A Positive Rage - Bonus Tracks

More A Positive Rage goodness. Those with so little of a life as to actually retain my blathering might remember that there were bonus tracks to be had for those that purchased this. The Hold Steady b-sides are often as good, if not better than some of the album cuts. Of course I am a contrarian, but as the boys are just as likely to bust out a leftover as an album track, so you'd do well to become familiar. 

So the first run of this had a defective link to the bonus tracks. Upon receiving the replacement (loose in a padded mailer without a sleeve - not a good look) I tried to get the unreleased tracks and was stymied once again. Having to cough up an e-mail address and zip to get them is a little shitty, too (like you're not going to sell that info off, Vagrant. Keep news of the umpteenth Thrice vinyl reissue to yourself, will you). Especially when you don't actually get them. After a couple three e-mails, the enigmatic Jake of Vagrant and HS list fame hooked me up with the five tracks via a link (like they should have just done in the first place).  Props are due to him, but it's all about the b-sides here, isn't it? So let's get to it:

First, while there are five bonus tracks available for your APR dollar, it's really only two new tracks, as the first three tracks were available if you bought the deluxe version of Stay Positive.

The tracks were strung together as a single track, so if you weren't of a mind to chop them up, I guess it's refreshing to get them as separate tracks. And a great trio of tracks they are:

First up is Ask Her For Adderall, which is as good if not better than any of the Stay Positive tracks. It rocks and it's awesome. It's also pretty much the same as Constructive Summer with different lyrics. Who cares, it's one of the best Hold Steady tracks yet.

Second is Cheyenne Sunshine. A slower tune with good Franz parts. Melancholy, kind of Modesto-esque.

Third is Two Handed Handshake, one of Craig's character studies. You've heard it live and liked it. All three tracks are great, and for my money one of them could have taken the place of Navy Sheets. But that's just me.

As for the two actual unreleased tracks, 40 Bucks is sort of a companion to Sequestered In Memphis, again with a Modesto/212-Margarita flair to it and Spectres has the big string and B3 treatment. Epic, heartfelt, better than a gang of Arcade Fire records. Plus, it's pretty much free for buying a CD/DVD set that's as cheap and awesome as some of the less tragic women in Hold Steady songs.  Buy a copy if you haven't already. Buy a second for a friend if you have. Here's a link.

R

The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage, Part Two: The DVD

I've always been pretty ambivalent about The Hold Steady and their video presence. The video for Chips Ahoy seemed a remarkably bad treatment for a band that was just starting to come on people's radar. With all respect to Moh Azima, who is a nice guy and who tenured briefly in my old band Musclecar, it seemed just a little too flippant for a song that good. I much preferred his videos for The Swish and Stuck Between Stations. I'm not sure who did the video for Stay Positive, but that one is absolutely terrible. I smell Vagrant saddling them with a director. Those things summarily shat upon, I approached the idea of tour documentary with a bit of trepidation, but having met the guys and their crew, it would be hard to avoid capturing the magic that these guys have.

I'm pleased to report that A Positive Rage the documentary is pretty great. It's got the real feeling that Superchunk's Quest For Sleep tour doc has, without the post 9/11 dread. Finn often talks about the level of joy that the band maintains, to the point of it getting a little bit rote, but even after hearing it so many times, watching them live it's hard to refute that statement. Of course, The Hold Steady would have to be a sadsack band of Radiohead proportions to not be pretty happy. The doc captures the tour behind Boys And Girls In America where The Hold Steady really started to get a lot of press and play bigger and bigger rooms. European and US tours are both captured, both showing the band equally exhausted and exhilarated, missing home but realizing that they had a very special band on their hands. There are no full-songs, much less a full live set, but that's what the cd is for, besides there are other live Hold Steady DVDs to occupy you. With A Positive Rage, it's nice to have them both in a single package for a reasonable price. I wouldn't say that this would be my first Hold Steady purchase and if you're a fan you already have this, but for the average person A Positive Rage is better for your shut-in friends or parent you're trying to expose to The Hold Steady.

