Losing It At The Astor Hidden Song Meanings Are In Ear Of Beholder, Just As They Ever Were

The other day my 14-year-old daughter caught me tapping my toe to one of her hot CD tunes.

“Dad, what are you doin’?” she scolded as if she were the parent and I the teenager.

“What’s it to ya’?” I answered impudently as if I were still the teenager.

“You don’t even know what this song is about,” she said.

“Maybe not … is it some kind of code?”

“Sort of,” she said rolling her eyes.

“Why would any singer have to put it between the lines nowadays? Let me in on the secret meaning. Please?”

She gave me the teenager’s all-purpose answer and discussion stopper, “You don’t have a clue, Dad,” then she shook her head and walked away in search of intelligent life.

Ah, but I do have a clue, or at least I used to have a clue. You see it was only a few decades ago that I was in the know and it was my parents who were befuddled at Mick Jagger’s complaint, “I can’t get no (satisfaction), no, no, no!” Mick wasn’t singing about his inability to get financial compensation, no, no, no!

But my generation wasn’t the first to smugly enjoy coded lyrics and hidden meanings (hidden from the older generation).

In 1940, the March 25 issue of Time magazine reported that America was nervous about “salacious” song lyrics: “Tin Pan Alley’s current trend has been called ‘the double-entendre era,”’ exemplified by that year’s big hit, “She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor.” The magazine reported that such “blue” songs are not allowed on the radio and the NBC Radio Network revealed “that 147 songs are on its blacklist, and 137 of those may not be played even instrumentally.” Here, here!

When I read this, I began a city wide search for a recording of “She Had to Go and Lose it at the Astor.” I found one and I’m ashamed to say I bought it, but purely out of hope that maybe it would wise me up so that I could chat with my daughter about the underlying message of the Queensryche song “I Am I” while we paste on fake tattoos and giggle at ourselves.

I listened to the old hit. If you are a parent, you can probably guess what she lost at the Astor (the Astor being a swanky hotel with a ballroom). Hint: It’s something that every son or daughter loses sometime in their life. You guessed it. She lost her new coat, probably one that her parents had scrimped to buy for her because she simply couldn’t live without it.

I played it over and over but still failed to see a double-entendre anywhere in the stupid song. The only thing I got out of it was painful recollections of the coats, sweaters and gloves that my kids had lost over the years. If I couldn’t figure out a 1940s song, how could I hope to decode the lyrics of the ‘90s?

The only way for me to find the real meaning of today’s lyrics was to strap my teenager to a dunking stool and dip her until she confessed those hidden meanings or wait until she asks for some money (a moment when she is susceptible to reason).

The latter situation presented itself. I held out a bill that caught her attention.

“Wise me up to your music,” I bargained. “What do the words mean?”

“It’s an age thing, Dad. Even if I explained it, you’ll never get it.”

“Lay it on me,” I bid, cutting through the generation gap with modern jargon.

“Either you’re on the bus or you’re not on the bus,” she explained, snatching the bill from my hand.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not on the bus.” She shot out the door.

“What bus?” I shouted after her, “there’s no bus!”

I felt a vague dissatisfaction with her explanation.

Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?

MEMO: Darin Z. Krogh is a Spokane County freelance writer.