I haven't done anything this week, so there's really no good reason I've been AWOL on the blogging front. The only interesting thing that happen was that I hooked up with some guys Saturday to draft players for our Madden NFL tournament. The deal is each guy has a team and then you play the games your team is supposed to play that season. So most of the games are against the machine, but on occasion we'll play against each other. And if people make it to the playoffs it'll be every man for himself on the way to the Superbowl. I'm playing my first game today (each player has to play a game every week), so it'll be interesting to see how well I do considering I've never played the 2003 version before.

According to Hello Magazine Duran Duran has signed a £30 million deal with Arista records. However, the buzz is that this isn't true and so far it hasn't been confirmed on the official site. Supposedly, the record is just about ready and they want to tour this summer, so hopefully this'll get sorted out quickly.

And speaking of summer tours The Cardigans, The Sounds, and The Hellacopters have been confirmed for Roskilde, while Doves, Tori Amos, The Raveonettes, Wire, Calexico, Beth Gibbons, and Sigur Ros are still on the rumour tip.

I mentioned the 2 Many DJs record recently, so I thought I'd pass along this excellent interview with the Soulwax guys. It's mostly about DJing and how the project came about, but thankfully they also mention being in the studio with Flood recording material for a new album [via Modern Age].

The only concert (for now) I'm going to this month is Stephen Malkmus on Tuesday. I'm considering checking Devics out later this month, but I'll have to listen to some of their stuff first. So since it's a slow month for music here I'm considering cruising to Copenhagen again to see Turin Brakes and then Kathleen Edwards the next day. I'm pretty broke, so it might not happen, but right now I'm thinking about it.

Another thing that might put a strain on the budget is the annual Nightfilm Festival. Last year I saw a truckload of cool movies, but this year I'll probably only go see a couple. I haven't really looked at the program yet, but I'm considering Ken Park, Lost in La Mancha, Love Liza, The Slaughter Rule, Sunshine State, Out of Control, and Tadpole.

These days you can't go out anywhere without seeing a poster of Razz. He's this 13-year-old kid, who won a music contest with a rap track called Kickflipper and now he's back with a record called Kast dine hænder op (which is a very direct translation of Throw your hands up). Unfortunately, I couldn't find the poster anywhere online, but on it you see his name written in graffiti (like on the website) and him and his homies all tricked out. He's got the rows and the blang and if I'm not mistaked he's flipping some kind of gang sign as well. He's like a midget version of that guy from 2GE+HER. And in case you were wondering the music ain't so hot, either.

Mew's Frengers gets four stars at DiS.

The new Dandy Warhols video is available on their website (make sure you have QT6). It's for the song Used to be Friends and the video is gorgeous, but the song is a real departure for them, so I'll wait a bit to say what I think of it (it is catchy, though). And if you haven't downloaded the song Retarded yet, you definitely should. It's as good as any song off 13 Tales.

I received a phone call from a guy, who was doing research for a segment for Danish national radio on people blogging from Iraq the other day. But unfortunately I was so busy turning down my stereo, when I answered the phone, I never caught his name. But he had found out that I'm writing about blogging in my thesis, so he wanted some input about what these blogs could mean for the way we get information about the war. We talked about Salem Pax and the CNN article about soldiers blogging from the trenches. But I never found out when the segment would air, so if you hear a bit about blogs on P3 please let me know.

I just came back from seeing Ed Harcourt, who's touring around Europe, and it was pretty good. I'm not a huge fan nor have I actually gotten around to buying his records. But I have heard them and he's written some really good songs especially for the first one. Anyway, he played a good show and what was most surprising was that they actually tore it up on quite a few songs. He was labeled a Tom Waits disciple when his first record came out, which is fair, but there are definitely also an Eels thing going on, when the band play live. Which is totally cool by me. Any time you wanna E it up you should definitely go for it.

It was cool hearing Apple of My Eye and Shanghai, but the coolest songs were the ones, where the band really went to town like they did on their versions of He's Building a Swamp and Undertaker Strut. He was pretty talkative and some of the funnier comments were: "Who wants my spunk?", "So, has anyone here bought Here Be Monsters at all?", and "We went to Superbixen today and you guys have a lot of porn. You're a very liberal people. We applaud that!".

The only bad thing at the show was this complete spazz, who kept doing these weird over-the-top Michael Jackson dance moves, which reached its peak of ludicrousness when he went into chicken-dance overdrive. Dude looked like he needed to get back on the Ritalin. And he was standing in the second row wearing a white shirt so everyone could see him, too.
But other than that the show was cool. So between the Nada Surf show, my recent CD purchases, and this show it's been a pretty good week for music.

I got the Malkmus CD tonight and I've been listening to it, while writing this. So far I must say that I'm very surprised people thought think it's weird and noisy. Water and a Seat is kinda weird, because it has a very syncopated beat, but there aren't any really noisy tracks. I've only listened to it a couple of times, but so far (Do Not Feed The) Oyster and Us stand out as cool tracks. And the strange mind of Malkmus hasn't taken a vacation on this album, either ("I don't really know your taste in ceilings"). So right now I think it's a pretty cool record.

