Green Book

This whole song is a cryptic shoutout to the Steely Dan fans who had two active internet forums at the time it was written. One was the "blue book" ( http://www.dandom.com/bluebook/ ) the other was referred to colloquially as the "yellow book" ( http://www.banyantrees.net/ ) (fwiw, it's no longer yellow). So "Green Book" is a mash-up of yellow and blue! "The new cashier looks like Jill St. John" refers to St. Alphonso, forum moderator at the yellow book. Lots of the other lyric elements are like that...and guess whose music is being referred to as "anachronstic but nice"? :-)

Check out the “Green Book” at The Village Studios where they recorded Aja…?

The song feels like a visionary look at where AI and VR may eventually intersect, conforming to the user’s imagination.

I think this song is about some sort of place or item (Green Book) where you can create your own fantasy. Kind of like in "Total Recall", you can choose where, her torse, eyes, legs... the "Marilyn 4.0" makes it seem like technology, one of the original fantasys or the 4th version to look like Marylin Monroe... "double dreaming a page at a time" maybe doing a little too much.

Looks like the narrator wanted his girl to have Maryln Monroe's legs. There's a lot of recording studio references here, like playbacks, samplings, keepers... etc...

I am very confused about this book, and i cannot make it fit entirely with the "green books" in real life (perhaps the cd-thing?). But nevertheless, this is one smooooooooth song.

I meant "song", not book. Too much thinking messes up the system.

The green book is a New York city directory of sorts. here is a link to explain better than I can:) http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/features/greenbook.shtml

The Green Book was also a state-by-state travel guide for African-American motorists, published from 1936 to 1966. I don't know if this song has anything to do with it (it would be a stretch), but here's a good article (and accompanying podcast) about the Green Book travel guide: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-green-book/

Naked Lunch was a "Green Book"

My take on Steely Dan is this...

Ever notice (?) that each Steely Dan lyric, song title or album artwork has a link to some sort of literature or author, especially the authors known as the Beats

They seem to use works of literary art as well as pop culture and current news items throughout to tell the same story about the relationships of the Kid, Jack, Daddy and one other pretender who isn't around all the time...

The story of Pygmalion is also ever present. But it's everywhere in our culture. Cute, young, uncultured rebel, a street wise thing meets sophistcated Mentor who tries to teach the ways of the world but mayhem, chaos and adventure follows just as in all the sit-coms and other works taken from this story. Lucy and Desi, I dream of Jeanie, My Fair Lady the Odd Couple and on and on and on

They, the Dan keep telling us the same story over and over again in different ways but it is always the same characters, Jack, the Kid, Daddy and...one other chimp or 'pretender' who isn't around all the time.

It's really a wonderful song.