Flashback to High School

Can we talk a little about high school?

Oh sure, I could make this all about my daughter since she’s 16, in the depths of her sophomore year and about to start drivers education…but it’s really about me. And I matter, damn it.

Recently I did a guest blog for my lovely friend Karen Booth, who is not only a Duranie…but an author.  She has a book coming out in a couple of weeks that I strongly recommend fans take the time to read. (Female fans would probably like it best… but hey, if you’re male and romance novels float your boat, then this is for you too!)  It’s named Bring Me Back and it’s out January 20th. I won’t say much right now other than I was lucky enough to read an advance copy and finished it in one sitting.That is one sitting with three kids running around and a husband attempting to vie for my attention. He lost. This is not fanfic by any means, but astute Duranies out there may notice some interesting details peppered in just the right places throughout the story. Enough said…I send you forth to go buy it on the 20th, and you’ll thank me when you do!

Back to that guest blog of mine that you can find here: Rock & Roll High School. On the blog, I mention my very least favorite (i.e. hated) band in high school. One might think I had to really ponder over the idea of what my least favorite band might have been, even if for just a second. Nope. This was one of the easiest questions I have had to answer all week, coming in just ahead of “What do you want for breakfast?”

My answer? U2.  I realize this probably offends 2/3 of you out there.  Before you hit “send” on that hate mail…the point really isn’t about the band, because I think most of us had a band that we couldn’t stand while everyone around us loved them.  So while you’re fantasizing about roasting me over an open fire, consider who may have been your own “U2″…and then send me a comment letting me know who it was!

U2. Wow did I despise them. The best part of this tale is the reason I hated them so much. Everyone else around me thought they were fantastic. That drove me NUTS. They had the nerve to fill up stadiums when they toured. They sold many albums. They were on the radio every freaking second. I hated them and that sanctimonious attitude that I felt Bono exuded through each tiny pore on his body.

Let’s just set the stage a bit. I’d say the year had to have been 1987. That would put me in my junior year of high school. I was in the marching band. Unbeknownst to the uninitiated, the members of the marching band at my school had reasonably good taste in music. The overwhelming majority listened religiously to KROQ (Richard Blade was still a DJ at this station at the time), and obviously, music played a huge role in our lives. (Understatement of the century, right?)  In March of that year, U2 released Joshua Tree. I don’t think I can really properly explain just how many times I heard “With or Without You” or “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. In a relatively short amount of time, I was ready and willing to sacrifice small children (I would have offered up my younger sister) or even animals to make the music stop. Every single day I would walk into that band room and every single day I was greeted by the drawl of Bono’s voice booming from the supersized club speakers that were in the room. (I never did understand why we needed those speakers. WE were the noisemakers, weren’t we??) If that weren’t enough, I had to hear my fellow band members go on and on about how “AMAZING” this band was and how I needed to get a clue, that Duran Duran was washed-up.

Wait, what?? Did they just use that name in VAIN?

I don’t think it should come as any real surprise that I was a big Duran Duran fan. If this fact shocks you, I’m thinking you might be on the wrong blog…but hey, welcome!! Where was I? Sure, I knew Roger and Andy had already left. Don’t remind me. I knew that the days of Rio and Is There Something I Should Know were behind. I also knew that Notorious hadn’t done quite as well as the first three albums. I was a believer and I had faith. Blind loyal teenage faith! I hadn’t even seen the band live yet, but I was not going away, and I was not giving in to whatever it was that Bono and company were trying to sell. No way. I blatantly continued flying my Duran Duran flag and continued taking hits from the rest of my marching band.  They lovingly (I hope it was lovingly) referred to me as a nerd…which is amusing when you consider that this, my friends, was the marching band. Weren’t we ALL nerds just by default?!? So I was the nerd of nerds. Outstanding. I was ever the over-achiever, even back then. I didn’t care. U2 could go to hell in a hand basket, I was never giving in.

After high school, which ended rather uneventfully unless you count a severe case of chicken pox three weeks before graduation, I moved into my college dorm with my closest friend from high school. (yes that’s right – three weeks. I caught them on the night of my PROM. Isn’t that fantastic timing??  I missed most of my finals and literally showed back up at school just in time to walk for graduation.)  Did I mention that this closest friend was a huge U2 fan?

She was determined to make me see the light. I was determined to resist.  Every Sunday night, she would call it “Music Appreciation” Hour, and she’d put on U2.  Vinyl of course, because even then I was convinced that CD’s sucked.  She would put the music on and sit in front of the speakers, trying to hear even the tiniest of sounds, and talk to me about what the music really meant and how Bono was trying to change the world. I self-talked my way into not openly gagging.  The next school year, I joined a sorority and moved out of my dorm room. Peace and U2 free at last!

To this day, I am still not a U2 fan in the same way I am not a fan of country music. I appreciate their contribution, and I have long since given up changing the station whenever one of their songs is played, particularly if it’s from one of their earlier albums – such as Unforgettable Fire – but I just can’t get on board completely. Call it stubborn…but I call it determined. I determined they weren’t worth my time a LONG time ago…and yeah, I’m slightly stubborn too.

-R