Saturday 5 October 2013

Really

"You Really Got Me" by The Kinks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3Ei_yoI4c

I don't know why this song still moves me and still makes me so happy -- it couldn't be more primitively adolescent. If I hear it while I'm driving, my ass dances. If I hear it while I'm sweeping up, or washing dishes, or vacuuming, or walking from one room to another at home wondering why I left the one for the other, I dance. Can't help it. The band's equally helpless, insistent repetition of so few words and amplified guitar chords proves the title: he who sings this and those who play it have truly been gotten. They get started, but get stuck really fast. They don't even want to be singing and playing. They only, always, want to be at her side, they can't sleep at night without her, and they're fine with that:  "See, don't ever set me free . . ." I get that. Bitter irony: once you get set free -- at least when you haven't wished it -- by the person whose side at which you always want to be, you've actually been sentenced to solitary confinement, and you're just a dead man talking (to himself).

No wonder they called themselves The Kinks. Just kids, sure, but I suspect they probably knew how imperfect they were, and the rest of us are. And if you don't love the sound of that snappy snare drum counting out all the heartbeats front and centre, you might want to consider a defribrillation implant. I hear they're routine.

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