Skydog
What songs do you hear on the radio or on your iPod that take you right back to your high school cafeteria? Answering that question may tell us just how intergenerational this blog community is!
For me, 3 Dog Night, CCR, Jim Croce, the Eagles, Steppenwolf, America, the Doobie Brothers, Guess Who, Grand Funk Railroad, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young — well, you get the idea.
But the sound of southern rock takes me back there, too. Starting with The Allman Brothers Band.
A couple weeks ago I finally got around to reading Skydog – The Duane Allman Story
Even if you didn’t grow up with ABB, you’ve heard their sounds. Rolling Stone named Duane Allman the second best guitarist in history (behind Jimi Hendrix and ahead of B. B. King and Eric Clapton). And one of their concerts at Fillmore East has been recognized as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, live recording ever.
Still not ringing a bell for those of you who are younger? Go to iTunes and check out “Midnight Rider,” “Melissa,” “Ramblin’ Man,” “Jessica,” and “Blue Sky” — and then listen to snippets of the Live at Fillmore East concert.
In SKYDOG, Randy Poe tells the story of this great musician: the good and the tragic. The tragic, of course, included the obligatory experiments with drugs and the 1971 motorcycle wreck that took Duane Allman’s life in Macon. (Ironically, almost exactly one year later, another member of the original ABB died in a similar motorcycle accident just four blocks away.)
A couple anecdotes give a feel for the scope of the book.
First, there’s a chapter on how Allman intersected Clapton’s life at an important time.
“‘Layla’ was, without question, the most lyrical song on [Clapton's] album. But melodically it was pretty simple — three great verses in search of a hook. Clapton was desperately in need of a guitar line that would bring more life to the song. He had created some of the greatest guitar riffs in rock, but he was stuck when it came to ‘Layla.’ When Clapton told Allman of his dilemma, Duane went to work, soon coming up with the seven-note phrase that is now one of the best-known guitar licks in the history of rock: 16th-notes ascending from A to C to D to F, and then descending back down to D and C before returning to a long, vibrating D. It was exactly what ‘Layla’ needed.”
I also loved Poe’s insights about the Fillmore East concert, like . . .
“When Betts hits his last long sustained note [of 'You Don't Love Me'], the whole band, including Doucette, jumps back in. Soon the two lead guitarists are playing together in harmony, and it sounds for all the world as if the band is about to bring the song to its logical conclusion. But once again Duane is suddenly alone in the spotlight. He drops the tempo as he plays a series of slow, bluesy licks. And then IT happens: exactly 16 minutes and 16 seconds into ‘You Don’t Love Me’ — in the middle of a natural pause between two notes during Duane’s freeform solo — a voice from the audience cries out, ‘Play all night!’ It is one of the defining moments in rock: a single jubilant fan caught up in the excitement of the greatest live rock concert ever captured on tape, expressing the feelings of an entire audience — an audience that would grow from fewer than 2,000 in attendance that night to millions of listeners around the world in the decades to follow.”
All right — back to the beginning. What songs take you back to your high school days?
Welcome To The Jungle by Guns ‘n Roses. It’s a song that gets more relevant as the years go by.
The Eagles, “Take It Easy”…
Take it easy, take it easy,
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.
Lighten up, if you still can;
Don’t even try to understand;
Just find a place to make your stand,
and take it easy.
“Come on Eileen”, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “True Colors”, “Manic Monday”, “St. Elmo’s Fire”
Van Halen!
Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart
APRIL FOOL!
Peter Paul and Mary
The Kingston Trio
the Everly Brothers
the Mammas and the Pappas
the Beatles
Yes, I am that old.
I’m guessing no one else lists these.
“Jeremy” by Pearl Jam, “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt, “The Space Between” by Dave Matthews, “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers, “Push” by Matchbox 20.
Thanks for taking me back…but not as far as some.
No offense intended by my post above. I would say that the quality of music during my generation doesn’t hold a candle to what went down before it.
