My high school political science teacher posted on his blog:

In “A Cheap, Easy High—With No Side Effects” Patrick Kurp refers to Terry Teachout’s “post devoted to the music he listens to whenever he feels ‘the urgent need to upgrade my mood.’ He writes, ‘I’ve always found music to be one of the most potent means of attitude adjustment known to man,’ and his experience jibes with mine. …. Music’s impact is prompt and unambiguous. In contrast, literature is an oral ingestion of medicine compared to the intravenous immediacy of music.” Kurp goes on to list some of the works of literature that invariably lift his mood. For instance:

• Most anything by…P.G. Wodehouse
• Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation
• Tristram Shandy, especially the scenes with Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman
• The essays of Joseph Epstein and Guy Davenport
•  Jonathan Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower” and “The Lady’s Dressing Room”

Teachout’s list of music that provides “a cheap, easy high” is long. A few of the many he listed:

• Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”
• The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek”
• Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture
• Gershwin’s An American in Paris
• Copland’s “Buckaroo Holiday” (from Rodeo)
• The Who’s “Shakin’ All Over” (from Live at Leeds)
• Sidney Bechet’s 1932 recording of “Maple Leaf Rag”
• Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso
• The first movement of Mozart’s A Major Piano Concerto, K. 488
• Steely Dan’s “My Old School”
• Flatt and Scruggs’ “Farewell Blues”
• Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide”
• The first movement of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony
• Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus Overture
• Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Three little maids from school are we” (from The Mikado)
• Pretty much anything by Count Basie, Erroll Garner, Fats Waller, Haydn, or John Philip Sousa

In case you haven’t heard of them, I linked to them up to the last bullet point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4R43_bFxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVXalu0p1wo

(Side note: A lot of Wisconsin high schools use “On Wisconsin,” when they could use a Sousa march as their fight song.)

Teachout also listed (and I have linked to):

• Stan Kenton’s recording of Gerry Mulligan’s “Young Blood”
• Wild Bill Davison’s 1943 recording of “That’s A-Plenty” (turned up very loud)
• The John Kirby Sextet’s “It Feels So Good”
• Buddy Rich’s 1966 live recording of “Love for Sale”
• Booker T. and the MGs’ “Hip Hug-Her”
• Johnny Cash’s “Hey Porter”
• Jelly Roll Morton’s “Wolverine Blues” (with Baby and Johnny Dodds)
• The Dixieaires’ “Joe Louis Was a Fighting Man”
• Donald Fagen’s “Morph the Cat”
• Doc Watson’s “Let the Cocaine Be”
• Sergio Mendes’ 1966 recording of “Mais Que Nada” (not the icky hip-hop remake, eeuuww!)
• The Dominoes’ “Sixty Minute Man”
• Stephen Sondheim’s “A Weekend in the Country” (from A Little Night Music)
• Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft”
• Walton’s Crown Imperial (as played by Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble)
• Stan Getz and Bob Brookmeyer’s “Open Country”
• R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe”
• The Beatles’ “Revolution”
• Django Reinhardt’s “Swing 42”
• The sound of Louis Armstrong’s voice