If you were looking for a single moment to sum up post-9/11 grunge rock, I’d steer you toward MTV’s 2002 Video Music Awards. If you were watching the 2002 VMAs, you would have seen Jimmy Fallon and Kirsten Dunst introduce two “of their favorite bands” for what the awards show deemed a battle of the bands: The Hives vs. The Vines.
I’ll let you be the judge of who won, but The Hives had a clear aesthetic edge. They dress in impeccable black suits with white ties. Behind them giant signs blare the message, “The Hives Are Law. You Are Crime.” And in the center of it all was Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, a Swede happy to twirl the mic and strut like Jagger and sing about his “main offender,” without exactly saying what that meant. The crowd of precious youths went crazy.
