On the surface an unlikely pair, musician John Oates got together with his friend Doug Glanville, a former outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, to treat a New York City crowd to an evening of reminiscences and repartee about Oates’ life and his new memoire, Change of Seasons, out on the prestigious St. Martin’s Press.

Both men were relaxed and well-spoken, and although the event was couched as an interview, the tone of the evening could have been two old pals just catching up: “So, I hear you wrote a book. How’d that happen?”

Prompted by Glanville, Oates took a packed Subculture Club audience through a few of the turning points he described so well in his book, and peppered it with specific references to his own time in New York, where he and Daryl Hall really first got together; he talked about playing the famed Village Gate, which he described (correctly) as “now a CVS, three blocks away.”

The icing, of course, was a brief acoustic performance with Oates’ singing and his spectacular guitar work, too often in the background.

We all went home with signed books, you betcha.