Songs that got me through high school by Dawn

I was miserable in high school and being a typical self-centered teenager, I thought this made me unique despite all those John Hughes movies to the contrary. My musical selection for my "Songs That Got Me Through High School" mix tape will give you 78 minutes of my mid-eighties strum und angst. Onwards to the music with minor commentary.


1. Major Tom (Coming Home) by Peter Schilling
The first two albums I ever bought were The Police's Synchronicity and this one. I used to rush home from 9th grade to put this on my mom's stereo before my sister beat me there with her copy of Prince's 1999.


2. Mother by Pink Floyd
I'm not exaggerating (at least not by much) when I say that I owe Pink Floyd my sanity because I listened to The Wall nearly every single night of 9th and half of 10th grade. Wish You Were Here came in a close second for times played; Animals a tight third.


3. Here I Go by Syd Barrett
Insanity, creative genius -- what more could a wannabe writer-girl (who wrote poetry the kind that doesn't rhyme) want? Listening to Syd gave Wish You Were Here a new kick. Russell Forsythe recorded his Syd LPs for me and when we dissected our fetal pig in science we named it Pig Floyd in his honor.


4. Blasphemous Rumors by Depeche Mode
In 10th grade English we had to write new lyrics to a song and the girl with bangs down to her chin wrote hers to Blasphemous Rumors. I borrowed her tape and the rest is black-garbed history. Soon after I began to sport multi-colored hair and moth-eaten 50s era prom dresses.


5. Killing an Arab -- The Cure
The flip side of the tape she loaned me featured The Cure. "They may be too out there for you," she sneered. As if!


6. Trilogy -- Emerson, Lake and Palmer
My best friend used to borrow her dad's cadillac and we'd race around with ELP blaring. This is the song that I always asked her to play and even now when I hear it I feel like driving fast through backwoods Ohio hills.



7. Another Day -- This Mortal Coil
That same friend introduced me to The Cocteau Twins and the rest of the 4AD family. Of the This Mortal Coil projects I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite song but I wore my tape out from rewinding to this one. (I missed the first time The Cocteau Twins came to Columbus because my mom wouldn't let me out on a school night. It's like she wanted to ruin my life! Sheesh!)


8. Are Friends Electric -- Gary Numan
My boyfriend's friend Carl (but we called him Chaos because we were such cool punk rock kids) had a car and so we used to get him to chauffeur us around so we could make out in the back seat. Carl was into ska and Gary Numan. He had one of the live versions of this song, which I loved but I haven't been able to track it down in my old age.


9. Enigma of the Absolute -- Dead Can Dance
I used to force people to listen to this song all the time. On bad nights when I couldn't sleep, I'd listen to it on my headphones and think that maybe I could get to tomorrow after all.


10. From the Air -- Laurie Anderson
I recently wrote in my own blog about Laurie Anderson. I said that my fascination with her was mixed up "... with the horrible adolescent feeling that your life hasn’t quite started yet but it’s almost just there almost ready for you if you could just reach out and touch it."


11. Misfit -- Curiosity Killed the Cat
Now I don't know when Marc was in school but in my day "a scrawny effeminate boy" was quite the 80s thing. Witness these handsome lads. And thank you to Popmuse for reminding me that they existed, that I had the album and providing the supplementary eye-candy.


12. Shadow of a Doubt -- Sonic Youth
Mtv, 25 years young this week, not only gave me the joys of the Misfit 1-hit wonder, they also gave me the video that accompanies this Sonic Youth song. Catch it on YouTube and see why it stopped me cold.


13. Burning Skies -- Tones on Tail
Rumor had it that Daniel Ash used to come hang out at the bar where I used to go dancing (courtesy of my sister's friend's fake ID) but I never got to see him. (Again with the curfew and my mother's thwarting of my social life!) This remains my favorite TonT song even if the closest I ever got to Daniel was row 12 of Mershon Auditorium.


14. Boys -- Bauhaus
Speaking of scrawny effeminate boys and Daniel Ash, I call this my soundtrack to the ill-fated love affair (pretty one-sided) I had with that boy with the smeared eyeliner at the other bar where I used to go dancing. (This was the flip-side of my shiny blue EP of Bela Lugosi's Dead)


15. Don't Argue -- Cabaret Voltaire
In what was to be my last year of high school (I graduated as a junior because the halls were too small for my bad attitude and lousy misery) I stopped being moony and started getting mad. A flirtation with industrial began.

No image, sorry, blame Amazon
16. World Destruction -- Time Zone
Nothing is more fun than dancing to lyrics about how the grown-ups have screwed it up for the rest of us. That'll show 'em!


17. Spinning Round -- Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Courtesy of a mix tape made by the second boy I ever kissed (a college man!) my limited musical environs were widened. The fateful tape began with this blaze of twangy guitars.


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Other Bloggers and their songs from high school ~ The Duke of Straw ~ musicisart ~ Marc