The angel and the one

Over the years you get attached to various bands.    One of mine is Weezer.   There’s not a great deal to Weezer, quite funny lyrics for the most part and some decent guitar work, but the attachment goes beyond the surface and I’m not sure why that is.  I have a Weezer sticker on my (acoustic) guitar:

“If it’s too loud, turn it down” – wise words indeed!

Weezer’s eponymous debut was out in 1994.    It opens with “My name is Jonas”, goes through the famous “Buddy Holly”, the excellent “Say it Ain’t So” and ends with “Only in Dreams”, which is over 7 minutes long.  It’s a top album, and we listened to it a lot on an ill-chosen Club 18-30 holiday in Faliraki back in 1996 (at which my mate Wilf was reprimanded for climbing a tree, to which he rightly replied that the reps’ priorities were a bit off given what they were encouraging their guests to do every night).   We spent two weeks playing an improvisational cricket game on the roof of one of those white square Greek holiday villas, a sponge ball and a tennis racket the equipment of choice, cheap vodka the refreshment.  Meanwhile all the streetwise people were up to everything you’d expect on such a holiday: boys from Newcastle, girls from Basildon…. stereotypes?  Well, you should’ve been there.

But I’m getting away from myself.  Weezer regularly veer between the funny and the serious:  “Pink Triangle” being a good example of funny (“I’m dumb she’s a lesbian, I thought I had found the one” – I’m sure we’ve all experienced something along these lines.  No?)

More recently (in the serious department) we’ve had “The angel and the one”, which ends The Red Album.  Here are the lyrics:

It’s not my destiny to be the one that you will lay with
So many reasons why I have to go but want to stay here
Sometimes I want a taste but then I don’t know what I’m saying
You are the angel and I am the one who is praying

There is another love that I would rather be obeying
I see the ecstasy and already I’m anticipating
I feel a deeper peace and that deeper peace is penetrating
I’ve got the magic in me, I am complete is what I’m saying

I’m flying up so high, my purple majesty displaying
I’ve reached a higher place that no one else can make a claim in

I’ll take you there, my friend
I’m reaching out my hand, so take it
We are the angels, and we are the ones that are praying

Peace, shalom, peace, shalom
Peace, peace
Peace, shalom, peace, shalom
Peace, peace

Nothing out of the ordinary there.   Have a listen though.   It might not do anything for you, but for overly sensitive, half-witted emotional wrecks like me these type of songs can get you.   It’s about the delivery:  I could sing those lyrics and it would be rubbish.  Rivers Cuomo sings them, with the soaring guitars and cheesy eighties pomp and… well, whatever else they’re up to.  And on a sad day I listen to this and feel alrighter.  It’s quality stuff, and it’s all about the people, Weezer.  Coldplay couldn’t do this.

And so it is with football.  You know I have to bend these things around.   Players are players and they do what they do, but in many ways it’s how they do it that matters.   John Paintsil seems to be all over this year’s Fulham Review, with both Jamie and myself independently transfixed by the joy and spirit in his game.   John Paintsil brings feeling to his football.   Clint Dempsey… if you’ve read Adam Spangler’s piece on Dempsey you know what the game means to him.  Everything.  And yet he says himself:  “the game don’t care”.  Ouch.   Dempsey and Rivers Cuomo are singing from the same sheet, one way or another.  Dempsey has soul, his game has soul, to watch him is to savour something special about football.  The titanic struggle of one man against himself, the world, and half a dozen other demons.

Have we enough transcendental players, players whose ability is only part of why we enjoy them?  Brede Hangeland can inspire when he’s dominating a game.  Danny Murphy’s neat excellence is impressive but not awesome, and while I like Simon Davies’ nimbleness and quick mind his style is not so far out of the ordinary.

A few times last season we worried that this Fulham side was somewhat mundane, nearer to Oasis than Blur, to Kenny Gee than Ornette Coleman.   Which is fine – more people listen to Kenny Gee than Ornette Coleman – but you need a bit extra too, don’t you?   You need struggle, majesty, dispair.   And while Weezer’s conjuring of those emotions in me is calculated, the emotions themselves are not necessarily.    You feel what you feel.

Where is our next hero coming from?  Is there a player on Roy’s shopping list who brings heart, style and substance to the team, allied to the excellence that makes these peripheral gifts into something worthwhile?  Without excellence we’re not interested in the back story, not really.   Who’s next?   This is the joy of sport.  The team, but also the stories within the stories.   Who’s going to move us?  Who’s going to flip the ball up into the air and volley it past Edwin van der Saar?  Who’s going to endure all kinds of grief, go to his old club and his younger brother and belt the ball so hard that the most expensive keeper in the league can’t get near it?   Who’s going to take us away, make us forget ourselves and our floundering lives, make us scream with joy until we’re hoarse and we don’t know what day it is anymore?

I’m flying up so high, my purple majesty displaying
I’ve reached a higher place that no one else can make a claim in

Ahem.

It’s time for the season to begin already.