Feel the need to test your faith or maybe lack of faith? Then try the Battleground God test [via Metafilter] where you're asked philosophical questions about beliefs and told if your beliefs contradict themselves. I made it through without any direct hits (ie obvious contradictions) and I only had to bite two bullets meaning I "responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable". That sounds about right. You can see that full analysis of my answers here.

Anil Dash gets interviewed about the Google Bar (there should totally be a GoogleBar somewhere that sold Evhead Bangers and Jason Shellen/Sutter/Goldman Balls) and then uses his blog to explain what he really meant to say. Could this be the end of misquotes and fabricated news stories? Blogging definitely gives you a cool way of being able to clarify certain things.

And speaking of Religion and Google it turns out that Wi-Fi + Google equals God, and apparently being hooked up to God leads to paranoia:

"In other words, once Wi-Fi is in place, with one little Internet connection I can download anything from anywhere and I can spread anything from anywhere. That is good news for both scientists and terrorists, pro-Americans and anti-Americans.
And that brings me to the point of this column: While we may be emotionally distancing ourselves from the world, the world is getting more integrated. That means that what people think of us, as Americans, will matter more, not less. Because people outside America will be able to build alliances more efficiently in the world we are entering and they will be able to reach out and touch us — whether with computer viruses or anthrax recipes downloaded from the Internet — more than ever."

Or maybe they'll be able to reach out and touch you with pictures of kitties and babies and educated opinions about politics and art, you paranoid freak.

I watched Beautiful Girls again last night and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the last time I saw it. It's one of those movies I can watch over and over again and talk about for hours. Which I think I did.

Poor Jay Mohr. How funny you were in Action, Go, and even Fastlane. And now you're hosting a reality show. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. But surprisingly enough according to Popmatters the show doesn't suck like a Hoover. The premise is that ten finalists have been chosen to live in a house together, so the audience can watch them work on materiale and get to know them. And the grand prize is they get to do a special for Comedy Central. So instead of watching people eat bugs or sing out of tune on this show we get to hear people tell jokes, which is to be preferred I think. Having read the article I actually hope this thing gets picked up over here as I've had it with all the bizarre dating and gross-out shows.

How would you like to write for a much read weblog for once? Well, if you want to try your luck you should submit something over at The Reverse Cowgirl's blog, because from tomorrow she's giving over her blog over to her readers. Postings should be some combination of edgy, or creative, or provocative, or original, or whatever, which is why I won't be participating, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a go.

I realize stabbing someone to death for singing out of tune is a bit extreme, but I understand where he's coming from.

And while we're being mean you might want to check out ESPN's Most Overrated poll [via Monoki]. Here you get to vote on who's the more overrated actor - Al Pacino or Adam Sandler - or the more overrated musician - Jewel or J-Lo. However, I don't understand why they need to dog Luke Wilson. So Home Fries and Bongwater won't ever be considered masterpieces, but he's always good in good movies.

I've been listening to Clem Snide a lot lately. They have an amazing ability to bring you down and lift you up during the course of a single song. Like the title track from Your Favorite Music, where the lyrics go "Your favorite music/Well it just makes you sad/But you like it/Cause you feel special that way" and goes on to talk about loneliness and not loving oneself. And when you're finally totally bummed out towards the end of the song they've added the laughter of children as if to indicate that everything will be okay after all.
Most the songs are slow and country sounding in a sort of Willard Grant Conspiracy way I guess, but the wry humour makes the records about more than just bumming you out. I'm never quite sure what Eef is singing about (And take me down south/with Hall & Oates in her mouth/my first love/my Joan Jett of Arc), but little stupid lines about partying like it's 1989 or singing The foot's on the other shoe so it rhymes with No one's more happy than you are funny to me. And their cover of Richie Valens' Donna is truly beautiful.

Their new record, Soft Spot, isn't out here yet, but I definitely want to check it out as soon as I get a chance. And if you haven't bought Your Favorite Music or The Ghost of Fashion you might want to consider it. I don't have You Were a Diamond, but it's being re-released in October with bonus tracks, so I might check it out later this year.

Do you ever have doubts about how you feel? Do you ever think that maybe you're feeling a certain way because you want to feel that way and not because those are your true feelings? Maybe you're not really in love, maybe you're not really depressed, maybe you're not really anything. You just want to feel something, anything, and when for instance something new suddenly pops up in your life you focus all your energy on that one thing and you tell yourself that maybe this is why you're never happy or that now you're finally in love and if only that one thing would disappear or somehow change a bit your life could be a lot better or at least get back to normal.

