The Hold Steady Ready Live Album, Documentary "A Positive Rage"

The Hold Steady will release their first live album A Positive Rage on April 7th. In addition to a CD stocked full of tracks from the band's earlier discography like 2004's Almost Killed Me and 2006's Boys & Girls In America, the package will also feature a DVD with a 53-minute documentary detailing the band's voyage from their first-ever London concerts in 2006 to their return back to their native Minneapolis. The film will also feature backstage interviews, fan commentary and never-before-seen live footage.

As for the live album itself, the songs were performed on Halloween 2007 at a sold-out show at Chicago's Metro. The enhanced album will also feature five bonus studio tracks, including two unreleased songs "Spectres" and "40 Bucks." Rounding out the whole package is the booklet, filled with personal photos and memories of the tour by band members including frontman Craig Finn. While very few cuts from the band's most recent LP Stay Positive, Rolling Stone's 36th best album of 2008, make it onto A Positive Rage, you can hear the newer tracks live when the Hold Steady tours in April, including a slot at this year's Coachella Festival. Check the track list for A Positive Rage below:

A Positive Rage
1. Intro
2. Stuck Between Stations
3. The Swish
4. Chips Ahoy!
5. Massive Nights
6. Ask Her For Adderall
7. Barfruit Blues
8. Same Kooks
9. You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With)
10. Lord, I'm Discouraged
11. You Can Make Him Like You
12. Your Little Hoodrat Friend
13. Southtown Girls
14. Citrus
15. First Night
16. Girls Like Status
17. Killer Parties

Related Stories:

• Q&A: Craig Finn on Zeppelin, Lyrics and Springsteen
• The Hold Steady's Craig Finn on Depression and Obama
• The Hold Steady Get Hip

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter