I used to have really strong opinions about music, until I eventually realized that almost all of those opinions were negative. Like many blinkered indie music snobs, I found that lots and lots of songs just pissed me off for no clearly discernable reason. I don’t know exactly why I felt that way; it was automatic.
And that’s a little scary.
Oh sure, I had my arsenal of gripey adjectives: corporate, boring, cookie-cutter, bullshit. But, if I’m honest, when it came to me and music, the emotional response happened first, and the predictable critiques were drafted ex post facto. I didn’t know that I was doing this, of course; I thought I was coolly and dispassionately assessing artistic merit (or lack thereof).
Bullshit.
But the anger I lived with was real. When I eventually realized that I wasn’t Lester Bangs Jr., and that I lacked critical acumen—or even the basic vocabulary of a music critic—I abandoned my rationalizations. But the anger was still there; it just became unmoored from language.
I think we’ve all been blindsided by a particularly effective insult before. Rationally, logically, its content was probably trivial. But, sometimes, someone gets you with a shot that should bounce right off you, but actually really freaking hurts. And though the initial shock might wear off pretty quickly, you find yourself probing the wound for days afterward, because the disproportionate response it brought out of you points to a disturbing fact: You have a weak point that you didn’t know about. Anything that hits you harder than it should sends the same message: You are not as strong as you thought.
“Bad music” was one of the things that got me to consider some pretty uncomfortable truths about myself. For example: If I hated a song that millions of other people seemed to love, then either I knew something that those other people didn’t, or I was missing something blindingly obvious. After realizing that I was no informed connoisseur, the latter option seemed far more likely. In the end, it became clear that my attempts to dress up my emotional responses as thoughtful considerations had more to do with my fear of being thought of as a reactionary dummy than any real intellectual evaluation.
So, that’s why I’m posting Harry Nilsson’s “Jump Into The Fire.” I can’t say I’m a huge fan of his work, but my parents loved him, he died tragically, and he was kind of a fucking maniac. And, since I’ve talked so much about how I tend to like or dislike things without quite knowing why, I thought I might as well put up something that I actually have a reason for enjoying. I mean, the song has basically one verse that gets repeated over and over, but Harry’s vocals just get more and more histrionic until the whole song just breaks. I love vocal performances where the singer goes from just-about-to-completely-lose-it to just-fucking-losing-it. I value that more than any well-built technical performance—even though those can be great, too—it’s just the way I’m wired to respond, I guess.
