Sorry, loves. It’s been a weekend full of job applications and then it got really hot and Misha and I were hanging out down by the creek working on an ACE post that took forever because almost every single fact per sentence was wrong. And then Aunty Flow showed up. Which wouldn’t have been a problem if stress hadn’t caused this to be the most painful tussle with my uterus for several months. Then a dear friend came by to feed me and watch Miss Fisher while I made solid progress on sorting Mount St. Helens photos. We’re now more than halfway there!
So we’ll have our Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education up tomorrow sometime. And it’s just after 9pm on the west coast of North America, so there’s still time for a Sunday Song, damn it!
For this week’s theme, I’m going old school, as in high school. I think nearly everybody’s got that one song that pretty much sums up a portion of your high school career. It’s one that brings back the memories every time you hear it. For me, that song is Slaughter’s “Up All Night.” I’d go to bed at like three in the morning, drag myself up at seven to get to school, and then repeat. I have no idea how I survived. But I loved my late nights, and on weekends, I’d be up until dawn, just like the song says.
Aw, yeah. That still gets all up in my emotions.
What’s your high school theme?
Way way old school, but I’m old (class of 1961) so . . .
“Lucille” was our party anthem and was a must at all gatherings. Also, all us white kids were heavily into “Race Records” because we wanted that raw raucous sound. And Little Richard led the charge. Still makes me want to get up and shake it.
One year older-school than movablebooklady, and my senior-year angst was perfectly expressed by Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvfG9uFswis
I’m linking to an audio-only copy of the original, sounding as it came out of the AM radio on the heap of an old Chevy I drove that year. The producer of this released version added a string section starting in the second chorus, and backup singers going “wooo hooo hooo hooo”, to create the sound that just wrung mah tender little heart.
You can also find a video of Cramer, at a white piano, playing the song solo, but that rendition underscores what I now recognize about the piece: musically, it is really simple-minded. Yeah, well, so was I.
I’ll go home and see if I can’t put something a bit more modern on the playlist. I may have to re-listen to some of those Nirvana and Guns n Roses and Spice Girls and Aqua tunes to refresh my memory.
I see. Dana’s sneaky way of finding out how old we are. High school was 1970s for me, so glam rock, then prog rock, then punk – though by that time I was into experimental/improvised rock by obscure groups like Henry Cow. I’m going to get some Henry Cow into one of these things one day, but a “High School Anthem”? Maybe not.
I was dithering between glam/prog/punk, and then I remembered. Some of my classmates formed a punk band, and went so far as to release a single single. To my surprise I found it on YouTube, so here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cX2mUXkQJo
“Punk Man”, by Predator, on Criminal Records.
I don’t think I really had a high school anthem. Is that weird? It might be because I was too busy to have one – I was one of those kids who signed up for everything, and now I can’t fathom how I did it all.
In the interests of lengthening the playlist, I’ll suggest this wind ensemble classic, because I was and always will be a band geek. We played this piece at least twice while I was in high school, and it’s a staple of wind bands everywhere, and I never EVER get sick of it.
That said, if rq requests a Spice Girls song, I highly approve!