I am stuck turning the pages of Donald Fagen’s tour diary ‘Eminent Hipsters’. Don’t worry, I haven’t bought it (yet) but I am flicking the pages in a bookstore. It comprises his thoughts on touring the US in a package with Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald and it’s bitter in a clever way.

I was much struck by this thought:
 

“I am now of the age.. that so many sad things have happened that I’m too anxious to read”

Which is “bon mots” enough to deserve saving as a thought for the day but this passage captures the spirit better
 

“By the way I’m not posting this journal on the internet. Why should I let you lazy, spoiled TV babies read it for nothing in the same way you download all those songs my partner and I sacrificed our entire youth to write and record, not to mention the miserable friendless childhoods we endured that left us with lifelong feelings of shame and self-reproach we were forced to countervail with a fragile grandiosity and a need to constantly prove our self worth.. in short, with the sort of personality disorders that ultimately turned us into performing monkeys”

Of course Steely Dan were always one of the more erudite of rock bands, but if this plea doesn’t make you want to respect copyright and pay something for their damn songs nothing will.
 

-TH