Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,93

a little embarrassing about them. They were always trying just a bit too hard. I think of the revolving coat rack covered in silk scarves that is Steven Tyler. I think of Mike Love and his repulsive Hawaiian shirts, mugging and pointing through another chorus of “Barbara Ann.” God help me, I think of Cher. (I know, I know, but go see her the next time she mounts a farewell tour; it’s ninety minutes of children dancing around her while she changes clothes twenty-seven times and gay men in velvet jackets rejoice.)

Is this what’s waiting for me?

It’s easier to get old and out of touch in Los Angeles, because in Los Angeles you don’t have to see young people if you don’t want to. You don’t have to see any people. You can hang out in your house and your car and be exactly as social as you want to be. In the early ’00s, satellite radio became a thing, and allowed you to listen only to what you already knew you liked. You could try the pop channel for a while, and then when the sound of being hit about the face with a pillowcase full of silverware got tiresome, you could turn it right to ’80s on 8, and leave it there. You could hear “Walking on Sunshine” again, and it wouldn’t remind you of eighth grade anymore, it would remind you of when you were stuck in traffic on Tuesday. Or you could cut out the middleman entirely, put your iPod on shuffle, and be your own radio station. It’s not what you want for yourself, but it’s comfortable. You can just stop growing and get old and die there in your car and nobody needs to know about it.

I was ready to do that.

I credit Craig Finn with saving my life.

The first Hold Steady song I ever heard was “Stevie Nix” from Separation Sunday, on one of the alternative stations. About a minute in, I pulled over my car and turned it up. It was a glorious mess of bar-band noise and those lyrics. Craig was less a singer at the time than a shouter, and what he shouted could just as well have been notes for a short story: vivid little vignettes about young drunks at rock shows and in ERs. A woman either getting clean or dying at age thirty-three, like Jesus. He wove in old punk bands, Catholic imagery, Fleetwood Mac, Mary Tyler Moore, and Rod Stewart. It was love.

They were playing at the Knitting Factory in a couple of weeks, and I scooped up tickets immediately. And when they took the stage, I had never felt more relieved in my life. They were my age. Praise Jesus, my new favorite band was my own age. So was the crowd: a bunch of weirdos who liked to read books, or who had had Catholic educations, or who just liked to get drunk at rock shows, or all three. The youth are always a minority at Hold Steady shows. We old people run things there.

I did my research on the band, and it turns out Craig Finn went to Boston College, class of 1993. My year. If I’d gone to the school that wanted me instead of begging my way into the one that didn’t, the lead singer of my new favorite band might have been my roommate. (Amy Poehler would have been in our class, too. God help us all.)

Cool grown-up bands appeared or reformed in the years after. The National. LCD Soundsystem. Superchunk got back together. So did Sleater-Kinney. And not for embarrassing reunion tours, like Foreigner or REO Speedwagon or whatever sad-sack old journeymen play the state fair circuit; they got back together and made vital music and rocked the fuck out on stage in their forties, like it was a thing you could do.

It didn’t make me feel young—nothing can do that anymore—but it reconnected me to what made my youth exciting.

And then, in 2015, the Replacements got back together. Even when the Replacements* were together, you never knew how together they were. They were liable to pass out on stage, or vomit, or fight, or break up. The records were great and have stood the test of time. The live shows were performance art.

When the tour dates were announced, every comedy writer in his or her (okay, almost exclusively his) forties took to Twitter to see who else was going, and in how many cities. All of us who’d