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August 29, 2007

Numerology: February in a Leap Year, Bones in your Skull

by David Klein

It feels appropriate that as I struggle to put together a proper survey of songs featuring the number 29, we are smack dab in the dog days of summer, a time when I traditionally feel that I’ve had too much of a good thing and start longing for the crispness and less jaded priorities of fall, as well as the feeling of wearing a jean jacket again. My late-summer listlessness has found expression in a less-than-critical but still heartfelt list, which appears oddly enough on the 29th of August. That being said, I am relieved to be able to report that I did find a song I can respect in the morning.

Sorry, all you wheezy, goateed nighthawks in your porkpie hats, our winner is not “Twenty Nine Dollars” by Tom Waits. I dig Tom Waits, his albums, I mean, and he was really excellent in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. But this sleepy blues number, sporting a refrain (“All you’ve got is twenty-nine dollars/and an alligator purse”) that’s growled out with boozy gusto, could hardly be called essential Waits. Less essential still is “29,” the name of a song AND an album by prolific, recently sober rocker Ryan Adams. Transparently based on the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin,’” both musically and lyrically (even down to mentions of cocaine and getting busted) the entirety of this heavy-handed tale of drug abuse and getting straight can’t hold a candle to Dead’s nimble opening image of “Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street.”

29 Palms is the name of a small city in the Mojave Desert that is home to the Joshua Tree National Park, where Bono & Co. glowered and squinted their way to black and white glory in 1987, and where the Stones took mushrooms and wore ponchos and watched for UFOs with Gram Parsons in an earlier decade. Other things happened there too, but those seem the most relevant. What all this has to do with “29 Palms” by Robert Plant is hard to say. It’s a dreamy, innocuous ballad that enjoyed chart success in 1993, but as much of a Zeppelin fan as I am, my interest in post-Zep Robert Plant is roughly commensurate with my utter indifference toward Mick Jagger’s solo record. It’s not clear if Plant’s song title had something to do with “The Lady From 29 Palms,” a chestnut about an untouchable tease dating from the ‘40s that was sung by people like Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. It’s corny and it’s dated, but TLF29P boasts a praiseworthy numerical lyrical structure:

She got twenty-nine Cadillacs, baby

Twenty-nine sables from Saks and them Cadillacs

Twenty-nine fellas who never had their arms

Around the lady from 29 Palms

Goes Cube - "Goes Cube Song 29"

Oh, I should say that the numerically minded, totally happening Brooklyn outfit known as Goes Cube have a 29 song on its fairly recent EP with the chuckle-inducing name of Beckon the Dagger God. It’s called “Goes Cube Song 29,” but then, all the band’s songs are named for numbers, i.e., “Goes Cube Song 30,” “Goes Cube Song 46,” and that one you can’t get out of your head, “Goes Cube Song 34.” The only problem with this numerically nomenclative predilection is that the numbers are not reflected in the songs at all. There’s no “29-ness” to “Goes Cube Song 29.” Ditto the utterly catchy “Goes Cube Song 34.” Unless the evil-sounding shrieks unleashed by singer Dave Obuchowski represent the sheer panic that sets in as one contemplates the decade after one turns 29. But I doubt it.

Deniz Tek, the leader of legendary Australian punkers Radio Birdman, could not possibly have added to his cult status with songs like “Hit 29” from 1998’s Equinox. A queasy hybrid of metal riffs and lounge lizard licks, this ponderous non-hit would almost surely alienate both constituencies. But compared to the Rembrandts’ “April 29” (rhymes with “everything is fine”) “Hit 29” is “A Day in the Life.”

Willie Dixon - "Twenty-Nine Ways"

In “Twenty-Nine Ways,” blues titan Willie Dixon boasts that nothing can keep him from his baby’s door, and he ticks off the various ways he has of getting there: “One through the basement/two down the hall/ When the going get tough/I got a hole in the wall.” While we are not given exact numerical evidence (he only mentions about a dozen ways), we have to take the singer’s word for it when he says there’s a reason he’s not laying all of his cards on the table: “A lot of good ways I don’t want you to know/I’ve even got a hole in the bathroom floor.” It’s hard to imagine that Paul Simon didn’t take the central idea of Dixon’s song and flip it around when he wrote “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” In his ubiquitous mid-‘70s radio staple from Still Crazy After All These Years, Simon enumerates the many ways of getting out that very same door. Coincidence? I wonder. But there’s no debate about the sturdy appeal of the Willie Dixon song, which sings the praises of the 10th prime number like no other.

Koko Taylor, whose signature hit, “Wang Dang Doodle,” has been covered by everyone from the Dead to the Nuge to the estimable Polly Jean Harvey, sang perhaps the definitive version of Dixon’s song, with the longer title “Twenty-Nine Ways (To My Baby’s Door)” on her self-titled1969 LP, which Dixon produced. In the ensuing decades, “29 Ways” has been covered by blues outfits ad infinitum, as well as a host of singers with bluesy leanings. But the fact that it’s been covered by both ‘70s actress Susan Anton (that’s right. Susan Anton, of Goldengirl) as well as Jim Belushi, who couldn’t possibly be a good singer, speaks to the appeal of this song, which even people whose best talent isn’t singing are just dying to wrap their vocal chords around.

In any case, the point of this excursion has always been to find not just the best song for every number up to 100, but a good song, too. “Twenty-Nine Ways (To My Baby’s Door”) is both definitive and good and unarguably the best 29 song ever written. Ever ever ever! Take that, Ryan Adams. My work is done here.

Koko Taylor -"Twenty Nine Ways (To My Baby's Door)"

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The plague of self absorbed twenty-something songwriters should see him through for now, but there are rough times ahead.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28

Posted by Jeff Klingman at August 29, 2007 10:30 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Magister Ludicrous at August 29, 2007 12:36 PM

Posted by: Jeff K at August 29, 2007 07:14 PM

Posted by: david at August 30, 2007 12:29 PM

Posted by: Magister Ludicrous at August 30, 2007 01:06 PM

Posted by: Randall Monty at August 30, 2007 01:35 PM

Posted by: david at August 31, 2007 10:00 AM

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