When They Kiss They Spit White Noise

Yall, I am seeing The Hold Steady in concert tonight!  I am so, so excited.  THS is one of my favorite bands ever--- basically an extremely poetic, yet extremely raucous bar band.  The band's lyrics are consistently haunting, funny, and compelling.  Craig Finn, the lead vocalist, describes over and over again the experience of living in the Midwest as a teenager and the passion and awkwardness and hurt and struggles with religion and outstandingly fun times that accompany growing up.  

One time I told N that I felt a little shafted for not getting to grow up somewhere like St. Paul or a suburb of Chicago, since THS makes it seem like those living in the upper Midwest get to live through the seminal American teenage experience.  He laughed and told me that he was pretty sure that people who grew up in Fort Worth went through similar things as kids in Minneapolis.  And of course he is correct.  

Everyone has experienced sparkling, caught-in-the-moment, fleeting evenings with friends when you can't imagine that things could get any better than they are right now.   "We had some massive nights/ Every song was right/ And all I wanted was time/ And your friends were pretty cool and my friends were acting cool."  I love how the last line cuts the absolute transcendence of the first few with a sense of anxiety that maybe the singer's friends are going to do something really out-of-control and ruin the whole evening.

Anyway, here's to massive nights.