School's Out for Summer: 5 Songs For a Summer State of Mind
This week's songs are from Parquet Courts, Loudon Wainwright III, Solange, Eddie Cochran, and Jonathan Richman
Schools are letting out. Camps are starting up. Vacations are getting planned. It’s time to gear up for some warm weather. Break out the SPF and the grill set.
It’s impossible to encapsulate all of summer into just 5 songs, so we’ll have plenty of summer-related content in the coming weeks. But summer is as much a state of mind as it is a season.
Let’s get us closer to it.
Here are 5 songs for a summer state of mind.
“Roman: I think we should go into town tomorrow and pick up a ski boat. Whaddya say? Sound good, guys? Uncle Roman'll blow some coin on a kick-ass drag boat!
Chet: That's OK, we're renting a pontoon boat.
Roman: Pontoon boat? What the hell are you gonna do with a pontoon boat? Retake Omaha Beach?”
- The Great Outdoors, Howard Deutch (1988)
Parquet Courts - “Sunbathing Animal”
Summer pits the mania of a child with complete freedom to do whatever they want in direct competition with the intense desire to do absolutely nothing but lay around in the sun. It’s a balancing act of extremes.
Most freedom is deceiving, if such a thing exists
When I was young, I knew but didn’t care
Faces change and shape to represent the same old beast
I want to flee, but I can only stare
One minute things are frantic, the next is paralyzing boredom. There is no in between. Parquet Courts are the perfect band to embody this contrast. They are a Brooklyn band, but half of them are from Texas. Their bread and butter is rigid, angular punk rock, but they can also put out loose laments like “Instant Disassembly.” They played Ellen. When I first started thinking about the summer sunshine, John Cale’s beautiful and basking “Buffalo Ballet” came to mind. But that’s the fantastical ideal of a peaceful, yet luxurious summer that only exists in your mind. Parquet Courts offer a bit of the truth: rushing from event to event, oppressive heat radiating off of concrete, hands sticky from melted popsicles, sweating without moving. Don’t fight the pace of it; run around exhausted, only having an ok time. At some point, you’ll get that moment of serene peace, like a sunbathing animal.
“Bodhi: No, it's real. It's absolutely real. Everything moves in cycles. So, twice a century, the ocean let's us know just how small we really are.”
- Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow (1991)
Loudon Wainwright III - “The Swimming Song”
This song has a tremendous joy in it I find hard to describe. It’s funny, but there’s a sadness lingering in there somewhere. Maybe it’s bittersweet? Melancholy? It’s definitely self-aware. It’s also child-like in the best way. Like the best Loudon Wainwright III songs, it has a deeply engrained humanity to it, and it is deceptively honest. All of that might be just that I’m a sucker for minor chords on a banjo. It is a reminder and celebration that even something frivolous can take us new places, challenge us, and tell us who we really are.
“Ms. Stroud: Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.”
- Dazed & Confused, Richard Linklater (1993)
Solange - “Junie”
Being the younger sister of Beyonce can’t be easy. Putting out pop/R&B about being a badass woman too seems like the easy route, and one that Solange has largely avoided since taking creative control of her career. A Seat at the Table and When I Get Home are closer to Jamila Woods than Beyonce—where music is simultaneously a commentary on the ills of our present and a celebration of a rich history of Black art, full of footnotes. And the music is cool as hell. It moves and shifts like futuristic jazz, but keeps a steady groove, like funk and R&B.
“Junie” is not about the month, but a tribute to Junie Morrison of the Ohio Players, and a commentary on cultural appropriation.
You want to be the teacher
Don't want to go to school
Don't want to do the dishes
Just want to eat the food
It has that loose, old school R&B feel I can only really attribute to the descending melody of the piano. When I first heard it, it reminded me of one of those “song of the summer” hits when I was a kid—“Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill, “Ghetto Superstar” by Pras and Maya. It’s fun, a little bit nostalgic, and offers a sense of freedom that makes you want to turn the volume up on a sunny day.
“John Milner: Rock & Roll has been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.”
- American Graffiti, George Lucas (1973)
Eddie Cochran - “Summertime Blues”
Eddi Cochran wants you to believe there is no cure for the Summertime Blues, but he’s wrong: it’s oldies radio.
The summer before I started college I had a job at a plumbing company. Within the first couple of days, one of my bosses had me running equipment out to job sites using his truck. Before he handed me the keys, he had 2 very explicit rules:
Don’t roll down the driver-side window. (“I’ll know you did it, because it doesn’t roll back up.”)
DO NOT TOUCH THE RADIO (“trust that I’ll know you did that, too”)
His chosen station was 104.3, which at the time was Chicago’s Oldies station. I cruised around various suburbs making deliveries listening to Stone Cold Classics. “Oldies” is the wrong word for songs like these. Springsteen would lift all of the ingredients of this in “Workin’ on the Highway”—a bendy guitar line, call-and-response style guitar/organ riffs, slap-back echo. laid over a shuffle beat and singing about working while the mind is on other things. It worked then and it works now. Music like this is timeless. Having it forced on me was a godsend. In my own car, I was used to shuffling between carefully curated mixes I’d burned onto CDs, or finding the perfect album to fit the mood. But I very quickly surrendered control. Driving around to “Hang On Sloopy,” “96 Tears,” “Runaround Sue,” “Daydream Believer,” “Be My Baby”—the only way to get anything better than that is if I could’ve had the window down.
“Max: I'm too nostalgic. I'll admit it.
Skippy: We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?
Max: I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time.”
- Kicking & Screaming, Noah Baumbach (1995)
Jonathan Richman - “That Summer Feeling”
Surely there is a long German word for the phenomenon of something capturing and naming a feeling that you’ve felt, but haven’t properly pinned down until someone lays it out for you. “That Summer Feeling” is a perfect example of this. The song is an encapsulation of the freedom, lack of responsibility, and innocence most children have, and most adults would love to get back. “That Summer Feeling” comes up when I listen to most of the songs included in this list. “That Summer Feeling” is the type of warning a child will ignore, and any self-aware adult will immediately recognize. This song is the musical equivalent of the moment when Anton Ego takes his bite in Ratatouille.
Jonathan Richman is one of those artists capable of living in between childish innocence and knowing adult. He’s a punk rock Peter Pan. May this be a reminder to make sure you tap into That Summer Feeling as best you can—before it haunts you.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs:
Summertime Blues is an all time classic. Predictably, I love the cover version from Live at Leeds as it adds some muscle.