I've always doubted my own reactions to things based on a fear of being a cliché. But doubting reactions because you feel like you've been encoded by Hollywood to react a certain way in a certain situation is one thing. Doubting feelings that have been gnawing away at you for days maybe even weeks is unnerving to say the least. And it's not like when high school kids stay in their rooms and listen to The Cure, read Sylvia Plath, drink herbal tea, wear big sweaters, and pull their legs up close to their chest, because no one could possibly understand what they're going through and secretly enjoy being thought of as pensive and slightly weird. It's more like constantly having to reevalute everything going through your mind (except the occasional moment of happiness) to figure out if you really felt like that at that moment. Nobody questions happiness, I think, because even fake happiness is better than real sadness (although I've been told there is some pleasure in having no pleasure). And if things actually for once went the way you thought you wanted them to go would you be happy? Or was it just one of those moments where you should've been careful about what you asked for?

Seeing as it's really hard to answer all these questions by just thinking about them it seems the more you keep thinking about them, the more insecure and nuts you get. And that's when you need to get out of the house and go do something to keep you from completely losing your mind.

The constant pondering has been my mind-set the last week or so, which has lead to bizarre mood swings and sudden urges to go for long walks to clear my head. Today, I ended up at three different building sites, where at the first one someone was building a new art museum, then secondly a new mall, and thirdly God knows what. Everyone agrees that the new art museum is going to look great inside once it's finished. But right now I'm more worried about what it looks like from the outside, which is a huge red LEGO brick on stilts jammed in between several other buildings. The mall is huge and totally unnecessary and I never figured out what was going on in the third place, but hopefully their were building something useful.

With all this walking I'm actually a bit afraid of becoming that guy from City of Glass, who channels something and spells out letters by walking seemingly random routes in Manhattan. But so far I don't think I've been followed by anyone, so if it happens I doubt anyone will ever find out.
But the walking is good and the occasional bumping into acquaintances is a nice break from sitting here reading all day. And you'd think all this outdoor time would do wonders for my tan, but alas I am, as always, white as a sheet. I suspect it's the Irish genes and I should just be thankful that at least I don't look like Carrot Top. Would you like red hair and freckles with your scrawny body and pale skin? Yeah, like I don't have problems enough already!

So, I still want to do the Blogathon thing, but because I only ran my eyes over the site instead of actually reading what it said I misread the time of the event. The actual event takes place on the 26th of July and this weekend is the launch of the new Blogathon site.

See how I got those two dates confused? So no 24 hour blogging show this weekend. But I'll check out the site, the rules, and the punishment for quitting after two hours, when the site launches and then I'll decide if I'll participate or not.

I watched parts of the Serena/Callens game yesterday and was somewhat shocked, when text on the screen announced that there would be news on a death at the Conferations Cup. Now, if you don't know what the ConCup is I can't really help you. It's obviously some kind of friendly cup with teams, who've won regional championships, but in my experience most people consider the tournament completely pointless and uninteresting and as do I. So I haven't followed it and I'm not really sure what the point of the whole thing is.

Anyway, after the break they switced live to France, where the French team was getting ready to play against Turkey. If you've ever seen a international football (soccer) game you know that the players line up, so the cameras can show who is on the team and then the national anthems for each team are played. So the camera does the usually pan of all the French players and it was absolutely brutal. There were 11 players getting ready to play and most of them were in tears and sobbing. Especially effected were Thierry Henry, who plays for Arsenal, and we were then informed that Cameroon's Marc-Vivien Foe had collapsed during a game played earlier that day and had died. They then showed a clip of the 28-year-old footballer running, then collapsing in the middle of the field and then losing consciousness. Watching him lie there with his eyes rolled back was very disturbing especially since I already knew that he was dying at this point. And after that it was heartbreaking watching these grown men having to go out and play a game with tears in their eyes.

In recent years people have died during the Tour de France and other events and every time the response is to continue the event out of respect to the dead athlete. Obviously, cancelling an event won't bring someone back, but at the same time it seems inhuman to force the other atheletes to care about competition at times like that.

As you might have noticed I always use a line from a song as my title and to be completely honest with you I had a really hard time finding one that fitted this posting. So I ended up with the last line from Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, because the duality of the lyrics sums up rather well how I'm feeling about a lot of things these days.