I forgot to mention something that happened at the football game. As mentioned we played FC København, which is known as FCK. First of, the letter K is pronounced like the C in Cumbersome over here, so when the fans chant F - C - K it sounds more like F - C - Cu-oh-oh. Anyway, some member of the local braintrust decided that changing the chant to F - U - C - K would be a sweet diss (see how they snuck a U in there those devils?), which means up to, during, and after the game you'll hear people spelling loudly in the streets of Aarhus.
Anyway so this one guy kept shouting F U C K and eventually his friend said to him:" F U C K!?! F U C K? Wauw, you really put them in their place with that one!", which totally shut him up. Now, that is a sweet diss.

I'm probably the last one to hear about this, but I just saw it at B3ta, so I'm going to mention it anyway. There's this guy called Andy Milonakis who has written an extremely funny (and probably highly offensive to some) song called The Superbowl is Gay. There's more of his stuff at angrynakedpat including three segments from the Jimmy Kimmel show (apparently Andy made an appearence on Kimmel last night). My first impression was that he was some weird kid, but according to this interview he's 27 and when asked about his musical influences he says: "Well, I obviously suck at singing and don't even know one guitar chord, so....Creed". So if you haven't seen the clip yet you should definitely check it out.

Screw Audioslave. The Bens are the only supergroup that matters [via Modern Age]

Who knew Calvin was B-ball fan? Apparently, he grabbed Spreewell during a game. Dude must be trippin'. More on this and Calvin calling Joan Rivers a cunt over at Gawker.

I'm going over to a friend of a friend's house tonight to get ready for a Madden 2003 tournament. There's a bunch of guys, who've been playing this tournament last year and now they're setting up a new year (complete with draft and everything), so I'll take over the Rams (the only team available) and start playing with them. I realize this is about as geeky as taking over a 17th level Elven and getting ready to fight dragons and shit, but Madden rocks and it should be fun meeting these guys.

The latest Roskilde rumour is that The B-52s will play Friday night. That would be incredible! Cosmic Thing is one of the best party records ever, so it would be cool to get to hear those jams live.
Update:And the latest news is that The Streets will play at Roskilde. Nice.

I saw some weird people today. There was a lady who's left side of her face was normal, but the other side looked like those dolls you make out of stockings (you can only wonder what her life must be like). There was a guy, who looked like Cousin Carlton ('cept this guy was black) and then there was the crazy headphone guy. I've seen this guy in record stores several times listening to records at the listening booth and he's always singing along loudly. Obviously, he isn't all there, so the staff usually lets him listen to a couple of records and just ignore him. But what makes it funny is he has horrible taste in music and he can't sing for shit. So it's always some tacky crap he's singing along to chiming in out off tune, when he remembers a line or two, which is just too funny.

I received a kickback from Amazon recently (I'm pimpin' Amazon big time over at the Warhol site), so I blew the money on CDs I've been wanting to get for a while. So hopefully they'll ship me Electric Sweat, The Datsuns, Make Up The Breakdown, Kill the Moonlight, and Sha Sha today or tomorrow. And I'm getting a deal on the new Malkmus from a friend (he claims the songs give him a headache), so after a serious musical drought I'm getting back in the game.

You snooze, you lose! The Offspring gets in Axl face, which is always fun.

DiS has an article about the new Hornby book, which I can't decided whether I should buy or not. I'm sure there are some interesting and funny passages, but I'm not sure I need to read about his crush on Nelly Furtado. Maybe if the CD that comes with the book had featured all 31 songs instead of just 11 I would have been more interested.

In the future whenever someone says that writing a thesis about weblogs is whack I'll always be able to point to this article and say "At least I'm not analyzing away messages". [via Catherine]

The video for QOTSA's Go With The Flow is pretty hot [via Voguer Than Thou]. They're playing Roskilde against this year. Last they played they played the main stage in the afternoon, so the setting wasn't exactly perfect, but they still managed to put on a cool show. And I had a massive hangover and had to send my brother after water a couple of times, so that wasn't so great either. The interview over on the left was done that day and somehow I managed to pull myself together enough to do a decent interview. But standing outside in the sun for an hour watching a show was almost more than I could handle. So it'll be cool to see them again and hopefully this time they'll get a better time slot.

Man, did I have a fun weekend or what? Friday, I went out to the Ponderosa to visit the units. I didn't do much other than hang out, watch the surprisingly funny My Fellow Americans and play Settlers of Catan, so that was mighty relaxing.

I came back Saturday, so I could go to a party. It wasn't a Dressed to get Screwed party, but people were dressed as everything from Power Rangers to Edward Scissorhands. I went as a wanksta, which not a lot of people got. And people who didn't know me thought this was how I normally dressed, which was way odd. There are more pics from the party over at Peter's weblog if you want to see how Danish college kids get down.
It was a cool party made even cooler by the DJ they'd hired. He played mainly British indie, but would mix it up with some American rock once in a while. He DJs at Club Drive, so I knew off him, but I hadn't talked to him before. So the music was cool, the drinks were cheap, the place was jammed with familiar faces, and I think most people had a brilliant time, so that rocked.

Sunday, I was pretty messed up, but agreed to go see AGF's first home game anyway. The weather was great, the stadium was packed, and our team turned a 0-2 game around to a 2-2 draw against the league leaders FCK. And during the game I got text messages informing me of Arsenal's 2-1 win, which was just what they needed. So that was just perfect.

