by Ana Carolina Lopes

As a kid, I didn’t know anything about taxes, or how to cook, or how to drive. However, I knew (or hoped) I’d learn when I got older. And I did. But there’s one thing I remember feeling growing up, and it was fear of not having a favorite band. Or worse, not knowing what my music taste was. Whenever people asked me what my favorite band was, I just didn’t know what to tell them and I really wanted to have a cool answer, or just an answer.

Unlike Almost Famous, I don’t really remember the first time I saw School of Rock. I know I was about 9 or 10 years old and I know I saw it first on cable TV. I often couldn’t catch it from the start, because when I found the channel, it was already on (kids, that’s how TV worked before streaming devices). But when I did, oh boy, it’d be a good afternoon (I studied in the morning). And the day my mom showed up at our apartment with the VHS tape of the movie for me and my brother, I remember the first thing I thought was “Now I can watch it whenever I want”. My poor mom and dad had to listen to “And if you wanna be the teacher’s pet, baby you just better forget it…” and “ooh la la la” over and over and over again. Which was fine for them I guess, because they like the film’s soundtrack filled with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Nicks. What they didn’t expect is that my brother and I would eventually know the lines by heart. And worse, that we’d say them along with the movie. We still do sometimes to this day. Though as we got older, it got in the way of actually watching the movie. If we don’t say it out loud, we say it in our heads.

What drew me to the film at first, as a ten year old kid, is that I liked the kids’ school uniforms, for one thing. The ones I wore at my school were nothing like the ones in the movie. Different fabrics, different styles, different cultures. The girls wearing skirts and ties – I wanted my uniform to be just like that, which never happened. Also, as a pre teen, I was already paying attention to boys, and so, I thought the drummer in the school’s band was really cute (we sadly and tragically lost Kevin Alexander Clark two years ago, at only 32 years old). Then I started learning as the characters were also learning. I felt more interested each time because I spotted the bands and the artists my parents were into and remembered their LPs and CD covers and names. By that time, I had heard of Led Zeppelin, but had never gotten the Led out (would eventually go to a Robert Plant concert around 8 years after that).

And so, to the sound of “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”, class was in session. For the Horace Green students and for myself. Let’s stick it to The Man!

And when we finally find the true music that makes us joyful, that makes us feel things, makes us feel alive, aren’t we all a little bit like Principal Mullins and Mr. Schneebly/Dewey Finn, making a fool of themselves, not caring that they’re making a fool of themselves, singing “Edge of Seventeen” while slightly drunk?

I’ve studied in many schools (and one university) in my years of age and all of them taught me something I could take with me for life. But Horace Green’s School of Rock, Richard Linklater, Jack Black and Mike White’s School of Rock lectured me into a movement, into the musical knowledge I have today and that I will develop as the days go by.

I said to the lead singer of an English band a while ago that everything I know about rock and roll started with School of Rock. So, if by any chance you think there’s no educational value in Yes, Deep Purple, T. Rex or David Bowie, you might want to think again. Richard Linklater and Jack Black can build you a full rock history chart which can be simply called “a history chart”. Because that particular film and its particular music opened a whole new world for me and made me discover who I am and who I could be in this rhythmic world.