So it's Thursday, which means the Roskilde Festival kicks of this afternoon. And yet here I am at home. What's up with that? Well, to make a long and boring story a little shorter the festival sold out, while I was waiting to hear from someone, who might have been able to get me a press pass or another job at the festival. The day I got the message saying it wasn't going to happen it was announced that the festival had sold out. So I got twicely screwed that afternoon.
I tried to pull some strings, but without any luck. And early on I decided I wasn't going to buy tickets from a scalper (the latest news is that tickets are now worth six times the original price), so I'm going to miss this year's festival. I guess it shouldn't be a big deal, but I've been looking forward to this for a long time and I thought the line-up this year was pretty incredible. I missed the festival last year, because I went to a wedding, but seeing as I knew about the wedding months in advance and the line-up was weak last year, it didn't bother me that much. But this year I was expecting to go and I've been hoping until the last minute that I might somehow get a ticket, but no such luck.

But there's nothing I can do about it now, so in an attempt to get on with my life I signed on to work at the Midtfyns Festival instead. The line-up there is pretty good as well (REM, Manics, The Flaming Lips, Badly Drawn Boy, Kathleen Edwards, The Roots, and more) and I get a free ticket, food, and maybe even a couple of beers. So that ought to be good and I've found out several of my friends are buying one day passes, so there should be a couple of familiar faces around for some of the shows.

And to make the music extravaganza complete we got tickets yesterday for a David Bowie show in October. And who does he bring along as support act other than the Dandys (Or Those guys you know, as my Dad calls them), who cancelled on me a couple of weeks ago. Bowie's playing at Forum, which seats about 8000 people, so it'll be a bit more intimate than had he played at an outdoor stadium. I haven't bought the Heathen record yet, and his Reality record is out in September, so I'll have to check that out as well. But the last time I saw him he snuck in quite a few old tracks and a handful of those will be worth the ticket price alone.

So because of the Roskilde fiasco I'll be at home this weekend, which means I might participate in some way in this year's Blogathon. Right now I'm not even sure the event will happen, but if it does and I can find a fun theme, or something else that'll give me blogging materiale for 24 hours, I might jump on the bandwagon. So check back tomorrow and I'll post something indicating if I'll be blogging non-stop this weekend or not.

I went out to celebrate my Dad's birthday today and inbetween eating and hanging out at the house I found time to go for a walk by myself. I visit my parents on a regular basis, but it's been a while since I walked around the neighbourhood and looked at how things have changed. My parents live right next to the school I went to as a kid, so I walked down to see if anything was different there. Basically, everything looks like it always has, but they've built a couple of things and they've added some things to the outdoor areas. So everything looked almost like normal, but is was weird looking in at the classrooms I used to sit in. They all seemed to look exactly like they did fifteen years ago like for instance the Home Ec room (although I don't remember there being big "No smoking" signs on the fridge doors back in the day) or the room where they taught Shop Class. For some reason the buildings and especially the weird little windows they have on one side of the main building looked a lot smaller than I remember. Maybe I'm a bit bigger now or maybe I just never really looked closely at them before. But they definitely looked odd.

My old school is split up into three buildings and between them is a lot of open space with grass and paths and stuff. It was strange walking around seeing all those places we used to hide or play ball or just plain screw around. There was a swampy area which I noticed has been closed off now and so has the place where people used to dump stuff, which is for the best I guess. I walked by the place where I once crashed my bike, so my hand got wrecked and I cracked my head open. I was in the parking lot, where I think I was drunk for the first time and I remembered all the times I'd walked our dogs in that area. The entire walk probably lasted less than 30 minutes, so it's not like I sat down and reminisced about the good ol' days for ages. Actually, they weren't even that good and I couldn't wait to graduate and start going to a better school. But a lot of stuff did come flooding back and I thought about how weird it must be to be one of those people, who move back to their hometown to start a family. Imagine sending your kid to the school you went to? I could definitely never do that. Not just because I could never move back to the town I grew up in, but because it would be too surreal to have to go to PTA meetings there and talk to the teachers, who used to teach me. It would be like some kind of space and time loop that I want no part of.

So after being weirded out by my old school I went back home and then we watched Navy Seals together like a family. That might not be how you'd want to spend quality time with your family, but to me trading jokes about gratuitous action sequences and Charlie Sheen's hair is as good as it gets.

