The Hives Strike Ventura, Ventura Strikes Back

First, Brad Nowell dies of an overdose the night before a scheduled Sublime gig at Nicholby’s. Then Dee Dee Ramone croaks a day or two away from a Ventura tour stop. And last night, whatever curse hangs over this city waiting to engulf visiting musicians struck again, albeit in a (hopefully) milder form. As roadies prepared the stage for Swedish garage rock revivalists, singer Pelle Almqvist wandered out to inform the crowd that guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem had been taken to the hospital for undisclosed reasons. Thus, this would be a “different” kind of Hives show, with Almqvist — whose energized presence is pretty much the entire reason why Spin once declared them one of the best live bands on the planet — anchored to a guitar. (Isn’t this the kind of situation where the guitar tech who’s been secretly practicing the set the whole tour steps in to save the show?)

Luckily for those who actually paid for the show (which doesn’t include me — it’s a perk, all right?), Almqvist ditched the six-string two songs in and got back to the mic-swinging and amp-climbing people expected, only picking the instrument back up occasionally throughout the set. Without the twin guitar attack to bolster the power chord riffing, the band’s sound definitely lost a bit of its muscle, but the reconfigured four-piece managed to turn in a punchy, typically adrenalized performance, at least enough to keep anyone from asking for their money back.

But what the hell happened to Carlstroem? Food poisoning? Seizure? Random gorilla attack?

Their MySpace and Website has no updates as of yet, although their most recent diary entry, dated 9/21, reveals both Almqvist and Carlstroem have been sick the last few days. And of course it all comes to a head in Ventura. Typical.