17. I'M ON FIRE!

Let it be known, dear readers, that I am a sucker for lyrical self-immolation. Any song containing the words "I'm on fire," or "set myself on fire," or any one of innumerable variations of same, gets an instant pass to my happy pile. It's a coarse and common metaphor and I suspect it rings with the same personal significance in the hearts of several million other people on earth as well, but none of us is completely immune to the trite (oh, deny it! deny it!). And yes, I admit (perhaps not readily but without any significant reluctance), my predilection does extend to Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire." (I blame the weakness of taste on high doses administered in childhood, delivered via a mixtape with the entire "Born in the USA" album on one side and Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" on the reverse.)

Here, however, I shall forgo exploration of The Boss's supremely mealymouthed delivery of the magic phrase. Instead, in defense of my otherwise stellar tastes, I offer a few other choice examples of the self-immolation genre:

Big Black, "Kerosene"
I was born in this town
Lived here my whole life
Probably come to die in this town
Lived here my whole life
Never anything to do in this town
Lived here my whole life
Nothing to do, sit around at home
Sit around and home and stare at the walls
Stare at each other and wait till we die
There's kerosene around
Something to do
Kerosene around, set me on fire!

For a six-minute song, this one isn't long on lyrics, consisting mostly of phrases chanted/sung menacingly and repetitiously and almost ritualistically, like a bunch of desperately sullen suburban kids with nothing better to do than to try to conjure Satan and, well, set themselves on fire. It's halfway between a dare and a threat, "I'm gonna hold my breath till you give it to me" meets "I'm gonna blow up the school." Possibly the best suburban-teenage-alienation song not written by suburban teenagers.

Fugazi, "Margin Walker"
You make yourself
so beautiful,
you make yourself so, so beautiful
and now I feel like
like I'm going
I'm going to set myself on fire

"Margin Walker"'s spastic, naked beginning could be the adoration of a lover, it could be peeping at beautiful strangers from a second-floor window - is the fire to kill the pain of not having the beautiful thing? Or is it out of an outpouring of joy, a fit of love? It gives me fits of love to listen to, that is for sure - a creased-brow I'm dancin! pained look and a powerful compulsion to sing or mutter or twitch along. Hello voyeur, hello lovely, I think I'm gonna set myself on fire….

Meatjack, "Light"
No touch feels like this
Flowing through my blood
Raking down my face
Clawing up my back
I'm on fire

This one comes in waves - slow creaky menace, the pace across the floor of the haunted house, quiet and poised for explosion - then the explosion, an infuriated stomp as loud as the lights blazing on and then the whole place going up in flames - then a slower stomp with a bit more melody to it - then back to the creak. And then at the exhausted end of a few such cycles, the magic words, drawn out and gritty and shouted so loudly that the singer loses his breath each time. A few more guitar notes and it's over - nearly six minutes long, but just as instantaneous and infinite as a good rollercoaster ride.

Richard Ashcroft, "On a Beach"
I'm out on a beach
Sat on a rock
Thinking of you and the love I've got
Saw the devil's servant
I sent her home
Said bring me your master, I don't want his dog
I'm on fire
I'm full of love and new desire

This one is kind of insipid and I'd probably loathe it, with a lazy sort of loathing, if it weren't for the magnificent chorus. The verses consist of a laconic telling of some sort of desert island story, one which notes all the big and boring parts instead of the Tom Waits-style oblique but telling details (and oh horrors, here we pause to realize that RA is famous enough that this might be a soundtrack song to any one of those awful beachy castaway movies that came along in the last year - but a brief web search assures me that this is not true, whew). The whole thing is delivered in an affected sort of tone which sounds to me as if RA is trying to eradicate all traces of a British accent from his voice* and has removed all the honesty with it.
During the verses I can't help imagining a tediously literal music video featuring RA standing on a beach (a ha), wearing white rolled-cuff cotton pants, hands in pockets, squinting into the sun and lipsyncing into the ocean wind. But then the chorus comes in, a slow glorious drawing-out of our favorite phrase, and suddenly RA's eyes are shut and his disembodied head is spinning blissfully amid galaxies, the song unfurling endless and ribbonlike from his lovely mouth, which is hardly a step up as far as video concepts are concerned, but for a radio-friendly modern rock song, I'll take it.

* God knows why; everybody loves a British rocknroller