A Positive Jam Season 1 Bonus: Bonus Tracks

Explicit content warning

10/14/20 • 47 min

Almost Killed Me has a deluxe edition that features five bonus tracks. Bonus tracks are a good thing, especially coming from a great band. So, we break down the five tracks one by one to see what makes them stand out and why they might have been left off the album. These are lesser known but there are plenty of gems here.

We cover:

Milkcrate Mosh
Hot Fries
Curves & Nerves
You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came To The Dance With)
Modesto Is Not That Sweet

Two more episodes remain on Season 1 of Positive Jam after this, so stay tuned!

We cover:

Milkcrate Mosh
Hot Fries
Curves & Nerves
You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came To The Dance With)
Modesto Is Not That Sweet

Two more episodes remain on Season 1 of Positive Jam after this, so stay tuned!

Previous Episode

A Positive Jam Track 10: Killer Parties

Every party comes to an end, and some parties almost kill us. We wrap up our review of Almost Killed Me (though not Season 1 of A Positive Jam!) with a look at "Killer Parties", the closing track on the Hold Steady's debut album. It's a ritual as much as a song, and we treat it with all due consideration. That includes making this a four-person episode, with regular guest Matt Brooks rejoining us as well as Shawn Westfall hitting us up for back-to-back appearances.

Mike Taylor kicks off the episode with a story about trailing the Hold Steady on their fall 2006 tour and how Killer Parties underlines all that is good about the band. We then go into a discussion about the band's use of ritual, including Craig Finn's So Much Joy speech, and the dichotomy between freshness and familiarity.

Check out our show notes here, and stay tuned for a few bonus episodes over the rest of the month: https://shortmanstudios.com/a-positive-jam-track-10-killer-parties/

Next Episode

A Positive Jam Season 1 Bonus: The Minneapolis Roots and Mythos of The Hold Steady

The Twin Cities ooze through the Hold Steady's work, lyrically, musically, and as a matter of ethos. What does that actually mean and how can we better understand that?

We bring on Kyle Undem and Brian Holm, co-founders and editors of 30music.com, a classic '00s webzine that reviewed, covered, and interviewed indie music acts of the time, including the Hold Steady. As Minneapolis indie music fans, they both saw the rise of the Hold Steady up close and can understand better than us where the Hold Steady comes from. So we talk about the band’s geographical and musical heritage, Lifter Puller, the resonance of Minneapolis in their lyrics, and how much of this stuff Craig Finn was making up.