Day One - Your Favorite Song

I'm a history geek.  Most people who know me know this.  If people were on the fence about that decision this will push it over to the geek side.  My favorite song is Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The song was written in 1989 by Billy Joel.  I was 8 in 1989 and don't remember the song coming out.  I was raised on country music so I didn't hear this song until sitting in a history class in the summer of 2006.

It was the first day of class and the song was our introduction to the class, which was United States History 1945 to 1991.  Professor Knaus, who became my favorite at CSU, asked the class what they thought we were going to learn about in the class.  Kids started shouting out things like "Woodstock" and "Kennedy" and "Vietnam."  Then a girl said, "I hope we don't talk about the Cold War."  Bing, bing, bing.  Everyone groaned in agreement with her.  Just those words, "Cold War" put a smile on my face.  Knaus asked why I was smiling when everyone else was grumbling.  I said "Everything from 1945 to 1991 is the Cold War.  You can't talk about Woodstock, Kennedy, and Vietnam without putting it in the context of the Cold War.  It's the driving force."

She played the song and everyone jammed out.  I had never hear this gem, which warmed my history geek heart.  I loved it!  And it summed up the class in rock and roll fashion.  By the end of the class, all of those unsuspecting students wanted to know why all of the things Billy Joel mentions in the song is The Cold War in a nutshell.

Anywho, that class was the last push that got me to consider a master's degree in history.  Prior to that class, that song, that professor, I was taking pre-requisites thinking that I would work towards getting a teaching certificate.  I wanted more history, ALL history, all the time.  So I went to grad school.  And this song was played many, many times during those years in grad school to refuel the flame of motivation and inspiration.  There were a few times when surrounded my books and haunted my papers and hundreds of pages worth of reading, this was the only thing that kicked my rear in gear.  I eventually became Knaus' GTA and on multiple occasions got to play this song to the undergraduates in each class. 

Oh, and it makes a great running song.  When I'm running, I probably run faster when listening to this song than to any others. Ah good times.  Good memories!  

"We Didn't Start the Fire" Lyrics


Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray 
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio 

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television 
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe 

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom 
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye" 

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen 
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye 

CHORUS 
We didn't start the fire 
It was always burning 
Since the world's been turning 
We didn't start the fire 
No we didn't light it 
But we tried to fight it 

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser aand Prokofiev 
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc 

Roy hn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron 
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock" 

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team 
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland 

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev 
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez 

CHORUS 

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac 
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai" 

Lebanon, Charlse de Gaulle, California baseball 
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide 

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia 
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go 

U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy 
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo 

CHORUS 

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land" 
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion 

"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania 
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson 

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex 
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say 

CHORUS 

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again 
Moonshot, Woodsto/ck/, Watergate, punk rock 
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline 
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan 

"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide 
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz 
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law 
Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore 

CHORUS 

We didn't start the fire 
But when we are gone 
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on... 






LOVE IT!! WOOHOO!!