I've had crazy mood swings lately. I spend way too much time just sitting here either trying to work or trying to ignore that I have work to do. At the same time a long series of minor things have gone wrong (or just haven't gone right yet), so with all this alone time I've had way too much time to sit and wonder what the heck is going on with my life. But thankfully as soon as I get out of my house (and out of my own head) I am able to chill and have some fun.
So Friday night I was, quite literally, staring at the walls and moping, because everybody had plans but me. But as soon as my buddy called to hear if I was up for some partying my mood did a 180 and I was all fired up and ready to go. We got to the party a little late and tried to catch up by doing multiple Galliano shots, which is a beautiful drink. I never got in full party gear, but still it was a lot of fun just being out.

Not surprisingly Saturday morning brought back my pissy mood, but now featuring a slight headache as a co-star, so I decided to go out and get a change of scenary. After walking through the woods and checking out some beautiful new apartments by the beach I ended up at a friend's house. I hadn't seen her in a long time, so it was cool to catch up. She's the only person I know who also loves corny country music, so we sat around and shared stories of accidents that have happen to friends of ours, while listening to Dixie Chicks songs and similar people, who use words like reckon and y'all a lot. The whole thing got a little sentimental, but in a good way, so my mood was a lot better when I left.

So I'm fine now and I'm getting ready to get out of the house again in a few minutes. Hopefully, there'll be some good news tomorrow about the Roskilde Festival (which I might not be going to now, because of a "mix-up" (read: I got shafted big time!)) and if not then I'll try not to get too blue about things that are out of my control anyway.

And apropos nothing it seems that with every new invention new unexpected problems arise.

So where's all the live bloggers at? It's like a jungle in this habitat!
Seriously though, only one Dane has posted stuff from Reboot. There's more at Marc's Voice and Boing Boing and Cory Doctorow posted some pictures of blogger chillin', but that's it. So let me know if more stuff pops up.
Oh, and I totally recognize the guy in the bottom left-hand corner of this picture.
[Update: Dalager has also posted from Reboot now]

I usually can't stand Pink. I hated her "R&B" record, I thought her "rock" album sucked, and she was so ridiculously out of key, when she covered Janie's Got a Gun for the MTV Icon thing. But her version of Feel Good Time is kinda hot. I guess even she can't screw up a Beck/William Orbit joint.

This picture made me laugh for no other reason than it's mad. And this is funny as well.

Shaun Ryder is back and although he might not be as fit as he used to (he's 41 af all) apparently he's put the drugs behind him and is ready with a new record.

Germany is like a planet of its own. So many weird musical collaborations happen there that never gets heard in the rest of the world. Did you know German singer Sarah Connor (I know!) has collaborated with both Wyclef and TQ? And Ronan Keating did a duet with some chick called Jeanette. The latest in weird combos is a German/English duet between Nena and Kim Wilde, which I think is a re-recording of "Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann", but I'm not sure. I guess Germany is to music what Japan is to ads.

PopMatters has an article about the future of rock and obviously the 22-20s are featured. Man, that dis has come back to bite me in the ass too many times now.

No thoughts, just links today:

Open letter to Brian Wilson (scroll down to the June 15 entry) [via Popfactor]. The best bit is the stuff about Uncle Jesse.

I am so an existentialist, bitch! [via Verture]. When philosophers fight it out on Springer it's like the Philosophy Sketch meets daytime tv.

ÅBC Project [via Jimbo's Corner]. An alternative to the Mirror Project, where a Danish and a Dutch blogger take pictures of the same things in their respective cities.

Finally! I was getting really sick of the will he/won't he articles that's been crowding the front pages lately.

The 20 Worst Post-Breakup Debacles [via Catchdizzle]. They manage to get digs in at both Arcadia and Power Station, but save the real pain for the side projects that really disappointed them.

Since this is obviously a world gone mad I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Roe wants Roe v. Wade overturned. The former plaintiff Roe, real name Norma McCorvey, says "she regrets her role in Roe v. Wade, [and] said the Supreme Court's decision is no longer valid because scientific and anecdotal evidence that has come to light in the last 30 years has shown the negative effects of abortion". Like I said, things like this doesn't surprise me any more, but I must admit the last couple of lines had me going "What?": McCorvey was a 21-year-old carnival barker when, pregnant for the third time, she sought an abortion. Oh, really! Carnival barker? I guess you could call this new campaign going back to her old job then.

