{"id":761,"date":"2016-10-17T02:17:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T02:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=761"},"modified":"2016-10-19T14:42:15","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T14:42:15","slug":"ftv-school-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=761","title":{"rendered":"FTV: School Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Having heard the Ontonagon High School school song enough times, I absolutely can not remember the school song from my days at Marquette Senior High. \u00a0I do remember that it wasn\u2019t just a converted college anthem reworked for our school but it had actually been written by my first high school band director, Mr. Joseph Patterson. \u00a0Perhaps I should do a little more research. \u00a0In this day and age, I just may be able to find it online somewhere (okay – I looked but not one of them was clear enough that I could actually hear the tune). \u00a0It doesn\u2019t really matter at this point, however, as this isn\u2019t an article about \u2018school songs\u2019 but rather songs in popular music that have included some school or teacher related theme. \u00a0If you don\u2019t think this has been a well covered subject in the music field, guess again. \u00a0It won\u2019t be possible to touch on all of them or even a representative sampling of them over the decades, so I will focus on a few of the memorable ones that are part of the soundtrack of my life. \u00a0Please feel free to reminisce about the ones that fit into your personal soundtrack. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In that I started getting interested in pop music in the mid-1960s, one of the earliest hit songs about school that \u00a0I was exposed to was <\/span>To Sir With Love<\/span><\/i> (1967) by Lulu. \u00a0It was the title track for the Sidney Poitier movie of the same name and as a soon to be freshman in high school, male and a would be rock and roller,, I am pretty sure I would not have been caught dead buying the record. \u00a0Never mind the posturing, it is a song that I got to like by playing along with it a lot. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Every day after school, I would load up a stack of 45 RPM records or 33 ? RPM albums on our living room stereo. \u00a0It was connected to a stereo speaker box in the basement corner right behind my drum set. \u00a0The single of <\/span>To Sir With Love <\/span><\/i>did happen to be in my sister\u2019s record collection so one day I put it in the stack and found that it was kind of fun to play along with. \u00a0As a string laden rock ballad, it was a lot different than some of the other songs I was learning so it became one of my regular practice songs. \u00a0I knew it well enough that when my buddies and I went to see the movie, I made sure they knew that I knew that the \u2018band\u2019 playing at the school dance in the movie was NOT actually playing the song (as if the lack of an orchestra doing the string parts in the film wasn\u2019t a big enough hint that they were lip syncing). \u00a0\u00a0The flip side was a more up tempo song by Neil Diamond (<\/span>The Boat that I row<\/span><\/i>) so I learned that as well when I would flip the stack of 45\u2019s over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I can go back a little farther and conjure up <\/span>Be True to Your School <\/span><\/i>(1963) by the Beach Boys. \u00a0My neighbor Louie bought himself and electric guitar with his paper route money and was working at becoming a guitar player. \u00a0He wasn\u2019t a California boy (his family roots were in Grand Marais, MI), but he had a neat collection of the Ed \u2018Big Daddy\u2019 Roth car models to go along with his growing collection of Beach Boy 45s. \u00a0This was just before I started learning to play a drum set so I knew of a lot of Beach Boys songs before they even \u00a0figured in big with my drum practice routine. \u00a0\u00a0The Beach Boys were already moving beyond surf music when I started woodshedding in a serious way., but I learned their songs anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Smokin\u2019 in the Boy\u2019s Room<\/span><\/i> (1973) was my favorite school themed song for a long time because one of my \u201815 minutes of fame\u2019 moments revolves around the song\u2019s co-creator, Cub Koda. \u00a0Cub wasn\u2019t a rock and roll star when he spent a year at NMU and if we had an inkling of what lay ahead, I am pretty sure I would have found the time to take a picture or two of him leaning on the fender of a black Olds 88 parked in front of our house. \u00a0Cub (or Mike as we knew him then) majored in \u2018rock band\u2019 at NMU and one of his bass players, Kim French, was famous for blowing up his speakers. \u00a0I have fond memories of them borrowing our Twig era speaker cabinets from time to time. \u00a0When he returned to NMU the first time in 1972, we were all a little slack jawed that our Mike was now \u2018Cub\u2019 and he had a rocking little band called Brownsville Station. \u00a0I know the first visit was around 1972 because the first time I saw them they were a four piece with Tony Driggins on bass. \u00a0The next time they came to town, Koda\u2019s co-songwriter on <\/span>Smokin\u2019<\/span><\/i> Mike Lutz had moved over to bass and they were performing as a trio with Henry \u2018H-Bomb\u2019 Weck on drums. \u00a0This coincided with the release of \u00a0<\/span>Smokin\u2019 in the Boy\u2019s Room <\/span><\/i>and appearances on nationally broadcast concert programs like <\/span>Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert <\/span><\/i>and ABC\u2019s <\/span>In Concert<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0It is still a great song and I have even more fond memories of playing it regularly with Knockdown. \u00a0These live concert shows were \u2018must see TV\u2019 for me and are \u00a0readily available on the World Wide Wait if you wish to check them out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the more high profile tunes in this canon would be Alice Cooper\u2019s <\/span>School\u2019s Out for the Summer <\/span><\/i>(1972). \u00a0According to the description of the song on Wiki, \u201c<\/span>Some radio stations banned the song from their airwaves, stating that the song gave the students a negative impression of rebelliousness against childhood education. Teachers, parents, principals, counselors, and psychologists also shunned that song and demanded that several radio stations \u00a0ban the song from ever being played on the air.