Hold Steady Plot Chronology

[hollywasahoodrat]

i always saw slapped actress about sapphire

[five]

May 16, 2010 17:51:19 GMT -5 tyslothrop said:

chips ahoy-craig tells this song from the unnamed narrator perspective, i don't see how this is holly at all, makes no sense. it's more likely the precog girl is holly i would think.

Took another stab at reading this, I don't think Holly is in the song at all. I think the narrator is Charlemagne and the girl is Sapphire, and that Sapphire and Holly aren't the same person (I read an opinion it was Mary, which would've been extra awesome couldn't find support for in the lyrics )

[Deleted]

i keep finding more things to back up my 'the vampires are real' theory

from Knuckles:

"there's a war going down in the middle western states. white crosses and wooden stakes. "

c'mon. tell me the wooden stakes a reference to heroin needles or something....

[Sunny D]

May 17, 2010 18:19:56 GMT -5 @tlon said:

i keep finding more things to back up my 'the vampires are real' theory

from Knuckles:

"there's a war going down in the middle western states. white crosses and wooden stakes. "

c'mon. tell me the wooden stakes a reference to heroin needles or something....

Are you implying that Craig means actual vampires in the story? Because I see it as a metaphor.
"Left home virgins came back vampires."

[Deleted]

May 17, 2010 21:51:03 GMT -5 Sunny D said:

May 17, 2010 18:19:56 GMT -5 @tlon said:

i keep finding more things to back up my 'the vampires are real' theory

from Knuckles:

"there's a war going down in the middle western states. white crosses and wooden stakes. "

c'mon. tell me the wooden stakes a reference to heroin needles or something....

Are you implying that Craig means actual vampires in the story? Because I see it as a metaphor.
"Left home virgins came back vampires."

i'm half-joking and half not. i initially saw the vampires as a metaphor (like in Arctic Monkeys' 'All You People Are Vampires') but we've got a clairvoyant, possible resurrections, and all sorts of weirdness ('when they kiss they spit white noise', 'they had cigarettes where they should have had eyes') so why not vampires?

plus, what else is the 'white crosses and wooden stakes' line about?

[Sunny D]

May 17, 2010 9:35:09 GMT -5 five said:

May 16, 2010 17:51:19 GMT -5 tyslothrop said:

chips ahoy-craig tells this song from the unnamed narrator perspective, i don't see how this is holly at all, makes no sense. it's more likely the precog girl is holly i would think.

Took another stab at reading this, I don't think Holly is in the song at all. I think the narrator is Charlemagne and the girl is Sapphire, and that Sapphire and Holly aren't the same person (I read an opinion it was Mary, which would've been extra awesome couldn't find support for in the lyrics )

I find it really hard to see Sapphire in any pre-BAGIA songs since she didn't come up until "Chips Ahoy!"

[five]

May 17, 2010 22:22:37 GMT -5 @tlon said:

i'm half-joking and half not. i initially saw the vampires as a metaphor (like in Arctic Monkeys' 'All You People Are Vampires') but we've got a clairvoyant, possible resurrections, and all sorts of weirdness ('when they kiss they spit white noise', 'they had cigarettes where they should have had eyes') so why not vampires?

plus, what else is the 'white crosses and wooden stakes' line about?

You're awesome man. Vampires in mind, take another look at the lyrics to Slight Discomfort.

Spooky

May 18, 2010 0:03:03 GMT -5 Sunny D said:

I find it really hard to see Sapphire in any pre-BAGIA songs since she didn't come up until "Chips Ahoy!"

We're agreeing, right?

[Deleted]

May 18, 2010 2:47:16 GMT -5 five said:

May 17, 2010 22:22:37 GMT -5 @tlon said:

i'm half-joking and half not. i initially saw the vampires as a metaphor (like in Arctic Monkeys' 'All You People Are Vampires') but we've got a clairvoyant, possible resurrections, and all sorts of weirdness ('when they kiss they spit white noise', 'they had cigarettes where they should have had eyes') so why not vampires?

plus, what else is the 'white crosses and wooden stakes' line about?

You're awesome man. Vampires in mind, take another look at the lyrics to Slight Discomfort.

i'm trying hard to convince my brain that song isn't about Holly being slowly devoured by Shelob, the giant spider from Return of the King

but i'm having a really hard time

seriously i've always viewed the THS universe as urban fantasy verging on horror and whatever Slight Discomfort is about - drug addiction, giant spiders, vampirism (all invovling thin needles injecting you with something) - it's not something good

[mickeymo]

Thanks for that - not sure I've taken it all in yet but lots of food for thought.