After the game I rushed home to eat, so I could make it down to see Nada Surf. I hooked up with my brother and some friends and saw the Nada boys put on a terrific show. The venue wasn't exactly packed, but they came out rockin' and everyone seemed to really enjoy the show. They played two rounds of encores and included Popular in their set, which I don't think they play that often. Their new record is pretty great, but I probably enjoyed the stuff from The Proximity Effect the most (although Ice Box was fantastic). It really is a shame people wrote them off as one-hit-wonders, because Effect is a really good record.

After the show both supporting act Echoboy and Nada Surf came out and talked to people. My friends and I ended up hanging in the bar with Matt Nada Surf for more than an hour talking about Venom, Megadeth, and other 80s metal bands (Matt admitted going to Monsters of Rock and seeing Dokken, which was too funny) and everything from American politics and Michael Moore to Williamsburg and Brooklyn Beer. And Matt even bought the drinks, so things just doesn't get cooler than that.

After the venue closed we had to haul ass, so we could get home to watch the Oscars. Steve Martin is funny, but other than Adrien Brody winning the show was pretty weak. Brody was so cookin' in Summer of Sam that we were totally rooting for him to win. And him snogging Halle and bitchslappin' Tom Conti was sooo classic. And not to sound like a big softie, but it was sweet seeing Chris Cooper win as well. It's just a helluva lot cooler, when it's people who really aren't expecting to win who gets to drag an award home. He's just incredible in Lone Star, so his Oscar was well deserved. But the rest of the show was dull as dishwater. Michael Moore means well, but he was pretty embarrasing up there and Eminem didn't show, which meant we didn't get to hear the only half-decent musical nominee. Actually, some of the old-school-players like Sean Connery, Peter O'Toole, and Kirk Douglas were pretty entertaining as well, but quite frankly when the show ended I had a feeling of Did I really stay up until 6AM to watch this, because since Polanski didn't show and some producer accepted for Chicago the ending was pretty anticlimactic.

So after a week where I've worked and partied more than normal it's time to get back to normal. The only thing of interest happening this week is the Ed Harcourt show on Thursday, which ought to be good. But other than that it's time to hit the books and get crackin' on the thesis. Coz the mother ain't gonna write its own damn self.

Oh, and I published the results from the Oscar poll over at Interesting Stuff. Erik won with eight correct guesses out of eleven possible , which is quite impressive.

They're 5 miles high as the crow flies
Leavin' vapour trails against a blood red sky
Movin' in from the East toward the West
with Balaclava helmets over their heads... Yes!

But if you think that Jesus Christ is coming
Honey you've got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who's hi-jacked his name
He'll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds

"It's war", she cried, "It's war", she cried, "This is war!"
Drop your possessions, all you simple folk
You will fight them on the beaches... in your underclothes
You will thank the good Lord for raising the union jack
You'll watch the ships out of harbour
and the bodies come floating back
Watch the ships out of harbour
and the bodies come floating back

But if you think that Jesus Christ is coming
Honey you've got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who's hi-jacked his name
He'll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds

If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He'd be gunned down by the C.I.A.
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows upon the human heart

But God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God doesn't belong to the yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
No, God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds

Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon days are here again

- Matt Johnson (1989)

So my Dad's trip to Syria got cancelled yesterday less than 24 hours before he was to leave with a group of his students. This happened just after the Danish Prime Minister in his infinite wisdom decided to give his support to the US government by sending a dingy called Olfert Fischer (btw. Olfert is the also the Danish word for wedgie just so you know) with soldiers carrying pellet guns and a sub called The Seal towards Iraq. This led his school to decide to postpone the trip. My Dad's not exactly happy with that decision, but I think my Mom was thrilled since the thought of having to stay at home worrying about him didn't sit to well with her. After all Syria is a neighbouring country to Iraq, so it probably won't be the nicest place to be, when the B-52s, SR-71s, U2s, and all those other planes named after rock bands starts dropping bombs like Tupac drops records. But the school promised that if the Middle East still exists in the Fall he gets to go then instead. So atleast that's something I guess.

I think most people who have enough records to make an actual record collection have a couple of records they really like that most people haven't heard. I don't mean those embarrasing second albums by one-hit-wonders that you're the only one who really likes. I mean records you picked up and just really dig made by bands who didn't really have hits or who makes music in genres most people don't like. I have a few of those, but the one that got me thinking about this is the second record by Belgian rockers Soulwax. Now, of course, they're widely known for the 2 Many DJs record, but before that they released a truly great rock album called Much Against Everyone's Advice. The album features singles such as the title track and the song 2 Many DJs, which along with a video packed with Belgian DJs spawned the now infamous compilation record where Dolly Parton gets mixed with The Velvet Underground and Destiny's Child.

I discovered the Much Against record through a sampler CD by brother had, which featured the 2 Many DJs track, and it didn't take long until we decided to order copies of the record for the both of us. The songs are very melodic and often have funny lyrics (Like an overweight karate kid/You could moonwalk over my heart), but at the same time some are rockin' and experimental. And just to be weird they have Tracy Bonham appear on the track My Cruel Joke, which might not appear on all versions of the record. I've been listening to it again lately and somehow got surprised by how fantastic an album it is. There isn't a dud on it and I always get in a good mood, when I listen to it.

I just realized that some of you reading this might consider this a very well-known record and maybe all your friends own a copy. If that is the case then I think that's pretty cool. But my impression is that even though it got great reviews and some airplay on MTV it didn't really move that many units and people tend to buy K's Choice or dEUS records, when they crave that Belgian rock.
Anyway, I think you should check it out sometime. And hopefully they'll stop with all the remixing soon and get back to making some rockin' tunes for their next album, which is long overdue.

