My pick for the 21st position on this list is "Benny's Dispatch". Yeah, sorry for rating it so low; don't get me wrong, I love this song, but this is getting tough. Let's just get at it.
Okay, we got traffic on the west side
Get off at 79th, and take the left side
Of Riverside Drive, and ya might slide
West End’s ya best friend if you catch the lights
And don’t take the Deegan;
Manny Ramirez is in town this weekend
Sorry Dominicans, take Route Eighty-seven
You ain’t getting back in again
Hold up a minute.
No fancy words for you today just yet. In the second verse of the song we have a simple rhyme scheme with side/side/slide. Not a big deal.
NINA
Benny, hey—
BENNY
Nina, you’re home today!
NINA
Any sign—
BENNY
...Of your folks, they’re on their way!
NINA
Anyway—
BENNY
It’s good to see your face—
NINA
Anytime—
Nina and Benny haven't seen each other in a year, and one of the first things Benny does is to finish her sentences. This works in a way in which it foreshadows the fact that at some point they're going to end up together. It's a really cliché idea that two characters in a musical are "meant to be", but here it's portrayed in a really smart way.
Benny and Nina have communication issues, which they work out in a metaphorical sense in "Sunrise". But here, they're shown to be in the same page.
BENNY
Hold up a minute, wait!
You used to run this dispatch, right?
NINA
Once or twice—
BENNY
Well check the technique! Yo!
There’s a traffic accident I have to mention
At the intersection of 10th Ave and the Jacob Javitz Convention Center
And check it, don’t get stuck in the rubber-neckin’
On a Hundred-Ninety-Second, there’s a double-decker bus wreck!
Now listen up, we got a special guest!
Of course Nina used to run the dispatch, Benny. Her parents are the owners.
Anyway.
We have a kind of unsual rhyme pattern here, but it makes sense. It goes: mention/intersection/Convention, but "intersection" is placed almost at the beginning of the line.
This is where another poetic device comes in place, which is stress. It's basically the parts in the line in which the accent falls. So how does this affect the rhyme scheme? It works like this.
The line "There's a traffic accident I have to mention" has six stresses. "Intersection" falls on the third stress of the line, and we start counting again at "of 10th Ave and the Jacob Javitz Convention Center", in which "Convention" is placed at the sixth stress, giving us a 6/3/6 stress scheme. So, it's a whole line, half a line, and a whole line again.
Then, we have some consonance once more, with "check/stuck/neckin'/Second/decker/wreck". Not too complicated.
And the song finishes like this:
BENNY
Anytime. Anytime, Nina.
Wait here with me
It’s getting hot outside, turn up the A.C
Stay here with me.
These "Anytime. Anytime" placed here serve the purpose of completing the pattern of Nina's words, which were "Any sign.../Anyway.../Any time."
And the last three lines of the song are being said in a more quiet, intimate way. The whole song we've seen Benny talking in the microphone, being noisy and making the other drivers honk their horns. This change of tone is another sign that these two are something else other than just friends. At least for Benny, anyway.
Also, this is entirely out of my lane, but it's something I noticed.
The riffs at the end of this song match the ones used in "When You're Home", right before Benny begins to talk to Nina about what they used to do when they were younger, and ultimately revealing he's got a crush on her.
Interesting, right?
They're forshadowing everything; I told you so.
-A.
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