Bango! Here are Some #Rare Videos of Your Favourite Bands in High School

Old people who haven’t felt anything in years love telling you that the best times of your life take place in high school. We know that’s not entirely true. High school is full of after-school detention, parent-teacher evenings and disastrous subject matter, like watching that video of a girl getting penetrated by a horse.

Still, there’s an undeniable romance attached to the years you spent wreaking havoc in the classroom, breaking hearts, getting blind-drunk on £1.79 2-litre cider and looking really cool in a studded belt. You learn so much for the first time, from the merciless (teenagers are cruel; eating fifteen slices of fake cheese in a row is a bad idea; never sext) to the useless (pamplemousse is French for grapefruit; potatoes conduct electricity; how to play the glockenspiel). More than anything though, the best discovery you make at high school is yourself. It’s the time when you start to become you - shedding your parents best interests and adamantly steamrolling past anything in the way.

It’s for that reason that loads of bands formed when they were in school. Most of them are gone - now simply a pipedream in the memory of some middle-aged accountant who listens to INXS and smokes weed on the weekend - but others, like the Cure, Radiohead, and U2, are still going. For them, high school never ends. The same friends who stuck pencils in each others noses in second period Geography are, twenty years later, playing around the world.

Thanks to the advent of the internet, we can now find old footage of these bands playing shows at school concerts. Below you will find some important artefacts. Signs that time has passed, practice makes perfect, and talent is recognisable even from a young age. Here’s a buttload of videos of our favourite bands playing at school and we miss school. Can we go back to school? School was great.

Even now, Green Day are intrinsic to the high school experience what with the subject matter of their songs - getting stoned, hating on the ‘rents; masturbating with reckless abandon - corresponding directly with the hormonal rollercoaster of years 7-11. So to kick things off here’s the terminally jaded and faded Green Day playing at their high school. The year’s 1990 and they’ve released their debut record, 39/Smooth. Not that anyone cares though. 50 seconds into the clip and Billie Joe Armstrong’s looking pissed off that students are walking past without a second glance. Thanks to a shared interest in the devil’s lettuce, the band had recently changed their name from Sweet Children to Green Day and the above footage is one of the earliest documents of their existence - with Billie even playing the sticker-adorned Fender Strat that features in the video for “Basket Case”.

If Tom DeLonge’s recent behaviour and the fact that his position in his own band has been usurped to no objection isn’t enough to go by, then let this video of a teenage Mark Hoppus covering “Silly Girl” by Descendents convince you that Mark has always been the superior member of Blink-182.

As exemplified by “Adam’s Song” and the dramatic influence Robert Smith has had on his hairstyle here, Mark was always the “darker” one. Penchant for nudity considered, he brought a pensive edge to a musical career otherwise overwhelmed by farting and mum jokes. Like, if you wanted to have a serious chat about love or your dad, Mark’s the one you would pull aside even if he did have his balls out. He looks like he’s been through the same things you’ve been through. And, clearly, he has. Here’s Mark playing with his high school band “Of All Things”, ripping through a Descendents covers set at a graduation party and struggling to hold the attention of disinterested older kids. Isn’t that all any of us did growing up?

Everyone has an opinion on Kanye. Is he a genius? An egomaniac? Just one of Kim Kardashian's foot masseurs? No one can be certain. But one thing that’s fact: Kanye West was once young. There are several pictures proving his previous existence as a child - including some from when he lived in China - but the most important artefact comes from a potato-quality video recorded in 1990. In it, a blossoming, tender Yeezy recites a poem dedicated to Martin Luther King.

The hand gestures. The stance so wide it looks like she’s atop an invisible horse. The many, many missed notes. A brief reminder of when Rihanna was a fallible mortal before she became the immutable goal of human existence she is today.

There’s a lot going on in this clip from 1999 stoner comedy-horror “Idle Hands”. Devon Sawa’s career is beginning it’s steady decline towards “that guy in the ‘Stan’ video”, Jessica Alba is about to reach a level of fame where her awards for being sexy precede her acting credits, Seth Green continues to exist… Also, here are The Offspring, right in the middle of it, playing Ramones covers and getting their heads torn off (spoilers, soz!).

Fun fact: at this point The Offspring line-up featured a 16-year-old Ron Welty on drums, and a high school janitor also known as Noodles, two people for whom I imagine this high school prom scene was a little close to home.

Well done Robert Webb, you’ve definitely made good choices in your life.

The high-school cafeteria was the prime location for high jinx. Away from the watchful eye of the law, you could pop a bag of crisps under someone’s earlobe, expertly lob a fizzed up drink in the direction of the deputy headmaster, and throw a sausage at another student’s head and get away with it, placing the blame on any number of teenagers in the room. All sorts of shit happened in here: fights, fondling, lunchbox deals, you name it. The cafeteria was the place to do what you wanted. To let loose.

Before he turned eighteen, released K.I.D.S and became an international superstar, selling out shows across the globe while on an independent deal, Mac Miller spent a lot of time rapping in his school cafeteria. There are several videos on YouTube, all at different events, and they all show one thing: Mac could kill you in a rap battle. Just watch the video above and compare the first kid’s confidence with that of Malcolm “But My Mackin’ Ain’t Easy” Miller.

The neurotic musings of Pinkerton and Blue Album sound like a crestfallen high school diary opened into song, so it makes sense that Weezer went back to school to play songs from both albums to an audience of hormonal teens. The reasoning? Some kid called Ladd Martin (10/10 name) won a competition to get the band to perform at his school. The set list includes the hits - “the Sweater Song”, “Buddy Holly” - and puts them alongside some of River’s more forlorn songwriting, like “No One Else” and “Pink Triangle”.

Tame Impala aren’t actually in this clip but god damn. Kevin Parker can write a harmony.

You can find Ryan and Emma on Twitter: @RyanBassil @EmmaGGarland