Supergrass' Danny Goffey talks about the use of Alright in an American ad. "We have a history of not really doing that (licensing songs). It is a bit sad to make loads of money and just have your music plastered around products that have nothing to do with your life." However, he completely forgets to mention that Seen the Light was used in ads for Orange months before Life on Other Planets came out.

Mr. Chandler goes to Washington. Matthew Perry will join the cast of The West Wing in an attempt to get the people who left with Rob Lowe to come back. I have a bit of a hard time seeing him fit into that cast mainly because he does a lot of physical comedy. But hopefully they'll be able to write him a character, which will allow him to be really funny but also serious on the show.

24 hottie gets bitten. Not by Kiefer as you might expect, but by an actual mountain lion. Wasn't there a story about Jodie Foster or some other child star, who also got attacked on a set by a lion? Someone told a story like that on Letterman once.

Where are the protest songs? This article talks about how few artists have spoken out against the war. And that the ones who have spoken out are old-timers like Neil Young and Chrissie Hynde and not the hot, young stars. Obviously, we can't expect Christina, Britney, and the rest of them to write protest songs, because they don't know anything about anything and they can't write songs anyway. But there's got to somebody out there who can do it (other than the Beasties).

Popmatters reviews the 1972 movie Ciao! Manhattan, which is a documentary about Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick. I was made available on DVD last year, but I haven't seen it yet. However, if you're interested in the Warhol scene it sounds like it's worth checking out.

One of my peeps (I do too have peeps) sent me the Fischerspooner CD today. I'm not sure it's "the best thing to happen to music since electricity" as the NME put it, but there are some hot tracks on it. There's also a DVD and some other stuff on it I haven't checked out yet. Nothing like getting value for money.

I found a very time stealing game called Break Out 360. Basically, it's like all those games, where you have to remove bricks with a paddle, but in this game you don't just move left and right. Here you have to make sure the ball doesn't exit the screen to any of the sides hence the 360.

I found some more stuff from SXSW. Sondre Lerche played and it sounds like a good time was had by all. However, I would like to get an explanantion of this quote: "Let's not be too alarmed that the Danish government wanted attendees to sign a mailing list in order to gauge interest in the showcase."

There's a Raveonettes profile and a Don't Believe the Hype-type article where this was the most interesting part:

"An unknown group called the Thorns were playing the second-story ballroom of the Driskill. Those who made a path past the slumpers and munchers in Ramones and Scorpion tour T-shirts littering the marble lobby found that the Thorns were actually well-known soloists Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins working as a folk trio.
As the trio played nine songs from an as-yet-unreleased album, Mullins' lead falsetto combined with Sweet and Droge's backing rhythm strums and midrange harmonies for a sound stolen from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The highlight was a cover of the Jayhawks' Blue -- an interesting choice, considering the Minneapolis-based originators were getting ready for their own showcase two hours later at the Austin Music Hall."

I've always liked Matthew Sweet, so I'd be very interested in hearing him team up with Droge and Mullins. Especially, if they'll be playing songs in the CSNY/Jayhawks territory.

Stephen Malkmus will release a bonus EP with his next album.

So how's that free speech thing working out for you?

The Danish host of Jeopardy runs a weblog and he just announced the birth of his daughter Pippi Alberte Dahlquist. Now far be it from me to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't name their kid (I suggested friends of mine name their son Kolo or Oleg recently), but Pippi? Alberte, however, is a great name.

I've added an AIM link to the Me section on the left. I don't know if it works, because I don't use AIM myself (I'm more of a Trillian man myself), but I nicked it from Brad, so it probably does. If anyone knows how to make a similar link for ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, or MSN please let me know.

And finally happy St. Paddy's Day to y'all. Although I'm half Irish I think I'll decline dressing up in green and getting smashed in one of the multible Irish pubs downtown today. I have to go help the brother of a friend with a paper, so I'll be inside proof reading most of the afternoon anyway.

One of the few Danes to make it in Hollywood, Connie Nielsen, is profiled on CNN. Or should I say her stylist is, because the whole damn article is about hair and makeup.

Did you watch the Comic Relief show last night? I watched some of it, but after a while I lost interest. I still can't believe they mentioned Popbitch in the Harry Potter sketch. Their newsletter must be more popular than I thought. And have you heard the Comic Relief single? That's bloody blasphemy that is! Gareth bloomin' Gates has the personality of a brick and their version doesn't even have the hack-ack-ack-ack guitars on it. Bring back The Doctor!

FCK footballer goes on massive bender. I bet he wished they hadn't taken this picture.

The Raveonettes mentioned in SXSW article and reviewed here (It won't be long before we'll all be eating out of their hands). I've been looking for reviews from SXSW of the Danish bands playing there, but this was all I could find. So if you stumble onto something let me know.
And apparently Liz Phair debuted a unique tribute song at SXSW - "...the audience heard Phair sing about her lover's jizz as "the fountain of youth, the meaning of life."" I guess she's not so gunshy anymore.

Eef Barzelay talks about the next Clem Snide record and American Idol ("The great mystery about it is did Sarah give him a blow job or not?").

According to this article the video for The Shins' New Slang is inspirered by indie record covers. While watching it I could feel my indie-cred deminish by the minute as I realized I had no idea, which covers had inspired them.

