“Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la. Mm. Uh huh,” Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz whines before describing a night out at the New Amsterdam with a gentleman he calls Mr. Jones. If they’re close enough to hit the bars together, why doesn’t Duritz address Mr. Jones by his first name? That’s merely the first in a series of unanswerable questions this song raises. Duritz creepily stares at a “yellow-haired girl” (that’s WOMAN to you, guy) while Mr. Jones talks to a flamenco dancer. The fact that they know she’s a flamenco dancer suggests that she is working and they are bothering her. Apparently Mr. Jones’ dad is there, too: “She dances while his father plays guitar.” (Confirmed, she is working.) Does this mean there are multiple Mr. Joneses in the picture? Duritz asks Mr. Jones to pass him a bottle and to believe in him, or to help him believe in anything—perhaps one of the Mr. Joneses acts as a paternal figure for Duritz? He goes on to explain that he and Mr. Jones “tell each other fairytales,” “look at the beautiful women,” and later, “look into the future.” Is he intimating that together, they’re capable of time travel? Duritz makes a brief foray into listing his favorite colors (blue, red, black, and gray), and ultimately decides that gray is his favorite. He wishes he had a gray guitar, but concedes that, since he does not know the late painter Pablo Picasso, he can never possess such an artifact. Luckily, Duritz realizes he can buy himself a gray guitar, since Picasso is not the only painter capable of painting a guitar gray. He wishes he were a lion, then later wishes he were Bob Dylan—but for the record, Mr. Jones wishes he were “someone a little more funky.” CIARA DOLAN