Rock & roll high school

I just got done watching a Vimeo clip of a band's performance. It was four old friends who'd formed their band (The Rogues) in high school. They all graduated in 1981, so they decided to reconvene and practice for a one-off gig at their 30-year reunion.

They were a bit rusty, but their spirits were high, their voices were in good shape, and their set list was an very classy representation of the stuff they dug in high school:

"I Need to Know" - Tom Petty
"The Kids Are Alright" - The Who
"Paint It Black" - The Rolling Stones
"Talk of the Town" - The Pretenders
"Listen to Her Heart" - Tom Petty
"Dreaming" - Blondie
"Like a Hurricane" - Neil Young
"Can't Stand Losing You" - The Police
"Because the Night" - Patti Smith
"Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" - The Ramones
"Accidents Never Happen" - Blondie

I'm good friends with two of The Rogues, and acquainted with the other two ... and I've seen all four of them play in other bands. But I met them in college; I never got to see The Rogues back in the day. I don't remember any of my high-school classmates in New Orleans forming a band, but if they did, they probably loaded their repertoire with Journey, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Supertramp and other such dogshit.

How about you guys? Did your classmates form a band that you and your schoolmates valued, and considered a vital part of your high school's character? Were you in such a band, perhaps?

wait, REO Speedwagon is dogshit? I suppose Aldo Nova and Nightranger were too?

Not in high school - people in my high school were too busy pickin' corn and sloppin' hogs to form bands. But in college a couple of my good friends were in a band called the Rock Outs, and the opening band for a ton of their shows were the Primatives, who went on to become Uncle Tupelo.

There's a photo of a Rock Outs/Primatives gig poster in Greg Kot's biography of Wilco and that was cool to see.

My first band got together all at the same high school during the two-tone explosion that for some reason was massive on the (Sydney) northern beaches. Me and mate who were both kind of geeky used to get hassled by these two surfer dudes who suddenly turned up with short hair and harringtons one day. We thought the only way to stop them picking on us was to form a ska band with them.
Once we started gigging, the novelty of us still being at school was the crux of any interview the local paper did with us and it wore a bit thin after a while.

Bizarrely, our debut single popped up on Billboard a couple of years ago out of the blue.

[www.billboard.com]

We wore pig masks (except for the singer) and suits 'n' ties. I played a keyboard placed on mom's ironing board. We covered Devo's "Mongoloid", Wall of Voodoo, an original noise song designed to irritate (it worked) called "Terror on the High Cs" because we played the highest C note on our instruments, and, because we had a Casio with the same beat, Trio's "Da Da Da" which actually got the crowd up and dancing at the school talent show. Then one of us held up the Casio, dramatically unplugged it, and we all fell down. End of set.

We weren't too well liked at our school, but after the talent show success, I actually felt kinda "cool." One of us said "I tired of everyone telling me how good we were!"