Being Nerdy Loudly

For our first paper, we will be exploring the reasons (and kinds of reasons) that a particular song might be particularly meaningful to us. As I mention on the Writing Assignments page, there are a number of ways to approach this project, but one of them is drawing on personal experience and reflection. The short essay below is something that I've written about my own favorite song, which it seems only fair that I share with you. I am not holding this up as a great example of this kind of essay by any means (as in, I'm not sure that I would have given this an A), but hey, it's something. 

Being Nerdy Loudly: "Little League" by Cap'n Jazz
by David B. Olsen

I may not have learned quite enough in science class, but I remember that centripetal force draws things into the center and centrifugal force goes the other way. I have since learned that in my own life, I tend to move centrifugally: outward from the middle of things, haunting the fringes of wherever I end up, and stopping only when there is finally a wall.

This is also how I played sports. As a once-aspiring hall-of-fame baseball player, I began little league on the first day at first base, and slowly made my way around the infield – seeking out less important positions – until the only place I could be trusted to stand was in deep right field, where no one was yet strong enough to hit the ball.

This is also how I listened to music. I went to my first punk show a few years after my retirement from future professional athletics, and I hit the mosh pit immediately – only to learn that the pit hit back. Within minutes, I was standing with a cool, cerebral distance in the back of the club, where I’ve remained a gargoyle for the last seventeen years. I’m the same at parties, too, and I spend a lot of time with the artwork on my friends' walls.

Which is why, when it comes to music, I’ve always preferred the awkward to the anthem. I mean, I’m not the fist-pumping-est guy in the world. Basically I am the “you” who gets rocked in “We will, we will rock you.” It also goes without saying that I’m not much of a dancer. I dance the way that babies eat: it’s kind of gross if you actually watch it, and something usually gets knocked over.

And so when I first heard the song “Little League” by Cap’n Jazz through the tinny, tiny speakers of a thrift-store record player in a stranger’s basement, I heard myself dance, play baseball, and grow up all at the same time. It’s a really, almost embarrassingly messy song, as though the band had never played it before. The verses sound like someone is mugging a group of maladjusted choir-boys in a room where different stereos are cued to different songs – none of them hits. The chorus… well, I’m not totally sure that there is a chorus. The lyrics are really kind of brilliant, but you’ll never hear them. The vocal delivery is as earnest and clumsy as finally telling a girl that you “like” her in junior high, but at maximum volume.

By the end, there’s nothing to sing along to, nothing identifiably rhythmic to dance to, and if you really wanted to pump your fist in the air, you’d have to do it randomly.

It’s like the national anthem of wherever I'm at when I hear it.

This song is my answer to age, really, because it always sounds young to me – again, like it's being played for the first time each time. And you can hear the band grow up as well; the song somehow already embodies their own short career. It starts small, gets loud, and then basically kind of falls apart. You can literally hear the band emerge from their modest, awkward beginnings (in 1993) to their glorious, awkward brilliance (in 1994) to their tragic, awkward demise (in 1995).

Whenever I play the song, as loudly as I can in my small car or apartment, I feel as though I am hitting back at the same world that I am also hiding from, and that it’s okay if I’m not totally cool. No one will probably notice anyway.