St Joe On The School Bus Sex And Candy Ancient Walls Of Flowers Marcy Playground

St. Joe On The School Bus Album: Marcy Playground (1997)
Sex And Candy Album: Marcy Playground (1997)
Ancient Walls Of Flowers Album: Marcy Playground (1997)
by Marcy Playground

In an interview with Marcy Playground lead singer/songwriter John Wozniak, explained that "St. Joe On The School Bus" is about getting picked on on the school bus. It's not about anyone specific, but John did have some rough times at school. He told us: "I was bullied as a kid, and for a little period there I think I probably started bullying kids because I was bullied, and so I understand it. I don't know if it's bullying, but I got in a lot of fights after a while. Because I didn't like people getting in my face when I was young. Or getting in my friends' faces. And I'm Irish and Polish so I got in a lot of fights. But it started with just getting picked on."

Marcy Playground is best-known for their hit "Sex and Candy." "St. Joe on the School Bus" was their next single, and the closest they came to another hit: it topped out at #8 on the US Modern Rock charts.

Like many of Marcy Playground's videos, St. Joe On The School Bus is very surreal. It involves a child literally crying wolf and suffering the consequences. Wozniak told us: "That video was done by Hammer and Tongs, the guys that produced and directed The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy movie. These guys are funny. They're British. And they're very funny. I like their sense of humor. And I've seen a few of their videos, and not all of them are funny, but they had this great idea for that video, and I liked it."

With images of "disco lemonade" and "double cherry pie," this is one of the more puzzling songs of the '90s, and according to Marcy Playground songwriter/lead singer John Wozniak, Sex And Candy pulls many things from many places. In an interview he explained: "Where did I get the 'sex and candy' part from? Well, I was dating a girl and she was going to Bryn Mawr College and it's where my dad teaches. And I was probably 17 or something like that and she was like 18. I always liked the older girls. (laughs) But we were in her dorm room, and her roommate came in and she saw us there, and she was like, 'Oh, it smells like sex and candy in here.' And I always remembered that. And that was back in the late '80s.

And then when I was writing the song and I was coming up with all these weird disco-era references that I was making up, 'platform double suede' and all that business, I was like, 'hey, let's just throw in that phrase that's been sticking in my head for the last five years or whatever.' So I wrote that song in '92, '93, somewhere around there. And it didn't really come out until '97. That song had been at least in my consciousness since the late '80s. At least with the concepts behind it.

But it's just about seeing some sexy girl and then falling in love, and then asking a dumb question to yourself... well, it's not even asking a question. It's just – I don't know!! I don't know. (laughing) I'm just gonna be straight up honest. I don't know. I'm telling you, when I was very young I experimented with drugs, but when I was writing these songs, I wasn't high. But it sounds like I was high."

According to Wozniak, even though there's a lot going on in this song, it took him only an hour to write.

Marcy Playground is named after the elementary school Wozniak attended in St. Paul, Minnessota, but the group formed in New York City in 1996. In 1997, they landed a deal with Capitol Records, which released their self-titled debut album. The first two singles were what Capitol thought were the most friendly tracks - "Poppies" and "Saint Joe On The School Bus" - but they were largely ignored. Some radio stations started playing the quirky album cut "Sex And Candy," so Capitol put that out as a single and it started a slow rise up the charts, reaching #8 on the Hot 100 in April 1998, over a year after the album came out. More impressively, it spent 15 weeks at #1 on the Modern Rock chart, a record at the time.

The next single, "Sherry Fraser," was a flop, frustrating the band because they were proud of the album and worried about becoming a one-hit wonder, which they did. Their next album, Shapeshifter in 1999, didn't trouble the charts and in the '00s they didn't fit in at all with the rap-rock and teen pop that was all the rage. Dropped from Columbia, they released albums in 2004, 2009, and 2012, and did occasional tours, often with other '90s bands.

The trippy video for Sex And Candy was created by Jamie Caliri, whose work includes the United Airlines "Dragon" commercial and the opening sequence of the TV show United States of Tara. His brother is Mario Calire, a drummer that has played in The Wallflowers and Ozomatli. John Wozniak told Songfacts: "He's got a really unique artsy sensibility that is very surreal. The imagery of it is really random. I mean, it's art. What we do is art. In the stuff I've done in the past there's not always a direct meaning, and I think that's the same with his video. He had a lot of very hidden subtexts in the video. Nowadays my songs are much simpler. They're about relationships, they're about my wife, they're about much simpler concepts."

Cassie Steele, who acted on the TV shows Degrassi: The Next Generation and The L.A. Complex, covered Sex And Candy in 2014. That same year, Maroon 5 covered it on the deluxe version of their album V.

"Sex And Candy" appears in the movies Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and Back In The Day (2014). It also shows up in these TV shows:

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist ("Zoey's Extraordinary Employee" - 2021)
Hightown ("The White Whale" - 2020)
Little Fires Everywhere ("The Spark" - 2020)
Workaholics ("Good Mourning" - 2012)
Cold Case ("That Woman" - 2007)

John "Woz" Wozniak – guitar, lead vocals (1996–present)
Dylan Keefe – bass, backing vocals (1996–present)
Jared Kotler – drums, backing vocals, guitar (1996–1997)