the Hives, September 14 at the Wiltern

As soon as I got the e-mail about the tickets, I wondered why I was initially going to skip seeing the Hives.  It was probably just being conservative: after having seen them at Coachella, there wasn't reason to make a great effort and spend the money to see them again.  They were my favorite act at the festival, as they usually are, but I didn't feel I needed more than that for this cycle.  But if tickets are free, anyone would be a fool not to go.  Rachel had tickets through her job, as she often did, and this was the first time she made the offer for a show and I could take her up on it (and thanks again, Rachel!).  Unfortunately, by the time I could get back to her to say that I definitely wanted to go, there was only one more extra ticket, so it was the very rare show that I went to without Carla, though she gave me her blessing to go.  I met up with Andrew and Heather, who had been drinking for most of the evening, for drinks and meet up with some of their friends, before Rachel met up with us and we went in to the show, scheduled to start close to midnight, which is so late it's almost not rock n' roll, but it gave us more time to drink.  The place was full but it was easy to get that maybe the crowd was stocked by people who just got tickets rather than real fans clamoring to see them.  Surely in our group I was the biggest fan, and even though I was the only one who could possibly have been prepared for the assault that is the Hives in concert, everyone else was able to get into it and maybe appreciate the majesty and sonic brutality that is a Hives show.  They never disappoint and they never give less than 100%.  As it might be a practiced show and even Pele's stage banter might be memorized, they never do less than entertain.  The only criticism could be that the crowd doesn't recognize their music enough to really get into it but that's their own fault for not paying attention to them after they stopped getting so much buzz a few years ago.  Whether the music is familiar or not, it's a show that seeks to entertain, and if you're not going to be open to that then you'll be run over.   The Hives don't care.  They're there to wreck any venue that will have them and the place is only lucky to be left standing when they're done.  If they don't get to take over the world as was their original mission statement, then they might as well obliterate it.  We were left obliterated that night.  Fidlar opened, and I listened to them a while later but at that time I didn't know a thing about them, which is a shame that I missed them, but we also had drinks to drink.

The Hives' set-list:
"Come On!"
"Try It Again"
"Take Back the Toys"
"1000 Answers"
"Walk Idiot Walk"
"Main Offender"
"My Time Is Coming"
"Die, All Right!"
"Wait a Minute"
"No Pun Intended"
"These Spectacles Reveal the Nostalgics"
"I Want More"
"Won't Be Long"
"Hate to Say I Told You So"
"Patrolling Days"
"Go Right Ahead"
"Insane"
"Tick Tick Boom"