SBlog

And we are away.

Round Zero for Nur Ein has happened, and, well, I'm still in. As per my usual Nur Ein standing, I ranked extremely low again, but I feel comfortable there. Its like the spot is reserved for me each year.

So, Sausage Boy's entry for Kick Start can be found here. There are a few good ones. I also recommend:

Billy's Little Trip
Hoblit
Octothorpe
Paco Del Stinko
Starfinger
Tex Beaumont and the Dirty Hearts

Next round is called Sleepwalking. Terrific. Great. Another Nur Ein title that brings nothing to mind.

So Nur Ein III begins.

Interesting Round Zero song title choice. I hope I can pull of my traditional awesome first entry track, shitty second entry. Sure the whole comp will be worth keeping an eye on, the judging panel is more diverse than ever before.

In other news, fuck, I need money.

So the fight begins anew.

Nur Ein starts again at the end of this month. Should be interesting. Sounds like Caravan Ray won't be in for this one, so it might just be me representing the Aussie contingent. Might have to pull out my A game.

Who am i kidding, I have no A game. I'll pull out my H game.

So the guy that I am when I'm not me, is now unemployed. He has been let go in less than optimal circumstances, but thems the breaks. Sausage Boy says suck it up!

The attack has started.

Send five The Worlds First Pocket Radios out with press releases. One to the general program department of Triple J, one to Home and Hosed on Triple J and one to Dave Callan at Triple J. Also sent one to Nova FM in Adelaide, and one to Rove McManus (because I could).

I have another five left over at the moment, so if you have any suggestions about where they can go, I am all ears!

Debt avoided!

The owners of the house decided they didn't actually want to sell it. Bastards. Good thing we hadn't organised more, like moving out of our current rental.

On the oft chance the owners of said house come here, fuck you cunts!

Welcome sausage boy to the world of crippling debt! He and Legs have bought a house. And thus begins years of poverty, and eventual death.

Laurie came around on Friday, and we had what amounted to our first practise (basically me playing songs back to him, and some bass playing, and a lot of beer consuming).

But better news!

The side project Mr B & Mr C that I am a part of has come to fruition, with the release of The Worlds First Pocket Radio. I am quite proud of how this came out, and I think mashing together some video clips will be in order. I also think I might send this on to Triple J, and see if I can get them to play part of it. It really is that good. Mr C has a way of taking my shitty contribution and de-shitting it.

I can't recommend one song in particular, they are all just so good. Download them all! Download the album art! Burn a cd, and give it to your family. They will thank you!

I saw Ween last night.

My mind is blown wide open. It is like Gods descended from on high and canked out an aural induced orgasm.

Ween totally floored me, and are the big kick in the bum I needed. My new life aim is to get a show together and beat Weens live performance.

Every Ahab has his Mody Dick.

FAWM is finished, and I succeeded. Awesum!

Managed to squeeze out 14 songs about Half-Life 2, 6 of them having demos recorded. I am working on one at the moment, and I hope to have all of them demo'd in the next few weeks.

So, if I understand this right, I get to pop an album up on CDBaby for free. Thats pretty cool. Dunno what to put up one there. On the one hand, I can just fall back of Paint Yourself Green, but I might see how much interest in the HL2 album there is. I may release that instead, get someone to master some of the tracks for me, or something.

Now onto the future! Gotta start working on a new album for this year, and getting the band together. And the whole 'on TV' thing. And its March now, can you believe it?! Where does the time go?

So, for bonus stuff, here is some FAWM shit you should check out.

j$ entire FAWM album
Do It All Night by Lord of Oats
Myspace, I Don't Hate You But I've Had Better  by Steve_Apple_Head 

So this week is totally fucked up. I had four days I had planned to work on FAWM, and I spent them fixing listings. Terrific.

So I have one song written and recorded, Give It A Try, a song about the gravity gun. I have written three others, You Won't Be Completely Forgotten, Beware of Dog and I Will Take The Liberty Of Choosing For You. But they don't have any music yet. Which is fine, just having song titles is technically enough to satisfy the requirements of FAWM.

But still, I would have liked to have had music for everything I put up. I guess if I write all the lyrics between tonight and Friday morning, I can record them all Friday during the day. But that is still fucking precarious.

Ah well, wish me luck.

