Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Hold Steady almost Killed Me


I love fucking rock and roll. A good show is almost as good as sex and just as good as drugs and on Monday night it felt like i almost got laid and did a ton of class A pharmaceuticals. Fucking hail the Hold Steady. They came in to the burgh and rocked the shit out of the place. It kicks ass when you go to see a band and they actually look like they are enjoying themselves and this band definitely were enjoying themselves.

For those at the show i was the muppet in the Replacements t-shirt jumping around like a 16yr. old kid when i'm actually twenty years older than that. I was wondering what the fuck all the 16yr old kids were doing but i think they were taking pictures with camera phones, i was to busy crouching down and taking hits off a cigarette due to the ridiculous no-smoking policy at the Rex Theatre. So i stood and watched a band i loved sans beer and stealing hits off a cigarette and it still fucking blew my doors off.

I did miss one song due to the fact that after the "walk around and drink some more" line of Party Pit i was forced to run to the bar and down an overpriced beer, smoke half a cig and run back.

Highlights included, You Can Make Him Like You, Party Pit, Stevie Nix, Cattle and the Creeping Things, Southtown Girls and just about every other song they played. The encore consisted of Citrus, First Night, Knuckles and Killer Parties, which led to a massive stage invasion when the band invited people to play their instruments. Tad Kubler, the lead guitarist, brought some young kid up who looked a bit lost and then asked if anyone else knew how to play guitar. I screamed i did and seeing as how i knew all the words and had been jumping around like an idiot, i jumped up onstage and proceeded to play lead singer Craig Finn's guitar and even got to sing "Killer parties almost killed me," right on cue until Craig realized he might not want this ape man to have the mic. I then turned to Tad and did some rock-n-roll guitar player posturing, even tossing in my Peter Hook bass player stance for a minute. By this time the stage was packed with teenage back-up dancers as we played on, me fiddling with the effects pedal to find the right sound. The bouncers then led all the kids offstage but when the one turned to me i was strumming the guitar with Tad behind me. The bouncer just laughed and walked off as did the rest of the band. The show ended with me playing some repetitive lick on Craig's guitar, then hitting the pedal to stop the sound and yelling "Goodnight." Fucking hell it was hilarious and a good time. I handed the guitar to Tad who i then informed that i had never played guitar in my life.

"So if you say we partied/then i'm pretty sure we partied/ we departed from our bodies/ ended up in Ybor City." or the South Side of Pittsburgh. Either way this band deserves your money and if you get a chance go see them go cuz you won't be let down, in fact you'll leave the place feeling great, feeling like that hangover won't matter and that those lost souls who populate the songs and the streets are like long lost friends come back for a killer party.

Postscript: I had some people at the show tell me they had video of the stage invasion. i would love to see it if possible.

2 comments:

ItWasInevitable said...

Wow - If you get it, I'd love to see video of that stage invasion too, even though I'm terribly un-photogenic, almost lost my glasses at one point and had to yank the sash of my skirt out from under someone's foot and re-tie it on stage.

I ended up hanging out with Galen, Tad and Franz for the rest of the night. Lost a bet with Galen and had to buy him a drink.

Thanks for the compliments on our guestbook. There's nothing like Makers on the rocks when it's cold and rainy outside.

ItWasInevitable said...

Hey, I just thought the holding me up part was kind of funny. And it was probably for the better, that way I didn't pounce on them the second they got there, you know? Let them settle in a little before heaping on the praise and compliments and adoration.

I thought it was really cool that Tad kept saying, "Pittsburgh. Who knew?"

Thanks for including the book recommendations. I'm pretty sure that my last blog post got me "let go" even thought it gives no specific information, so now I'll have plenty of time to read up. Too bad it didn't happen a week earlier - that would have been one hell of a week following The Hold Steady around!