My Favourite Soundtrack: ‘Up the Academy’

The 1980 motion pictured released as Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy represents one of the great tragedies of cinema and soundtracks. Not only was the film a financial failure that lost us all the chance to have a bona fide Mad magazine movie, its soundtrack was even more of a flop—sentencing a good music collection to bargain bin obscurity.

First, some background on the whole Up the Academy debacle: after National Lampoon begat the 1978 blockbuster Animal House, Warner Brothers sought to make a proper Mad magazine movie and commissioned a script that would have brought Mad’s pages to life in a sketch-comedy format.

Before that, though, Warner wanted to test the brand’s drawing power, so they slapped Mad Magazine Presents above the title of Up the Academy, a pre-existing military school romp directed by iconoclast Robert Downey Sr. (creator of Putney Swope, father of Iron Man). Downey’s coarse and ill-paced satire was rated R for foul language and thus inaccessible to Mad’s preteen audience. It bombed atrociously and, as a result, Mad Magazine: The Movie suffered a permanent kibosh.

In the meantime, though, Warners’ music department assembled a sprawling, 22-song Up the Academy soundtrack that functions as a perfect snapshot of what major labels briefly banked on in the wake of punk. Spiky hair, skinny ties, and sugar-rush guitar riffs seemed a natural extension of the unwashed ass-length manes, skin-tight bellbottoms, and smoking grooves that moved zillions of units in the years immediately prior to #1 hits by the Cars and Gary Numan.

Alas, the actual vinyl Up the Academy soundtrack album winnowed that astonishing array down to a mere ten numbers. It still delivers plenty of potent wallop but devotees spent decades assembling and trading their own complete UTA collections on cassettes and CDs. A similar phenomenon occurred with 1982’s Valley Girl, prompting Rhino to issue a secondary soundtrack album consisting of excised songs in 1995. Nobody’s holding their breath, however, for Warners to unleash More Music From Up the Academy.

In short order, Michael Jackson, Madonna, New Wave’s synth-y Euro fops, and a 24-hour music video channel, MTV, would bury this final outburst of hard-rock-as-sweet-pop embodied by Up the Academy. Take a taste.

Blow-Up – “Kickin’ Up a Fuss” Easy Living Up the Academy Cheap Trick – “Surrender” Up the Academy Over the Edge Spring Break Up the Creek Nick Lowe – “Heart of the City” Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Up the Academy Pat Benatar – “We Live for Love” Pat Benatar Blondie Eddie and the Hot Rods – “Do Anything You Wanna Do” Eddie and the Hot Rods the Ramones MC5 David Johansen – “Girls” New York Dolls Up the Academy Cheeks – “Coquette” Cheeks Ian Hunter – “We Gotta Get Out of Here” Elvis Yoko Ian Hunter Mott the Hoople The Babys – “Midnight Rendezvous” the Babys Lou Reed – “Street Hassle” Lou Reed Up the Academy Bruce Springsteen