Still FAWMing. Done three more songs, The Song We Sing, We Sing For Eternity, We Don't Go There Anymore and You Won't Be Completely Forgotten. The last one still needs music and stuff written and recorded, but I am thinking that I might try and pump out the lyrics to a bunch, so that I at least have my song count up.

Not too sure what to do with these songs after I have finished. I might wait and see what the interest in them is, and if there is enough, I might get someone to tweak them a bit for a wider market. j$ has always been good at fixing my stuff, I find. We have a similar ethos to music, but he is far more talented and liked than I am. Plus, he has awesome squealy guitars, which I love.

A week of FAWM is almost down, and I have so far completed three songs.

What we have on offer at the moment is The Right Man In The Wrong Place, Man Of Few Words and You Have Chosen, Or Been Chosen. These basically cover the first part of Half Life 2, up until the moment when the teleporter in Dr Kleiner's lab malefunctions , thanks to Lamar. Hopefully the rest of the game will yield enough for 11 other songs. If not, I am fucked.

I had a brief conversation with Laurie today. For those not in the know on Sausage Boy lore, Laurie and Sausage Boy used to be in a band called Jonny Juice and the Good Time Boys together. Laurie hasn't been in a band in a few years, since the last band he was in dissolved. Steps will be taken to extend Laurie an invite to participate in the Sausage Boy live experience. Hopefully, he will be on board, but we are seeing the first steps of a live show being taken.

Second day of FAWM! And I'm off to an acceptable start.

I had hoped to get the lyrics written for three or four songs by day two, but all I have so far is one mostly finished song, and a few ideas swirling around for other songs.

If you are interested, you can keep track of sausage boy's FAWM progress here.

I have decided to go with the Half Life 2 'dialogue as titles' route. Originally I was thinking that the dialogue I used would inspire the songs, but instead I find myself actually writing about Half Life 2. The first song, The Right Man In The Wrong Place, is based on the opening sequence of Half Life 2, and written from the G Man's perspective.

I have started to toss about lyric ideas for my next song, Man Of Few Words, about when Freeman meets Alyx Vance. It is shaping up as a love song.

Some of the other FAWM songs are really good. I'll post links to a few I like some time, so you can check them out. It should be worth it.

Man, one whole fucking year. And not really that much to show for it.

Poor SBlog, its so floppy and disused. Its like the erectile dysfunction version of SBlogs, just failing to get it up. Where is man standing in empty stadium awkwardly suggestion full erection when you need him? Will all this erection talk invite more automated spambots than ever before? Dunno. Erection.

Ok, so some actual news. I have thought hard about this, and I want to declare 2008 the Year of the Sausage. You WILL see a Sausage Boy live show, even if I have to get up there and play it all by myself. You WILL see a new album. You WILL see a video clip. You WILL see it on TV. And I WILL see me fail abysmally.

To get this all rolling, first thing is first. There is a little 'do' called February Album Within a Month (FAWM, www.fawm.org), where you write 14 songs in a month, and then disappear into the obscurity of the internet. I already have the obscurity, so the 14 songs should be piss easy!

So, I want to kind of record the whole FAWM experience here, just because I am a sucker for both punishment, and any kind of attention. Hopefully during FAWM I will come up with a few good songs that, coupled with some of the already sub-par song I have, will make up the live set.

If you have any favourites, let me know, and I will add them to the list of possibles.

For now, though, fuck off.

Through circumstances beyond my control (read: extreme apathy), I didn't get to give my picks last week. So, lottsa picks for this week then!

A Process Of is a nifty little metal/rock band from Melbourne. I like a couple of their songs, but my pick goes to An Elite. The vocals in the track really compliment each other well, and the bass playing is really good.

The Vue had my foot tapping with their tune, Take It Easy. The song changes pace really well at a couple of points. The musicianship is excellent, while the vocals are highly above average, teetering on excellent.

As another artist with an unfortunate name, Adam Hole instantly demanded a listen. And I wasn't disappointed. The intro of Not Expendable promised interesting things to follow, and it delivered. This songs has truly astonishing guitar playing, and the supporting instruments fit really well into the style.

Rubbish Night by Aimless is another song I am enjoying. While lacking in technical brilliance, it makes up for it by being both quirky and meloncoly, which is a combination I adore. It is a shame that Aimless seems to have taken the song down. Pester him for it, its worth it, in my opinion.

