Eminent Hipsters Hardcover Author: Visit Amazon's Donald Fagen Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0670025518 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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From Publishers Weekly
In these entertaining sketches, Steely Dan keyboardist and front man Fagen pays tribute to the talented musicians, writers, and performers from beyond the suburban New Jersey of his youth. In one chapter, Fagen recalls his early fascination with now-forgotten jazz singers the Boswell Sisters. He singles out Connie—whose career was affected in some measure by an early brush with illness (likely polio)—and praises her last recording, saying that she sounds like a toned-down Wanda Jackson or Brenda Lee. Fagen sends a kind of love letter to Henry Mancini, telling the composer of the theme from the television show Peter Gunn—a theme whose first notes every neophyte guitarist tried to learn back then—that his music continues to be young and fresh. Fagen vivaciously recalls his college days at Bard, meeting his future Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker, and playing at a Halloween party with Walter and actor Chevy Chase on drums. In 2012, Fagen, Michael McDonald, and Boz Scaggs toured as the Duke of September Rhythm Revue; during the months of the tour, Fagen kept a journal, included in these pages, that's filled with irony, sarcasm, humor, anger, and flat-out honesty about what it's like to be on the road playing to houses filled with aging hippies: Tonight the crowd looked so geriatric I was tempted to start calling out bingo numbers. By the end of the set, they were all on their feet, albeit shakily, rocking.... So this, now, is what I do: assisted living. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)
From Booklist
Since the popular music group Steely Dan produced its last album in 2003, founding member Fagen has been keeping busy performing in occasional reunion tours and channeling his celebrated, lyric-generating talents into penning crafty and incisive essays. In his first collection of these distinctively droll and erudite pieces, Fagen covers a wide range of topics, from boyhood memories to musical criticism. The eminent hipsters referred to in the title are Fagen’s early idols, such radio personalities as Jean Shepherd, best known for narrating A Christmas Story, and late-night jazz DJ Mort Fega, the cool uncle you always wished you’d had. Class of ‘69 recounts his momentous years at New York’s Bard College, where he met Steely Dan cofounder Walter Becker, and With the Dukes of September excerpts his journal notes from a recent musical tour he took with fellow music legends Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald. While Steely Dan devotees will, of course, revel in Fagan’s barb-edged observations, any observer of popular culture will find his essays informative and trenchantly amusing. --Carl Hays
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Books with free ebook downloads available Eminent Hipsters Free PDF
- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Publisher: Viking Adult (October 22, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0670025518
- ISBN-13: 978-0670025510
- Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Fagan begins with a little background on his early years growing up in a New Jersey suburb in the 1960s and talks about the jazz singers and songwriters that were an influence on him. He touches on his high school and college years and briefly mentions meeting Walter Becker, his future partner in Steely Dan, while attending Bard College. In the last part of the book he chronicles his recent cross-country tour with Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald as the Dukes of September, an R&B band.
As a long-time Steely Dan fan I enjoyed learning more about one of my favorite singer/songwriters. But in a way, the book was too short. Perhaps that was deliberate because it only touched on a lot areas of his life and in most instances didn’t go into a lot of detail. While mostly interesting, the material is a little scattered and rambles at times.
I particularly enjoyed the essays about his love of science fiction. (Yes, I did mention he got a bit random at times.) A loner in high school, he would escape into books, specifically science fiction. Many of the authors and novels he mentioned were refuges of my own youth and I enjoyed and easily related to this.
I already knew Fagan didn’t like to go on tour, but the second half of the book, a diary he wrote while on the road with the Dukes, really brings that home. It’s pretty obvious he loathes touring: The hotels, even the swimming pools at the hotels (hmmm), the food, the room service, the venues, even some of the fans. It annoyed him that so many fans wanted to hear only his old hits. This part of the book did get a bit cranky but was written in a humorous, sarcastic manner which gave me a few laughs.
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