For anyone with Spotify I've done a playlist in the order five recommended. Unfortunately a small number of tracks aren't on there mainly the Australian Almost Killed Me bonus tracks and Cheyenne:



A word of warning - the link won't open if you are using Firefox. IE and Google Chrome are fine though.

[five]

May 18, 2010 3:04:15 GMT -5 @tlon said:

May 18, 2010 2:47:16 GMT -5 five said:

You're awesome man. Vampires in mind, take another look at the lyrics to Slight Discomfort.

i'm trying hard to convince my brain that song isn't about Holly being slowly devoured by Shelob, the giant spider from Return of the King

but i'm having a really hard time

seriously i've always viewed the THS universe as urban fantasy verging on horror and whatever Slight Discomfort is about - drug addiction, giant spiders, vampirism (all invovling thin needles injecting you with something) - it's not something good

I always made the connection from spiderwebs to Gideon's tattoos, and from there to the Skins and drug dealers more generally. Kind of a similar sentiment to 'the pistols and the pagers that come with all the powders.' I agree it's dark as hell

[soniclovenoize]

five...

I was thinking about this, and I know this is your interpretation and all, but I seriously doubt that the songs tell the "story" in chronological order. It seems we already have an ending to the damned thing in "Crurves and Nerves", with Charlemenge dead and Holly moving to LA! It ended as it was starting?

For the Nightclub Fires Saga in LFTR PLLR, Craig had thought it all out in advance, and slowly dropped in clues throughout the LFTR PLLR catalog; the band ended before the story was fully told, though. What seems more likely to me, if Craig wrote this thing in a the same fashion as the Nightclub Fires Saga in LFTR PLLR (as I'm pretty sure he did--he didn't change his writing style but sort of reset the characters, you know), is that there's no chronological order to this in the lyrics... This "event" happened, and Craig is giving us bits and pieces of the "event", bits and pieces of the background of the characters, all the details a little bit at a time without telling us the plot. It's like this big huge jigsaw puzzle, and he's giving us the pieces for us to put together without really knowing what this picture is supposed to look like in the end. Thus you seem to be taking these jigsaw pieces and lining them up in a row... Seriously, what do we really know? That Holly was a hoodrat, Charlemagne eventually is killed and Gideon is in a gang. And it seems to me that this central "event" that the three characters seem to gravitate to was some big gang war. I think after 5 albums, we should know by now!

Don't think of it like an order of events, like: A) Holly did this... B) Gideon said this... C) Charlemagne snorted that...
Think of it as a brainstorming chart: The "event" in the center, with events spitting out and around it...

So what I'm saying, is that instead of a chronological storyline, I'd say there was some sort of main event, and all the references are about the certain details of this event. You know what I mean? I'm not flaming you or anything, and you did do a good job of collecting the pieces! But I think we should all figure out how they should go together, because I don't think you have that right...

[five]

May 18, 2010 9:32:28 GMT -5 soniclovenoize said:

five...

I was thinking about this, and I know this is your interpretation and all, but I seriously doubt that the songs tell the "story" in chronological order. It seems we already have an ending to the damned thing in "Crurves and Nerves", with Charlemenge dead and Holly moving to LA! It ended as it was starting?

For the Nightclub Fires Saga in LFTR PLLR, Craig had thought it all out in advance, and slowly dropped in clues throughout the LFTR PLLR catalog; the band ended before the story was fully told, though. What seems more likely to me, if Craig wrote this thing in a the same fashion as the Nightclub Fires Saga in LFTR PLLR (as I'm pretty sure he did--he didn't change his writing style but sort of reset the characters, you know), is that there's no chronological order to this in the lyrics... This "event" happened, and Craig is giving us bits and pieces of the "event", bits and pieces of the background of the characters, all the details a little bit at a time without telling us the plot. It's like this big huge jigsaw puzzle, and he's giving us the pieces for us to put together without really knowing what this picture is supposed to look like in the end. Thus you seem to be taking these jigsaw pieces and lining them up in a row... Seriously, what do we really know? That Holly was a hoodrat, Charlemagne eventually is killed and Gideon is in a gang. And it seems to me that this central "event" that the three characters seem to gravitate to was some big gang war. I think after 5 albums, we should know by now!

