The Hives have always
been one of the world's best live bands, and the fact is that they are almost as good as digital.
It is clear that Fagerstabandet takes this tour just as seriously as a physical world tour - it is far from a loose corona home recording in soft pants, on the contrary.
As usual, there are matching suits, high kicks and a wonderfully punk-fast tempo.
They are late enough, as befits a rock band, and meanwhile the audience amuses themselves in the chat by writing to Heinz or Melanie that they are "right on stage, by the toilets" and "can you get me a beer, nice".
Once the band starts, it does not take many songs until the Hives shirts are transparent with sweat.
Intermediate talk mix of smartness and crap
With roaring flashing
lights and one and the same camera moving in front of and on stage, you get surprisingly close to a real concert experience.
Frontman Howlin 'Pelle urges the audience to get closer, asks if we are well and extends the microphone towards us so that we can respond.
The middle talk is, as usual, a perfect mix of smartness and bullshit, it's hard not to laugh at Howlin 'Pelle's deliberately half-hearted school German.
To get the audience, even though we can not be in the same room, the band has come up with different tricks - some good, others less successful.
The applause and screams
from genuine Berliners recorded in advance balance on the border between canned laughter and a pleasant feeling of actually being there - usually due to the sound engineer's timing.
That the audience got to vote for different songs to the set list is fun, but the invention that the band should receive phone calls from the audience during the gig was better in theory than in practice.
The phone calls pave the way
It's a bad sound and Howlin Pelle and the callers, who do not seem to have anything special on their minds, talk to each other.
Hopefully the phone function is refined during the tour, but during the Berlin gig it most resembled a really lousy Bingo lottery production that broke and calmed the mood.
Thumbs up for the sound engineer though, who was quick to hang up.
For a band that
has not released a new album since 2012, The Hives still has a fascinating joy of playing and love for the stage.
When Chris Dangerous' drumsticks are thrown at us, the fourth wall is almost broken.
Can the world's first digital world tour replace a real live show?
No, hardly.
But it makes waiting for the real thing a little easier.