B-Sides: Back to School Edition
Steve Barton
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The new school year has already begun for some and will begin any day now for others. This weekend’s B-Sides is a double dose of movie academia that hopes to get your school spirit through song. One song gets no respect and the other might make you want to go peep on the girls’ shower.
We begin most fittingly with the song “Back to School” from the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy hit Back to School. The movie saw Dangerfield play an irreverent self-made millionaire who decides to go back to college in hopes of motivating his discouraged son. One need only listen to the lyrics of the movie’s opening title song, performed by Jude Cole, to know that this was one of those movie themes written by someone who had actually seen the film, perfectly encapsulating the movie – a lost art these days.
Here’s Jude Cole to inspire you as you go “Back to School”.
Dave Edmunds’ incredibly peppy “High School Nights” could rank as one of the best songs to ever be composed specifically for a truly awful motion picture. I remain convinced to this day that the song would not have faded into total musical obscurity if it didn’t have the burden of being forever known as the theme song to the 1985 turd du jeur Porky’s Revenge. No way in hell the Academy Awards were ever going to give a Best Song nomination to a number from the worst entry in the most notorious sex comedy franchise of the Eighties. Had “High School Nights” been featured on the soundtrack of Back to the Future, I’d be willing to bet everyone would still remember it.
You might have to turn up the volume a little for this one. I told you it’s obscure. Here’s Welsh rocker Dave Edmunds singing the praises of those misspent “High School Nights”.
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Categorized:B-Sides
