Books That Mention THS?

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I just grabbed You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About by Daniel Herborn. It’s not written by me, but it is about an 18 year old guy exactly like me, who lives in my old neighbourhood in Sydney, plays the venues I played, and who likes The Hold Steady and Springsteen, so he falls for a girl who likes The Replacements and Gaslight Anthem and Springsteen, there’s a mini arc with her friend getting converted to Gaslight. Other Unified Scene bands like The Mountain Goats, Ted Leo, Menzingers, Smith Street Band, Kate Bush, Perry Keyes all get mentioned.... there’s some Husker Du jokes too

There’s one line about them in Meet Me in the Bathroom, which Franz reviewed. I thought they deserved a whole chapter, they were part of that scene.

They’re not in the index to Trouble Boys, the Replacements biography I’m gonna read. Weird. Thought they’d get a mention

[delboydrums]

The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.
By David Carr

Bloody superb.

[mikeflynn]

Rob Sheffield's "Love is a Mixtape" mentions THS near the very end.

[chinaski]

Oct 19, 2019 8:19:16 GMT -5 @tlon said:

I just grabbed You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About by Daniel Herborn. It’s not written by me, but it is about an 18 year old guy exactly like me, who lives in my old neighbourhood in Sydney, plays the venues I played, and who likes The Hold Steady and Springsteen, so he falls for a girl who likes The Replacements and Gaslight Anthem and Springsteen, there’s a mini arc with her friend getting converted to Gaslight. Other Unified Scene bands like The Mountain Goats, Ted Leo, Menzingers, Smith Street Band, Kate Bush, Perry Keyes all get mentioned.... there’s some Husker Du jokes too

Well this ticks enough of my boxes to get me to check it out. Thanks for the heads up.

My first book ends with the words "I pressed for the next track. The Hold Steady. Stuck Between Stations. Great song."

Given the THS fanbase, I can only imagine there's a whole bunch of writers out there who have at least been sneaking THS references into books for a while.

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The book is honestly so creepy I’m writing a short story about it. Literally everything has happened to me.

There’s at least two Chuck Klosterman collections that mention them but I don’t think ‘rock journalist talks about rock band’ is surprising, and Craig was working on an adaptation of Fargo Rock City anyway...

[thehudsonsteady]

Great thread!  George Pelecanos' The Cut features a conversation between two characters that quotes Multitude of Casualties. To quote from an interview he did on the 'largehearted boy' website

"In The Cut, this song, from Separation Sunday, is mentioned in conversation along with the following lyrics: "She said I shipped it out from Boulder/packed in coffee grounds and wrapped around in dryer sheets." Spero and a woman he just met are talking about the method of shipping marijuana via FedX (coffee grounds deter dope-sniffing dogs) but what they're really discussing is how the mutual love of a band can lead to the next, possibly physical step in a relationship. The Hold Steady is the kind of group that can bring literate listeners, bangers, and club drunks together in the same space. When Slash and Springsteen are referenced in the same song, someone is doing something right."

If memory serves me right, I think the Spero character says THS "Kick it live" or somesuch.  Pelecanos is a very THS writer!

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Doctor Sleep doesn’t explicitly mention THS. But it has a paragraph where an ex-alcoholic talks about how he used The Shine to bet on horse races before he got too old for it to work. This never comes up again, Stephen King is a rock & roll obsessive with a rock and roll obsessed kid, and the book’s main conflict is solved by remembering Game of Thrones.

So draw your own conclusions.

Tho John Constantine does do the horse racing trick in a comic pre-Chips Ahoy so I dunno.