Steady as she goes

It's been a little while since I've posted. Lotta work going on right now. If ever I worried that I wouldn't have anything to do out here, I can put those fears to rest. Once this crush ends, I'll have written in the span of about five weeks:

• three articles for Viking Update
• three CD reviews for the Las Vegas Weekly
• four team previews (at about 5,000 words apiece) for the Blue Ribbon College Football Yearbook
• four articles for Las Vegas Life
• three articles for Las Vegas Magazine
• four articles for the Minnesota Vikings yearbook

AND ... I launched this blog in that period as well. Whew! No wonder I'm so stressed out lately.

However, I have had a little time to have fun, and I finally got to see one of my favorite bands live and in person. The Hold Steady made its Las Vegas debut on Sunday night, playing a free show to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the opening of the Beauty Bar in the fabulous downtown region of Las Vegas.

For the uninitiated, the Hold Steady is a band from Brooklyn with serious Minnesota ties -- at least two of the members hail from the Twin Cities, and the lyrics of singer/songwriter Craig Finn namecheck Mary Tyler Moore, the Golden Gophers, the Northtown Mall, Lake and Chicago, the Thunderbird, Osseo, Stillwater, former Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman (who taught at the U and committed suicide by leaping from the Washington Ave. bridge), and Rainbow Foods. And they're big Twins fans, as you could probably guess by the t-shirts on sale at the show (left).

Musically, they're a fun mix of the very best of highbrow and lowbrow rock. To wit: hyper-literate lyrics that reference Jack Kerouac (his buddy, Sal Paradise, actually) and Beverly Sills and William Butler Yeats and the Bible tell stories of inked-up characters who partake in every drug known to man, use Pringles cans for pipes, and hook up in the "chillout tent," where wasted concertgoers are taken to sober up with "oranges and cigarettes." All set against a wall of guitars that wail through muscular solos over a throbbing rhythm section.

(Check out some of their mp3s here.)

I enjoyed the show on Sunday -- one of the very few that I've seen in my almost two years here in Vegas, because bands I like don't usually play here. It was pretty much what I expected, based on what I've read. The band was tight, and Finn is a showman -- a twitchy, manic, frantic showman. But his phrasing was all off -- he'd cling to some lyrics like a drunk to a lightpost, then rush through others in order to keep up with the beat.

All in all, it was fun and I'd go see them again in a heartbeat, but their CDs will hold steady in my heart long after memories of this show have faded.