FoW gets reviewed at Stylus and the verdict is great. I need to get the record now!

And I'm definitely not going to Reboot this year, so I need all y'all to transcribe everything said and make it available online as soon as it's been said. Ya heard?

I recently mentioned that American comedians of Middle Eastern decent were beginning to joke about life in the US after 9/11. Turns out British comedian Shazia Mirza (''My name is Shazia Mirza,'' she said. ''At least that's what it says on my pilot's license.'') has been doing this for a while. In this interview she talks about her Islamic upbringing, her love for George Clooney, and getting death threats in Odense, Denmark [via Metafilter].

Have you heard Type O Negative's version of Angry Inch? It's kinda nutty and for some reason it's unbelievable funny hearing Pete Steele snarl "My first day as a woman and already it’s that time of the month" (maybe because it's common knowledge that he's hung like a bear). Rarely has metal, musicals, and transsexuals been brought together with such success.

Usually bands from Scandinavia try to sound like British or American bands, but sometimes it also works the other way around. Now, I haven't heard an entire Longwave record, but on the tracks I've heard they sound really Swedish to me. Check out Crushed Down & Faded and then tell me The Wannadies couldn't have written that song. Which is kinda a compliment since The Wannadies are pop geniuses.

I'm a big Douglas Coupland fan, so I thought this article was funny. If you haven't read Microserfs or if you don't remember that Doug's computer died and ate his original manuscript then maybe you won't exactly be rolling on the floor laughing at this, but I found it amusing.

Today, I spent a lot of time looking at the reactions to the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo (try saying that fast three times in a row). I've only located the tip of the iceberg so far, but these transcriptions will be bedtime reading the next couple of days (not really, but I'll definitely have to go through them) and then I want to read a bit more about what "the community" thinks about all this commercialisation of The Blogosphere. So far the people who attended the conference seem to think using blogs commercially is the shiznit, which surprises me a lot considering how people reacted to the whole Raging Cow debacle. Maybe there's a backlash out there already, but I haven't seen it, so I'm on the lookout. Personally, I'm not against using blogging tools and weblogs as a part of a companies' intranet. And there are scenarios where paying someone to blog could be really interesting. My problem is with the viral marketing scheme, where you never really know when someone is plugging something or not. This is what I'm writing about in my final paper right now and if I make it to Reboot this is something I'd like to hear more about from people like Meg Hourihan and some of the other bloggers attending the conference.

It sucks not having any pull. I still haven't heard from the people, who I talked to about working at Roskilde and Midtfyns. And seeing as I don't have any contacts of my own, I just have to sit around and wait for them to get back to me. If I don't hear anything today I'll have to buy a ticket for Roskilde just so they don't suddenly sell out, which would be adding insult to injury.
And then there's the Reboot 6.0 conference next week, which I'd also like to attend. But paying 1875kr (approx. $300) for a one-day event is way too steep for me. So I've contacted a friend of mine to see if maybe he can get me a press pass. I really would like to hear some of the speakers, and in general I think it would be a fun experience to hang out and maybe meet some CPH-bloggers. But again I'm at the mercy of others, so there's nothing to do but chill and see what happens.

Speaking of Roskilde the line-up has been changed around a bit. So far there's been cancellations from Zwan, Nas, Gangstarr, and possible The Sounds (they've cancelled all their shows from June 7th to June to June 28th due to illness, but might be ready for Roskilde). Instead we get The Melvins, De La Soul, and Xzibit [Update - Fu Manchu have also been added to the line-up].

I've been trying to find out, why the Dandys cancelled their show here, but haven't been able to. Instead I found an interview with Courtney done at the Norwegian Wood Festival yesterday. He claims that after this tour they'll break up, because he's sick of the music business. He has spent all his Vodafone money on a studio, so they might record under another name, but we'll just have to see what happens.
Apparently, the show they played in Norway was a major disappointment, but they still looked good, though.

I just mentioned to someone yesterday that Adam Ant used to be the epitomy of cool in the 80s, but lately he seemed to have lost his mind. And then he goes and breaks his neighbour's windows.

"Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service is a great pop song in the same way "Sometimes" by Les Rythmes Digital is a great pop song. And now you can check out the the very clinical and odd video for Such Great Heights at RS Online.
And isn't it odd how the video for Rooney's Blueside looks just like The Thrills' video for "Big Sur"? Both are good songs, though.

