so it's good to see some really thoughtful responses still coming in.

High school was grades 10-12, fall 1987 - spring 1990.

The school was about 1,000 kids in suburban Philadelphia, so you're going to get typical cliques and musical subcultures you'll see in stereotypical teem high school movies. The punks, the hippies, the goths, the rockers, the proto-indie kids. Hip hop was relatively small (like the school's non-white population) except as a part of the overall pop music scene (ie, hits like Wild Thing), at least until Fear of a Black Planet our last spring. The big picture is probably summed up best by thinking about the songs I remember from the relatively few high school dances I went to:
-Safety Dance
-It's The End of the World As We Know It
-Boys Don't Cry
-and the theme to our prom, for some reason? Fool In the Rain. Bizarre.

Classic rock was sort of a common denominator; the radio format was fairly young at that point but it was rare to find someone who didn't like at least something that would qualify. This got a boost from some of the teachers, and also from the fact that a lot of the old bands were doing their first round of comeback reunion tours around that time - the Allmans, the Moody Blues, the Who, Skynyrd, etc. One teacher actually loaned me records by Barry McGuire and the Mamas & Papas.

The most interesting crossover effect was between the punks and the hippies. I think most of it stemmed from the fact that they were the two groups most likely to be smoking (tobacco) in the Breezeway, the sanctioned smoking (with signed parental permission - how rebellious!) area. At any rate, plenty of the hippies were converted punk fans, so there was a much greater than expected appreciation for a variety of sounds from both groups. I remember playing in school for the first time in like fall 1988, and the crowd was making a ton of noise - acoustic performances from students were pretty much unheard of at that point - and Mike Conway, one of the main punk dudes walked out, turned on a mic, and told the audience to shut the fuck up or get out to the lobby. It was awesome.

Goth was pretty small, even though some of the stereotypical Goth bands were fairly popular. I only really knew about it because of this one super cute Goth chick named Melissa Cunningham. She had the pale skin and red lips, but was unstereotypically happy, flirty, and nice. No idea what she listened to though!

The indie crowd was mostly based around kids who'd switched over from prep schools, I guess, where the connection to what was then called 'college rock' was stronger. REM was the biggest band, but there were other acts like Camper Van Beethoven, Guadalcanal Diary, etc. that had their fans. My favorite was fIREHOSE, whom I got hipped to by a skater buddy in the marching band. I was skeptical, but he played Ragin' Full On and I was hooked on first listen. Around senior year bands like Cowboy Junkies, Hothouse Flowers, and 10,000 Maniacs all came out to subtle acclaim and had their share of fans.

The main stuff that I was into kinda grew out of my fascination with acoustic rock, esp. CSN/Y. I'd also discovered my folks' record collection a few years earlier and devoured all the Weavers and Kingston Trio, Belafonte and Makeba records along with the Byrds and Beatles. I listened to Philadelphia's folk radio show and started going to folk shows and festivals. AFKAP has joked about me rolling up to parties blasting the McGarrigle Sisters, and there's some truth to it (though not THAT much.) That wasn't exactly popular but I found a lot of people appreciated what I was into b/c either their parents were into it, or b/c they'd never been exposed to it at all. By the time I graduated though Tracy Chapman and Indigo Girls had broken nationally, so there was a much wider recognition that the stuff I was into and playing wasn't just some fringe hippy shit (even though everyone thought I was a major toker).

Pop fans were an interesting bunch because pop still covered a very wide spectrum of influences. Hip hop began making inroads, but what I remember most were the tail end of hair metal. The girl I dated for most of Jr. and Sr. year loved... Aerosmith. The new shit, too, Crazy and Love in an Elevator and shit, not the stuff from the '70s. And Madonna... Express Yourself and everything was huge. She made fun of me for listening to Indigo Girls (until they got popular). When REM went major label they were really big. Overall though I paid pop very little attention at the time.

The metal scene was pretty strong. Most of the guys in it had graduated from hair stuff - Def Leppard was big when we were in Jr. High, and Yngwie Malmsteen and Bon Jovi to Metallica and Megadeth. Tee shirts that needed to be covered went from 'Bon Jovi rocks your ASS off!' (Jon Greenauer wore his jean jacket all day the day after that show, but kept flashing the back of the shirt to show how cool he was) to 'METAL UP YOUR ASS' (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/46/frontmetallica.jpg/sr=1) by high school.

Interestingly, my high school years produced two relatively important musicians:
-Gregg Foreman, who became a downtown popular soul DJ and also led the first garage-blues act Delta 72, though they unfortunately didn't last long enough to cash in. I remember him doing a variety of things in high school, from performing a cover of 'shoot that poison arrow' in an all-synth band (anathema to me at the time, sadly) to playing bass in one of the few live hip hop performances the school had (most of the variety shows featured a rapper, but rapping over tapes rather than tables). Last I heard Gregg was successfully recovering from heroin problems, doing some acoustinc side projects, and playing for Cat Power. I've been tempted to try to catch up with him but never have.
-Brian Chippendale, I think aka Black Pus, of Lightning Bolt, who was a year behind me. I remember him having a super mullet and wearing shirts from either the Cult or the Church, whom I conflate for some reason. I think he might have been in marching band but don't remember him there for sure like I do on JV soccer at the same time. Interestingly I don't remember him ever playing in bands or at variety shows or anything like that.

Overall, I had friends all over the place, musically, and absorbed from each of them. Some sounds (hip hop, anything synth) wouldn't grow on me for a few years after HS graduation, but for the most part I'm pretty proud of the way I developed and feel like I sort of carved out my own place.