52% intelligent. 9% modest. More monkey than bear.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

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.

6 Comments:

  • At 1:39 pm, Blogger Damo said…

    I don't normally point out typos, but there's a fantastic one in your post. See if you can spot it!

    We got the '11 out of 10' banter too. The Bristol Academy doesn't get much in the way of tribute acts, but the far smaller Fleece gets them twice a week (Hi-On Maiden are due to play soon). Having said that, the Academy does have The Darkest play soon. Hmmm...

    As for Kings of Leon, they've just announced a big December UK tour - check for dates.

     
  • At 1:52 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    "there fair shair" ??

    In honour of the magnificently monickered Hi-On Maiden, I'm going to leave it in.

    (I *hate* typos too - perhaps as part of my possible OCD and my concern for order and quality, they offend me greatly)

    Curse my metal body!

    Great tip on the KOL as well.... I'm off to get some tickets for Rock City.

     
  • At 2:03 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    speaking of gig venues in Nottingham, I've just booked up my R.E.M. tickets for the City Ground next summer. I saw them a couple of times last summer, and they were brilliant. You can hear the new album at
    http://myspace.com/rem/

    by the way...

     
  • At 2:59 pm, Blogger Damo said…

    Nope, you've missed the funny typo! Keep looking...

     
  • At 4:23 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    his dead?

    I like that one too.

    (it better had be that one, I'm sick of reading this damn post!)

     
  • At 4:58 pm, Blogger Damo said…

    That's the pudding.

     

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