The Hives: band name came from confusion about disease and idea of 'spreading like an epidemic'; find out more

The Hives performs on the Mundo Stage at Rock in Rio this Friday, but the story behind the Swedish band's name is far less explosive than the group's shows. In the early 1990s, drummer Chris Dangerous found the word "hives" in a dictionary and suggested the name to his bandmates. The problem is that they understood that the word, which means hives in English, referred to a much more lethal and contagious disease than it really is. They liked the idea of a band that could spread like a disease and stuck with the name. Hives, in reality, is a skin reaction that can cause spots, welts, and itching and is not contagious. The confusion, however, ended up helping to create an identity for the group, formed in Fagersta, Sweden. The choice was initially just "Hives," without the article "the."