I forget which sexy mega rock god said it, but it was someone suitably svelte and saturnine who said, “Anyone who tells you they got into a band for music and not to meet girls is lying.” Which must make it hard for The Hold Steady, because in this throng of 600 or so, I’ve counted 72 women. Boy that must be depressing. You’ve been on the road since September, the youthful sap is flowing, you’d like a cuddle at the end of the night and when you hit the stage what do you see? 527 men. And I do mean men. I’m used to being one of the older guys in the room; it makes me feel cool and contemporary. Suddenly I’m in a crowd of “young-in-spirit” peers. Frankly, I’m upset. New bands are for young people. Old people go and see old bands. Perhaps what we have is a new phenomenon: a 21st century band for a 20th century audience.Seeing The Hold Steady for the first time is a bit of a shock. Hearing singer Craig Finn’s New Jersey whine keeps putting pictures of Springsteen in your head. Suddenly your confronted with a someone looking like a Dr. Frankenstein semi-success in crossing Bruce with Elvis Costello. Around him is a band that looks like they joined for the honest reason – girls – but even being on a stage didn’t help them. Which makes them all the more endearing. Craig Finn sings like he can’t contain all the music inside him; he’s just bursting with enthusiasm to tell you his warped tales. I bet he doesn’t have any problems with the chicks. With his geeky glasses and spastic stage excitement it’s obvious he’s complicated and possessed of strange demons and needs the comfort of a good woman and if it’s an act it’s a bloody good one.Is it a New Jersey thing to sing about beautiful losers? Of course, Bruce’s cast of characters are all romantic and lightly limned by a sun setting on the horizon of the highway they’re driving on. The Minneapolis crew that populate Hold Steady songs seem a much scuzzier bunch. When he sings about holing up with a gal and getting high for a week it feels like the drugs enjoyed come in small paper fold-ups and pills with names invented in chem labs.Even though the Empire is a pretty small theatre they give the impression this is a big hall for them. At one point Finn looks to the balconies and says, “I’m not ignoring you, I’m just not used to balconies.” I get the impression that even though the album sounds big and therefore the band must be big, this really is band doing the new Internet band thing, building an audience one fan at a time. He mentions a fan they met yesterday, a 19 year-old who pulled them over in the car. He used to have a bad drug problem and has been clean for a year now and The Hold Steady’s music helps keep him there. It’s got the ring of purity and truth that makes me and the other 599 in this room a fan as well. They really are just a big lovable bar band.
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