Positive Jamming in Chicago

The Hold Steady - Metro, 10/30/07
Chicago, IL

Some nights you really need a dose of rock romanticism. There’s no way around it; shit has gotten rough, inside or out, and you need power chords and the rants of a crackpot cockeyed optimist to help you through.
It happened that Tuesday was one of those nights, and it happened that the show I was seeing would be my first since moving to Chicago. And after working and commuting to the Metro, it happened that a few Pabst tall cans were needed to get into Hold Steady mode. “Bar Band” being after all the most beat-to-death descriptor of the band in question, I felt I’d do their live show an injustice if I wasn’t a little soused. No doubt they would be.
My buddy arrived at the Full Shilling Pub with our scalped (craigslist!) tickets with time to spare. Once Hold Steady mode was… holding steady, we made our way inside, and jockeyed a very respectable pit standing. The band ambled on stage maybe two minutes later, beers in hand, and opened with “Party Pit.”
The ratio of Hold Steady songs with shoutalong parts to Hold Steady songs without shoutalong parts it pretty one-sided. This makes for a wonderful, cynicism-destroying concert experience.
The music was tight and loud. The keyboards lost a bit of their authority to the overdriven guitars, but the sound was exciting and anthemic, more Cheap Trick than E Street Band. If the Hold Steady have a major flaw, it’s the relative predictability of their classic rock-indebted song structures. But as a flaw it’s debatable, or even delectable, given the satisfaction delivered by such a familiar, greasy taste. Who doesn’t love meat and cheese?
The unique aspect of the Hold Steady is Craig Finn, and his motor-mouthed, Boss-flavored storytelling. His verbosity can be polarizing (a woman at the Full Shilling was claiming she preferred the “Whoa-oh-oh-oh”s in “Chips Ahoy” to any of Craig Finn’s actual lyrics), but live it’s less of an issue, simply because it’s impossible to catch every breathless phrase. But good bits came through, even if it was only glib couplets like “it started in the vestibule and ended in the hospital.”
You couldn’t ask for a more generous and gregarious frontman. His rapport with the crowd was easy and sincere, and he never shook his slight air of ‘aw shucks’ disbelief at his popularity. It was that disarming spirit that informed the entire event, and it makes the Hold Steady more than the sum of their parts. You knew that he cared about what he sang about, and that when he sang “certain songs are scratched into our souls,” he couldn’t believe his luck that, for many watching, some of those will be his.
I got what I came for and left happy. But craving a cheeseburger.