A Get-Together to Tear It Apart

I'd like to use the space to remind all 6 of our readers that one of the purest joys a post-college 20-something year old can experience is seeing live music. Obviously individuals' tastes will vary wildly and while the experience of seeing band A may elicit euphoria in person X, it may induce nausea in person Y. The point, however, is that something inherently exhilarating occurs while seeing a band perform live. It goes well beyond simply hearing a great song or two. The joy comes from watching the band perform and feeling the energy that only a large, crowded mass of bouncing bodies can generate. Part of the great thing about live music is turning to face a complete stranger as you both scream (moreso than sing),

"Cause baby, I'm an anarchist, you're a spineless liberal. We marched together for the eight-hour day and held hands in the streets of Seattle, but when it came time to throw bricks through that Starbucks window – you left me all alone .. all alone."*

Seeing live music is one of the few opportunities people have to let loose and lose themselves completely in music and their environment. It's easy to forget about how lame working is, how insanely in debt you are, or how Republikans are intent on destroying your rights of privacy by spying on this country’s citizens. No matter what genre of music you're into, 90% of the time, 100% of the time it will feel a thousand times better live and you'll get more out of the music than skipping around on your i-pod.**

I mention all this because Enis, Slim Charles, and myself (Dr. Danger, Esq. as always) spent last Friday evening at Terminal 5 here in good ol' NYC seeing The Hives with opening act, The Donnas (Norwood did not attend as his hatred for the Terminal 5 venue precluded him from doing so). I hadn't seen either band live before but I knew several things going into the show.

1) The Hives are excellent - a garage rock n roll band straight out of Sweden who has put out 3 very solid to spectacular albums and an absolutely phenomenal EP (Veni Vedi Vicious, Tyrannosaurus Hives, and The Black and White Album, with a.k.a.I.D.I.O.T. being the EP).

2) I was aware that the lead singer, Pelle Almqvist, was a maniac on stage and the drummer was fucking awesome.

3) I really really really dig The Hives' music.

4) I didn't really know much about The Donnas other than the fact that they are an all chick band, their popular single "Take It Off" was a decent song, and I had heard tell (courtesy of Norwood) that the drummer was hot.

The three of us arrived at the show (utterly saturated from the monsoon that hit the New York area Friday night) while The Donnas were more than half-way through their set. Immediately my ears perked up. The Donnas, it turns out, were far FAR radder than I had anticipated. Their music was more metal influenced than I was aware and the guitarist, Allison Robertson, SHREDS. She was pulling sweet metal riffs out from every angle and nailing them with precession. Beyond that, the guitar was loud – like really fucking loud, which was made more incredible by the fact that she was the only guitarist in the band. My sole qualm with the band's performance would be that the singer, Brett Anderson (female), didn't seem to have much vocal range and missed a few notes at time. It could have just been the night or she just might not be the best live singer. But truthfully, it didn't matter. Her singing was more than adequate and the band overall rocked and rocked hard. In hindsight, I'm genuinely upset that we didn't catch their entire set – lesson learned … show up early for The Donnas next time.

Once The Donnas left the stage, the three of us had a bit more time to assess our options as far as where we would stand for The Hives set. Terminal 5 is a fairly big venue, holding around 3,000 people in my completely unscientific (and likely inaccurate) estimate. The acoustics are absolutely awful. The problem with a large venue with terrible acoustics makes itself blindingly clear when the place is sold-out. We needed to get away from the bar and out from underneath the overhangs if we wanted to hear music as opposed to garbled, bassy noise. Unfortunately, there isn't really an interesting or exciting story that developed out of our quest to find a more amenable location to view the show. We simply pushed a little and ended up out from the sound dungeon that was the space under the overhangs and entered into the main crowd (allllllll the way in the back).

From the moment The Hives stepped on stage, everyone in attendance knew the show was going to be fantastic. Throughout their set, Pelle Almqvist was a nutjob – running around stage, executing crisp jump kicks, and singing in his perfectly honed Swedish impression of an American accent. The drummer had a much smaller kit than I would have guessed – very basic, a kick drum, a floor tom, another tom (there's definitely a more accurate term for this), a snare, and crash, ride, and hi-hat cymbals. How he manages to project such loud, deep sounds from a rather simple kit is beyond me, but made for a very impressive feat to see and hear. The other three members (2 guitarists and 1 bassist) contributed by either being fucking awesome (all of them) or moving about in hysterical manners (the 2 guitarists). Their song selection covered all 3 full length American-released albums and I didn't catch a single fuck-up. They spent the entire hour forty-five in a state of impassioned frenzy. Their performance unquestionably has entered into my top-10 live performances that I've witnessed list, joining the ranks of, inter alia, Joe Strummer '99 (Roseland), Rancid '02 (Roseland), the entire Ska Against Racism concert '98 (Montclair State University), and Tom Petty '00 (PNC Bank Arts Center) .. oh and of course every Hang the DJ show.

In summation, the show fucking rocked and I encourage each and everyone of you to try to attend more live music shows – you'll be a happy (and better) person for it.


* "Baby, I'm an Anarchist", Against Me!
** This probably doesn't apply to crappy top-40 bands, but I honestly don't really know.