And if you didn't enjoy this cricket game, then maybe this is more up your alley [via Metafilter]. PETA is going to have a field day with this one.

Oh, did I call this one or did I call this one? [via Metafilter]

"It makes Andrew WK sound like Godspeed! You Black Emperor." Junior Senior are reviewed in Drowned in Sound and they think it's the party album of the year.
Evan Dando's Baby I'm Bored is also reviewed and it sounds fabulous. The review doesn't mention who's on the record other than Dando, but I believe Ben Lee was involved with song writing, Jon Brion produced, and Howe Gelb and others appear on it. Dando will be on Steve Lamacq's show tomorrow, so I'll try to catch that.

There's an article on the Bangles reunion in the Guardian. I wish I could go to their Copenhagen show. I've never been a huge Bangles fan, but I've always had a thing for Susanna Hoffs. Raise your hand if you rented The Allnighter to see Hoffs dance around in her underwear. And keep it up if you bought one of her solo albums, because you figured with a guest list which included Jon Brion, Jason Falkner, Rachel and Petra Haden, Mark Linkous, and Matthew Sweet it couldn't go wrong. Yeah, me too.

I watched The Last Days of Disco last night and although it's hardly a masterpiece it was pretty entertaining. It's based on the book by same name and apparently it's the final chapter in a trilogy. It's basically about a group of young people who live in New York during, you guess it, the last days of disco. They hang out in a place obviously modeled over Studio 54 and try to figure out who they want to date and what they want to do for the rest of their lives. The movie features Chloe Sevigny and the gorgeous Kate Beckinsale, but all the best lines fall in the lap of Chris Eigeman, who plays basically the same role as he would later do on It's Like, You Know. Highlights include an intellectual teardown of Lady & The Tramp (the movie's function is to program women to adore jerks) and a debate about following Shakespeare's maxim of "To thine own self be true" (but what if you're own self isn't very nice?). I'm a sucker for dialogue like that, so who cares if other parts of the movie are slightly flawed.

I wrote this entry almost a year ago, when I was trying to explain why I had started blogging and some of the things I had thought about before going ahead and started my own, personal weblog (I just re-read it and if you'll excuse my ego I think it's one of the better things I've written). In the entry I link to a journal written by someone I had met and used it as an example of one of the things that annoyed me about writers (I know, not very smart, but I was trying to make a point). He just noticed the entry today and dropped me a comment inviting me to check out his new journal (it's not up yet). I thought that was a weird and cool thing to have happen out of the blue.

According to Popbitch Sigue Sigue Sputnik will re-release Love Missile F1-11 when the war with Iraq starts. I had no idea those guys were still around, but apparently they are and they look as barmy as ever.
For more on the plane, which most people call F-111, check out the F-111 homepage or read Douglas Coupland's short story about James Rosenquist's painting of the plane.

Wil Wheaton is helping out a student, who's conducting a poll on why we blog. It's mainly multible choice questions, so you should be able to go through it fairly quickly.

If you surf blogs like I do you'll notice that I'm the only one, who didn't go to SXSW. But had I gone I would probably have given the finger to the Interactive festival and spent my money on the Music festival. I mean who wants to listen to bloggers talk blogging when you can hear rockers rocking? There are eight Danish bands featured at the festival, so if you're there and you hear them let me know what you thought.

The latest band to be confirmed to Roskilde is Blur. Personally, I lost interest after The Great Escape although there are good singles on Blur and Coffee & TV is a crackin' track. I've seen them live once on the main stage where they sucked, but if they play in one of the tents I might check them out.

Stephanie Seymour's husband buys stolen Warhol. A Swedish artdealer borrows "Red Elvis" for a show called "Andy Warhol: A Factory" and then sells the painting to "newsprint magnate, publisher, film producer, polo player, convicted tax evader and real estate developer" Peter M. Brant via a warehouse in Denmark.

Vaugn impresses on Late Show. "Where Vaughn was truly impressive was in making B-list guests Rosie Perez and Geri Halliwell entertaining somehow." They're showing reruns this week, so I'm guessing the ones with guest hosts will play here next week.

I watched the final episode of Band of Brothers last night and although it wasn't as good as the other episodes it was still a pretty powerful ending to a great series. I didn't get to see the series, when it first aired, but eventually I sat down and watched it and was completely blown away. It had a lot more nuances than I expected and it did a great job of portraying the dynamics in a group of people going through hell. It was brutal at times and the scenes in the concentration camp were absolutely devastating. If you haven't seen it yet you really should seek it out.

I wanted to go see Mark Olson and Victoria Williams tonight, but frankly I don't have money for tickets. So instead I'll probably be going through bills and receipts tonight, because I'm being audited again. I seriously fucked up my life by blowing all my cash on a trip to NYC instead of saving it for the taxman. But I guess after they impound my gear I'll still have the memories.

Goodbye French Toast. You'd really think politicians had better things to do than make up fake names for food products, but apparently that ain't the case. Next they'll be going after The Freedom Kicks and Freedom Stewart. And expect the French to retort by renaming movies like American Pie and American Beauty (but probably not American Psycho) using some French word for bully or shithead.

50 Cent spends some cheddar (however, no frou-frou brie, camembert, or roquefort thank-you-very-much!) on accessories for his kid [via Gawker].

