There were a bunch of songs in ’58 that grumbled in protest. If there were obstacles, and there were, he’d forge ahead. “C’mon Everybody,” “Somethin’ Else,” “Nervous Breakdown” all had irrepressible impudence, a streak of bad boy. By 1958, he’d already appeared in a couple of movies, The Girl Can’t Help It and Untamed Youth (vehicles for Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren, respectively), and released a few charting 45s on Liberty (the top 20 hit “Sittin’ in the Balcony,” “Drive In Show” and “Jeanie Jeanie Jeanie,” the latter a rockabilly cousin to Little Richard’s “Jenny Jenny”), but it was “Summertime Blues” that established his musical character, a pop James Dean: he was a teenager hopped-up with adrenaline, eager to bust loose. It was the only top 10 single Cochran had in his brief career, his breakthrough song. It has three scenes, three chances to turn things around, but each time it ends up in the same place: “There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.” Cochran might as well be waiting for Godot. The record is like a hot rod that lurches forward for a few seconds, then stalls, lurches again, stalls, with a repetitive eight-note riff that punctuates all of Eddie’s complaints. “There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues,” he decides.

He considers making an appeal to the United Nations (although presumably Dag Hammarskjöld had more pressing matters on his desk), and goes to see his congressman, but that gets him nowhere. He needs to work to make money, but then he doesn’t have the time to spend with his girlfriend, and when he skips out on his job, his parents take away his access to the family car no one is on his side. On “Summertime Blues,” released sixty years ago, Eddie Cochran, who wrote it with Jerry Capehart, is trapped in a cycle of frustration. R.I.P.“Summertime Blues” is a song premised on an oxymoron: Isn’t summer a time of liberation, irresponsibility, romantic potential?

It's like being a gay kid in a hick town that you have to go to in the summer or a hardcore gamer whose had nothing or no one to go outside and play with, they can't wait for it to be over. Also generally the only people who like going back to school during this time have had very bad summers - they did nothing, so they're summer haters. Also re-enacting something you did to kick-off summer helps or you can just reassure yourself that next summer is coming soon. The only way to temporarily mark the occasion is to party hard on the night of labor day, and try to cram some things from the summer list in. There is no official cure for the summer time blues, as it's inevitable. As we know, summer is the best season because you can do nearly everything and nothing. Everyone after labor day returns to their prior engagements such as work or school. Often Summertime Blues occur during the days preceding labor day, and as such mark a saddening time on a persons' life - this is because after labor day basically summer is over. During the last week of Summer you try and cram everything from the list in, but most likely miss. The realization that summer is coming closer to an end.

The who summertime blues