Don't think of it like an order of events, like: A) Holly did this... B) Gideon said this... C) Charlemagne snorted that...
Think of it as a brainstorming chart: The "event" in the center, with events spitting out and around it...

So what I'm saying, is that instead of a chronological storyline, I'd say there was some sort of main event, and all the references are about the certain details of this event. You know what I mean? I'm not flaming you or anything, and you did do a good job of collecting the pieces! But I think we should all figure out how they should go together, because I don't think you have that right...

Can you explain that a little more? I'm definitely interested in hearing that interpretation. I got annoyed with tyslothrop because he sounded mad, because it seemed like he was reading things into my post that weren't there, and because I could only half understand what he was saying. I really did write this as a discussion piece, and if you want to write something up I'd be really happy to read it (I'm not asking for something referencing every song, more like people have posted the connection between Hurricane J and Certain Songs).

I think the strongest argument in favor of it being a narrative is Holly's character arc. She leaves Massachusetts a sweet kid, gets involved in the scene, gets druggy along with it, and eventually gets clean and redeems herself. All that needs time to happen. Also, I don't see Curves & Nerves as an ending, for what it's worth. Charlemagne being dead is open to interpretation, but Modesto is not that Sweet is about Holly coming back from California.

[soniclovenoize]

Hmm. What I'm saying is that all of this is not a series of events that when put together, make a story; instead, it's random details and back-story that all lead up to one "event." I could try to map this out, but it would take me some time. As I said, it seems to me that the ambigous "event" I'm talking about was a gang war--hence the many MANY references to blood shed (is that what's goin on on "Give Her Adderall"?), Holly possibly turns her life around (I say "posibly" because I don't know that she does) and Charlemagne gets bumped off in the end.

Have you ever read "The Wastelands" by TS Eliot? It's like that--the point itself is the combination of all the allusions and references Eliot made throughout the piece, without actually stating the point itself. That's the thing about Craig Finn, is that I know he's well-read and he does a lot of the classic poetic devices intentionally, that I see no other rock lyricist doing. Read James Joyce and TS Eliot--CRaig's like the rock n roll beat-poet version of them. That's what makes him so fucking brilliant.

Also, I have to state that it's tricky making connection from one song to another without Craig actually stating it. Like Hurricane J and Certain Songs? I don't see that at all. You have to remember that Craig is not writing from his own perspective, but as third-person narrator, a witness--but it's not Craig himself, and I don't believe it's from Holly/Gideon/Charlemagne/Jessie/whomeever's perspective either--otherwise he would have said so. Also, not every song is about this story/event thing. Like Certain Songs is just a comment about how, well, certain songs get scratched into our souls.

Man, this is more complex than Hazards of Love!

[five]

I didn't see the Certain Songs connection myself, but some people in this thread have pointed it out and I like it.

I haven't read Joyce or Eliot, although I've been meaning to start Joyce forever. Is the device something similar to Vonnegut with Slaughterhouse Five?

I like that interpretation too, anyhow. I can appreciate the amount of time it would take to do a solid write up ( ) but if you do want to tackle it, I'd love it. I'll take a look at Wastelands and get going on Dubliners too, I've been pretty strictly reading nonfiction for years.

edit: actually it's probably my experience with Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5 and Hocus Pocus are like this) that pushes me towards my interpretation - he writes stories with a rough chronology told deliberately out of order. This way, Both Crosses is roughly analogous to the description of the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse, sort of a climax and focal point.

[soniclovenoize]

Erm, yeah, it's a bit like SH5, but not exactly... SH5, yeah it's out of order because Billy was unstuck in time; The Holly/Gideon/Charlemagne Saga seem more like you're randomly flipping through a history book, only reading one or two sentances here and there, if that makes any sence.

I was just at the park with my kids and I thought of an analogy for this: It's like you're at a party, and everyone is talking about what happened to Gideon and Holly and so forth. But you don't ask anyone and no one tells you what happened, you're just overhearing other people's converstaions. And that's what Craig's lyrics seem to be to me: we're just overhearing snippets of what happened!

On a not-so-related note, check out Finnegan's Wake by Joyce (of course). Greatest piece of literature EVER. Totally insane. No beginning, no end. It just exists.

