Okay, here’s the thing: there’s this record out, it’s by a band called the Hold Steady. It’s called Stay Positive. Have you heard of it?
Listen, here’s the gig: if you haven’t grokked them yet, you gotta try. You just gotta. I resisted for years. Way back in 2005, Jaysus was telling me that Craig Finn’s work on Separation Sunday was that of “an agitated seer,” that he was posing with “a boozy scowl, as he half-sings, half-yelps songs about life as seen through beer lenses, cigarette smoke, and what may be rock’s most potent inferiority complex.”
Prof. Fury joined with his own accolades, struggling to explain the music as “sleazy Christ-haunted post-Catholic riff-rock,” and rejecting even that.
I blew ‘em all off. I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel it. Prof. sent me a copy of “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and I listened to it once, then drug the little lightning bolt and threw it in the trash. All that talking, you know?
Then, Jaysus got Boys and Girls in America, and he made me come over to the house, and sat me down and made me listen to “Southtown Girls” until I started grinning. I remember the moment it happened. I was sitting in his home office staring at a tiny Mac screen and it washed over me like . . .
. . . like what? I realize that the Hold Steady inspires its fans to poetry. We don’t just love it, we live it, we believe in it. I was just sitting there, thinking “warm beer . . . ? Like a wall of ‘white noise’?” Totally trying to slap a little poetry over a description of the way I feel when a rock band plays.
That, my friend, is when music has got a hold of you. I’ve only seen the Hold Steady once, in New Orleans—but it was a truly transcendent experience. I slid on my Hood Rat hoody that night and never took it off again (metaphorically speaking—it’s too damn hot right now). This is what I said:
Listen, listen, I wish you and everyone else in the world could be here for this. That was the greatest thing: everyone at the show was just so happy. I kept smiling and my calves were tired from all the jumping up and down. I high-fived guys in the bathroom who were shaking their heads and singing along. We were all in love with the music and with each other and I wish I didn’t sound like a hippy but dammit, rock and roll is about being someone else and trying to find people that are just like you, and how it feels when you do.
And you know what? I already loved them, but Tad Kubler sent me a little note that just said “thank you,” and told people about my little story, and that just did me in.
That picture up there is of a little orphan flip-flop in the mud in Memphis in May. I was standing there drinking a beer and listening to music and just thinking that rock and roll can be a helluva thing.
You gotta stay positive.
Right now, you can get a copy of Stay Positive with a nifty t-shirt. It’s fifteen bucks. Do yourself a favor, kid—I just paypalled that sucker up; and Vagrant is bargain basementing out Boys and Girls, too, for only five bucks. It’s worth fifty.
Previously:
Jaysus on seeing the Hold Steady live in Baton Rouge.
Prof. on that same show.
Prof. on Boys and Girls in America.
HOLD STEADY myspaces.
Download: Hold Steady – Stay Positive.
Tags: Hold Steady, Separation Sunday, Stay Positive, Vagrant
P.s. “My friend got a copy of Boys and Girls in America, and he made me come over to the house and sat me down and made me listen to “Southtown Girls” until I started grinning. I remember the moment it happened. I was sitting in his home office staring at a tiny computer screen and it washed over me like warm beer, and all of a sudden I wanted to throw the dice, take off my shirt, grab a girl and try to dance. I wanted to do it all and the record said I could, I should give it a whirl.”
I think that’s how it goes.
Byootiful. I just got my copy of Stay Positive from the good folks at the CD Store (hi Taylor!) and am looking forward to listening to nothing else for the next few weeks. August 7th can’t get here fast enough! Get your tickets soon: They’re playing Chelsea’s, people. Total capacity: 7. (Unless they change the venue, as rumored.)
August 7th cannot get here fast enough!
look, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that rock and roll can change your life. it’s tough to do that because it obviously sets you up for disappointment, and most of the time it just doesn’t. most of the time it’s just music.
but i’ve seen the hold steady live 4 times, and i’ve never walked out of a hold steady show and thought there was something better i could’ve done, anywhere on earth, for any amount of money, with any group of people, for the preceding 2 hours.
I suppose this is a bitter update, but while I still love the Hold Steady (August 7 cannot get here fast enough!), Vagrant’s online store—fueled by MerchLackey—is pathetic. I ordered the bundle above on the day I did the post—July 16. It’s now July 30, and the rep on the phone said “it was shipped yesterday.” Which in my world is code for “not yet in any fashion.”
So: two weeks, still not here. That sucks. Should have waited and bought it from the band, so the money went right into their pockets. BAH WEB 2.0 YOU SUCK