Monday, January 17, 2011

The Hold Steady - Desperate Pageant: B-sides & Rarities


Update: after the fall of Megaupload, all my blog links went dead. Since there's been demand, though, I re-uploaded this one. I do remain adamant, however, that the band should be issuing this collection officially because these songs deserve a proper release.

***

A song without an album is a funny thing. Many listeners assume---sometimes correctly, sometimes not---that the non-album track must have been discarded (or, at least, hidden away) for a reason. After all, why would any band sentence a song to a life of scarcity and fan-only obscurity if it were truly great? Or even very good? Bad songs have to go somewhere, right?

Right?

Well, maybe... sometimes.

Though I've certainly heard my fair share of lackluster tunes released as B-sides or as bonus tracks tacked onto the album proper, I've also come across quite a few hidden gems that more than justified sifting through all that sonic refuse. On rare occasions, I've even come across what can only be described as a treasure trove of album-free brilliance. Maybe it has something to do with talent (or a lack thereof), or else maybe some bands are simply less concerned with quality-control that others. Regardless, is there anything better (for a music fan, anyway) than finding out your favorite band has over an hour's worth of non-album material that is as good, if not better, than much of their LP-based output? It's a rare thing, sure, and often requires quite a bit of online crate-digging on behalf of the fan, but some bands truly do reward the effort.

Which brings us the The Hold Steady.

People who know me personally know how near and dear this band is to my heart. As a fan of lyric-heavy music, Craig Finn is something of an idol; a completely original and staggeringly inventive voice in a world that favours sing-song platitudes and overly-sentimentalized cliches. His densely woven, acutely detailed tales of degradation and redemption in the American Midwest sound like nothing before them. And yet, with the Hold Steady backing him, Finn's speak-sing-yelp mutates into something strangely familiar, traditional but somehow totally unique. Like classic rock from the future. For many, especially those who didn't grow up in the same sort of drug-addled chaos and druken confusion that Finn so loves to chronicle, The Hold Steady never really clicks. But, for me (and, I suspect, the many people I've introduced the band to who have grown to love them just as dearly) The Hold Steady is that band. The one where the singer isn't just singing, he's singing to you.

I guess it's like Finn says, "certain songs just get scratched into our souls."

The collection I'm positing here took me around four months to finish and contains every non-album studio track released prior to their latest and, sadly, weakest (though still pretty good) album Heaven Is Whenever. I've tried to arrange the songs as chronologically as possible, in order to preserve context (though some thematic adjustments were made). Though I plan to do a Hold Steady introductory mix at some point in the future, this compilation serves as a excellent summary of their style and progression over the course of their first four albums. In fact, I would easily rank this collection, which I have taken the liberty of dubbing Desperate Pageant: B-sides and Rarities, above at least two (and perhaps more) of their actual LPs, such is the quality on display here.

I would also like to thank the online Hold Steady community for helping me, both directly and indirectly, to complete this compilation. Some of these songs were actually e-mailed to me by other fans and are, generally speaking, impossible to find online, legally or otherwise.

Please, if you like the band, go out and buy their records or, at the very least, go and see them live. I assure you that very few bands are as compelling a live act as The Hold Steady.

Here's the tracklist.

01. Milkcrate Mosh
02. Hot Fries
03. Curves & Nerves
04. Modesto Is Not That Sweet
05. You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came To Dance With)
06. 212 Margarita
07. For Boston
08. Girls Like Status
09. Arms And Hearts
10. American Music [Violent Femmes Cover]
11. Teenage Liberation
12. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? [Bob Dylan Cover]
13. Ask Her For Adderall
14. Cheyenne Sunrise
15. Two-Handed Handshake
16. Atlantic City [Bruce Springsteen Cover]
17. 40 Bucks
18. Spectres
19. Take Me Out To The Ballgame

And here's the download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/3v5ho4nallem8my/THS_DP_BSIDES.zip

Enjoy (and share).

8 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for posting this.
    That's great stuff. I am a huge fan as well and highly encourage anyone who likes great rock music with a positive (and entertaining) message to get into these guys. They kick ass and then chill out. It's pretty amazing.
    Really hard to find their b-sides though.
    This is a great collection and I thank you for sharing it.

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  2. Well done, sir. I know this was three years ago, and you may or may not be alive. ;) But you did good work putting this here. I was ready to go scrounging for these songs one by one.

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    1. Also, I only check this site once every year or so. If that. Still love the Hold Steady, though. Even if their latest album didn't really work for me. Also: still baffled that this isn't an official release yet.

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  4. People e-mail me sometimes and ask me why that one Bob Seger cover isn't on this and the answer is... because I don't like it. Haha. I think that as it stands these songs, arranged as they are here, work as an album, and that's what I was going for. Glad everyone has been enjoying it all these years. I am very proud to have helped the Unified Scene in any way!

    Stay positive!

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  5. Now available on YouTube:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO4NK8wGe8U

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  6. Can you please re-up this collection?

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