You asked about high school but not necessarily my favorite music. It’s interesting that many of my friends and I found our favorite music in other generations.
James Taylor – Fire and Rain, You’ve Got a Friend, Sweet Baby James; Bread – Baby I’m a Want You, If, Make it With You, It Don’t Matter to Me; Simon and Garfunkel – Homeward Bound, Sounds of Slence, The Boxer (which you’ve used in a sermon – see, I really was listening), the Carpenters – Close to You, Top of the World, Rainy Days and Mondays, Elvis’ Suspicious Minds (hey, I’m from Memphis), everything by Three Dog Night, and Mr. Bojangles. Anyone of those sends me back immediately. I went back and read it again. You said “songs” – plural.
Ah, Craig, you must have been in MY high school cafeteria. You jogged my memory. I must have eaten 1000 fish sticks listening to “Mr. Bojangles” and “Make It With You.”
Anything AC/DC, Journey, REO Speedwagon, or Van Halen.
Y’all got to listen to rock band music in your High School Cafeterias? Harding Academy in the ’60′s & ’70′s would’ve been AGHAST at such a thing! I knew I was missin’ out on lots of fun stuff out there, but wouldn’t have even imagined that.
I’ve got to get Skydog! Thanks for the excerpts, Mike.
Craig, loved your list & about a million other songs could be added—lots of Crosby, Stills, Nash AND Young, too.
Mike Kjergaard, we are the same age…I can tell.
Passage to Bangkok, The Trees, Roundabout, Bungle in the Jungle, Thick as a Brick, Do You Feel Like We Do, La Grange…wow, what a glorious decade that was. But the ’80s had some highlights, too, with Blackfoot’s “Highway Song” picking up where “Free Bird” left off…
Sometimes when those tunes come on the radio, I can still smell prom night and the endless evenings of the Chihuahuan desert. MMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
qb
“… and i ran … i ran so far away!” a flock of seagulls.
“abbacab” genesis
“open arms” journey
“celebration! come on and celebrate and have a good time!” i have no recall of who sang this song
“everybody’s working for the weekend!” loverboy
“hungry like the wolf” duran duran
“in the dark” billy squire
“jukebox hero!” foreigner
“you can dance if you want to. you can leave your cares behind … the safety dance” men without hats
“do you come from a land down under?” men at work
this is fun, mike! thanks for bringing back good memories!
Stuff that was popular or stuff I listened to? A mix:
“Don’t Drink the Water,” or “Halloween,” by the Dave Matthews Band (Actually, anything by DMB, before they turned into a pop knockoff band – and the since “Halloween” is different every single time it’s played, I guess I should specify that it’s the recording from the album “Beyond These Crowded Streets”)
“Walking on the Sun,” by Smashmouth
“Tubthumping,” by Chumbawumba
“Flight of the Cosmic Hippo,” Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
“If I Had $1000000,” by the Barenaked Ladies
“Dunebuggy,” by the Presidents of the United States of America
“Carrot Juice Is Murder,” by the Arrogant Worms
“Naked and Famous,” by the Presidents of the United States of America
… I’m pretty odd. Those are all (relatively) mainstream, but my iTunes library is what you might call “diverse.” I’m thinking of changing my middle name to “Eclectic.” Maybe I should post my “top 25 songs” as determined by the smartlist in my iTunes. ^_^
Ok Ken and I must be the same age. I loved (actually I
still do) Billy Joel and saw Journey, Bryan Adams and Van Halen in concert. I think “Celebrate” was Kool and the Gang! Now in Junior High I was all about Abba and K.C. and the Sunshine Band…I know…
no comments please!
The summer of 73 cruising down PCH to the sounds of … Steely Dan (California tumbles into the sea, That’ll be the day I go back to Annandale), The Doobie Brothers (oh how I loved crankin “Darkeyed Cajun Woman” on my craig underdash cassette player) oh there is more but i’ll savor those.
“Crimson and clover, over and over….”
Ah, 8th grade!
Then, in 1969, Dianna Ross and The Supremes: “Some Day, We’ll Be Together.”
