Bargaining Beggar

Today’s Quick’n Dirty jam, “Bargaining Beggar,” encounters one of humanity’s oldest commercial arrangements: he has a heartbreaking story, and you happen to have money. What an extraordinary coincidence. His pitch unfolds over a stubborn bass and an initially rather respectable D-minor landscape, while F Lydian gradually lets suspiciously bright B naturals into the premises. He asks for neither food nor practical assistance — goodness, no — merely the vastly more convenient option of wiring him money. Her audit is less charitable. Is the tragedy current? Is it even the same tragedy as yesterday? While he performs increasingly elaborate melodic appeals to pity, she examines the business model and eventually proposes the one form of financial assistance conspicuously absent from his plan: employment. Meanwhile the arrangement itself gets involved, progressing from sparse chords and a pleading slow monosynth into two increasingly insistent fast lines, before the vocals receive an almost suspiciously well-behaved triadic accompaniment. A scam? A misunderstanding? Entrepreneurial storytelling? Whatever it is, please don’t ask for our bank details.