I'm arrogant enough to believe that I know what I like is good (even when I'm 15). :) But anyway... I still love listening to that Ace Freheley solo album, when I break it out--it's got some great stuff on it. I almost never listen to Jesus Christ Superstar, but when I do put it on, even if its flaws/derivativeness are much more obvious to me now, I still really enjoy it. On the other hand, many albums (e.g., Yes' Relayer, Topographic Oceans; Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic, etc.) I think are just as beautiful/fresh-sounding to me now as when I was a teenager...

― Joe, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

eight years pass...

Tonight I was walking down Valencia where it hits Mission St and I see a gf from high school. I have not smoked weed before this for about 7 or 8 yrs and I was really stoned coming from work's Xmas party. Turns out she is now some drug counselor. She looked pretty good, wanted to ask her what kind of drugs she was on to make her become a pro at counseling about it, but didn't. Really awkward. Might see her this weekend when we both are back in same town for Xmas. She must have noticed I was high. :/ Probably want to counsel me.

― svend, Thursday, 23 December 2010 03:44 (fifteen years ago)

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