I read the RS story on Avril last night and I'm surprised that people actually thought she had anything to do with the song writing on her album. Every song is "co-written" by bonafide hitmakers and the band she's touring with wasn't put together until the record was finished. She's 17 and doesn't know who David Bowie is. Did you honestly think she could make a hit record?

And if you're sick of spam you might get some satisfaction from playing Spamwars [via Richy's].

Not a lot is going on here, so I think I'll end with a cry for help: If you live in Denmark and you have a Win95 CD lying around your house I need you to hook me up. I know it's like asking if people have a Newton or a morse machine lying around, but there's gotta be someone out there who hasn't gotten around to throwing their old Microsoft crap out yet. So shoot me a holla if you can hook a brother up.

Durst not wrong after all. Turns out Ozzies among others also use the word "agreeance", which is "an obsolete word, having passed out of circulation by about 1714". So apparently he's not a complete moron after all. He sure fooled a lot of people, though.

Everybody's favourite band, Fountains of Wayne, are reworking their website and will release their third album, Welcome Interstate Managers, on June 3rd. Hopefully, the release will coincide with a European tour, but there's no news about that yet.

I guess the Fischerspooner backlash was enevitable. Personally, I dig the 80s style and songs like Emerge and Sweetness, so I don't know why people are hating.

If I were to write an entry about spam it would look exactly like this. The week before last I was gone from my computer for about 70 hours and in that time I received 100 emails. More than 90 of those were spam. It's gotten so ludicrous that I don't even bother checking my mail, when I'm not at home.

Someone at Matador Records is sorry [via Monoki].

Mew are interviewed by Drowned in Sound.

Mayhem fan hit by sheep's head. Well, what'd you except from a band where the singer is called Maniac?

Confetti. People dressed as animals. Strobe lights. Cool Hand Luke. Fake blood. Happy Birthday To You. Jon Stewart. Robots. Flash lights. Carmina Burana. Balloons. 90210. Japanese slasher movies. Naked hippie chicks. Hand puppets. And more great songs than you can shake a stick at.

That's what The Flaming Lips at Amager Bio was like. I'd never been to that venue before, so I was quite surprised when I came in and the place looked like a smaller version of The Bronze. I don't think the Lips have played a place that small since they played the After Dark (Please welcome the cool, the crazy, the fabulous The Flaming Lips). So anyway, this joint fits about 1000 people and it was crawling with Danish rockers and music journalists.
Brendan Benson and The Well-Fed Boys go on and they're great. I don't think a lot of people knew them and unfortunately they only played about 25 minutes, but they were good. I was surprised that Benson was a guy in his thirties, because I thought of him as a Ben Kweller/Ben Lee type of guy, but seeing as his first record came out in 1996 I should have figured he couldn't still be 25.

The Lips' show started with Carmina Burana blasting and propaganda on the screen behind the stage informing us that this evening would change our lives. And from then on it was just one great song after another accompanied by the greatest show ever. It was almost awesome (in the word's original meaning and not in the watered-down "This pretzel's awesome" way) to see Wayne Coyne control the audience like some kind of mad scientist/conductor, while pulling out more junk and gadgets than Carrot Top. Unfortunately, they only played for about 80 minutes (like Aimee Mann did last week. Whatever happened to putting on a real show?), so there were a lot of songs they didn't play and it was almost like it was over before it had begun. But what we did get was truly great and Coyne hinted that they'd be interested in playing Roskilde this summer, so hopefully that'll happen.

I'm officially back from Copenhagen now. We spent three days hanging out, drinking beers, watching football, picking up CDs, and eating in cheap restaurants. I had a really good time especially because beer is cheaper in the capital than it is here. I drank quite a few Hoegaardens (unfortunately, not pronounced Ho Gardens) and twice we went to a my friend's neighbourhood bar where we met a cool indie-rock-cute Norwegian girl (she had a Maria Hotnights thing going) and some fucker stuck his cigarette into my hand. So that was exciting.

Local band Tiger Tunes was featured on John Peel's show recently, they've just signed with Bird Hits Plane, and they'll play at Spot 09 alongside bands like Carpark North, Kashmir, Mikael Simpson, and Kitty Wu. Looks like things are really going their way.

Joaquin and Reese to play Mr. and Mrs. Man in Black. For some reason that just seems like a really odd casting choice.

Malkmus disses Jimmy Fallon [via Gawker]. I like Fallon, but Bathroom Wall was an unfunny piece of shit.

So today is the one year anniversary of Fauxhemian. It both seems like I just started writing here yesterday and like this is something I've done for ages. But on a personal level it's nice to see that I've been able to stick with this for a year instead of getting bored and giving up after a few weeks. So far I've written 232 entries (and gotten 232 comments), which I think is mighty productive since my entries are usually pretty wordy. And the number of visitors passed 29.000 today, which I'm pretty impressed by. So thanks for stopping by and returning and linking and leaving comments and in general being great.

I'm in Copenhagen right now. I came over yesterday and just hung out. Today, we went into town and picked up records, looked at books, had coffee, and walked around. The Benson/Lips show is in three hours, so I'll be going to that tonight and tomorrow I think will be all about Arsenal/Chelsea and Roma/Lazio and then I'll probably make my way home sometime Sunday.

I mentioned here that Simon Le Bon probably wouldn't appear on the forthcoming Dandy Warhols album. But according to Danish magazine Gaffa he is infact featured alongside Nick Rhodes and Nile Rodgers. And the Dandys are planning a festival tour for this summer, which makes it likely they'll stop by Denmark. Nice one!

