Words by Blair, Mark, JP, and other Robots

Going back to school means you need to be ready.

First, be sure to have your iPod stocked with the appropriate jams for the fall. Nothing helps a kid through the highs and lows of school life like a solid music collection. You’ll need some punk rock and hip hop so the skate kids will “respek” you, some noodley guitar jams for the hippies who will let you copy their homework (the stoners are always smart), some bland, recycled, sappy hooks for the popular girls, and some pop for the closet you may be hiding in. Oh, and don’t forget the mix-tape fodder so you can smoove out the bumps with the ladies.

We can definitely trace our own high school histories by looking at the albums from our formative years. It’s how kids like us define ourselves, through the crappy music that will inevitably embarrass us later on (especially when we’re drunk and singing along to a bar full of people who will never forget this moment). Would we be the same kids if we hadn’t rocked out to the Dead Milkmen’s Eat Your Paisley while driving around in our sky-blue Buick station wagon? It’s highly-fucking-doubtful.

For you indie peeps reading ‘Sup, we recommend the new album by the Double, Loose In The Air, out now on Matador; I Am The Fun Blame Monster by Menomena; and the self-titled Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album-if you picked it up before Pitchfork gave it a stellar review, consider yourself a music nerd. If you picked it up after, consider yourself an indie-yuppie, or a “yundie.” Don’t forget the National’s Alligator, APSCI’s Thanks for Asking, and if you don’t have the Gorillaz Demon Days yet, you are hereby uninvited from patronizing your local comic book shop.

Surely some summer sleepers will carry over into the fall-we’re looking at you, Love as Laughter’s Laughter’s Fifth (Sub Pop)-so check out the Mae-Shi’s Heartbeeps. Put it on when you want to get all aggro after an exam, or after someone pulls your pants down in gym class and it so pisses you off. For the quieter fall days, throw on John Vanderslice’s Pixel Revolt.

It’s always hard to predict what the autumn hits will be, especially since they’re not out yet, but if the leaked singles are any indication, it’s a pretty safe bet that the new Kanye record is going to be nasty. Nasty-good.

But we’re not just here to help you with music; we cater to all your Back to School needs. You’re going to need a backpack. Sure, all the emo kids have fancy over-the-shoulder Freitag record bags, but you can laugh when they’re in the hospital with horrible spine infections and rubber kneecaps. Wear both straps at all times. There is no irony in this. And make sure you pack a mid-morning snack. We personally prefer the Hostess Iced Honey Bun, but that’s just us. You can also roll with the Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie, or the Drake’s Coffee Cake. If you’re a child of the Mid-Atlantic States, like JP is, Little Debbie is a filthy, two-bit whore compared to the goodness of Tastykake and that oatmeal poo-pie doesn’t hold a candle to butterscotch Krimpets! And the Philly jerks can have their Tastykakes. We’re not interested. Another option is to jet down to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts for a quick butternut and a medium regular. That should do the trick for you older, sophisticated types.

Grab a new Trapper-Keeper with your favorite comic book hero, Batman, specifically the bat-shit scary Batman Begins edition. Definitely the best summer blockbuster by far, Batman Begins was totally like the best big-screen telling of the Batman story, and the use of undervalued Scarecrow as one of the villains wins major points. Honestly, when Batman is bouncing that dude up and down like a yo-yo and the guy says “I swear to God” and then Batman screams, “Swear to me!”…I mean, damn! So, be sure to have your BB Trapper-Keeper ready and stocked with paper, both wide-ruled (because your handwriting sucks) and graph paper (so you can pass Algebra 2 and draw your own comic-book heroes to scale). Find some Listerine Pocket-Strips to cover up what you were doing behind the gym at 4th Period (where the fuck were these when we were in school? Honestly).

You’ll definitely want to have a wristband or two, because we know for a fact that you either want Ryan Atwood from the O.C. (if you’re a girl) or want to be him (if you’re a guy). Don’t front like you didn’t watch the whole first season, because we know you did. And don’t act as if you didn’t watch the whole second season, even though “it wasn’t the same” or “the lesbian stuff wasn’t nearly dirty enough” or “that Rocketeer dude talked way too softly” or “Rachel Bilson was getting annoyingly skinny and needed to eat something.” We know you’re holding your breath for season three after Marisa shot Ryan’s still-fresh-from-prison brother in the last episode. Hopefully, though, you’ve been paying close enough attention to the show’s soundtrack to tell the difference between the crap and the indie gems it highlights. For example, Sufjan Stevens’ track “To Be Alone With You,” Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” from the Christmukkah episode, and Spoon’s “The Way We Get By,” are all indie gems. Rooney, Jem, the Bravery and that awful theme song “California,” by Phantom Planet, are all crap. It’s totally OK if you heard Bloc Party or Dios Malos or Eagles of Death Metal or LCD Soundsystem for the first time on the O.C. The show’s producers have obviously been paying attention to stuff that’s just barely off the mainstream’s radar. However, if you’d never heard of Modest Mouse or the Walkmen before they played at the Bait Shop, read this whole magazine cover to cover and then we should sit down and have a talk. Also, if you’re rocking “the Cohen” look, you can’t go wrong with a recently reissued Le Tigre or O.P. polo shirt-maybe Penguin, if you’re into bowling and whining or crap like that.

Oh, and don’t forget money for lunch. With the weak dollar and the rising price of potato futures, our guess is that school lunch is reaching astronomical prices these days, but we honestly have no idea. We used to be able to get a chicken burger with some tater tots for about $1.35, which, in retrospect, seems awesome now. In fact, we wish we had a school cafeteria right now.

Here’s a mix we’d make for you to take to the first day of school to impress your friends and wow the new hot girl or guy:

Side A:
Hot Chip “Playboy”
Malcolm Middleton ” A Happy Medium”
Ramones “Judy Is A Punk”
Cut Copy “That Was Just A Dream / ~~”
Sondre Lerche “Two Way Monologue”
Annie “Me Plus One”
Papas Fritas “Way You Walk”
Lo-Fi-FNK “Change Channel”
Geiger “Cocain-e”
Captain Comatose “To My Song”

Side B:
Moloko “Fun For Me”
Snoop Dogg + Pharrell “Drop It Like Its Hot”
Steve Miller Band “Fly Like An Eagle”*
Weezer “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here”
Brakes “I Can’t Stand To Stand Beside You”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah “The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth”
Dolly Parton “Islands In The Stream”
The National “Cherry Tree”
Diamond Nights “Destination Diamonds”
Cheap Trick “Surrender”

[*We've agreed to disagree on this. Mark claims that
"Serenade" is the far superior track and a vastly underrated piece of Steve Miller's back catalogue. Blair opted for the more populist, and still excellent, "Fly Like an Eagle." We'll let you decide.]

This mix is best played while driving around during a lunch break or after school. Here’s a tip: If you’re cruising around while your friend hangs out the window of your station wagon, whipping a shirt over his head and screaming “Get a job, street trash!” to all the other students, make sure you don’t do this within sight of the principal. It’s bad news bears. Be cool, stay in school.

Love,
Your boys of summer ’05
(robot) Blair, (robot) Mark, (robot) JP
http://music.for-robots.com