I wrote this back when I was editor at Amazon.com/music

Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) - Bruce Springsteen
A surreal thing happened to me in 1980. A nun read the lyrics to "Born to Run" during an all-school assembly when I was a freshman at a Catholic high school in Minnesota. It was back when records were being spun backward, banned, and burned. It was also a stretch of time when it seemed that Minneapolis venues were booked solid. I recall kids packing the hallways before class, their t-shirts billboards for the concert the night before: the Kinks's "Give the People What They Want," the Police's "Ghost in the Machine," AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock," and Ozzy Osbourne's "Diary of a Madman" were just a few. It was also the year that John Bonham died and I remember more than one upset classmate who had had tickets for the show. Surely our speaker was trying to make the point that the message in rock music such as "Born to Run" gave way to anxieties or expectations that students would be better off avoiding. Maybe she thought it was vulgar, or perhaps her goal was to let us know that the answers to questions of whether or not love is wild or real can be answered without the help of a fast car or a teenage romance. It was certainly odd hearing this holy woman reading the Boss' lyrics, but now I simply give her credit for her ability to pick out one of the most poignant examples of just how anxious high school years could actually be. Maybe she wasn't as out of touch as we thought.

Just a few short years later--and less than four miles away from that school--Bruce would find himself at dizzying new heights while "Dancing in the Dark" at the Met Center with Courtney Cox.

We had a priest at our school who was particularly fond of prog rock, and told us he wished he'd been Steve Howe. We thought he was embarrassing.

At the height of the Thatcher era, two P.E. teachers were roped in to do an assembly at my secondary school. They filled up part of the time by playing "The Beaten Generation" by The The, while they held up and threw away cards with the lyrics scrawled on them, Dylan style.

At primary school, a teacher once ranted about about the corruption of pop music, the reason being that pop stars all "played by ear" and were therefore evil. Even at the age of 6 I thought she was completely mad, particularly as the only pop songs I knew then were the not-very-satanic "Yellow Submarine" and the "Two Little Boys" by the great Rolf, hardly a friend of the devil...

My friend Siobhan, in the days when she was still known as Patrick, was overheard by a teacher mentioning the Groundhogs' "Thank Christ For The Bomb", and was told in no uncertain terms: "Thou [Whack!] shalt [Whack!] not [Whack!] take [Whack!] the name [Whack!] of the Lord [Whack!] thy God [Whack!] in vain. [Whack!]"

Ears still ringing, Pat took the album in to school the next day and received an apology. Which clearly made everything OK.

I can remember quite clearly on the last day of some term the music teacher allowing us to bring our records in, then analysing the chord progressions on his grand piano. The Buzzcocks were not seen as complex musically....

But further on assemblies, when I was around 14 some sixth formers were allowed to play the Freshies 'Wrap Up The Rockets' to the entire school as part of a CND-themed assembly. Happy days.

Also, at mine on the sixth form turntable it was definitely cooler than thou rules. Crass's Feeding of the 5000 generally saw off most other contenders.

On the other hand...

I recall being responsible for playin "We Don't Need No Education" in a school assembly. Which didn't go down quite as badly as my mate Jason reciting a poem with great relish that ended with the couplet:

A Master of Arts
Is nothing but a fart

(However, I can't now get Google to find the verse for me, so I may have dreamt that bit.)

Poteet High School Percussion Ensemble - Karn Evil 9, Pt 1

WARNING: Progressive Rock can seriously improve your IQ

Back in 1985, an elderly relative saw me listening to Misplaced Childhood and asked if I could make a tape of it for her. I was slightly surprised, given her age and (up to then) apparent dislike of music. But I did it and thought nothing of it...

Days later, she dropped by and gave me a copy of a book entitled Rock (And What Parents Need to Know). I still remember the title of this slim piece of drivel because it was so ridiculous. Written by an American preacher, it specified exactly why children, teenagers or, in fact, anybody, should be stopped from listening to Zeppelin ("squeeze my lemon til the juice runs down my leg" is some sort of sexual reference, apparently), The Beatles (they were fond of the occasional illicit substance, doncherknow), Pink Floyd (Nobody Home is not a song about a wife's infidelity but rather about somebody with psychic powers - he knows his wife is not at home not because she's having an affair but because he can SEE INTO HER HOUSE FROM AFAR!!! Aaaahhh!), etc.

All the greats were in there, and it was hilarious reading. BOC, Styx, Journey, and all other kinds of fairly inoffensive bands were given a right good kicking for their album covers, lyrics, stage shows, comments in interviews and much more.

But the best bit was the author's plea for parents to sit and listen to the albums with their children - if anything was going to turn children towards the dark side it would be their parents telling them their music was dangerous and a gateway to Satan and his horrible imps.