[Deleted]

i probably should have mentioned this before but 99% of the media i consume is 'genre' - fantasy/sci-fi/horror
and Joyce

SO

maybe the disjointed nature of it all ties into Sapphire somehow? like some of it is through her eyes and she can't tell what has happened, what will happened, what was supposed to happen before

personally, i think there really is a chronology, and Craig does have the plot mapped out somehow

but there's another meta idea that ties into Joyce - that everything is happening on several layers of reality/myth at once. Stephen Dedalus is Stephen Dedalus but he's also Odysseus

Holly is Holly, but she's also a figure in the Christ story. whoever got betrayed is himself, but he's also Jesus. whoever did the betraying is whoever he is but he's also, on another level, Judas. the ancient stories get reenacted
'It all started when one brother killed the other/I sometimes wonder if the world ever will recover'. it all dies back to the Catholic idea of original sin (and man that line will make me think of LOST after the last episode)
'I'm pretty sure i've heard this one before'

Holly and Gideon and Charlagmange and all that are normal people but they get swept up into something bigger and it all gets fuzzy and mystical

but yeah. beneath it all is, somewhere, a linear story

[five]

That's been my interpretation, Tion.

This all leads pretty well into another conversation entirely - how important IS the plot in fiction? My friend and I have talked a lot about this - the disjointed, fuzzy nature of the Hold Steady story makes what plot there is almost coincidental. Instead of being the focal point of the story, it's something the characters do to reveal themselves to us, the audience. This is one of the things we both really like about the Hold Steady as a band, and it's something we're trying to capture in our own work.

It's funny you bring up Lost, because that's one of the other examples we use. The first few seasons were great, mainly because we didn't know anything. We had a well-acted, varied cast reacting to a strange situation with an almost total lack of information, combined with flashback vignettes which further illuminated the inner world of each character without revealing the overall point. This season, and the last episode in particular, have been particularly weak because we're starting to get answers, and whatever you think of the plot it can't possibly live up to what it could have been back before we knew anything about it. The most important thing we've seen all year, IMO, is sideflash Ben place Alex's wellbeing over the pursuit of power, because it makes a huge statement on who Ben is as a person, and the effect of circumstance on a person's actions. Compare that with Jack, who I haven't cared about since the season three finalé. The most important thing to know about Jack's character is that leaving the island pretty much killed him, because nothing he ever does can possibly be as important as leading the survivors those first hundred or so days after the crash.

So new conversation topic: How important is a plot in fiction? Is it truly relevant at all?

[soniclovenoize]

May 18, 2010 18:51:36 GMT -5 five said:

That's been my interpretation, Tion.

This all leads pretty well into another conversation entirely - how important IS the plot in fiction? My friend and I have talked a lot about this - the disjointed, fuzzy nature of the Hold Steady story makes what plot there is almost coincidental. Instead of being the focal point of the story, it's something the characters do to reveal themselves to us, the audience. This is one of the things we both really like about the Hold Steady as a band, and it's something we're trying to capture in our own work.

You see Lion, you've had courage all along...

[five]

May 18, 2010 19:37:25 GMT -5 soniclovenoize said:

May 18, 2010 18:51:36 GMT -5 five said:

That's been my interpretation, Tion.

This all leads pretty well into another conversation entirely - how important IS the plot in fiction? My friend and I have talked a lot about this - the disjointed, fuzzy nature of the Hold Steady story makes what plot there is almost coincidental. Instead of being the focal point of the story, it's something the characters do to reveal themselves to us, the audience. This is one of the things we both really like about the Hold Steady as a band, and it's something we're trying to capture in our own work.

You see Lion, you've had courage all along...

lol true as it is, I'm still dorky enough to have written the OP

also dorky enough to have a favorite tongue smiley

[Deleted]

"So new conversation topic: How important is a plot in fiction? Is it truly relevant at all? "

fiction in general? or in music? 'cause having a plot and characters puts THS ahead of 90% of non-prog/metal music... if you're going to have a plot in your band's album, do it right... i listened to the last Mastodon album, half-joked that it was probably about somebody going back in time to the Russian Revolution to become Rasputin, and then turned out to be right
ouch

but it is kinda weird how the plot/character stuff means you're listening for two different reasons... to get pumped up on the music and figure out how it fits into everything. but it's great, too
you know how you'll watch an old Sopranos or Buffy episode and realize some chance remark or detail actually sets up something a few episodes down the line? i get that listening to Almost Killed Me, and it's awesome

but honestly, they're music albums. they're going to be listened to on shuffle or mixed in with a zillion MP3s or put on in the background. there IS a linear plot somewhere but if THS made it too linear/literal the albums would be mostly unlistenable more then once

ACTUALLY... are more bands putting out plotted/themed albums? you've got The Mountain Goats (probably a big influence on Craig), The Decemberists, Green Day, Titus Andronicus, Joanna Newsom (maybe) and i'm guessing metal/prog guys still do it

[doctoracula]

this thread has a lot of long posts
my 2 cents:

the entire "story" is really just one major event, and most of the songs have been different perspectives and the fallout of that single thing.

