The early signs at last night's Hold Steady show were not good. A group of fans had shown up wearing "Unified Scene Drinking Team" softball shirts. And while I couldn't say exactly what Craig Finn had in mind when he invented the first half of that phrase, I was pretty sure it didn't involve flipcup.

The opening act compounded the problem. Homogenous pop/punk with a Bosstones scream — they weren't my thing, really, although a lot of the crowd liked them. Tuning out early gave me plenty of time to think about why the Hold Steady had given them an opening slot. I concluded that it wasn't the band, it was the idea of the band — they were joyful and enthusiastic. And visually, they covered all the bases: there were a couple of tattooed rap/rock fireplugs, an asymptotically skinny indie boy, a nerd-rock drummer peering through dirty hair and ludicrous glasses, and a little keyboard-playing white girl in a pretty Motown dress. My friend Chris summed it up well when he said they looked like a rock band from The Sims.

Which left me in an awkward position. As much as anything the Hold Steady have built themselves on a downright mythic idea of rock and roll and the people that listen to it. I can't say I've ever been a part of a scene like that, but it always sounded pretty good to me. Now I was standing there, staring at what I could only take to be a living shorthand for what they'd had in mind, and it was a cartoon. Suddenly I was in a crowd of fellow fucking tourists, wondering if I'd be wearing a softball jersey, too, if I'd been born into the wrong online neighborhood.

But then the band took to the stage and I realized what you probably already have: this is all ridiculous. Their stories are too good, the music's too good, to get tangled up in worry over authenticity. By the end of the first song Craig Finn had made us toast Joe Strummer, and I found I didn't even care if, for the people around me, the honoree wasn't any more real than Charlemagne or Holly. Their hands stayed up after the toast, and that turned out to be the important thing.

The show wasn't recorded, but the band did a set from this tour on World Cafe, and you can listen to or download it here. If the links wind up broken let me know and I'll repost 'em.

ONE FOR THE SKEPTICS: Here, listen to this:

Image by Flickr user hyku, used under a Creative Commons license