August 9 2007: The Hold Steady, the Big Sleep, the Teenage Prayers - Prospect Park Band Shell, Brooklyn NY

Yesterday was the last day of school, and I had no intentions of staying put for 26 whole days waiting for the fall semester to start. So first stop on the list: free rock and roll in Brooklyn.

I got up early enough to make it into town to catch a noon Mets game, met up with Josh at his place afterwards, and we headed to Prospect Park (it being conveniently located just a few blocks away from Josh) at around 6, making a concerted effort to pick up a sixer of some 7.5% Jamaican stout en route. It was a maybe 70 degree evening, the sky was blue, the humidity was nonexistent, and we could just tell that shit was going to be good.

Enjoyed a few tunes from the Teenage Prayers, whom Josh in some preshow online investigation into the opening acts discovered were supposed to be “a more soulful Steve Malkmus,” but all I could tell was that we were really close to the speakers, which were really loud in my ears. Josh felt similarly. So we put a backpack and a shirt over our chairs and retired with the stout to the lawn where we leaned back and enjoyed ourselves. The aforementioned perfect qualities of the evening’s weather were here multiplied exponentially.

And then after an hour or so the Hold Steady’s appearance on stage started to seem pretty imminent so we reclaimed our seats up front and tossed back some Scotch from a flask throughout the set, and shit. I hadn’t seen them since I’d REALLY started to dig their stuff, and Josh had never seen them, and then they go and open with “Stuck Between Stations” and the spirit just led. In all they played everything from the new record except “Chillout Tent” (including “Citrus,” which I hadn’t seen played before and which I really really like), and “The Swish” and “Barfruit Blues” (which I hadn’t seen before) and “Stevie Nix” and “Multitude of Casualties” and “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and “Modesto is Not That Sweet” (which I hadn’t heard before but really enjoyed), and they closed the encore with “Killer Parties.” And really, “Killer Parties” seems destined to go down as one of the all-time greatest songs to close a gig with. That baseline, those guitars, the ridiculous and ridiculously brilliant lyrics…mere words cannot describe.

So all in all the show was fabulous and my feet definitely left the floor a few times and the alcohol was at just the right place in my brain and many a moment left me literally grasping at my chest for my heart. It was amazing.

And, perhaps more telling than anything else: Josh Livingston was dancing. Really dancing. Possibly even dancing, in the parlance of our times, like a motherfucker. Such is the influence of cheap whiskey and great rock and roll. And the Hold Steady are truly a great rock and roll band.