Spitball Army

Nearly every band that played at our San Diego high school dances in the mid-’70s tried their hand at Steely Dan’s “My Old School.” Everyone would scream and holler when the song began because, well, it was about OUR school, of course (why not, right?), and we were either willfully ignoring the fact that one-half of the song’s oft-repeated chorus is “I’m never going back to my old school,” or we could hardly wait until we could truthfully sing those words about our own lives. Whichever, the gym floor would pack out while the band choogled through this song that, at its best, encouraged jerky hip-shakes in an unflattering white man’s overbite sort of way (on the record album, those odd movements are brought to life through the rhythmic farts of a baritone saxophone, but at dances, we had to propel our mid-sections by imagining them). Worse, it is a song that no band ever learned how to properly end, usually mocking a fade-out while the kids on the dance floor kept moving, leaving the lingering sounds of shoes shuffling on hardwoods as the last sound heard before a smattering of applause, one surfer dude’s wolf call, and a retreat to the bleachers, water fountains, and occasional punch bowls.

And then there was “Moondance.”