52 GIRLS

"Miss Marlene" / Donald Fagen

Fast forward 28 years, and here's the return of Steely Dan -- or at least the keyboard half, Donald Fagen -- still hitting that jazz-rock groove. If Fagen's 2012 album Sunken Condos doesn't equal classic Steely Dan on every track, when it does, it's something fine indeed. The cool jazz sound and oddball lyrics score some intellectual sophistication, but before we get too pretentious, the song's rock guts kick in. Hipster irony? Oh, folks, we are way beyond that here.

And really, we just don't have enough songs about bowling, do we?

I'm immediately swept along by the song's syncopated charm, its plush textures, the slight blurt of a horn section, the antiphonal electric guitar, those slinky chord changes. The chorus sets the scene in some Big Lebowski universe set at the local bowling lanes. "Can’t you hear the balls rumble? / Can’t you hear the balls rumble  / Miss Marlene / We’re still bowling / Every Saturday night." Dig how he swells into the unresolved chord of "ruuummm-ble," willing the chord to resolve. I imagine him standing at the end of the lane, tilting to the side, urging his ball to veer into a better trajectory.

In verse after verse he verbally riffs with the conceit, filling in all sorts of esoteric bowling-specific references -- "when she release the red ball," "The ball would ride a moonbeam down the inside line," "You were throwin' back hurricanes," and my personal favorite, "We drop the seven-ten." In my limited bowling career, I have never been able to clear that split between the 7 pin and the 10 pin, but I've got the lingo if nothing else.

There isn't much plot here, but it's such a particular, specific slice of life, I'm totally absorbed. It's a busy social milieu, with back-up singers oozing into the ends of phrases, the clutter of various instruments going their various directions, only the percussion track keeping steady like a ball rolling down the alley. I could swear I hear the murmuring voices at the bar, the machines in the arcade, the clatter of the ball return.

Fagen does give us glimpses of the girl in the picture -- rolling like a pro in 2007 when she was just seventeen, "With the long skinny legs, child / And your hoop earrings." (Prime pool hall skank or wild child free spirit? You decide.) Then the denouement in the sixth verse: "You ran into the dark street / At University Place / The cab came up so fast that / We saw your laughin' face." I know those streets and their skinny-jean clientele. I'm with her trying to grab that cab.

This is not a classic pop song; it does not make a major statement. Fagen probably thought up the lyrics in five minutes on a bowling evening, humming them under his breath as he waited for the automatic ball return. But I'm in no mood to quibble. Just sink into that fat instrumentation and let it roll.

11 DOWN, 41 TO GO

52 GIRLS

"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" / Steely Dan

1974. I'm in college, no longer listening to my parents' car AM radio, thrown upon the mercies of college FM, which has its own weird orthodoxy. But every once in a while I tune into the local AM station and hear -- between "Time In a Bottle" and "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" -- something strange and wonderful. Plenty of cheesy jazz-rock imitators came along later to muck up the waters, but these guys invented the sound -- the dense aural environment, underlaid with a slapping, commanding groove.

Calling Dr. Becker! Calling Dr. Fagen! Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the two mad scientists behind Steely Dan, crafted that sound and welded to it oddball lyrics with a distinctly snarky take on modern life. And snarky was just exactly what I needed to hear in those days.  "Reeling In the Years," "Do It Again," "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" -- the music was compelling, the songs themselves rather disturbing. But hey, I was in college -- disturbing was what I ate for breakfast back then.

So what's the story here? To a spooky samba beat, the singer's pleading with a girl -- I don't even think a girlfriend, just someone he briefly dated. Or whatever. There's certainly a whiff of desperation in the way he reminds her of "our little wild time" and going "out driving on Slow Hand Row" (that's some evocative name for a lover's lane). Properly speaking, I'm not sure that Rikki even remembers this guy at first, not if he has to remind her of their connection.

Now, in college I assumed that the number she wasn't supposed to lose was his. I pictured something scrawled on a matchbook or a cocktail napkin; I actually had a few of those in those days. If they had been steadies, she'd have had his phone number on speed dial -- but instead he's pleading with her "Rikki don't lose that number."