\u201d \u00a0As I mentioned some time ago in an article about misheard lyrics, if you want to have a hit record, make sure someone hates it and tries to ban it from airplay. \u00a0There isn\u2019t a better PR campaign alive than having someone try to ban your record. \u00a0A good old Detroit boy like Vince Furnier (um, I mean Alice Cooper) has always had a showman\u2019s flair for getting attention. \u00a0The song is credited to all the band members and Alice says guitarist Glen Buxton based the opening riff on something he had heard by Miles Davis. His inspiration for the lyrics was the answer to a question he was asked: \u00a0\u2018What\u2019s the greatest three minutes of your life?\u201d \u00a0Alice said it happened for him twice a year: \u00a0at Christmas just before you opened your presents and at the end of the year when the last three minutes of school would crawl by. \u00a0He said, \u201c the last three minutes of the last day of school when you’re sitting there and it’s like a slow fuse burning. I said, ‘If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it’s going to be so big.'”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, the implication in Alice\u2019s song is that the school blows up and school is definitely out forever, but every student alive has had that daydream once or twice (and no, in this sensitive age, I am not promoting violence against schools). \u00a0There are many elements that make this a great school song: \u00a0the sing song kid\u2019s voices doing the \u201cno more pencils, no more books, no more teacher\u2019s dirty looks\u201d and Alice\u2019s assertion that \u201cwe got no innocence\u201d (which he sometimes changes in concert to \u201cintelligence\u201d or even \u201cetiquette\u201d) raise the \u201csnotty kid\u201d level to just the right level. \u00a0The best gauge of the long standing popularity of <\/span>School\u2019s Out <\/span><\/i>is probably the number of films it has been used in. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jethro Tull weighs in next with one of my favorite songs simply called <\/span>Teacher. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>I had borrowed my Twig bass player Mike Kesti’s copy of the Tull album <\/span>Benefit<\/span><\/i> because we were learning a tricky little song from it called <\/span>To Cry You A Song.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0It had enough funny stops and starts that when we finally started playing it at gigs, we figured we had taken the next step as musicians. \u00a0It was a fun song to do and we continued playing it when Mike and I reconnected in Sledgehammer a few years later. \u00a0While learning <\/span>To Cry You A Song<\/span><\/i>, I got hooked on <\/span>Teacher<\/span><\/i> which really wasn\u2019t about school. \u00a0It was an ode to going out and having fun, which according to the lyric, the Teacher did with abandon but the student never really did. \u00a0I tried to get this song into our catalog in a couple of bands but it seems like I was the only one who liked it. \u00a0When I started to teach myself guitar, this is one of the first songs I was able to figure out the chording to and I sang it to myself enough that I can still remember all of the words forty five years after it first got my attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ian Anderson is still performing the song with his touring band today, although his voice has weakened noticeably in the last couple of years. \u00a0Anderson presses on like any good songwriter does with a good song: \u00a0he has a vocalist in his band whose voice sounds a lot like his and they trade verses so he doesn\u2019t have to strain his voice to get through the song. \u00a0The opening riff has a simple \u201cBUMP BUMP ba BUMP – baaaaa – \u00a0BUMP \u00a0BUMP ba BUMP\u201d rhythm that makes it instantly recognizable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last entry here comes from your not-so-typical southern rock band .38 Special. \u00a0They kind of broke the \u2018southern rock band\u2019 mold in 1981 when they began putting out arena rock hits that shot up the Billboard charts with regularity. \u00a0Perhaps it was this notoriety that got them on the soundtrack of the 1984 Nick Nolte feature film <\/span>Teachers.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0<\/span>Teacher, Teacher<\/span><\/i> was used masterfully in a montage of movie clips and live band footage that was hard to ignore when it was in heavy rotation on MTV. \u00a0Nolte was the main protagonist in the movie, but scenes of the memorable characters weaving in and out of the video as the song plays on lets you relive the entire movie in four minutes. \u00a0I really liked Richard Mulligan\u2019s mental hospital escapee turned history teacher and Royal Dano\u2019s portrayal of a teacher so boring that when he dies on the job , nobody notices until the custodian comes in to empty the trash. \u00a0Even when I hear this song today, I see an image of Mulligan dressed up as Custer (indeed, the same costume he used in the Dustin Hoffman movie <\/span>Little Big Man<\/span><\/i>) when the paddy wagon comes to collect him. \u00a0Seeing Dano slumped behind his desk, face covered by a newspaper as his students dutifully collect, do, and hand in their work despite his being quite deceased is another classic scene from the movie. \u00a0Songs have always told stories and played out as little movies in my head. \u00a0<\/span>Teacher, Teacher <\/span><\/i>is just one of those songs that resonates because I can flash back to the movie promo video and relive the whole thing without seeing the actual video. \u00a0The movie wasn\u2019t wildly popular, but it wasn\u2019t for lack of a great title song and soundtrack album.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I am pretty sure there will be songs written about schools and teachers as long as there are both on the planet. \u00a0If we are still referencing them long after we ourselves are out of school, then they must be pretty good songs! \u00a0We will do our best to spin these tunes on WOAS-FM 88.5 this week and see if they jog any of your school daze memories. <\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Top Piece Video – It is too painful to watch the newer versions of the Tull classic with Ian Anderson’s voice starting to fail him, so bear with the poor lip syncing and even poorer audio sync on this clip from the German TV show BEAT CLUB.<\/p>\n