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The Second Arrangement Lyrics
Pour out the wine, little girl
I've got just two friends in this whole wide world
Here's to reckless lovers
We all need somebody
Stashed in the yellow Jag
I've got my life and laundry in a Gladstone bag
You should know the program
Just one red rose and a tender goodbye
[One last goodbye]
And I run to the second arrangement
It's only the natural thing
Who steps out with no regrets
A sparkling conscience
A new address
When I run to the second arrangement
The home of a mutual friend
Now's the time to redefine the first arrangement again
It's a sticky situation
A serious affair
I must explain it to you somehow
Right now I'll just move back one square
Here comes that noise again
Another scrambled message from my last best friend
Something I can dance to
A song with tears in it
Old friends abandon me
It's just the routine politics of jealousy
Someday we'll remember
That one red rose and one last goodbye
[One last goodbye]
Then I run to the second arrangement
It's only the natural thing
Who steps out with no regrets
A sparkling conscience
A new address
When I run to the second arrangement
The home of a mutual friend
Now's the time to redefine the first arrangement again
I've got just two friends in this whole wide world
Here's to reckless lovers
We all need somebody
Stashed in the yellow Jag
I've got my life and laundry in a Gladstone bag
You should know the program
Just one red rose and a tender goodbye
[One last goodbye]
It's only the natural thing
Who steps out with no regrets
A sparkling conscience
A new address
When I run to the second arrangement
The home of a mutual friend
Now's the time to redefine the first arrangement again
A serious affair
I must explain it to you somehow
Right now I'll just move back one square
Another scrambled message from my last best friend
Something I can dance to
A song with tears in it
Old friends abandon me
It's just the routine politics of jealousy
Someday we'll remember
That one red rose and one last goodbye
[One last goodbye]
It's only the natural thing
Who steps out with no regrets
A sparkling conscience
A new address
When I run to the second arrangement
The home of a mutual friend
Now's the time to redefine the first arrangement again
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This is an excellent song. I'm just listening it to it for the first time. Honest to god, hearing this is like unearthing a treasure buried long ago. With its subzero cold music and lyrics, it would fit perfectly on Gaucho. Absolutely perfect.
The lyrics are uncharacteristically non-cryptic. (Obviously there's a better way to say that, I just don't know what it is right now.) I especially like the yellow Jag part.
The music is pure disco. Eighth-note hi-hat on the offbeat. The chord changes just before "Stashed in the yellow Jag" and "Old friends abandon me" totally date this song. But god damn, I love it.
@Starquest Nothing wrong with good disco. That genre was unfairly maligned in my opinion.
@Starquest Nothing wrong with good disco. That genre was unfairly maligned in my opinion.
A surprisingly straight-forward song from 'The Dan.' It's about divorce - the protagonist has left his wife and all he owns is his bag and the yellow jag. The protagonist cheated, he got caught, and now he's been kicked to the curb. His two best friends are the bottle of wine, and his mistress, who's place he'll be staying at tonight. Great song!
Yet another salvo fired by WB/DF regarding the temporal nature of relationships in the vacuous Los Angeles of the late seventies. The story of why this song was not included in "Gaucho" is now a well-traveled tale among SD fans. According to the book, "Reeling In The Years" by Brian Sweet, a novice engineer supposedly erased the final master by accident. Upon realizing his mistake, he was reduced to tears. The duty of delivering the bad news to Fagen fell on their recording engineer, Roger Nichols. Upon hearing this information, Fagen stood up and left the room without saying a word.
https://youtu.be/IRrmGxFx_tY?si=Bp71KKIlBXWfLlZS
Couldn't believe this song wasn't here, so I added it myself. This song was intended to be on Gaucho, but an assistant sound engineer erased 3/4 of it accidentally. It still exists, in a 79th generation analog copy that is on Youtube and the internet at large.
A Gladstone bag is a leather suitcase / duffle bag that kinda looks like a large purse.
A great pity what happened to the song.... I've heard a snippet of a much smoother, cleaner version than the bootleg tape but there's no vocals on it.
@mrose77 "Gladstones" was also a famous restaurant in Malibu, CA where Becker/Fagen lived throughout most of the mid-to-late 1970s. Not sure which meaning he has here, perhaps Fagen is equivocating.
@mrose77 "Gladstones" was also a famous restaurant in Malibu, CA where Becker/Fagen lived throughout most of the mid-to-late 1970s. Not sure which meaning he has here, perhaps Fagen is equivocating.
@mrose77 Fans are still working on it, and the search for the lost master track continues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvF1xeGrpS0
@mrose77 Fans are still working on it, and the search for the lost master track continues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvF1xeGrpS0
Nice mix of the instrumental and lo-fi track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvF1xeGrpS0
Roger Nichol's daughter found two nearly complete versions of this (no horns) on rough mix tapes he had stashed away and in June 2023 it was released on the internet. This is the original version (before erasure) and not the bootlegs of the second attempt before abandoning the song for good.