First, Kottke published his rules for the NYC Subway, but apparently he hasn't lived in NYC that long, because he left out a ton of equally import rules. So Catherine adds another nineteen rules that you should be aware of while travelling by subway in the world greatest city (no permalinks, so scroll down to the June 6th entry).

And welcome to all the kids coming in from the Bush Message Board. Apparently, someone posted a link to my entry about the relationship between Gavin Rossdale and Marilyn and now they're screaming at each other over there. Personally, I couldn't care less if Gav is a switch-hitter or not. I just thought it was a cute picture.

So here's how the week was supposed to go: I was going to get out of work early tomorrow and cruise to Copenhagen to see The Dandy Warhols and then I was going to hang out maybe for a few days and hook up with friends I haven't seen in a while. But the Dandys cancelled their show (for unknown reasons), so now I have to stay here and work and stuff. So I better not hear that they cancelled, because they got high in Germany or some shit like that. Anything less than broken limbs is unacceptable especially since this was the second show on the tour. Hopefully, the Roskilde guys will jump at this opportunity and scoop them up for their festival, because I really want to see them on this tour.

The new Fountains of Wayne record is out, but that does me no good, because it isn't out here. I've checked every European music site I know and nobody has a European release date, which totally sucks. So if it isn't released within the next week I'll have to order it online, because it's just one of those records I've got to have right now (and downloading it is not an option).

But amidst this misery there's a bit of good news as it is revealed that Morrissey has signed a deal with Sanctuary Records. No news on when the record will be released, but seeing as he's toured with these songs for a while it'll hopefully happen sooner rather than later.

And more good news is that Whiskeytown are getting back together [via The Modern Age]. As much as I like Pneumonia I hope they go for a more stripped down sound and let Caitlin Cary sing a couple of songs as well. Maybe it'll be good for Ryan to have someone to bounce ideas off of, because his own records have a tendency to be all over the place and maybe getting back with his buddies can help him get a bit more structured.

I saw this picture called Heart Attack the other day and I really like it [via Thugbot]. I know. I'm a big softie. I even felt sorry for the girl next door the other morning, when I could hear her play All By Myself over and over again (at least until I got sick of hearing that damn song over and over again).

And finally check out Beck's weblog to see that the hell happened to him at Field Day.

I'm not a big basketball fan, so I mainly know Dennis Rodman from MTV's House of Style and the award shows he goes to. So this article about Rodman's life and his present state was very interesting and frankly more than a bit depressing.

The Kid is looking good in this picture [via WFAT]. I'm so going to check out the Starsky & Hutch movie.

I don't believe in aura readings and rocks with special powers, but if I were to have my fortune told I'd demand that the gypsy used these cards (and she better not play me the Robert Smith card).
And if you think the people on the cards are nobodies check out how they've inspired all the hottest bands today.

Rappers sued over so-called derogatory lyrics [via Metafilter]. The only problem is that no one understood a damn thing they were saying, so it was impossible to determine if the lyrics were derogatory or not.

The judge researched the bizarre-sounding terms in an urban dictionary on the internet.
"This led to the faintly surreal experience of three gentlemen in horsehair wigs examining the meaning of such phrases as 'mish mish man' and 'shizzle my nizzle'," the judge said.

Jurassic Park IV: Big, Nasty and Stinky! I wouldn't ask that Horner dude to give any more input to the JP franchise as the movies are boring enough already without all those facts.

Remember that 80s movie where the jocks have it in for the freaks, but after the main character makes an impassioned speech this one guy starts clapping slowly and then everything turns out alright? Someone made a parody of it called 80s Ending [via Defective Yeti].

Three days of jury duty in NYC. Usually, people try to get out of jury duty, but when you see the court room as a way to get dates apparently you get desperate to get on the jury (pun very much intended).

Yes! Polite Rock is catching on! It really is the wave of the future. The Long Winters have made four tracks available online because "clearly, it would be presumptuous for us to expect you to enjoy our music without having heard it. Thus, please help yourself to full-length, high-quality versions of our songs in the popular MP3 audio format." [via Shellen]. Nice people rule!

Adrian Brody likes the sistas. And after snogging Queen Latifah he put on his parka and played Life of Riley. It was out of this world, man.

