I made a lot of realizations on the last day of May, 2007. Maybe it's just this backlog of mental notes that's been piling up in my head over the past few days. I've been deep in work mode, having just finished a cover story on Entourage star Adrian Grenier for BPM magazine (hi Rob). Just in the past six days, I've seen Toronto's electro kidz Crystal Castles at Check Yo Ponytail's new location, the Echoplex, which was awesome (hi Alice). Then there was the Arcade Fire at the Greek on Wednesday, which was even better than expected (hi Rachel). Thankfully I missed Winn Butler pissing off the entire crowd on Tuesday nights with tasteless jokes about wayward celebrities and forest fires (one simply does not make light of fires in the hills of Griffith Park just days after a massive blaze in the area). And then last night seeing the pride of Minnesota (by way of Brooklyn), the Hold Steady.
Blitzen Trapper (left) was already playing when I arrived. Ben High and Mark Willett were both kicking it by the merch window, which was manned by Matt Wright, super-cool publicist and Blitzen Trapper's manager. I finally met the equally cool publicist Daniel Gill. The merch area turned into something of an ad hoc VIP area, as local blog dudes Jeff Weiss and Ian Cohan joined the fray. Jeff bought one of the HS's insanely cool tour shirts (pictured above). Anyone that remixes an old-school Minnesota Twins logo to have the dudes toasting frosty mugs of beer is good with me. Blitzen Trapper was great, in a kind of Whiskeytown, post-alt-country way. At the set's apex, they reminded me of a modernized Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to any band. When their album Wild Mountain Nation is released on June 12, you'd do well to procure yourself a copy. Although I'm sure by then Pitchfork will have featured it in their "Best New Music" category and you'll have forgotten all about me mentioning them here. Oh well.
The next band, Illinois, just didn't do anything for me. At best their set was kind of reminiscent of Soul Asylum (which is not a dis), at other times it felt like self-indulgent meandering around the idea of classic Midwestern rockisms. Lots of folks love these guys though, so maybe I just missed something.
As for the Hold Steady (above). If you've never seen them live, it's kind of tough to explain the positive, church-revival kind of feeling their shows invoke. The sound is akin to the Replacements if they played as much as they drank crossed with Bruce Springsteen circa The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. There are also bits of Cheap Trick and even Thin Lizzy in there. Yeah, it's that good. Nevermind that frontman Craig Finn (far right) looks more like your cool college TA than Springsteen in his Serpico phase. The guy writes some of the most affecting and genuinely honest lyrics of his generation. Songs like "Chillout Tent" and "You Can Make Him Like You" from last year's stellar Boys and Girls in America album tell tales of what it's really like to be a middle-class kid trying to make sense of life growing up somewhere between the city and the cornfields. Keyboardist Franz Nicolay (second from right) may look like the bastard love child of 70s Oakland A's pitching ace Rollie Fingers and Super Mario, but he pounds the keys with the dexterity of the E Street Band's Roy Bittan, right down to the accordian skills.
Guitarist Tad Kubler is the band's other secret weapon, peeling off classic rock riffs on his Les Paul in a style similar to Cheap Trick's Rick Neilsen. He even busted out the same Gibson double-neck best known as the ax Jimmy Page used when playing "Stairway to Heaven" live. You can't get any more rock than that.
It was one of those shows that left you feeling glad to be alive, eager to finally find that one perpetually elusive cool girl/partner in crime and the idea that even you could be a rock star. I haven't seen a show that dude-heavy since I don't know when. And I mean "dude." We're talking beer bellies and jean jackets. The only thing missing was a keg (or twelve).
On the way out, it was great to run into Minneapolis native/photography god Dan Monick, who Finn even shouted out from the stage. In short, I'm already jonesing to see them again. The Midwest is still best, baby. These roots run deep.
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