Day Two of the Spot Festival begins with me one the couch nursing a massive headache while taking calls and coordinating when to get back into the game. But since there's nothing breakfast and fresh air can't cure we're back and ready to go at around three in the afternoon. After some fusion-style jazz courtesy of Bugpowder I decided that my fusion days are way behind me and I made it over to one of the other stages to see Pluto.
The band plays lo-fi indie reminiscent of Low, but with Danish lyrics, and the very relaxed mood of the show was just what we needed. They were probably the politest band I've ever seen, and it was a little funny when the singer asked if he could please get a bit more guitar in his monitors in an very self-effacing fashion. Could Polite-Rock be the next big trend in rock?

Straight after Pluto we made it over to one of the other stages to see B&B International, who are signed to Homebrew. I know one of the Homebrew guys, so once again I went to a show mainly support one of my peeps. But within minutes it was pretty clear that the B&B guys were very cool. The first track I heard reminded me of DJ Shadow, but played by a full band (including a DJ) and a tech guy, who controlled the samples and the movie clips projected behind them. They managed to mix up the styles nicely and brought in a singer on a couple of tracks and all in all put on a pretty funky show.

For the next couple of hours I bounced from show to show and the only thing worth mentioning was tattooed bluesman Bjørn Berge, who played tracks off of his Illustrated Man record. Imagine if John Lee Hooker had Nuno Bettencourt's chops and you might get an idea as to how the guy sounds. I'm not a huge fan of blues and slide guitar, but he gave it his all and his version of Give It Away was really out there and had people jumping around like crazy.

Later, it was time for more Danish indie this time performed by Superjeg. The cool thing about acoustic shows is that you really get to listen to the lyrics and in the case of Superjeg the lyrics are what sets them apart. They've made a record called Alt Er Ego (which in Danish means Everything is Ego instead of Alter Ego) and almost every song seems to have both subtle puns and funny insights about being a hick in the big city. So the Superjeg gig was by far the funniest show of the festival.

Afterwards, Hello Goodbye played a show, which I didn't exactly dig. Imagine a straight, Norwegian version of Le Tigre and you're still not really close to knowing what they were like. Their piano player was dressed like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor and the rest of them looked equally nutty in their own way. It was probably more weird than actually good and after a while we made our way over to another stage to check out Håkan Hellström. Before Saturday I didn't know Håkan from Adam, but everybody at the festival was talking about how nutty he was, so we went and saw him.
Him and his big ass band play party music not unlike The Specials or Madness, but with all kinds of stuff thrown into the mix (one song sounded exactly like Holiday and another like On with the Show). They put on a great show and their surprisingly big following here jumped around, jumped up, and got down like there was no tomorrow. At this point I was hanging with the Homebrew Crew, who convinced me to stick around and see the last act of the festival: Ralph Myerz & The Jack Herren Band.

How much does that name suck? A lot! And as much as it sucks that's how much those crazy kids from Norway rock. Imagine Royksopp with drummers that make Eels' Butch sound like Ringo and you've got it about right. They brought the crazy tunes and the drummers put on a massive show. We threw our hands in the air and danced like we hadn't walked around from show to show for the last ten hours. And they ended the show in the coolest fashion by cranking I Wanna Rock N' Roll All Night on the PA as soon as their last song was finished. What a way to end a brilliant two-day festival.

In between all this rock 'n' roll madness I snuck away to hear Richard Gottehrer talk about his life and his experiences in the music industry. I suspect he was invited to the festival, because he has produced The Raveonettes' forthcoming debut album, Chain Gang of Love, which may of may not be released in August. But he spent most of his time telling brilliant anecdotes about bribing DJs with cheese cakes, working in the Brill Building, pretending to be an Australian rock star and performing with The Strangeloves, and working with Blondie and Richard Hell (Blank Generation: It's a great record... if you like cocaine!). He talked about his company, The Orchard, and he compared getting MP3s off Kazaa with when he used to steal 78s from the local record store (Stealing music through Kazaa is like what they said about climbing Everest. You're going to do it, because it's there). I'm a sucker for rock anecdotes, so I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Gottehrer sharing more than 30 years of industry experience.

Like I said in my last entry I don't think as many of this year's bands will become well known names, but in terms of value for money, great weather, cool people, and pure fun this year's festival was actually a lot better the one last year. It's so cool that you can go to a festival in your hometown, meet all your friends, and check out new music all at the same time. And you could tell everybody was feelin' the Roskilde vibe already, which means I'm probably more excited about going to this year's festivals than ever. It's going to be so sweet.