My CDs from CD-Wow came today (Mew, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Dandy Warhols), so I stuck the Dandys on repeat and started cleaning the house. My first reaction was that something was really wrong. Where were the guitars and the songs that go on and on with the same four chords for ages? Where was Courtney's sleepy vocals and why can't you hear Simon Le Bon on Plan A? But after three spins I found myself singing along to more than half the tracks and feeling pretty good about the record. I'm still not crazy about the first track (although I like the line: "When Michael Jackson dies we're covering Blackbird") and some of the other tracks haven't gripped me yet. But right now I think it's a pretty good record. We Used To Be Friends is a killer single and You Were The Last High will make another killer single (that's actually the song that reminds me of Duran Duran the most). The closest they get to old-school Dandy stuff is Insincere Because I and maybe Hit Rock Bottom, but most parts the record is drenched in 80s style keyboards, which may or may not be because the record is produced by Nick Rhodes (who's a dandy in his own right).
The Dandys will play Copenhagen next Wednesday and I think I'll have to go. I might have to move a shift at work, but that's just the way it's going to have to be. I've seen them three times before already and was hoping they'd show up at a festival this summer. But a regular show is always cooler anyway even if it means schlepping my ass to the big city and seeing them on a school night. So hopefully everything will work out and hopefully they'll be as good as the time they played here.

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.

This year's Spot Festival was a massive success. I doubt we'll hear as much about the bands, who played this year as we have of the bands who played here last year (Sondre Lerche, The Raveonettes, Under Byen, and Junior Senior). But that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of talent present. I saw a lot of good shows and a lot of crappy shows, but I'll focus on the good ones here.
The set-up of the stages was different from last year, because there was a lot of construction going on. So where everyone was hanging out in the foyer of Musikhuset last year, this year people were hanging out on the lawn in front of it instead. And seeing as the weather was incredible that turned out great. I don't think I've ever seen so many hipsters in one place and every band seemed to be featuring an asswipe sporting a trucker cap. But with the success of Junior Senior I guess that was inevitable.
I don't know how many people attended the festival, but there seemed to be familiar faces everywhere and combined with great weather and good music you really can't ask for a lot more.

Friday started off with a show by local band Tiger Tunes. You might remember I mentioned that John Peel played their demo recently, so they've already gotten some serious exposure. I've listened to some of their demos, which are of very varied quality. But live they really hit home with their mix of energetic dance-oriented rock mixed with 80s keyboard sounds (apparently their singer is a huge Simon Le Bon fan). So their show was a really pleasant surprise and I hope their record label hooks them up with a good producer, who will capture some of their live energy on their forthcoming record. For a preview check out the live version of Train Stations, Harbours, and Airports on their website.

After the show I went and saw David Fricke talk about last year's festival and the bands he saw back then. He's still nuts about Under Byen and The Raveonettes and said that after he had reviewed the Raves' CBGB show he'd received a call from the President of Columbia Records (He never calls me. I'm not that important.), who wanted to know if Fricke thought signing the Raves was a good idea. Fricke had said it was, but added to us that saying yes is easy, when it's not your money. He talked a lot about how being Danish can be an advantage, because you add something new to playing music, because your background is different from people living in NYC or London, and the moderator mentioned that the singer from Under Byen had given the best answer when asked what her source of inspiration is: Public transportation and water. Oh, and he mentioned that Mexico's Café Tacuba is one of the best bands around right now, so you might want to check them out if you're not listening to enough Mexican music.

Later I went and saw Figurines. Imagine if indie rock hadn't changed since 1994 and the only records you owned were There's Nothing Wrong With Love, Bee Thousand, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (man, 1994 was a good year!), then you'd probably make music that sounded a lot like Figurines does. I love those three records, so while the band isn't exactly original they play music in that style very well and I couldn't help smiling all through the show. Their show was cut a little short, because Kashmir were scheduled to go on straight after, so that was a bit unfortunate. But Kashmir once again put on a great show, so we didn't complain for long. They played mainly songs of their new record, but threw three old songs into the mix just to make the kids happy.

After the Kashmir show we hung out, watch some more stuff, and then went to the After Party. The first band was The Breakers (who apparently are signed to Sony), who played loud and fast garage rock. They were okay and certainly had the attitude in place (the singer wore an undershirt with "I Am The Fucking Rock Star" printed on it) and after them Separations played. At this point I was pretty beat, so I made my way home, so I could catch some Zs before getting up for a new day of rock.

The next entry will feature reviews of Pluto and Superjeg, and some fun anecdotes from the Richard Gottehrer talk, so stay tuned for more Spot stories.