Good memories….
Logged on to Napster 70’s
School’s out by Alice Cooper
Smoke on the Water (with air guitar and drums) by Deep Purple
Dark side of the Moon by Pink Floyed
Blonde on Blonde/Blood, Desire by Bob Dylan
Tres Hombres, La Grange by ZZ Top
Hotel California by The Eagles
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Chevy Van by Sammy Johns
I can smell the soured milk
And The Joker by Steve Miller Band while playing foosball with my lunch money
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Chicago Transit Authority. “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “Color my World.”…plus a host of other songs.
Grunge (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, etc.)
Garth Brooks
House of Pain
Alternative (Nine Inch Nails, Jane’s Addiction, etc.)
Metal(Metallica, Guns and Roses, Faith No More)
Anything Buddy Holly published. He was my neighbor for six months before he moved to NY. I am pviviledged to play in a band (Mostly fellow shepherds in our congregation) who re-live that era every week. We do play alot of CCR,Eagles, but in my mind Buddy set the stage.
i guess so lee ann. are you 41? i feel so old. i remember when i thought 30 was old.
Anything playing on MTV in the mid- to late-80s, because I was parked in front of it most of the time. Madonna, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Van Halen, Tesla, Sting, Prince, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson (I still love his ’80s stuff, bless his whacked-out heart.)
I just read “Clapton,” Eric Clapton’s auto-bio. A very interesting read that will make anyone who reads it thankful for their mundane, non-rock star lives.
I remember when I started hearing the phrase “80′s music”. I was greatly offended to being assigned a decade, especially when the tone was the same one I used to imply when referring to “60′s music”.
Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Madonna, Cindy Lauper “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, etc.
I had a huge silver purse, leg warmers, bows everywhere, add-a-bead necklaces, and twisty beads (I don’t know what you call those things, really, but they’re coming back in!).
Oh, and New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” takes me right back to the dance floor at the local teen dance club (my parents thought I was at the movies.)
Abbey Road, Tea for the Tillerman, Al Green, Carole King, JT, Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, Carly Simon, Don McLean, Santana, etc.
Ok, the first two were albums…….but those from my era don’t need any explanation.
Gotta confess……..we had Richard Pryor 8 tracks going too!
Thanks for the trip back, Mike.
DU
“Cherish” by the Associations. That was my song in high school with my then boyfriend, of course.
Cherish is the word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside
You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I had told you
You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could hold you
You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could mold you
Into someone who could cherish me as much as I cherish you
And I do cherish you
And I do cherish you
Cherish is the word
Ahh, what memories!
Ah yes! Class of 1983. It was “Keep On Loving You” by REO Speedwagon, “Private Eyes” by Hall and Oates, “Open Arms” by Journey, “Eye of the Tiger,” (Yo! Adrienne!) All of the good music was made during the 70′s and 80′s. How blessed we were!
Mike-
I love the rock n roll talk on your blog. Let’s get more of this and more baseball talk too.
I don’t know if you have seen the movie “Almost Famous” but it is an homage to rock fandom from the era you are talking about. One of my all-time favorites. Cameron Crowe followed Zeppelin and the Eagles and the Allman Brothers back in the day and he used that experience to comes up with that movie.
Kent Benfer
I hate to admit it, but Snoop Dogg does it for me. A friend of mine had one of his first CD and I asked to listen to it, but I had to turn it off because of the swearing. Things have changed a lot since High School for me.
http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org
Like Josh said, this was the music that I seemed to hear everywhere back in my day–not necessarily my favorites now, though.
No Doubt, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Dave Matthews, Ace of Base, Green Day
(I had forgotten “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers!) Also…The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe, Buddy Holly by Weezer, What if God Was One of Us by Joan Osbourne, Mr. Jones by Counting Crows, and, um, Baby Got Back.
Mike, you and I are the same age, so the groups you mentioned all bring back memories to me. Though they weren’t by my favorite groups, the two songs that take me back to my high school cafeteria are “Alright Now” by Free and “American Woman” by The Who.
