Yesterday was my Dad's birthday, so I'm writing about "Aneurysm," my favorite Nirvana song. Most people would never equate their father's birthday with a fairly obscure song by a now-fairly obscure, once-monumental, without-equal punk/rock three-piece. But I do.
When I was still too young to appreciate an unknown song by a band I didn't know I would soon worship before obtaining my driver's license, I was just another ten-year-old that only liked whatever his Dad liked, which was Van Halen. Back then, it seemed like my father had a lot of free time, at least as much as I did, and he would spend most of this time watching footage of (almost) every Van Halen concert ever performed.
My father loved Van Halen so fervently (and still does) that I can say with 99.9 percent certainty that theirs was the first piece of music I had ever heard in my life. I can't imagine my father not playing "Unchained" for me, his first-born son, within the first twenty-four hours of my existence. These things are just what fathers do when their children are born.
By now you're probably asking yourself what this has to do with Nirvana, and it is this: my father loved rock music, and he instilled this Love of Rock in me, almost immediately upon my birth. Most of my early childhood memories involved consuming rock music with my father either (a) in front of a television, or (b) in the passenger seat of his car. It was in the (b) setting that I first heard Nirvana's "Aneurysm." I wouldn't love the song for at least another five years. At the time, its lyrics were my only memory.
I remember the lyrics because they were so cliché. "Come on over & do the twist," opens the first verse after my favorite "gas-then-brake" song-openers of all time, a term I use to describe parts in a song that start small & quiet at first, then launch you into its maximum level of Rock, then simmer you down again like a sonic roller-coaster.
The empty meaning of the first line, and that it sounded like something the Chubby Checker would come up with, is what made it so memorable. Line Two, "Overdo it & have a fit," was interpreted childishly to be a reference to what happened in the song before the verse. Line Three, "I love you so much, it makes me sick," is still clever, regardless of how literally it described Kurt Cobain's love for Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill. Line Four just repeats Line One.
The second verse is same as the first, with the minor adjustment in Line Four, when Kurt sings, "Come on over & shoot the shit." For whatever reason, this got my Dad every time. He found this lyric patently hilarious. It might've had something to do with his upbringing in a small Tennessee town, but he's still entertained by it to this day. When I was ten and singing this lyric in the car with him as the song played, it was the only time I could say the word "shit" without any negative consequences, and being able to do that is memorable for all children.
I was fifteen and already an established fan when I realized how exemplary "Aneurysm" was to Nirvana's catalog. It is the best of everything they were, and probably the best of everything that was Rock & Roll in the 20th Century.
The melody and structure are impeccable. Bass, drums & guitar freak-noise count off the opening measure, then the most perfect arrangement of four chords ever conceived, with Dave Grohl hitting the cymbal one, two, three times at every other fill. It's what heroin must feel like (also referenced lyrically). Its verses are quiet, then loud, quintessentially derivative (and expertly reductive) of anything done by the Pixies, and the chorus (on the Incesticide studio version) employs a '60s-era echo ("Beat it, beat it") reminiscent of a time when women with shimmering bouffants did that sort of thing.
To top it off, the song's lyrical content combines into one idea the only two subjects rock music always glorifies: being in love & doing drugs.
I don't think I would have ever loved this song, or even this band, if it wasn't for that one afternoon in 1996, riding shotgun in my father's Honda Civic hatchback. For all of these reasons, "Aneurysm" will always be my favorite Nirvana song, and my father is the only person I have to thank for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment