Heidi and I went to see The Hold Steady on Friday night at The Pearl Street, a small club here in Northampton. A really great show – both band and crowd were in good moods, lots of joking and banter. It’s not often that you see bands looking like they’re having a good time on stage, but these guys clearly were.
HS’s massive AC/DC-meets-Thin Lizzy riffs and Craig Finn’s manic narrative bark are tailor-made for a venue like this, and most of the crowd raised their beers and sang/shouted along at all of the appropriate ‘whoa-oh’ points. They ran through all of the tunes from the new album, plus a few favorites like “The Swish” and “My Little Hoodrat Friend” from earlier records.
Openers Catfish Haven were pretty cool too, despite that horrible name – acoustic/electric soul/punk, and they had one guy whose primary role was to bang the heck out his cowbell.
Show ended with Catfish joining HS onstage, and eventually lots of people from the crowd packed onstage too and surrounded the bands while Finn climbed up on the drum riser and led everyone like a big choir.
Pretty dang cool.
- JBC
P.S. As far as I know, Heidi was not involved in Friday's riot at UMass.
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