I didn't plan to see The Hold Steady three times in two weeks.  It just
happened.  When I was down in Austin three weeks ago, I saw them during
the South By Southwest festival (2,000 bands playing over four days and
night, but that's another story entirely).  Really nice show, and I
thought
that would be that.  Then Channel 13 shows the episode of From
the Artists Den with THS (at The Emigrant
Savings Bank Building on Chambers Street no less).  Finally two
Mondays ago, I get an email
from Big Dan who tells me that he has a ticket to see THS that night
he's not going to be using, so if I want it all I need do is meet him
in downtown Brooklyn.  Of course I did, and of course I went to what is
now called The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza that same night.

A few words then about the once hippest, now just the biggest band out
of Brooklyn (The New York Rangers just sent front man Craig Finn his
own Rangers jersey).  It's pretty easy to denigrate The Hold Steady. 
First call them just a bar band (whatever that means).  Next find the
website with and play Hold Steady Mad Libs.  Finally paraphrase Yogi
Berra and say that their shows are so crowded, nobody goes to them
anymore.

But let's give Finn and company their due.  Their music, even with its
borrowed riffs, can be compelling.  Their lyrics, with their many tales
of college student sex and drugs and alcohol and parties, are chapters
in a novel.  And taken all together, you can have a hall full of people
bopping to the music, singing along word for word.  Maybe not exactly
the "unified scene" that Finn invokes from time to time, but close
enough for rock 'n' roll.  And enough to have this writer watch these
guys three times in two weeks.

The Hold Steady will play the Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 10th.

  — Eliot Wagner