I must have heard from every Hold Steady fan in America (they don’t seem to have international fans, I didn’t hear from any), and I respect the devotion, the only question is…can that devotion spread?

Or, as one Mike Van Jura wrote to me:

"Those of us who’ve been adamant supporters of ‘the best bar band in America’ have slews of friends who, not unlike you, are absolutely sick of hearing about how great this band is."

Used to be word spread.  You built a fire and it turned into a conflagration.

Now you build a fire…and you’ve got to keep putting on logs to insure it doesn’t go out!

Everyone believes if you just keep doing it, it will grow.  But today, that’s not the case.  To grow, you must be truly great, or truly mainstream.

The mainstream act tends to have a brief career, whereas the cult artist can tour to drooling fans for decades.  Just don’t think the cult artist is gonna break through.

Used to be, the holier-than-thou fans, who controlled the media, who lived for rock, thought they could influence the public’s taste. Almost no one can influence the public’s taste these days.  It’s a crazy, mixed-up, shook-up world of advertising, radio and TV airplay, which are so often ignored, and marketing by friends to each other online.

And if we don’t like something immediately, we click and say NEXT!

Sure, this means people aren’t dedicating the time to "Get it".

But don’t think that people have ADD.  They spend tons of time on that which enraptures them.  In other words, Farmville is bigger than the Hold Steady.  Maybe because no one’s seen Farmville before, and it demands interaction, whereas the Hold Steady are clearly derived from what’s come before, they’re not brand new.

The pecking order of fans is done.  Hip-hoppers and indie rock fans and the clueless all live in their own private universes.  And you know what?  The clueless are just fine with this.  And they’re not entirely clueless.  Music just does not light their fire, it’s not number one.  Something else is.  Maybe updating their Facebook page.

If you want to break big, get Jimmy Iovine to spend millions on you.  Or write catchy songs and have a very good voice.  Some things never change.