My Ears hurt...

It turns out that The Hives really **do** rock, in case there was ever any doubt. For more details see the comments thread on yesterday's post. Turns out Damo went to go and see them in Bristol on Tuesday night. They were really loud, and this morning I am very aware that I was standing slightly closer to one speaker stack than the other, if you know what I mean.

I like Rock City as a venue; big enough to have a decent crowd but small enough to be intimate. I've seen a few cracking gigs here as well (ash, pulp, Queens of the Stoneage, The Streets...) and I do keep my eyes peeled at their schedule... they get more than there fair shair of Hi-on Maidens (do you see what they did there?), Magnums, Motorheads etc. etc, but in amongst all that are people like PJ Harvey, The Hives, Keane. I'm still devastated that I missed the Kings of Leon there, as they clashed with Eddie Izzard at the Nottingham Ice Arena (increasingly also becoming a handy concert venue). Rock City would have been a great venue to see the dirty southern rock of the KOL too - and Izzard later announced an extra Nottingham date, the git.

Anyways. Venue was full of students and I felt a little bit old. I felt a little bit better when I saw that one teenage guy had come with his 40-something dad. Then I noticed that his dead was wearing a "System of a Down" t-shirt, which I thought as a pretty good effort.

Only caught a couple of songs by the backing band, and they made no impression other than that the singer was trying hard to sound like Robert Smith c.1986 (lots of yelping). The Hives themselves were excellent I thought - lots of short, sharp rock with punchy riffs and a good deal of swaggering by Howling Pelle Almqvist. Considering they are Swedish, I thought it was a bit rich of them to criticise the English weather, but there you go. It's also nice to see a band with a fat bloke in.

They were fun.