It was a different era, that's for sure. You didn't text somebody, you couldn't email them -- if you wanted to communicate you had to use the telephone, and chances were they wouldn't even be home to pick up. (This is such a Neanderthal era, we didn't even have answering machines -- if you called when they weren't home you just had to try again later.) It took effort.

"You don't want to call nobody else," he adds, entreating her -- because if she doesn't call, he'll never hear from her again. "Send it off in a letter to yourself" (mnemonic tips from Dr. Becker!). Chords falter and diminish as he speculates, "You might use it if you feel better / When you get home . . . " He knows she won't, but a guy can hope, can't he?  ("And you might have a change of heart . . . " the line wanders upward, followed by a twiddle of piano).

But things are not well in Rikki's world. That ominous ticking bass line, the ambiguous lyrics, the faintly scolding call-and-response of the chorus, they all spell trouble. At one time she wouldn't have phoned him for anything . . . but now maybe she will. Because --

Now, all these years later, I see a different scenario. It has occurred to me that it could be some other phone number -- an abortion doctor's, maybe? He's trying to help her out of a jam, but also keep himself from being implicated in that jam. He wants her to have a change of heart and get rid of the thing. After all, he only knows her from Slow Hand Road, and the unwritten rule is, whatever happens on Slow Hand Road stays on Slow Hand Road. Unless there are complications....

Maybe this is the scenario. I don't know for sure. All we hear is the dialogue between the two of them, and they know things we don't. It's like being thrown into a Raymond Carver short story, and scrambling to figure out what's going on.

One thing I knew for sure: if I was Rikki, I'd keep that number.  

10 DOWN, 42 to GO

"Miss Marlene" / Donald Fagen

Hijacked again!

You know, I considered Donald Fagen's 2012 CD Sunken Condos for my 2012 "best of" list. I regret to say, it did not make the cut. My long-time Steely Dan affection not withstanding, Donald Fagen minus Walter Becker loses that lyrics edge that always made the difference for me.

But a few weeks into the new year, I find that I cannot dismiss this album. The hooks are still there, the funky-jazz groove still compelling. So what if every song isn't equally good?  There's still a track or two of prime material here, and the more I listen to them, the more they possess my brain.

And hey, we just don't have enough songs about bowling, do we?



In the manner of all Steely Dan numbers, it took a little while for the chorus to sink in. And when it did, I was a little dumbfounded. Is this really what he's singing about? "Can’t you hear the balls rumble? / Can’t you hear the balls rumble  / Miss Marlene / We’re still bowling / Every Saturday night." Are we in some hipster Big Lebowski universe set at the local bowling lanes?

But after all, why not? And I'm soon swept along by the song's syncopated charm, its plush textures, those slinky chord changes.  Dig how he hangs on the unresolved chord of "ruuummm-ble," willing the chord to resolve. I imagine him standing at the end of the lane, tilting to the side, urging his ball to veer into a better trajectory.

In verse after verse he plays with the conceit, filling in all sorts of esoteric bowling-specific references -- "when she release the red ball," "The ball would ride a moonbeam," "down the inside line," "You were throwin' back hurricanes," and my personal favorite, "We drop the seven-ten." In my limited bowling career, I have never been able to clear that split between the 7 pin and the 10 pin, but I've got the lingo if nothing else.

There isn't much story here, though Fagen does give us glimpses of the girl in the picture -- "With the long skinny legs, child / And your hoop earrings." (Prime pool hall skank, if you ask me.). And then the denouement in the sixth verse: "You ran into the dark street / At University Place / The cab came up so fast that / We saw your laughin' face." I know those streets and their skinny-jean clientele. I'm with her trying to grab that cab.

This is not a classic pop song; it does not make a major statement. Fagen probably thought up the lyrics in five minutes on a bowling evening, humming them under his breath as he waited for the automatic ball return. But I'm in no mood to quibble. Just sink into that fat instrumentation and let it roll.   

Donald Fagen delivers a very specific brand of goods, and does so consistently, song after song, album after album. The cool jazz sound and oddball lyrics score us some intellectual sophistication, but before we get too cerebral and pretentious, the song's rock guts kick in.  Hipster irony? Oh, folks, we are way beyond that here.