A Fair Trade Book
Title: A Day in the Life of a Rock Musician
Title: A Day in the Life of a Rock Musician
Author: David Paige
Date: 1980
Publisher: Troll Associates
Length: 32 pages
Illustrations: color photos
Quote: “Although Rich plays guitar with his group, he composes his music on the piano.”
You were expecting maybe Elvis, Mick Jagger, or Michael Jackson? Paige didn’t say rock star; he said rock musician. This book is about rockers who’ve done well enough to make music a full-time job, but who still have time to be photographed for a picture book. Lead guitarist Rich Moyers has recorded only some of the songs for his first album, and the band still perform in a local family-type restaurant.
Following Rich through a day of composing, rehearsing, recording, and performing should be a delightful challenge for first grade readers, who get to learn words like “rehearsal,” “equipment,” and rhythm.”
The group’s image is wholesome; their clothes and hair are simple, not even the high-fashion looks of 1980. The keyboardist also plays classical piano, wears baggy button-down shirts in the daytime, and performs in a street-length skirt. The drummer is familiar with wood and hide as well as metal drums, and the bass guitarist plays acoustic guitar too. Without hearing it, we can guess that their sound will be soft and folksy, with the kind of “rock” beat kids heard on “Sesame Street” in 1980.
This is the kind of rock music young readers have heard in movies and on “oldies” radio, so the book’s not hopelessly out of date. A Day in the Life of a Rock Musician is recommended to anyone, up to about grade four, who is interested in a musical career.
When I searched for David Paige on the Internet, what popped up looked like an interesting sequel to this book: a web site called http://www.davidpaigemusic.com/ suggested that Paige may be an active rock musician, too, by now. I checked. He says that's a different David Paige.
To buy A Day in the Life of a Rock Musician as a Fair Trade Book, send $5 per book + $5 per package to salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com. (This is a small, thin book; we could probably fit six or eight copies into a package, for which the price would be $35 for six copies or $45 for eight copies.) Out of this price, we will send $1 per book to David Paige or a charity of his choice. Other online booksellers may offer a lower price, but so far as I know this is the only online bookseller that sends payments to living authors when we sell their books secondhand.
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