Friday, April 27, 2012

Best I'm Afraid I Must Tell You that I Told You So

I've come home tonight sweaty, deaf, and as content as can be because I spent the night getting shoved around (and shoving back) in a packed little club as a band played garage rock loud, fast, and completely out of control.  This, to me, is nearly as good as it gets.

The funny thing is the band playing the tiny club tonight was the Hives, a band who, in the worlds of Howlin Pelle Almqvist, typically play crowds of "Fifty thousand million people." [And if you're thinking, "Whatever, the Hives are so 2003." Let me tell you No, they are very 2013] How'd this happen?  I was just on the internet at the right time and my clicking finger was fast and sure.

Let me be quiet.  Let me show you the band taking the stage:


Let me show you the band during their first two numbers:
















(after two songs I put my camera away to keep it from being destroyed and pulled it out again during the final number, when Pelle ordered us to create a runway for him through the center of the crowd.  He told us that he was going to try to run to the stage and that it was our job to crush him and keep him from getting there.  So we did.  We crushed him.)



Bows.




It didn't seem right to start this post with the less exciting stuff from before the show, so I show it to you now.

Got a good place in line along with all the people who thought they were in line for the Wombats.  Sorry, folks.  This is the Hives line.  We're partying in the basement.




Certain familiar faces began to emerge.


The band showed up from pizza and made friendly before the show.  See this gentleman who is not a Hive? His name is Eric, he's the frontman from the New Bomb Turks, who I saw open for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones in 1993 at my very first concert, ever.  After the show I told him that story, I think we were both awful surprised to be talking about that show 19 years later.




In the club, waiting for the show.




Just trying to make you understand hall small the Webster Hall basement is.






You know you're doing something right when your roadie is a ninja.




Okay, go back up to the top of the post if you want to see what happened next.

3 comments:

Mitch said...

I'm so happy you got to see them!!

LaurenHoya said...

I've got a bad case of concert envy.

Cassandra said...

So jealous!