R

The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage, Part One: The CD

For the uninitiated, or those that don't like The Hold Steady (at JS-NYC HQ, we call those people deaf), A Positive Rage is the new live CD slash DVD tour documentary from the boys from Brooklyn. In the interest of yammering on about The Hold Steady as much as possible, I'm going to separate the two discs into two reviews. Let's make love to our ears first, shall we?

This recording comes from a single show taped on Halloween Night in 2007 at The Metro, in lovely Chicago, IL. It's a great room, and by the sounds of things, it was a pretty good show. It's mixed by John Agnello, but I assume that it's pretty much warts and all. Not that this is The Shit Hits The Fans. The boys are often tight as fuck and one of Craig's favorite records is Liveage, a record that I'm pretty sure adhered to that aesthetic. Granted it was probably shallow SST pockets that facilitated the former, but The Hold Steady are every bit as tight as Hermosa Beach's finest, making A Positive Rage an economical choice for all parties involved. Truth be told, many of the first copies were defective, including mine. It was a minor inconvenience, save for our inability to garner the unreleased tracks that were theoretically encoded therein. I'll keep you posted on the replacement process, though I'm pretty salty about not being able to hear them.

That duly bitched about, here's the tracklisting for A Positive Rage:

1. Intro
   
2. Stuck Between Stations
   
3. The Swish
   
4. Chips Ahoy!
   
5. Massive Nights
   
6. Ask Her For Adderall
   
7. Barfruit Blues
   
8. Same Kooks
   
9. You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With)
   
10. Lord, I’m Discouraged
    
11. You Can Make Him Like You
    
12. Your Little Hoodrat Friend
    
13. Southtown Girls
    
14. Citrus
    
15. First Night
    
16. Girls Like Status
    
17. Killer Parties

So, it's a pretty good set. A Positive Rage has got most of the best parts of the Vagrant era, with a dip into some of their tastier b-sides to keep things interesting. In that vein, props are due for putting You Gotta Dance in the set. Personally, I would have lost Citrus for Modesto, but that's just me and I don't recall their asking my opinion, as shocking as that might seem. All in all, I'd give the show a seven on a ten scale. I'm sure it would score higher if I had been there and getting my 'that guy' on, but that's my call and I'm sticking to it. For the newcomers, I'll point again that a Hold Steady seven is about a fifteen for the average band. Almost twenty Hold Steady shows in the last couple years has shown me that the bar has been raised considerably for rock shows in this millenium. There is a short list of bands around today that can hold their own against them and that number grows smaller with every release.

If you had the choice between spending your hard-earned dollar on seeing The Hold Steady live or buying A Positive Rage, I'd say see the guys live. After that, you'll probably end up buying this anyway. Here's a link, if you're feeling pre-emptive and all. 

R

The Hold Steady: A Positive Rage - Out Today!

You read it right. 

Pick it up here.

R

Live: The Hold Steady at Valentine's 3.31.9

Night two of the Tour De Steady, and one that was no doubt going to be a little bit more of an endeavor, as it was in my old stomping grounds of Albany, NY. To up the liver scarring ante, it was going to be at Valentine's, where an old dear friend was known to run things. Add the Brothers Johnson, the Unified Scene and Steven and Annie, and shit would be well-described as being on.

There had been a lot of conjecture about the best way to get Albany. As a result, I opted away from the Chinatown Bus option and went Greyhound, a mistake I shant make again. Got picked up by the lovely Lila at the bus station and headed to Lark Tavern for many pints. Ran into Tess and a gang of other old school Albany kids and caught up with L, then headed over to Valentines to pre-game. Mike hooked up the ticket and I posted up barside and caught up with Howard and the usual gang, then headed upstairs.

Valentines upstairs is pretty small. Much smaller than I remembered, but this time I was a lot more drunk.  The room reminds me a lot of the old Wetlands. It didn't seem to be as rowdy a crowd as the night before, but I wasn't as front and center as I usually was for social reasons.

It was a good set, although opening with You Gotta Dance is always going to get points at JS-NYC headquarters. 

