Rockin' Tune of the Weekend: The Hives

PD1 and I have an ongoing debate about which of today's bands can be considered punk. I won't rehash that argument here, but I will say that two bands occupy the opposite ends of our agreement spectrum. First, we have the band on which we disagree most vehemently; Greenday.

PD1 will argue until the cows come home (and on a recent trip to Indianapolis she actually did just that) that Billy Joe and the boys are punk defined. While the structure and power of her opinion is impressive for a 14 year old, any true music fan immediately recognizes this opinion for what it is.

Total bunk.

Greenday, may have been "punkish" when they first hit in the early '90's, but they never were punk despite the best efforts of their publicists to convince us otherwise. In fact, the band from that era that was most punk was a wonderful little group from LA of all places called Offspring.

But I digress. Today's selection represents the band that we both can agree on: The Hives. Man these guys just rock. While it is hard to find a true punk band these days, PD1 and I find common ground in our opinions on The Hives. It's true, their tunes are fantastic, and they're full of attitude.

The best thing about these guys though, is that they're from Sweden.

Can you believe it? Sweden, land of snow, cold and the originators of the concept of "bland"! I mean I'm sure Sweden is a wonderful place, and I hear the women are very attractive, but culturally, if we're going to be totally honest, our friends the Swedes haven't really been pulling their own weight.

First we all remember that instead of putting a stop to the nonsense before it gained momentum, the Swedes unleashed ABBA on the world. A horrifying sonic assault of cloyingly sweet diddies about nothing in particular, ABBA at one time was so successful as to have represented something like 90% of the country's GNP. Interestingly, I heard that as a result most of the money in Sweden during that time was stained with peach lip gloss and bubblegum residue. Which would be just desserts, but my guess is the Swedes may have actually liked that.

Then we have Lutefisk. For those of you lucky enough to have escaped any contact with this loathsome dish allow me to educate you. Lutefisk is fish that has been preserved in lye and buried in the ground. Can you imagine the deranged mind that came up with this contribution to the culinary arts? Even more bizarre is the fact that the lye thing is wholly unnecessary! I mean come on! The whole friggin' country is frozen solid 11 months of the year, so just bury the fish in the ground Sven!

No, Sweden really hasn't been good for much to be completely honest. Now, though, we have something the Carlssons, Peterssons and Nielssons can be proud of. We have The Hives. If there is any justice in this world gone mad, the King (they have a King don't they?) will give them some sort of award.

So there you go. Today's lesson: Greenday = wussie boys, The Swedes = bizarrely depressive fish preservers and The Hives = punk.

Anybody who disagrees is itchin' for a fight.