[five]

May 18, 2010 20:23:34 GMT -5 @tlon said:

"So new conversation topic: How important is a plot in fiction? Is it truly relevant at all? "

fiction in general? or in music? 'cause having a plot and characters puts THS ahead of 90% of non-prog/metal music... if you're going to have a plot in your band's album, do it right... i listened to the last Mastodon album, half-joked that it was probably about somebody going back in time to the Russian Revolution to become Rasputin, and then turned out to be right
ouch

but it is kinda weird how the plot/character stuff means you're listening for two different reasons... to get pumped up on the music and figure out how it fits into everything. but it's great, too
you know how you'll watch an old Sopranos or Buffy episode and realize some chance remark or detail actually sets up something a few episodes down the line? i get that listening to Almost Killed Me, and it's awesome

but honestly, they're music albums. they're going to be listened to on shuffle or mixed in with a zillion MP3s or put on in the background. there IS a linear plot somewhere but if THS made it too linear/literal the albums would be mostly unlistenable more then once

ACTUALLY... are more bands putting out plotted/themed albums? you've got The Mountain Goats (probably a big influence on Craig), The Decemberists, Green Day, Titus Andronicus, Joanna Newsom (maybe) and i'm guessing metal/prog guys still do it

Fiction in general. Most music doesn't have a plot beyond a single song, I'm asking more about writing, television, movies.

I agree that the story wouldn't mean a thing if the individual songs didn't hold up (although I have to admit, the first half of Stay Positive is largely propped up by plot connections for me). Most concept albums fall flat for me because of a lack of characterization, which is absolutely the most important part of the story the Hold Steady is telling.

Going way back in the conversation to Curves and Nerves, I've been asked before about Charlemagne being six feet under in that song when he clearly is still alive later if my timeline is gonna work. I kind of think he's dead metaphorically, either dead to Holly at that point in time or dead to the scene, generally, because he's in hiding. Really though I think he's just dead in that song, and the logic of the Craig Finn's world is fuzzy enough that the idea that he's alive later doesn't have to create a conflict.

That fuzziness is the most intriguing part of the story. It's what makes these conversations worthwhile, it's what made me curious enough to piece together a timeline, it's what brought me here to the forum. It's not what keeps me listening to the band (the beautiful, escapist visions of the scene in Almost Killed Me), or what got me into them in the first place ("She slept like she'd never been scared" summing up some of the best and worst times I'd had with my recently-ex girlfriend in a single sentence)

[Deleted]

why does there have to be one timeline? why do people have to stay dead?

we still don't know the 'rules' of the Hold Steady universe or how it operates. if it's partly in the mystic/religious realm, certain things are possible

and i think it's more interesting to discuss story as it relates to THS/albums. i do think what's more important though is mood and theme. even if i'm not sure exactly WHAT's happening i know where it's happening and who it's happening to...

and most bands write stories about the people listening to them. Smiths, Gaslight Anthem, whatever... they write songs about their listeners. and THS kinda do that...

on the verses, Chips Ahoy! is about a psychic cheating at horses
on the choruses, it's about the time i broke up with an ex and she was on E but wouldn't touch or hug me and hadn't danced with me all day and it just felt WEIRD

Hey Sapphire is about Sapphire, but it's also about a girl who, yeah, she probably won't be mine. but i hope she don't die

and that's a trick that THS pull off really really well. The Decemberists' 'Crane Wife' is about what it's about. the chorus relates to the story of transformation. Oh Valencia! is about... Valencia. but THS songs are both about the characters in them and about universal human experience

maybe that's the 3rd level... the Listeners, the Characters, and the Mystical level

[five]

Have you read Phonogram? It's a comic about the experience of being a music fan, I think you'd dig it. First issue is free and legal here

[Deleted]

May 18, 2010 22:43:48 GMT -5 five said:

Have you read Phonogram? It's a comic about the experience of being a music fan, I think you'd dig it. First issue is free and legal here

yeah. deals with the Britpop era, so i don't get all the references, but i read the first trade. it's EXACTLY what i'm talking about, and i'd love to write something similar about the music i'm into

the author's gaming blog, RockPaperShotgun, is also quality