My little post about Pump up the Volume yesterday, along with my watching VH1’s “Greatest Rock Songs of the Last 25 Years”, got me to thinking about music, and – more specifically – music listened to in high school.
Here are the main songs I remember being blasted at high school dances. To my high school friends who read this, please add what I might have left out.
High School Dance Music
Goody Two Shoes – Adam Ant
We Got the Beat – Go Gos
Rock the Casbah – The Clash
Rock Lobster – the B 52s
Freeze Frame – J Geils
Angel is a Centerfold – J Geils
Time-Warp – Rocky Horror Picture Show “It’s just a jump to the left …”
Purple Rain – Prince (this was always the last song – a slow one – for everyone to slow dance and suck face.)
I Love Rock and Roll – Joan Jett
Borderline – Madonna
Whip It – Devo (Devo was HUGE, it achieved cult status at our school)
Hard for me to say I’m sorry – Chicago (only the first part, the slow part – not the rocking second part, which I liked much better)
London Calling – The Clash
Thriller – Michael Jackson
There are more, I know there are more ….
“I Will Follow”, U2.
“Living After Midnight”, Judas Priest
“Dancing With Myself”, B. Idol
“Message In A Bottle”, the Police
And about three dozen ZZ Top songs.
How on earth could I have forgotten Billy Idol?
White Wedding was a big one, as well as Dancing with Myself.
i’m not one of your friends from high school, but i think we are from around the same era, musically.
loverboy: the kid is hot tonight
the tubes: she’s a beauty
a-ha: take on me
Mlah: You just reminded me of some more hit tunes from the high school dance circuit:
Everybody’s Workin’ for the Weekend – Loverboy
You Should Hear How He Talks About You – Melissa somebody (or is it how SHE talks about you?)
High School Dances.
…guehh…
Hmm…let’s see what Red didn’t mention from her list that was at my school…
1. Mercedes Boy – Pebbles
2. Anything that C&C Music Factory was playing at the time.
3. Straight Up – Paula Abdul
4. Janet Jackson – Pleasure Principle
5. The Reflex – Duran Duran
6. Come on Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (hope I spelled that right)
7. Bad – Michael Jackson (No one danced to it, we all kinda glared at the DJ)
8. Shout (The Animal House version)
9. Shout (the Tears for Fears Version)
10. Gittin’ Funky – Kid n Play
11. Girls ain’t nothing but trouble – Dj Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (because my teachers knew the lyrics)
12. Silent Morning – (Stevie B?)
I don’t remember much about the slowsongs, I spent too much time looking for something to drink from dancing to the fast songs.
I hated my school dances, overall, though. the lodge parties were so much better. offensive lyrics, an occasional fight, and of course…freaking. That’s a different subject altogether…heh heh… :)
Of course – Shout (Animal House) was also HUGE at my school.
“You Should Hear How She Talks About You” – Melissa Manchester. (Yack – horrible memories of my third radio station, my junior year of college, 1983-4…)
“Panama”, Van Halen,
“Twising By The Pool”, Dire Straits
“Cadillac Ranch”, “I’m A Rocker”, Bruce
Is Melissa Manchester also the one who sang:
“Baby cried the day the circus came to town …”
heh heh
Even as a teenager I was offended by the sentiment of that song. I will cry out loud if I want to, and no I WON’T keep it inside and learn how to hide my feelings!!
And Panama. Oh my God. The memories!
Okay. This is going to tell you more than if I actually told you my age.
Louis Louis, The Kingsman
In My Room, The Beach Boys
She Loves You, (Yeah, those guys)
I Don’t Get No (Satisfaction) (Yeah,the other guys)
It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry If I Want To), Leslie Gore
My Girl, The Temptations
Up On The Roof, The Drifters
Enough already. Time for my prunes.
Damn, Michael. I want to go to THAT dance!
I just wish I’d had more confidence ;) in those days. I would have enjoyed THAT dance even more. Especially when they played In My Room and Up On The Roof.
See, now you’ve got me started. Acts at a music festival I went to in Northridge, CA ca. 1968:
Some bluesman, I think Albert King
Janice Joplan
Jethro Tull
Jimi
Stand By Me – Ben. E. King
Crazy For You – Madonna
Jungle Love – Morris Day and the Time.
Crazy for You was my senior prom theme.
“Crazy for You was my senior prom theme.”
Ours was “Pretty Vacant”
Or at least, nobody reading this can prove that it wasn’t.
Stray Cats
Stray Cats
Stray Cats
Stray Cats – of course!!
I remembered someone else – Cyndi Lauper. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was huge.
Jenny (867-5309) – Tommy Twotone.
I wish that I had Jessie’s girl…
Why can’t I find a woman like that?
Rick Springfield, I had forgotten about him.
Talk about the dark and dank recesses of the past.