Look! Our first repeat artist! Gifted But Twisted serve up, really, a fairly above average song in Life in Australia. Its saving grace is the inclusion of the line "Our Prime Minister looks like a sinister Mr Sheen". I would love to hear that go out over the airwaves.

So Unearthed was officially launched this week. Exciting stuff. Exciting.

First pick this week goes to Panika with their nice little tune, Body Partz. Its an interesting mixture of hip-hop and electronica, with some rocky influences thrown in. Im not too sure what exactally the song is about, but the chorus is pretty catch, and even has geeky content for all you.... geeks.

Next we have Central Deli Band with Bad Girls. I like this a lot, it has this kind of laid back, lo-fi vibe to it I enjoy. The vocals are subdued, but not slacking off in any way. Not to mention they have included heavy distortion on the shouted chorus, and snippits of background talking. All in all, this is the kind of cut and past, do what you like songmaking that I enjoy.

We now come to Contraptions with the track Dance. This is cool. Its catchy and upbeat, with this kind of stop-start asthetic. Plus cowbell and claps! The audacity! The guitars are nice and full, with some nice complementary drumming. The vocals are sung with gusto and fervour, which is good to hear. A very good track.

Worth mentioning is that Caravan Ray's track Pencil Me In is surrently number 23 in Uneartheds Pop tracks. Bring Caravan Ray fame!

Pick of the week!

First pick, goes to Girl With Cake with their song Scars. Its an interesting folk rock kind of thing, sounding somewhere between The Grates and Bullamakanka. The intro is kind of long, but once it gets started it is quite interesting. The instruments are kept fairly simple, but there is a mix of them, with drums, guitars, pianos, violins and some others. Good all round song.

Second pick goes to Son of Dad with Knife in the Back. This is ska. This is definately not going to win. But who cares? Its a good song. Its upbeat and bouncey, has some excellent ska guitar and horns, and really sits well in a playlist.

Third goes to The Milton Experiance with Detrimental. Ok, first of all, it has to be said... is the mispelt word experience intentional? I have no idea. But the band is pretty good. Awesome rock guitars. The singing is a little wanting, but I suspect these are still young fellows, and with experience should come the vocal confidence.

When things are at their lowest, they can only go up. But once they start to go up, they can go down again. So you might always end up feeling low.

Somewhat busy week for Sausage Boy. SongFight ran some title-o-rama fight, with 11 titles in one week. Sausage Boy collaborated on Terror In Tiny Town with the band Fish Sausage, both writing and recording vocals for the song. The not-so-super-secret side project between Johnny Cashpoint and Sausage Boy reared its head in this weeks round, with Mr B & Mr C contributing a song to Blank Stare.

Also, over on RemixFight, Sausage Boy's remix band Sausage Bot has submitted a remix of the, strangely enough, Fish Sausage song Cable Beach.

Lastly, no, wait... thats it

Buy the new album!

Seeing as I am on Unearthed, and I have practise in reviewing on SongFight, I figured this would be a cool little excercise to partake in. So, I introduce the first of Sausage Boys weekly Unearthed Picks!

My first pick is Legless, an Adelaide Rock outfit manned (girled?) by four beauties dressed as your best dream and your worst nightmare. As musicians go, they are pretty good, but in particular my pick goes to their song Legless Says. Those who know me, know that I have a thing for disjointed and out of place backing vocals, which this fills. Not to mention the song comes in hard and solid. A good rock tune all around, with a bunch of attitude.

The next pick goes to Caravan Ray, a fellow from Brisvegas, whos name some will be familiar with. Normally I am all for talking up my friends, but honestly, Caravan Ray doesn't need it. In particular, my pick goes to Pencil Me In, an awesome song that just blows your fucking brains out of your head because of its awesomness. Take a listen, its like a little piece of youth culture, distilled and reformed inside of an old guy, that smacks of rock, dance and country music.

Last pick goes to Gifted But Twisted from, again Adelaide. Me. Biased? Never. The have a fairly neat hip hop tune in Spin The Wheel, though, to be honest, I only listened to their songs because, "we are the gyprockin hip hoppers cruising the country side building your homes and writing funny messages on the inside". I just identified with that so much, having written stuff on Gyprock sheets and then putting them up with my father, Baldy Boy. Being able to help your audience identify with you is such a sure fire way to getting attention.

So, those are this weeks picks. Enjoy!