Party to Live: Rock + Roll Means Well Tour

The Hold Steady + Drive-By Truckers at First Ave 11/16/2008I tell you this - and I use the first person preposition because this post will be disgustingly self-serving and totally devoid of journalistic objectivity - that the Hold Steady can save a life. Yeah, yeah, the Hold Steady almost killed me... the killer parties almost killed me and when I was done trying to die the music was still there, talking to me about the syntax of trying - we won't save you, but we'll get you to a place where you can save yourself. Nothing's a fake fight when it's against yourself. I'll roll when I'm ready.

It's foolish 'cause I want it, want to feel a part of it and smiling kids are always screaming for more. There is a hard-bit sweetness for the scene before it got druggy, cutting our baby teeth and saving us from fangs. I say it, but I don't really want to be 17 forever...but I do like the warm feeling - bundling up against the wind coming off the Mississippi, carrying salt, cliques and hisses, the whole chorus of city kids trying to stay alive, stay real high.

Don't die! Any night they play half of Separation Sunday is a good night for absolution, and Craig Finn says it every time, every time and I go back to hear it. Need it so much so that I've stolen it for my own ends. I use this ending to a monologue I've been working out, stories about telling stories, trying to get the honesty ingrained in me so that it becomes reflexive but rock and roll. Rock and roll means well, but it can't help but tell boys lies. But hey, he gave it to me, right?

...And I'm trying to understand America,
to get it through a bar band and I still can't comprehend
why the Hold Steady need day jobs and night jobs as bar backs,
and how the acclaim doesn't mean they sell records.
There's something wrong with that.
Each song is like a benediction
to a country of half-hearted Christians
and backstabbing best friends,
kids are human beings and it says;
We see you, you're here and we are too.
Craig Finn, his arms flailing like busted wings
grabs the microphone and beams and twists
and screams, that he always says it,
he always does, he always does:
That
There
Is so much Joy!
In what they do onstage
And thank you, we love you,
Minneapolis/Saint Paul.

I suppose it doesn't even matter. I love you too, I love me too, it doesn't matter which city because we have gone out to find America, you and I. We have gone out to find America, you and I, and found ourselves in bars and reststops and schools and malls and found ourselves.
...
Oh yeah, the Drive-By Truckers were there too - see what I mean about lack of journalistic objectivity, they co-headline for crissakes - but I have never been a huge fan of theirs. I have dismissively said that their lineage is Lynyrd Skynyrd and not all that much else - and I still stand by that. But they have a good time. The Hold Steady guys seem to have a good time with them, and they played the two songs of theirs that I really do like, "Dead Drunk and Naked," and, as an encore, "Let There Be Rock." A damn fine story about fucking up and turning out alright. Now that's a benediction, and I've been doing just fine, thank you very much.

"Stay Positive" into "Stevie Nix":

"Constructive Summer" into "Stuck Between Stations":