Overview: Confessions of a Musical Masochist is a darkly funny, brutally candid chronicle of one musician’s decades-long refusal to take a hint.

NY-based singer/songwriter David Fagin spent his life chasing the elusive promise of rock stardom-first as frontman of indie-pop band The Rosenbergs, later as a songwriter, performer, and professional survivor of the music business.

Along the way, there are major-label courtships, disastrous managers, record deals that aren’t quite record deals, industry feuds, endless touring, brushes with genuine fame, and enough spectacularly bad decisions to fill several Behind the Music episodes.

Verdict: For those unaware, from opening for Duran Duran just hours after getting arrested, to taking on the recording industry at the dawn of the internet and at the height of the Napster controversy, David Fagin repeatedly found himself tantalizingly close to his big break - only to watch it disappear, implode, or occasionally be sabotaged by Fagin himself!

In truth, the Foreword and Introduction alone are enough to have you stuck like glue to this book, endlessly reading and turning pages to learn more about the man in question. In what is a rather rampantly scripted style of prose reveal, we get to know an awful lot about Fagin, his life, his dreams, his mistakes and his hopes, without even opening Chapter One.

And that is wholly a good thing, as it sets things out nicely for us to know if we do actually want to continue onward and learn more about the life of a man who himself freely admits didn’t even know if after stealing supermarket sushi before the biggest gig of his life would sink his burgeoning career before it had even started - whether he remained in the jail cell past soundcheck or not!

David Fagin - musician, songwriter, producer, and artist-rights advocate best known as the founder, lead singer, and principal songwriter of the power-pop band The Rosenbergs - founded that little band in his apartment in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Having failed spectacularly at a label showcase in L.A., and having even worked for Neil Diamond, Sheryl Crow and The Muppets at one stage, he also started beefs within the record industry from 1999-2000, signed a record deal with Robert Fripp’s label (when most other labels didn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot barge pole!), and was even one of the early few that partnered with Napstar!

The nearly-thrown-away gig opening for Duran Duran in Jones Beach, Long Island in 1998 is a story told that beggar’s belief, but we’ve all done stupid things before big events, haven’t we, so we’ll put that down to nerves! 30 years or so later (2023) and he is still singing Rio ... albeit in a cramped Atlantic City nightclub with his cover band, the brilliantly named The Counterfeiters (and, as only life could joke with, they are the afterparty entertainment for ... Duran Duran!).

But I have jumped too far ahead, as flashing back to the heady days of 1998-2000, and The Rosenbergs actually became a case study in artist leverage in 2000, when Fagin publicly refused a slot on Universal-affiliated Farmclub over a 23-page, six-album contract that would have handed the label the band’s website and publishing in exchange for roughly two minutes of airtime (Billboard).

Indeed his refusal circulated widely - now called ‘going viral’ - garnering coverage from CNN, CNBC, the LA Times, Spin, Wired and the Denver Post. The Rosenbergs instead signed with Robert Fripp’s aforementioned Discipline Global Mobile on a revenue-share deal that let the band retain its own masters, releasing Mission: You in 2001, and partnering with the aforementioned Napster on record sales and tour promotion.

But Fagin wasn’t done there, as he also carried that argument into policy. He was an officially listed witness in the U.S. Copyright Office’s Digital Performance Rights CARP proceeding in Washington in 2001 (Federal Register) and served on the New Models panel at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit at Georgetown University in January 2002 (Georgetown Music Policy Forum archives). He argued the case in print as well, in a signed Billboard opinion piece calling for a return to real artist development over litigation (Billboard, Nov. 20th, 2004).

Moving on and his song Birds of a Feather was used as the theme to the CBS sitcom Accidentally on Purpose (IMDb). And sure he has shared bills with Echo & the Bunnymen, Duran Duran (just), Alex Chilton, Supergrass, and The Strokes, and is the creator and executive producer of the amazing, yet stuck in eternal limbo, TV pilot Rock in a Hard Place [featuring the late Patrick Muldoon].

But as you read this devastatingly compelling new book, it is clear that behind the mask of bravado, of angst-ridden and foolish choices, let alone his seemingly wanton disregard for a successful career at anything for huge chunks of time, that threaded throughout, perhaps at times even subliminally written between the lines, is another story about family, loss, friendship, and ultimately gratitude.

In closing, part rock-and-roll memoir, part cautionary tale, and part love letter to anyone incapable of giving up on the thing that they probably should have given up on years ago, Confessions of a Musical Masochist: My Life as an Almost Rock Star is an absolutely fascinating, thoroughly engrossing, and captivatingly engaging story of what happens when the dream doesn’t come true - but you keep chasing it anyway!

The result is something that pulls back the curtain on the music business to show what life actually looks like for the almost famous - the outrageous road stories and industry absurdities, but also the emotional and financial toll of refusing to quit something that rarely pays the bills.

About the Author - David Fagin is a musician, writer, songwriter, and artist-rights advocate. As the frontman of indie rockers, The Rosenbergs, David shared the stage with artists such as The Strokes, Duran Duran, Echo and The Bunnymen, No Doubt, Supergrass, Alex Chilton, Night Ranger, and many others cooler than him.

Official Book Purchase Link