There is so much joy in what we do

I'm a bit short of things to blog about at the moment - nobody wants to hear how wonderful everything is. People having a good time is boring, and so if I'm happy and cool and having fun, it's boring for the six people who read this. Love y'all. Anyway, I was going to call this blog "why I love The Hold Steady", but the Craig Finn quotation I nicked for the title is pretty much the reason, so I'll use that instead.

Something heavy we could feel through all the Feminax.

The Hold Steady brought me out of a bit of a dark place, musically. Stopped me pontificating about, trying to be uberalt. and made me realise that, with a few notable exceptions, and to quote a friend, "the only music I like is rock music and if it is not rock music it is fucking shit". I was at the wonderful Connect Festival in Inveraray, Scotland, and was at that point when it was a few hours before a band that I wanted to see came along, and I was far too drunk to really get up and do anything about it.

It's great to see you back in a bar band baby.

Completely awesome. I'd drunk a lot of a popular brand of pear cider at this point, so until I bought their debut album Almost Killed Me, I couldn't be sure whether I was doing that thing were I go watch a band, get shitted, tell everyone how awesome they were, and then look really stupid. I digress. They were quite simply the best rock band I'd ever seen. I couldn't hear the lyrics (I needn't have worried on this point - Craig Finn is up there with Dylan and Waits, so far as I'm concerned), but it was just song after song. Nothing atonal, nothing grinding, just vaguely punk-inflected melody, big guitars, a few solos and a nice keyboard sound. Everything I'd rallied against for years. Hypocrisy is fucking awesome.

Lost in fog and love and faithless fear, I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere.

The Hold Steady are the first band that legitimises my Catholic guilt. Every Sunday that I don't go to church (and that's pretty much the past 500+ Sundays), the guilt grows. The Hold Steady reference enough Catholicism for me to feel better about this. That doesn't usually happen. Separation Sunday is such a wonderful album for this. It's a loose concept album, based around the character of Hallelujah (but the kids they called her Holly), who struggles to equate Catholicism with taking drugs and being promiscuous. That's helpful.

So this is it, this is the end of the session, I ain't gonna be taking any more questions. I think my attorney's going to second that notion.

"So I'm just going to go right ahead and say it. Here it comes. Thank you so much - there is so joy in what we do!"

Every time I've seen the band, Craig Finn says this, and it brings tears to my eyes. Such honesty from a man pushing middle age is a wonderful thing. If you don't enjoy being in a band, fucking stop it and let someone else do it, because there's millions of people who'll do it better than you anyway. The Hold Steady are the perfect antidote to the whinging rockstar. Stay Positive.

The best two records I've listened to this week

I used to listen to a lot of this sort of thing when I was a bit younger. My beloved Phlegm Fatales were heavily influenced by Bad Religion and their ilk when we first started out. I think it had something to do with being skint and unhappy. It's odd listening to the music that people in their 40s made when they were younger than you are. Suffer is a great record - it's short (long punk albums are almost always a bad idea, unless you're The Clash), it's angry, and it changed the face of punk music beyond repair. Unfortunately, it mostly went shit (see: your little brother's record collection), but Bad Religion were cool as fuck. I like the artwork too.

Notable tracks: 'Suffer', 'Do What You Want', '1000 More Fools'.













Night train is groovy
An orange jubilee
Feels good comin' and goin'
I'm warm all over me

Fire up the crack boys
And tie off my arm
Cinch up my diaper
Turn the TV on
Give me another blow job
Before I'm on the nod
Say you'll always love me and
Never do me harm
Never do me harm
Never do me harm

Well you're a preacher's daughter
And I'm a bastard's son...

There can be nothing wrong with an album that includes these lyrics. Mark Lanegan is a new discovery for me, and my life is a better thing with him in it.