The Hold  Steady are no strangers to a deep cut or two. Given that they have only released four full-lengths, they can't afford to be stingy with the b-sides. The gents aren't ones to rest on their laurels either. Hey, if it gets me Milkcrate Mosh in the set, I'm for it. Yeah Sapphire popped up as well, as you might be able to see from the photo to the left (that was stolen from Lowden11 on the HS board, incidentally). I understand there are two more unreleased tunes that will be appearing on the A Positive Rage CD/DVD set that's dropping on Tuesday, but neither of them have popped up in any of the East Coast sets that I'm aware of. I'm intrigued to hear if they are as good as the b-sides from Stay Positive. I'd venture that's it's too late to get in on the pre-order, but pick it up here on Tuesday.

Having already almost lost my bag at Lark Tavern, I succeeded in leaving my regular touring sweatshirt at the Valentine's, one inaugurated in the hard trenches of Chicago around the turn of the century (and one that Kid Congo Powers chatted about at length with me about, for chrissakes, oops did I drop something?). Staggered back to Steven's at an hour I can't remember and got the royal treatment, including car service to the nightmarishly silly Albany bus station at 9am with one of the larger hangovers I've had in recent years. Far better treatment than I deserved, if only as it lulled me into a false sense of relative comfort that only poorly managed bus transport can ruin. 

Shitty bus employees aside, all respect due to Mike for the hookup for the ticket and Steven for the hospitality, Lila for the pick-up and Annie for the drop-off, as well as to the Brothers Johnson for making things their usual good time. Apologies to any old friends I may have missed or slighted in my whirlwind stay. Of course, all kudos to the men and women of The Unified Scene, a crew as good as you're going to get at a rock show. If you're going to have a rock show that doesn't involve Superchunk and/or The Figgs, you can do profoundly worse than The Hold Steady. They are a true force. We are lucky to have them. See you at the shows in June!

R

Live: The Hold Steady at Irving Plaza 3.30.9

It had been a while since I had seen the mighty Hold Steady. Last November, I guess, if you don't count the horrible episode of Live: From The Artist's Den that finally aired on PBS last week. Not their best show, although it was profoundly hampered by the venue. Bask in the nostalgia here.

This show was the first night of their most recent tour behind Stay Positive, but also one coincident with the release of the new Hold Steady CD/DVD set called A Positive Rage that's dropping on Tuesday. It was also an anniversary show for local radio franchise WRXP. I can't say I have too much of an interest in listening to programming that someone else chooses for me, but it was pointed out to me that city folk like myself don't drive, putting us out of the demographic. WKXP also features Matt Pinfield as part of their on-air staff, giving them at least one DJ with some depth of music knowledge. If people want to listen to this, god bless them, but why I was paying $35 (and .25?) plus fees is still a mystery. I sure hope that a good amount of those dollars found their way toward to pockets of The Hold Steady.

The interwebs tell me that this is set list. I vaguely heard that picked by someone named Jamie. I didn't hear who Jamie was, but it's pretty decent.

Constructive Summer
Multitude of Casualties
The Swish
Magazines
Sequestered in Memphis
Party Pit
Massive Nights
Don't Let Me Explode
Stevie Nix
Barfruit Blues
Yeah Sapphire
Ask Her For Some Adderall
Sweet Payne
Most People Are DJs
Lord I'm Discouraged
Yr Little Hoodrat Friend
Stay Positive
Slapped Actress

Encore:
Stuck Between Stations
Chips Ahoy
Killer Parties

It was sweaty as hell, and a pretty active crowd. Lots of the Unified Scene kids in attendance, both from in and out of town. There are a pretty good number of regular father/son combos at the shows and it was good to see them out as well. The crowd got a little bit old (ironic for it being so young up front) and, as always kids might learn how (or perhaps, more appropriately, when) to dance, but I'd give it probably a seven, on a ten scale. For a first night back, they were as untouchable as usual. Finn displayed a heretofore unknown hockey allegiance to The Rangers in the encore via a personalized jersey, but there were no other real surprises. The four dates the boys announced on Friday sold out completely in about an hour, so punters better be quick on the draw if you want to see them in the small rooms in the future. I will offer an extremely heartfelt FUCK YOU to Ticketmaster for selling off blocks of tickets to brokers pre-sale to the public, though. That's just plain wrong, especially for a band as righteous as The Hold Steady.

R