Ok, it is scary how you can tell the age of people by the school dance songs. For example, A-ha was popular Freshman year of college, as was just about anything by U2. There were a select few of us that ACTUALLY knew the words to anything by U2 pre-“Sunday, Bloody Sunday”mania. But, Sheila, let us not forget anything by Journey (I still shamefully love Steve Perry) as well as “Stairway to Heaven” being the last song. I always hated it when it was Stairway to Heavan because the song lasts SOOOOOOOOOOO freakin’ long, and it is hard to keep that phony “Nah, I don’t care that I’m not dancing with anyone”smile pasted on your face longer then the standard 3:32 song. PS The Jr.Prom theme was “Against all Odds” by Phil Collins. How funny is that???????
Cant believe I forgot to include Huey Lewis and the News: Heart of Rock ‘n Roll is still beatin’…
My first concert ever. at the Civic Center with Mere and Jayne.
“Don’t stop – believin’…
Hold onto that fee-elin’…”
Say what you want about him, that dude can SING.
Wow, lotsa young-uns on your site, Sheila. With the grand exception of Michael. I seem to be the only 70’s baby here, so here was what was hip when I was in High School:
“Knock on Wood” ….a BIG hit when it came out. So very cool to dance to.
Ofcourse, the ENTIRE album of “Saturday Night Fever”.
“Emotion”….what was that chick’s name again?
“Ring My Bell”
“Le Freak”….that was a big one to roller skate to. Boogie Skate, that is.
“Stairway To Heaven”….that was the slow one, not played much at discos, but always a good one to snuggle to.
“Love Will Keep Us Together”….remember Captain and Tenille? Loved them.
“Killer Queen”…that was a tad before High School actually, but I always associate it with dances cuz it was so boss.
and ofcourse……everything by disco Diva Donna Summer. I smoked a joint next to Andy Worhol at Studio 54 while “Last Dance” was playing.
Yup. Sure did.
Killer Queen rocks my world. Day-um. I didn’t get into Queen until high school, though, and they had already been out for quite some time.
Captain and Tenielle … come ON. I even remember when Ms. Teneille had a guest-starring spot on Fantasy Island. I feel shame about this but I even remember the plot-line.
Alex- “Emotion” was Samantha Sang. I almost said Yvonne Elliman, but she was Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ,Superstar. “Oh, yes, it’s just emotion/taking me over/caught up in sorrow/lost in my song/and if you don’t come back/come home to me darlin….” I believe the BeeGee that looked like Grizzly Adams was her backup in that song.
Oh, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I can still do the 867-5309 thing with my fingers to the music. No wonder boys didn’t want to dance with me, but, damn, I thought it was COOL!!!!
Meet Beth. One of my dearest friends from high school and beyond. She and I would get ourselves into such a mad frenzy, dancing to, say, Rock Lobster – like, we were dancing like we’d never danced before – until we were literally DRENCHED in sweat, and our heads were sweaty, and our Irish cheeks were flushed bright red. Actually, our whole heads turned red. This is at the actual dance, mind you.
And then – to cool ourselves off – we would run over to the side of the gym and manically press our sweaty red cheeks up against the cool tiles, turning our heads first this way, then that way … cooling off.
This is all in public.
Then we would race back into the fray.
And we wondered why we didn’t have boyfriends …
Flash forward to a couple of years later….I am at a wedding…dancing in my oh-so-cool-sweat-inducing-ways….it is all caught on videotape, which I see the next morning. Apparently, I am NOT an oh-so-cool-dancer….I now only dance when I want to make my children laugh, or when I have had too much to drink. But I swear, if no one is watching, I actually look pretty good.
Did anyone say the Thompson Twins and Kaja Goo Goo (Too Shy, Shy, Hush Hush Eye to Eye). and then, what about Yaz and Oingo Boingo!
Oh, and the ultimate!: “Don’t You Forget About Me…” (closing song in breakfast club where judd walks across the football field.
Who sang that again?
I am now in love with Beth.
Alex:
I forgot to comment on one thing:
You were at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol? I might have to kill you. With envy.
Wow. Someone mentioned Yaz. Now you’re going into my brother’s area of nostalgia. I am thrown back to when he would pummel my subconscious from across the hallway with Bronski Beat, New Order, Farley Jackmaster Funk, and songs By the Art of Noise that weren’t heavy on the breakdancing scene.
I knew about ‘Moments in Love’ before it was on all the R&B Mixtapes.
all the time, when I hid in my room behind my twin-sized captain’s bed amidst my action figures and marvel comics, I quietly hated him for making me hum obscure samples from songs that were incomplete in my head because I never got to hear the whole thing.
Imagine an 11-year old kid walking home from school humming ‘Touched by the Hand of God’ I was a FREAK to all my peers, and feared by most.
…in fact, it wasn’t cool until several years after I graduated.
…mumblegrumble…
Well, while we’re talking about it how about “Beth” by Kiss? Was that truly their only ballad ever?
My Jr High days were the late 70’s height of disco, while High School was the beginning of the Miami-Vice 80’s. And college was the mid/late-80’s. Talk about a gamut of music styles. From Donna Summer to U2.
How about:
“If This is It” – Huey Lewis
“King Tut” – Steve Martin
“YMCA” and “In the Navy” and “Macho Man” – by the Village People, back when we kids had no freaking idea.
“Mcarthur’s Park” – Donna Summer, when the first love of my life broke my heart…*sob*
“Rosanna” and “Africa” – Toto.