I hated school dances. I had two left feet, I was hardly a popular kid, and most of the people I got along with didn’t go to them. So…when I was on Student Council my senior year, guess what I got put in charge of?
The first dance was torture. Almost nobody came, the DJ played a set heavy on New Kids on the Block (this was 1988, see), and the few kids who did show up spent most of their time clumped along the walls. The floor was completely empty.
So, for the second dance, I made the theme “classic rock.” It’s all people listened to in my town anyway. We didn’t have much dancing that time, either, but the place was packed out. From there on out, it was easy money. The moral: school dances are great when you don’t try to get the kids to dance.
I remember when we had live bands play our school dances. Rock & Roll all night long!
I was disappointed with the DJ when I went to my 10-year class reunion. After the DJ played Stairway To Heaven I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him, “Um, the Class of '74 reunion was last week. We’re the Class of '84…”
What a shame! Darn, your homecoming, Junior Prom and Senior Ball should be fun and awesome memories! Good music, food to make fun of, cruisin’ “the strip” afterward. I feel sorry for kids nowadays.
I hate to say it, but rock and roll just ain’t what it used to be. If I were forced to listen to a steady diet of rap at a dance I PAID for, I’d ask for my money back.
Laughing!! Our class voted that one second place. The winner? “I Wanna Get Next to You” a sweet-type love song by the same band that does “Car Wash” Rose Royce.
The very first song they played was “Sunflower” by (I think) Glen Cambell (yeah, tongue sticking out smilie fact). We all danced to it, but were looking at each other like “what the ???”
Fortunately, the band made up for it with the rest of their music.
Thanks for the sympathies, guys. I was a bit wary of posting in the Pit.
Anyway, spoke to the SCA president and a couple of her cronies. Didn’t make much difference, since the dance happened a week ago, and earned some scoffs and an “are you crazy? the dance was great! We all had fun!”
Feh.
I’m still going to my senior prom (How could I not? It’s my last dance in high school!), but I’m bringing my own music with me and getting the DJ to play some if it gets to be like Homecoming.
Thanks again for all the responses!
“I am not a crystalhealingsistermountanwomanrain kind of lesbian… you know, the kind with the crystal. No, not this snort… that’s the kind of crystal you boys do.”
Re. high school dances, the theme to my senior prom was, no kidding, “Kokomo.” Yeah, the Beach Boys’ “comeback song,” which was in heavy MTV rotation that year or something. Apparently someone thought this would have broad crossover appeal, both to us Minor Threat fans and to the Poison devotees. Yeah, it didn’t.
Ugh- our senior prom theme (in 1988) was Earth Angel. Earth Angel?? WTF FUCK? That song sucked in 1950 or whenever it came out, and it sure as hell sucked in 1998.
School dances blow, IMHO, and the only clubs worth going to now are the 70’ and 80’s flashback style clubs that play old disco and 80’s tunes. Even then it’s mostly people doing the “we’re close to having sex right here on the floor” dancing. Ugh.
At least they didn’t do a panty check on you as you were trying to enter the dance like that Vice Principal a year or so ago…remember her?
That’s why this high school senior stopped doing the whole school dance thing in eighth grade. Got tricked (lost a bet) into going to the sophomore formal, had a miserable time.
And now, our senior prom theme is Aerosmith’s rendition of “I don’t want to miss a thing”. Voted over “Forever young”, “Stairway to Heaven” and - amazingly, Eve 6’s “Here’s to the night”.
In my four years of high school, we had two Led Zeppelin prom themes. And, one should note, this was in 1990-1994, a good ten years after Bonzo bought it. Freshman year was “Stairway”; Senior year was “All My Love”.
Seems unlikely, but it was predictable. Once a month we had a “club period”, in which a class was cancelled and various clubs had their meetings. This was when the prom committee met. However, many clubs had required attendance, such as the Beta Club, FFA, FHA, FBLA, etc., so the only people who were really available to go to the prom committee meeting were the stoners. They were allowed to make all the decisions, which were always bitched about incessantly afterwards.
At the senior prom, the DJ didn’t even have Zeppelin’s “All My Love”–he started to play some other R&B version of the song, to everyone’s confusion. Fortunately, someone had a copy of “In Through the Out Door” out in his truck.
Damn straight – the last time I went to one of their dances it was nothing but Dowland, Dowland, Dowland all night long. Who can dance to that shit?!? Okay, so the guy eventually played Greensleeves but what kind of minstrel doesn’t know Paggington’s Pownde or Kemp’s Jig, fercrissake? In the end I was forced to send a complaint to the Guild.
"Skip the school dance. It’s been decades since they were cool "
I couldn’t agree more. I graduated in 1964 and the whole school dance, prom, graduation ceremony thing seemed to me to be antedeluvian even then.
Screw it. Have your own dance. Play your own music. Fuck the ring. Stick the diploma up your ass. Move on with your life. There’s LOTS more of it, I promise.
