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Hip-Hop Lives Here
There’s been a battle between The Hives and Viagra Boys over the last few days, with the Swedish rockers taking jabs at each other on social media.
Fans of both bands need not worry, however. It’s all in good humour, and a way to plug their show at Stockholm Fields Festival this weekend (6 July).
It began with an Instagram post from The Hives last week, in which the garage punks wrote: “The self described punk rock losers in @viagraboys have been challenged by others described punk rock winners The Hives to some sort of rock contest. Who you got money on?”
In the video, Hives frontman Pelle Almqvist was at a car dealership with an assistant, who gets a phone call from someone asking if the band would be interested in “playing the Viagra Boys at Stockholm Fields.”
“Viagra who? Yeah, we don’t do charities,” he deadpanned in response to his assistant when she relayed the question.
They then made another Instagram video, in which Almqvist was asked by a journalist if he had anything to say about the “upcoming clash” with Viagra Boys. Almqvist wrote in the caption, “The plot thickens! I googled them. They don’t seem that young. Please send liver function test and VO2 max for each member.”
The band then made another post, complete with a photo of a bus advertising the gig in the style of a fight between the two bands. “Don’t get run over by the Viagra Boys vs The Hives bus if you are in Stockholm,” they wrote alongside it. “Also The Hives’ new Viagra Boys diss track just dropped. Entitled: Viagra Boys keep sucking, we are about to come.”
For their part, Viagra Boys posted a video too, in which they’re offered one million dollars to play “against” The Hives at Stockholm Fields in a phone call. “Fuck those guys,” said frontman Sebastian Murphy, while the band wrote in the caption, “They called from the washed up old poser corporate suit rock factory and wondered where u at @thehives.”
Earlier today, they posted another video in which they were also asked about the “clash” with The Hives and said that the band have “stolen a lot of our material.”
A day after their Stockholm Fields show, The Hives are supporting Bloc Party at Crystal Palace Park in London, alongside Friendly Fires, The Mysterines and Connie Constance – you can find tickets here. They also played a run of UK shows earlier this year, and supported Arctic Monkeys on their stadium tour last summer, something they discussed with NME.
Meanwhile, Viagra Boys are supporting joint-headliners Deftones and System of a Down in a mammoth one-off show in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on August 17.
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Ed Sheeran has criticised the government for supporting bankers over bands.
The Suffolk-raised singer-songwriter, who went to a state school in his hometown, spoke about his feelings on how the government have cut funding to the arts on Theo Von’s podcast.
He said: “I’ve been doing probably for the last seven years stuff with music in high schools because in my area, so basically in 2017/ 2018, my old music teacher came to me and he was like, ‘look, the government that is currently in charge, do not value art at all.. arts, drama, music.’ And they cut all the funding for comprehensive high schools.
“So my music teacher came to me and was going, I think they had to share between art, music and drama, like £700 per year for all three subjects. So I started funding that at my local high school. And then you see a massive uptick in kids doing production, kids doing songwriting, kids doing this.”
Sheeran added: “I built a recording studio there. There’s loads of proper instruments that aren’t broken and you just see the school getting better at music. So then I started doing that in the county that I’m from. And we’ve just now changed it to do it nationwide. And I’m now visiting more high schools and places that really need music funding.
“And you see what a difference it makes too. Because I’m not an academic person and in the real world I would be viewed as stupid, but I excelled at music and therefore people think that I’m good at something.”
He went on to further criticise the government for focusing on maths and banking rather than the arts.
Sheeran continued: “We’re famous for music with The Beatles. We’re famous for painting. Damien Hurst. We’re famous for movies. You’ve got Danny Boyle coming out of here, Christopher Nolan.
“And the government is just putting importance on maths and banking and we make arms, but no one is proud that we make arms and no one is proud that our banking’s really good, but they are proud of our art. And so for a government to be like the art doesn’t matter, where do you think the arts’ going to come from? So the next part of my career is getting proper, proper funding and art, music, drama back into schools and actually Ireland do a very good job of it.”
He also said that if Labour win the general election on Thursday (July 4), he believes support for state schools will improve.
Sheeran added: “I’m doing what I can to get funding for it. But I think getting the new government will be better at it. But the thing that, that’s kind of what I want to segue into is music education. It worked so well for me and I know it can work so well for other kids. I’m kind of proof that normal kids can just pick up guitars, work hard and do it.”
Meanwhile, it was recently confirmed that the singer-songwriter was the most played artist of 2023, beating out close competition from Taylor Swift.
Last week, he also teamed up with Hozier at Pinkpop to perform ‘Work Song’.
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