Oops. That would be The Guess Who.
Metallica’s “One” takes me back to the back of that school bus: “left me with life in Hell” was forming my existential view of war before I knew what that was.
“Welcome to the Jungle” puts me in my high-school homeroom.
Now I’m drawn to the previous generation’s music: Pink Floyd’s “Time”, Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”, CSN&Y’s “Woodstock”.
Styx – Come Sail Away, Springsteen – Thunder Road, Hungry Heart, Journey – Lights, Commodores – Easy (like Sunday morning – Lionel Ritchie must not have gone to early service), AC/DC – Back in Black
and every year at our homecoming pep rally we played Lynard Skynard – Freebird Oh, Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven was always the last song played in our Friday night cafeteria dances
YES, CSN&Y’s “Woodstock”:
Well, I came upon a child of God,
He was walking along the road,
And I asked him where he was going,
And he told me…
We are stardust, we are golden,
And we have to try to get back to the Garden…
Sarah, Hmmmmm!
Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart
NO April Fool!
As to age, no comment. LOL
Truly don’t know what the music fad was at the time of my high school years – my group of friends and I were fanatics about classical music – and my dad, being of the old school, did not permit my attendance at dances, so who knows what everyone was listening to other than the classics.
However, a bit later many of those mentioned here were among my favorites too. One caveat – I am not a devotee of Rock and Roll. I know, I know, that truly is an heretical statement on this blog. LOL
There’s nothing like cruising to the beach in South Texas with the windows rolled down and hair blowing. Of course the 8-track is cranking out Beach Boys and Doobie Brothers! What a day!
The Wall – Pink Floyd – “We don’t need no…”
They didn’t play it in the cafeteria; I don’t think ours had a sound system,, but we played it in our dorm rooms (yes, boarding school).
One more line, in your best Scottish accent: “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”
Ken I’m a little older…just turned 43. Ross…yeah Class of 83! Thanks everyone for sharing all the memories. We didn’t have a sound system in our cafeteria either and no school dances (Church of Christ school) but we did cruise Camp Bowie blaring our music and sneak in a few public school dances!
Hey Canada Jim…what boarding school did you go to?
I spent my entire teenage years in the 80′s… but the bands that influenced me the most play well beyond that decade.
Pink Floyd
Aerosmith
YES
Metallica
Toto
The Police
Van Halen
Genesis
Guns and Roses
Kansas
Boston
Molly Hatchet
Hank Williams Jr.
Ok, I’ll stop there…
Oh man! No one is as old as I am. Perhaps I’m just feeling it more today! Anyway, I won’t even mention the songs of my day. Well, one. “Goodnight, Irene” was our school victory song – the only one everyone could remember the words to.
Two come instantly to mind:
Pieces of April by 3 Dog Night and of course one of the greatest rock songs of all time, Takin’ Care of Business by BTO
“If you wanna get to heaven”…..Ozark Mountain Daredevils
“Bad Moon Risin” CCR
“Amy” and “Two Lane Highway”….Pure Prairie League
“Peaceful Easy Feeling” and anything by the Eagles
“Hot and Nasty”….Black Oak Arkansas
“Rose of Cimmaron”….Poco (incredible overlooked band)
Depeche Mode
Van Halen
AC/DC
Men at Work
Joan Jett
Journey
Lee Ann – boarding school = Great lakes Christian College in Beamsville, Ontario… class of ’81
wow!, what a lot of great lists! i like them all.
its like some have said, “these” groups may have not been playing in their prime during my high school years, but all of these are great.
i really like dps’ list.
that southern rick sound was and is great to listen and sing along with, huh?
We were sitting around the table eating our state government food (Texas) and the conversation of this new band comes up. “The guitarist wears this big black top hat and his curly black hair hangs down over his eyes. Are these guys for real?” He was referring to the latest video (remember those)’Sweet Child of Mine’ by Guns-n-Roses. I remember that like yesterday (wait, what did I do yesterday?).