I've haven't done any real surfing today, so that's it for links and stuff. However, I should be make on regular duty Monday.

The Michael snowball just keeps rolling. Turns out the cows were killing in Africa, but the animals they'd gathered at the French/Swiss border apparently didn't get wacked. Has anyone cross referenced Roswell activity with Michael's alleged date of birth yet?

I'm not a big fan of the first Lord of the Rings movie, but I think I would have liked it a lot more if the movie had been more like the book [via Must-See HTTP://].

C.S.I. Miami just started here yesterday. The pilot was decent, but not great. There was too much going on, too many characters introduced, and too much personal shit thrown in already. But it's a hot cast and I'll definitely give it a chance. Caruso is cool, Emily Proctor is my kind of Young Republican, and you just know Rory Cochrane is going to flake and blow Caruso's money in Vegas in some crossover episode.

I was watching this great documentary series last night on classic albums. I've seen the episodes on Yellow Brick Road, Transformer, and some other records, but yesterday it was about Number of the Beast. I was a huge Maiden fan back in the day. I rocked a The Trooper patch on the back of my denim jacket and I knew all the onstage banter from Live After Death by heart. So it was cool watching the guys talk about this kick-ass record. Highlights included them talking about how groups of Americans had burned and smashed Maiden records, because they thought it was the Devil's music, which prompted Dave and Steve to wear t-shirts saying: "'No we are not an English rock band... We're dental floss salesmen from Montana". And it was fun hearing Dave Mustaine say that he had never heard anyone using 666 that explicitly before and thought: "These guys are going straight to Hell!"

I'm on my way back to Copenhagen for the Lips/Benson show, so last night I sat down and tried to figure out the chords for Benson's song Jet Lag. I'm pretty confident I got it right, but I've added it to the More part of this posting, so if you feel like going through it feel free. He makes some interesting changes between E, E7, and E minor chords, which messed with my mind. But besides maybe making a few As into A7s I think I got it figured out. I've also made it available here, because frankly it looks a little weird on this page.

Blogging will probably be scarce this weekend, but I'll try to add something tomorrow in celebration of the one year anniversary.

More...

If you're the type of person who knows his overs from his wickets then this is the game for you [via Arseblog]. And the rest of us will just sit perplexed by and wonder what the hell is going on.

Tom Coates has an interesting take on the consequenses on the Blogger/Google deal. He thinks the deal will turn marketing and public relations companies onto weblogs in an attempt to get us to flog sodas and sneakers. I can see how this could happen, but as I commented at his site I doubt more than a handful bloggers will be approached. I mean most bloggers have less than a hundred visitors a day, so why would you want to spend money on them? Most bloggers write for themselves and don't get linked to or mentioned in articles, so unless you're on the so-called A-list you probably needn't worry about taking a moral stance against advertisement on your weblog. However, the emergence of something like Project Blogger might prove me wrong.

The article Metafilter in the Ruins sums up pretty well why I never read comments om Metafilter, Fark, or any of the other community sites around. And not surprisingly there's quite a thread on this already.

Eels are previewing songs from the forthcoming album Shootenanny starting this week and they'll preview a new song every Tuesday until they run out of tracks [via Silentuproar]. And while you're there you might as well download the video for MC Honky's Sonnet no. 3 (Like A Duck).

Was Craig David really the most street British person they could find? Nice gloves, you pansy!

Dougie dons drag.

Fuller comes to Baltimore. Is David Boston next?

I just came back from the ABCBC meeting and as usual it was very nice. Topics ranged from Pmachine (which everyone seems to be shifting to), Blogbot (and why people who write in English are less popular among Blogbot users than people who write in Danish), the Bloggies (and should there be a Danish equivalent), Blogpatrol (and why people thought it sucked), further use of the ABCBC blog, and different things that has been going on in the Danish blogging community.
Obviously, tons of non-blogging stuff was discussed, but quite frankly I enjoyed steering the conversations towards blog related subjects. I mean if you're meeting up with people who blog it really doesn't make a lot of sense to sit around talking about movies all night. At least that's my theory. And I think it's fun to hear others talk about how they perceive this thing we do and hear about weblogs they've noticed lately.

One of the things I brought up was how cool it would be if all Danish bloggers would join Blogtree. I have no idea who the grand-old-men of Danish blogging are and I'm not sure how people got the idea to start blogging here. But if everyone signed up we'd be able to see who has been around for years and which blogs has influenced others to start their own. My theory is a lot of blogs showed up after Reboot 4.0 in May of 2001 (I began blogging in August 2001), but maybe there were tons of cool blogs before that which I haven't heard of. I've always been more interested in blogging as a global phenomenon, so I actually have very little knowledge of what people have been doing here, while I've been reading Kottke and LYD. But if people signed up for Blogtree I might find some interesting weblogs and learn more about the dynamics of the Danish weblogging scene. Again, that's my theory.

And speaking of blogs... the Anti-Bloggies are accepting donations now and will be accepting votes from March 15th. I doubt I'll be nominated even though categories like "Biggest Sore Loser For Not Winning A Bloggie" and "Biggest A-List Suckup" have my name written all over them.

