Elsewhere

I usually consider myself as being on top of the UK scene, but Obscure Sound has three tracks from a band I'd never heard before, Hidden Messages, and they are quite good. [Obscure Sound]

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Over at the AV Club, Comedian of Comedy Brian Pohsen interviews fictional, animated metal band Dethklok who tell him about the craziest thing that ever happened at one of their shows: "There were two guys who ran at each other full force in a mosh pit and exploded their brains and guts and donkey cum onto a bride who had just gotten out of a limousine at that exact moment."; Jason Schwartzman offers up his iPod for an exceptionally interesting Random Rules. My esteem for him went up by 24% after reading this; And Nathan Rabin finally tackles the inexplicable, horrendous, yet un-turn-off-able mess that is Dreamcatcher for his awesome My Year of Flops project. [AV Club]

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I saw both of Pelle Carlberg's NYC shows in May (one of which I reviewed) and in addition to his own songs, he covered Elton John's "Rocket Man" and Mika's "Grace Kelly" which were both great. I've been looking for MP3s ever since. (There's an EP that has them, somewhere, but you had to order the album online to get it. I already owned it at that point.) Quick Before it Melts comes through with the Mika one. [QBiM]

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Speaking of... in today's NY Times Dining section, restaurant critic Frank Bruni gives two stars to high-end tapas joint Pamplona. I'll have to take his word on the food, but Pelle Carlberg's song of the same name is at least a three-and-a-half, if not four:

MP3: Pelle Carlberg - Pamplona (buy it)

Comments

[J]

If my esteem for Jason Schwartzman were to rocket up 24%, it would reach .000000024 (of a possible 58). Let's give it a go:

"I think The Shins are the best band."

Nope! Sorry!

[bill p]

Oh, J, always so negative. He also like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson and Built to Spill and actually knows about music made before six years ago. He's genuinely enthusiastic... and actually knows the music on his iPod. If you read many of these Random Rules features, you get a lot of people saying "uh I don't really know this song, my girlfriend put this on here" or something.

[J]

Maybe the problem's not not reading the feature, then, so match as reading the feature? And yeah, points for those you mentioned (And the Martsch solo album, too, which was good! And OMG he's got the same favorite B2S song as me!) but it goes downhill fast (recoups with "Mandy," though), and his enthusiasm is annoying. (He should get a blog.)

In the end, he's still just some guy who can't act who gets a lot of choice parts because of his family's connections, and a guy who was in at least one tepid band. Wasted my time, not wasting any more of my esteem.