The High School Song

I'm embarrassed to say, but due to teen angst, I associate a lot sappy early-90s R&B with high school... especially Glenn Jones and no-names like Raymone Carter (and no, the original release date definitely was not 1971).

Dirty Laundry by Don Henly. The year was 1983, the place, Dugway Utah. A god forsaken hole in the wall out in the Great Salt Lake Desert. My dad had moved there about 6 weeks ahead of us and had shown my picture to his bosses daughter, who would be in 10th grade with me that year.

Naturally, she developed a huge crush on me and by the time I actually got to Utah there was somewhat of a buzz surrounding my arrival. I very quickly become one of "the cool kids" and the dance the weekend after school started was the pinnacle of my high school "status" accent. That song always brings me back to that time.

Alas, I also quickly realized that I was not one of the "cool kids" and the cool kids pretty much realized the same thing. I was quickly ostracized from that crowd and went back to the crowd I belonged in, the geeks :)

Smashing Pumpkins' "Rocket" reminds me of high school in that bittersweet (much more bitter than sweet . . . in fact, there was very little sweet at all) way.

Anything by Duran Duran or Pat Benatar takes me back, but what I really remember is Soft Cell's Tainted Love playing at a dance freshman year, which is also probably the last year I ever went to a dance! I even remember the boy I liked....Matt...he was cool because he was in a band.

"this is how we do it, it's Friday night, and I feel alri-i-i-ight..." whatever that song was (I don't know the title/band) that'd be playing on the bus radio EVERY MORNING at the SAME TIME. The radio station was WPGC? WPGX? Something like that.