F is for food - Mike

So me and my housemate Matt came up with an idea today. The idea is to eat only food that starts with the letter "a" for a day. Then the next day eat only food that starts with the letter "b" and so on and so on for 26 days in total.

We predict this will be easy at first, but may hit some roadblocks by the 24th day in particular. In order to combat this, we may be allowing ourselves a little creativity in the names of certain foods. So whilst any cheese can be eaten on the third day, stinking bishop in particular can be eaten on the "s" day. And for the 24th day in particular it has been decided that xenomorphs count in the form of mis-shapen cookies and the such so on no paricular day do we have to eat nothing.

This will be a horrowing and perhaps humorous tale. A journey of the self as well as food and as such I've decided to document it day by day, if it goes ahead.

We'll try and keep you informed in the planning stage,
- Mike

Piss and Shit - Mike

Consider the four human bodily processes of Eating, Drinking, Pissing and Shitting. Each works as a verb demonstrating an action is taking place. They also work as nouns as in this case: food, drink, piss and shit.

But what about the adjectives that show desire to carry out the actions?
You can be hungry and you can be thirsty, but what single words are for the feeling of needing a piss or shit? Sure there are words with connetations such as brewing, bloated and bursting but nothing that clearly and definitively means "I could well do for a piss," or "Christ on a bike if you don't get out of my way I'm going to shit. Soon."

So then, an alternative? Pissy means something else, as does shitty so both of those are out. We need new words in order to save time when pushing past people on the way to the toilet. After all, isn't that what life is truely about?

I propose that the funniest two appropriate yet nonsensical word verifications to be submitted should be considered being introduced. All you have to do is reply and you'll know what to do.

My first one is "kiess". No good.

Next,
- Mike

Proposed Song Order - Alex

Okay, I've had a fiddle with Mike's list, feedback is smacky good:

1.Tell Me Ma
2.Boys Who Left The Band
3.Weigh Anchor
4.Curse the London City Gent
5.Steve The Twat
6.Auld Triangle
7.Cumberland Crew
8.Sideways Up The Rubber Sprocket
9.Old Boys' State
10.Last Blackwall
11.Old Jack
12.Drunken Sailor

Tell me ma - I'll be very happy with this as a first track - once we've had time with aled in the studio.

Weigh Anchor is a big ballsy one, I like that near the beginning.

gent-steve-triangle is a nice little package I think, means steve is earlier in the album so the run up to the end of the album can be more unbrokenly exciting.

Crew and Blackwall are still next to each other, which I think may be a problem. I want the toms in both of those to sound very large and probably similar (though in crew there'll be lots more reverb I suppose). Do you think swopping Anchor and Blackwall would work?


Song Titles ?
Just realised we have no standard way of writing most of our songs - I like a mixture of the first, second and third I've written for each; more feedback!


"Tell Me Ma" / "I'll Tell Me Ma" / "Ma"

"Boys Who Left The Band" / "The Boys Who Left The Band" / "Boys"

"Curse The London City Gent" / "The Curse of The London City Gent" / "City Gent"

"Auld Triangle" / "The Auld Triangle"

"Cumberland Crew" / "The Cumberland's Crew" / "The Cumberland Crew"

"Last Blackwall" / "The Last Blackwall"

"Old Boys State" / "Old Boys' State" / "Old Boy's State" / "State"

"Old Jack" / "Shitbounce" / "Cock In Your Eye"

"Drunken Sailor" / "What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?" / "Sailor"

Proposed Song Order - Mike

So since now we've got a first preliminary mix of all the songs, I bashed out a steamy load of proposed album order. Feedback is tasty.

1. Tell Me Ma
2. Boys Who Left The Band
3. Curse The London City Gent
4. Auld Triangle
5. Weigh Anchor
6. Cumberland Crew
7. Last Blackwall
8. Old Boys State
9. Steve The Twat
10. Sideways Up The Rubber Sprocket
11. Old Jack
12. Drunken Sailor

This was especially difficult because we have three songs that start with variations on "old" which couldn't be grouped together, and a difficult choice for the first song. I've always been against putting Tell Me Ma first, but I think it is genuinly the best choice out of the songs we have.

I've also tried to listen as much as possible to which songs "feel" like early or late songs, with the middle being the hardest to judge.

I'm giving it a listen as we speak, so I'll definately change it later.

- Mike

Horses and Album Art

At the weekend Smokey Bastard consumed two entire horses - one in Cardiff Student Union (supporting the mincing Mental Image) and one at the very accommodating Royal Oak in Bath, supported by the truly fantastic The Clap.

No but actually, go listen to these boys, brap brap etc.

It was a shitty weekend to drive the nearly five hundred miles I covered but it was great to get everyone together again. We turned up at a rehearsal studio in Cardiff and bought most of our instruments from the bewildered old man there before mostly playing metal/end-of-film-rock versions of our own songs all afternoon. I personally left a tiny bit of wee on the drum stool from laughing so much all afternoon.

We then had a great turn-out in Cardiff Uni, especially considering it's so far away from our nominal base, and bearing in mind that it was in Fuckingwales, which is a pretty hopeless start to almost anything. I've got some pictures on film (so they'll be ages) of some larks, some blood and a chinese set list on Pat's arm, and we collectively ingested a fair old amount of free beer.

Those who had the time to chill out on saturday then, as far as I can gather from Macca, played earthworm jim on the megadrive for possibly longer than a night and a day, sitting in their own filth very happily.

We went acoustic for the Bath gig and the gloriously free bar helped that one to be gloriously shambolic, but we sold a fair old stack of the old CDs so we had petrol to get home, and we also had some good time to discuss the album; what we want out of it and when and what to call it and all that stuff:

ALBUM ARTWORK WORK.

Ok, there's some cash in it for whomever's album artwork we use on our upcoming album, but we don't know what it'll look like yet.

We recon we'll try and settle on our favourite four or five album titles, and then we'd like to invite anyone who's interested (and especially a few people we've got in mind, but we're very open to input) to rub one out to go with one or several of the titles, and then whichever artwork is best will probably decide which title we use. Watch this space for more information on this one. The only title we're so far agreed on seems to be 'Propping Up The Floor' but there are definitely others on the shortlist.

"NOW That's What I Call Shitfisted!"

p.s. A google image search for 'shit fisted' was never going to be pretty (you have been warned this is gross and explicit), but check out item number five! I wonder if we should use more porn buzzwords as themes when we record in future, to up our hit count...