Hooray, Hooray, the School Is Burning

I was nominated by @katharsisdrill to participate in this challenge, where you have to write seven consecutively posts about songs from your high-school/college years, that somehow were important for you.

I start with a song, that plays a huge role in one of the most hilarious school pranks, I've thought out and performed. But let's start with the music:

Extrabreit - Hurra,Hurra die Schule brennt (1982)

"Hurra Hurra Die Schule Brennt" (English: "Hooray, Hooray, the School Is Burning") is a song originally recorded by German band Extrabreit in 1980 and remixed in 1990.

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Early Influences

When I grew up in the 70s, my taste in music was certainly influenced by my parents. As they mostly listened to German Schlager music, as provided by a weekly TV series called ZDF Hitparade, I still know the melody and lyrics of most of the songs of this genre.

So it was only consequent, that the German entry for the European Song Contest in 1979 called "Dschinghis Khan", became the very first record, that I've ever bought from my own pocket money.

But then with beginning new 80s decade, there suddenly was a new kind of German music, which my parents didn't like too much, but still made it into the Hitparade. It soon became a movement and genre called:

NDW

Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW, pronounced [ˈnɔʏə ˈdɔʏtʃə ˈvɛlə], "New German Wave") is a genre of West German rock music originally derived from post-punk and new wave music with electronic influences.

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Suddenly German music was cool. Either because of the Punk and New Wave influences and because of the surreal or provoking use of language. Some songs were even blacklisted by the radio stations or played very rarely, like "Hooray, Hooray, the School Is Burning" by Extrabreit. I also liked the band a lot, because they lived in our neighboring town.

The band was founded around the end of 1978, when they began their career as a German punk rock band; later they were ascribed to the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) movement, though their music is not typical of the NDW genre. It was influenced heavily by punk rock music, and their lyrics were often critical of politics and society. The members viewed themselves as punks, whose only association with the NDW was that they appeared at the same time. As testament to that, they wrote on their homepage: "Ja wir haben den Scheiß eben mitgemacht!" (Yeah, we went along with that shit).

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The Prank

As I was the proud owner of one of the first Walkmen and liked to play around with electronics, I once had the idea to connect my Walkman with the speaker system in our classroom.

The only thing, I needed was a screwdriver and a broken headphone cable with bare wire ends. Then I recorded the "School Burning" song on a cassette leaving the first 20 minutes blank.

Shortly before the course started, I connected the Walkman to the school speaker, who was hidden in a space above the door of our classroom, and started playback...

The hardest part was to not turn a hair and seriously follow the class' lesson. And although our teacher smelled a rat, she certainly didn't know, what would happen.

Then suddenly the music started to play: "Hooray, Hooray, the School Is Burning!" - At first our teacher thought, someone had hacked the speaker system of the whole school, but when she realized, that half of the class was rolling on the floor laughing, while the other half was singing along, she knew, that it was a prank of our class.

Her overall reaction was pretty cool and I got no punishment, I rather had the feeling, that I even rose in her esteem.

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Busted

About 10 years later, I worked as security guy during one of Extrabreit's live shows in a huge disco in Dortmund. And I even made the visuals, that announced the concert before, with my first video camera. I still have the clip somewhere...

Then, in 2003 an English pop punk band called Busted covered the song. The version rewrites the verses in English, but keeps the chorus in German. So you can get an idea of the lyrics.

Busted - Hurra Hurra die Schule brennt

I'd like to know about the best school prank, you've performed or witnessed. Please share in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

@shortcut

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The rules:

• Choose one song from your high-school/college years.
• Write a few words about who made you listen to this song for the first time, what this song means to you (was it a breakup song? you blasted it at 100% on your audio system when you were partying with your friends?) whatever you want.
• Write your text while listening to the song. As soon as the song ends, wrap up what you where writing and submit it.
• Do this for 7 days in a row if you get nominated
• Mention one person who should do this on each day.
• Tag it with #musicwaybackchallenge and include these rules at the bottom of your post