Dave's School of Rock

I wanted to introduce my daughter to a variety of rock bands and a high-level history of rock as well.  So, I decided to make a compilation of songs that would fit on a single audio CD.  Here's what I did:

1. I picked one song per year from the year I was born through the year I graduated high school.
2. The song had to have been released that year.
3. The band had to be important (not necessarily pivotal) to rock history.
4. It had to be a song I like.

The major difficulty was that often when I wanted to pick a song that was either most representative of a band, or my favorite song of theirs, the year was already taken by another song I had chosen.  So, some songs were my second or third choice.

(Not an image of the actual CD)

Here's my list:

1969  Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times
1970  The Guess Who - American Woman
1971  The Doors - Riders on the Storm
1972  Chicago - Saturday in the Park
1973  Pink Floyd - Brain Damage
1974  Kiss - Black Diamond
1975  Aerosmith - Uncle Salty
1976  Eagles - Life in the Fast Lane
1977  Steve Miller Band - Jet Airliner
1978  Van Halen - Runnin' with the Devil
1979  The Cars - Dangerous Type
1980  Devo - Whip It
1981  Rush - Limelight
1982  The Clash - Rock the Casbah
1983  Def Leppard - Rock of Ages
1984  Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane
1985  Ratt - Lay It Down
1986  Bon Jovi - Livin' on a Prayer
1987  Guns N' Roses - Mr. Brownstone

What would yours be?

Don't Know Much About History...

No, really, I don't. And you know why? Because I'm a genius.

Give me a little leeway here and I'll explain.

Set the Wayback Machine to 1986: American History class with Mr. Sawyer. He was not a teacher I particularly enjoyed, in spite of his bitchin mustache and sarcastic douchey manner. The thing was, Mr. Sawyer gave out homework every single day. This is not the right class for a lazy kid like I was. Well, maybe not lazy, per se. Okay, lazy.

The other thing was, though, that Mr. Sawyer was a busy, busy man. He had History class like six times a day. In addition to that, he coached track. So, I got to thinking... six times thirty kids times homework every day... that's 180 pages to review. Plus track. It almost seemed like it would be impossible to really check every single one...

The next homework assignment was a definition of terms. I filled it out something like this:

George S. Patton - Wore a red sweater and smoked a corn cob pipe. Thoroughly enjoyed cheese.
Operation Quicksilver - If you ever accidentally swallow a thermometer, you will need to have one of these operations.

...you get the idea.

The next day, I got my homework back with a fat green check mark indicating full credit. "Heh heh," I chuckled to myself.

I grew bolder still. The next assignment I filled out with the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven.

Another day passed, another green check mark was awarded. Hey, this was easy! Even my choice of song was unoriginal. Hooray, me.

You might think, "Keep pushing, kid, and eventually you're going to get caught." In this case, though, you would be wrong. There were tests, of course. I don't remember what I did for those. Cram, maybe? Who cares? I had escaped craploads of homework!

In this way, I genius-ed myself out of part of a good education. And the rest, as they say, is over.

So, if you ever ask me when Prohibition was and I query, "Wasn't that around the same time South Dakota invented yams?" - you will know why.