The Hives at Rock City, Nottingham
First off, the opening act “Henry Fiat’s Open Sore”, was terrible. It says something when the lead “singer” declares “I know everything, ask me a question!” and throws the microphone into the audience, only for it to be grabbed by a bloke who immediately screams into it “You f***ing suck!”
It would be more offensive if he was wrong. Maybe in fairness it’s not my sort of music, but in my books playing everything (and I mean everything) at 180bpm really loudly isn’t talent.
Fortunately, then came the Hives. The phrase “stage presence” is thrown around a lot, but nothing compares with the Hives. It was only half way through the first song (Hey Little World) and the lead singer Pelle Almqvist was throwing himself into the crowd.
Speaking of the crowd, if I am able to walk to campus tomorrow it will be a miracle. I was worried at first because quite a few were a bit younger than me, and I thought I’d wandered into the wrong gig. I hadn’t, and 16 year olds can still push.
I’m afraid I have no photos, because while the crowd were destroying my skeleton I couldn’t actually reach my phone.
Aside from the awesome music, there’s one thing I can brag about.
I got a guitar pick! And no, I’m not selling it on eBay.
Update: Without meaning to be too critical, you may have seen this article on NME.com. There are a lot of errors I’m afraid. Firstly the Hives’ new album is called “The Black and White Album”, not “Black and White”. Also, they did not play “Here We Go Again”, “Automatic Schmuck” or “Stay Alive”, but they did play “Try It Again” and opened with “Hey Little World”. I don’t know the order I’m afraid, but suffice to say they ended with “Return the Favour”, so the order isn’t right either. Oh dear.
Also, although I’m pretty sure it was deliberate exaggeration by NME, the band held their poses for about 50 seconds (rather than 5 minutes!) in the middle of “You Dress Up for Armaggedon”. See this YouTube clip for reference. And yes, the pause was incredibly effective. The crowd really did go that berserk.