Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan

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· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Michael Butler Murray
Audiobook
7 hr 51 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock canon has conjured a more vivid cast of rogues and heroes, creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators-or imbued their characters with so much humanity. Pulling from history, lived experience, pulp fiction, the lore of the counterculture, and their own darkly comic imaginations, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker summoned protagonists who seemed like fully formed people with complicated pasts, scars they don't talk about, delusions and desires and memories they can't shake. Every name is a locked-room mystery, beguiling listeners and earning the band an exceptionally passionate and growing cult fandom. Quantum Criminals presents the world of Steely Dan as it has never been seen, much less heard. Artist Joan LeMay has crafted lively, color-saturated images of her favorite characters from the Daniverse to accompany writer Alex Pappademas's explorations of the famous and obscure songs that inspired each painting, in short essays full of cultural context, wild speculation, inspired dot-connecting, and the occasional conspiracy theory. All of it is refracted through the perspectives of the characters, making for a musical companion unlike any other. Quantum Criminals is a singular celebration of Steely Dan's musical cosmos.

About the author

Alex Pappademas is the author of Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant-The Movies & Meaning of an Irrepressible Icon and the writer and host of the acclaimed podcast The Big Hit Show. His work has also appeared in GQ, the New York Times, and Grantland.

Joan LeMay is an artist based in London and New York City (although the paintings for Quantum Criminals were created in Portland). Her work appears in multiple publications and books and has been shown in museums, galleries, and public spaces internationally.

Michael Butler Murray is a professional actor, narrator, and musician who has voiced over fifty-five audiobooks. His recorded titles run the spectrum from dramatic to comedic fiction and nonfiction titles varying in topics from the Middle East to understanding your dog's olfactory senses.

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