Beau of the Fifth Column gives his take on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” as a gift to public school teachers.

I was a big Billy Joel fan who kinda felt like he lost his way with An Innocent Man, even though it had a lot of hits. Another classic rock guy who crashed into New Wave.

First time I heard Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” I thought, “Hey, return to form.” I will still defend Billy Joel to any music hipster who comes at me, but I wasn’t empressed with the other songs on Storm Front (Hmm. Unfortunate album title nowadays…)

But I still love that single. It deserved to be a smash hit. It made an important subject fun to a lot of people, which is the first step toward making them curious.

I just discovered a fun video of Beau of the Fifth Column doing a version of that song that mentions other world events. Excellent idea. Way more history took place during the Cold War than could ever go into one song. You could make a million just like it.

I got C’s in most of my History classes even though it was a minor, but I couldn’t resist a great story, though I had a hell of a time remembering when they happened for the test. I’m still glad I took those classes. Knowing history is a great way to guess the future.