I've refused to get sucked into all the Michael Jackson crap that's been going on lately, but this article caught my attention especially because of the following:

Vanity Fair reported that in 2000, Jackson attended a voodoo ritual in Switzerland, where a witch doctor promised that Spielberg, the entertainment mogul David Geffen and 23 other people on Jackson's list of enemies would die. Jackson ordered his business adviser, Myung-Ho Lee, to wire $150,000 to a bank in Mali for a voodoo chief named Baba, who sacrificed 42 cows, the magazine reported.

Is it just me or is 42 a pretty abitrary amount of cows? And were they sacrificed by Baba in Switzerland or Bali? And who were the 23 other people on the list? Hopefully, it'll turn up on The Smoking Gun sooner rather than later, so we can see if Jacko is responsible for the premature deaths of some of our recently departed celebs.

So, how was your trip to wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, John? Well, quite good, actually. We came over Friday afternoon and some of us went out to this incredibly cheap Spanish restaurant and had a nice meal. Most of the stuff on the menu looked the same, so I ordered the chimichanga, because it's fun to say. After that we went and saw 28 Days Later.

We actually wanted to see Rules of Attraction, but it was sold out, so although none of us really knew what 28 Days Later was about we went with the brand name recognition of Danny Boyle. Because it was so cool to see a movie I had no idea what was about I won't reveal anything about it here except for one thing: The movie is crazy scary, yo! People were jumping around in their seats throughout the movie and afterwards you could hear people going "Damn, homie!" (or, you know, a Danish equivalent) and talking about how freaky this movie had been. The script is written by Alex "The Beach" Garland and has a couple of cynical plot twists along the way, which just makes the movie even more nasty. I'm not a big horror/splatter movie fan, but this one has that creepy Invasion Of The Body Snatchers feel to it, which I dig. So afterwards we were on such a high that we had to drink weiss beer and talk about the movie for hours.

Saturday, two of us went shopping (I picked up three old CDs), then we watched Kissing Jessica Stein (which is very funny and has a very cool soundtrack), and later everyone came by for some food before the show. I was in the fortunate situation that I had a huge apartment to my disposal for the entire weekend, so we used "my place" as a base for everyone else, who was going with us to the show.

Eventually, we went to the show and although I'd been to the venue before (I was there in 1993 to see Extreme who, no mattter what anyone says, totally rocks!) I didn't recognize it at all. The others hadn't been there before, so they were equally surprised to see what is basically the kind of venue you'd use for a Microsoft convention or something. It's located next to a hotel, so all the people working the bars were hotel people in white shirts and black vests, there were water fountains there, and the whole place was just decidedly anti-rock and roll.
But it didn't really matter, because we were excited to see Aimee Mann. She has refered to her show this summer at the Roskilde Festival as one of her best shows ever, so we figured she'd be happy to be back. She went on after nine (her support act was her bass player Paul Bryan) and played about an hour and a half including two sets of encores. The show started off slowly with a couple of slow songs from the new record, but soon she started playing some of the better tracks of that record, tracks from Bachelor No.2, and especially tracks from I'm With Stupid, which really got the crowd going. She played Wise Up and Save Me back-to-back, but for some reason she didn't quiet the band down, so people could sing along, which would have been the stadium rock way of doing things.

She played a bunch of encores, went off stage and came back and announced that it was request time. People started screaming all kinds of titles, but thankfully she heard someone ask for One, so she played that and then The Other End of the Telescope, which is a song co-written by Elvis Costello, and ended the show with Deathly.
I thought the show was really great. She played a lot of stuff from Stupid and frm Bachelor and although she seemed a bit frosty at first she warmed up to the crowd really quickly. One amazing moment was her introduction to You Could Make a Killing, where she explained how the song was written about Noel Gallagher before she meet him. And after she'd hung out with him after a few shows she realized the song was really more about herself, which I took to mean that she wasn't quite as hot for him after she'd actually talk to him.

After the show we went out and ended up at Vega. Apparently. some super DJ was playing there (DJ Cosmos I think), but we went into the lounge, which was like a Motown party. Every track had a Jackson Five/Stevie Wonder bassline and a lot of the tracks were funky cover versions, so the whole joint was jumpin', jumpin'. Unfortunately, I didn't feel so hot, so after a couple of hours (this is like at 3 in the morning) I had to bail, but it had been a sweet party until then.

So Sunday all I did was watch movies and drink coffee. I sat through both discs of An Evening with Kevin Smith (which is extremely funny. I'm a sucker for Hollywood anecdotes, so all the stories about making the movies, working on other scripts, and especially the Prince story was just fantastic. However, I wish they'd edited out some of the annoying stoner kids), Robin Williams - Live on Broadway (which wasn't as funny as I though it would be, but it definitely had some hysterical moments), Igby Goes Down (which I didn't know anything about, but really enjoyed. Bill Pullman is totally underrated (see Zero Effect for further evidence), Amanda Peet is totally hot, and Kieran Culkin has a ton of great lines), and finally Bottle Rocket (gotta love those Wilson boys).

Monday, I watched Mystery Men, because Ben Stiller is always funny and then I took the bus home. Although I was pretty beat (I'm even more beat now, so sorry if this post is a bit rambling and disorganised) I managed to read a hundred pages of The Corrections, which I still think is totally great.
Now I have to get a truck load of stuff in order, because I'm going back to Copenhagen on Thursday for the Flaming Lips/Brendan Benson show. So things will probably get a little hectic here over the next couple of days. Also, now I'm unbelievably broke, so I have to figure out how I get through this month, where my calendar is pretty packed with fun, but expensive things I'd like to participate in.