Crazies

From The Whole Shebang

On one of the many incarnations of the Fluid Ounces message boards that have come and gone, amid many discussions of what songs people wanted Fluid Ounces to revive at their live shows, I steered one such conversation toward songs that I hope I never heard played live again. Most were songs that I’m still tired of from before Seth Timbs moved to Los Angeles (“Marvel Girl” and “Luxury” come to mind—because they always seemed like easy songs added to live sets as throw-aways to add length and song-recognition to the sets), and the only one I listed that they were actually playing at the time was “Crazies.” They never played it again, and I take credit for the demise of this song, whether I had anything to do with it or not.

It’s not a bad song, but I tend to associate it with past relationships, and I think it was given too prominent a place with its frequent plays, and I just got tired of it. It does a lot of things right, though with the nice, “La da da da da da da, la da da da da da”-ing and a great piano outro.

I guess, and maybe this is brought on by the fact that I’ve done a lot of “growing up” since this song was debuted in 2001, that my chief problem is how the song flaunts its naïveté and boasts of a love that “couldn’t work out better in the movie,” yet in the end, the “love so simple it was made to go on and on and on,” for both Seth and me, proved not to be that at all. Thinking specifically of having this song played at my wedding reception, it seems to embody pride coming before a fall to me. I guess Seth doesn't feel that way about it. That is why I was surprised that it stayed in Fluid Ounces sets as long as it did, on through 2005, before I killed it.