As always, I was asked to introduce songs at this year’s Sausagefest. I’d like to share some of them with you so you can get a taste of what I do for the Fest.
These four are only some of my favourites this year. I did 10 intros altogether and the longest was about nine minutes. That’s my actual favourite, but it was less about the track intro, and more about inside jokes that mean nothing to you. I also did a well-received Neil Peart tribute as part of my “Passage to Bankok” intro but you can just read it here as it was previously posted in its original text form.
Below is a medley of four intros and one outro. Some notes before you proceed:
Because it’s 2020 and why the fuck not, I understand they did the countdown in reverse order this year. Starting at #1 going down to #100. I didn’t know that when I recorded these.
I like to lift bits from cartoons like Rick & Morty and American Dad. You will hear some. These are not my original bits, just funny things that work as transitions from whatever Tom & Meat had going on before me.
Afroman has been a point of contention. I do not believe Afroman has a place at Sausagefest but they vote it in every year and then make me introduce it. This year I fought back by putting in 0% effort. (50 second mark)
Better than the Afroman intro was the outro which you will also hear. I “interviewed” Werner Herzog about Sausagefest and people that vote for Afroman. (2 minute 15 second mark)
The Herzog bit was probably the most complex to edit. I downloaded random Werner interviews and found a perfect part where he was talking about chickens.*
Getting Darth Vader on Cameo was a real stroke of luck! (3 minute 45 second mark)
* I had to surgically create the word “one” out of the word “chicken” in order for it to make sense. Now you’ll notice but before you wouldn’t.
“It is with sadness that we announce that as of October 27, 2019, The Spatula Diner will be closing its doors.”
Sadness? For the staff, surely. For us, it’s more like mixed emotions. Yes, the Sausagefest crew has enjoyed breakfast there for almost two decades. We hadn’t planned on returning in 2020 even before the closure. A shrunken menu and poor service made up our minds for us. Our favourite meal was the breakfast monstrosity known as the Flesherton Fillup. Under new management, it ceased to exist. Remember when Uncle Meat had this conversation in July with the server?
“When did you get rid of the Flesherton Fillup?” he asked.
“Oh, we haven’t had that in a long time,” she responded.
“We were here last year and you had it then, I’m just surprised,” said Meat.
Condescendingly she answered, “Isn’t a year a long time?”
Relatively, but when you’re in a location like Flesherton Ontario where the business is seasonal, expect to be asked that question more than once.
Admittedly, we could have been…more considerate as customers. We could have called in advance to let them know they were about to be slammed by 30 hungry, sweaty guys. I would have preferred to do it that way, but was shot down every time!
Goodbye, Flying Spatula. Many a good steak-n-eggs and Flesherton Fillups were enjoyed there. But your time had come and parting isn’t always such sweet sorrow.
Our gracious host Iron Tom Sharpe has furnished us with the full Sausagefest 2019 countdown! Gaze at the majesty below. A few brief notes first:
1. “Kiss Me Deadly” by Lita Ford was blamed on Uncle Meat, who definitely took a verbal bruising for that song appearing so high at #22. Meanwhile I took flak for Greta Van Fleet.
2. I am pleased any time Kiss makes the list. “She” was so awesome to groove (shirtless) to on the Friday night.
3. “Fuck yeah!” to Testament, Sabbath (with Gillan), the Kinks, and Iron Maiden (including a non-album song).
4. I marked the songs that I did intros for with an *
5. Included, for your enjoyment, is the audio for my controversial Afroman intro. (#69 on the countdown.)
1 Tommy the Cat – Primus 2 Dance on a Volcano – Genesis 3 Electric Crown – Testament 4 Respect – Aretha Franklin 5 Bombtrack – Rage Against the Machine 6 Hey Nineteen – Steely Dan 7 Sex Bomb – Tom Jones 8 School – Supertramp 9 Cochise – Audioslave * 10 Dancin Fool – Frank Zappa
11 Dinah Moe Hum – Frank Zappa 12 Rise of the Fenix – Tenacious D 13 Big City Nights – The Scorpions 14 Kickapoo – Tenacious D 15 Easy Lover – Phil Collins & Philip Bailey 16 Friends of Mine – The Guess Who 17 Mean Eyed Cat – Johnny Cash 18 Thumb – Kyuss 19 Ride my Llama – Neil Young 20 Let Go the Line – Max Webster *
21 Circumstances – Rush 22 Kiss Me Deadly – Lita Ford 23 In the Flesh – Pink Floyd 24 11th Hour – Lamb of God 25 Old Man Down the Road – John Fogerty 26 Mean Street – Van Halen 27 Queen Bitch – David Bowie 28 Women in Uniform – Iron Maiden 29 Over the Mountain – Blizzard of Ozz 30 War Pigs – Black Sabbath
31 South Side of the Sky – Yes 32 Escape – Alice Cooper * 33 10,000 Scarabs – Five Alarm Funk 34 Tobacco Road – War (live as fuck) 35 King Harvest – The Band 36 Black Coffee – Humble Pie 37 Heroes & Villians – The Beach Boys 38 Ghost – Clutch 39 Space Cadet – Kyuss 40 Stairway to Heaven – Frank Zappa (live as fuck)
41 The Rain Song – Led Zeppelin 42 Rango II – Vulfpeck 43 You Know My Name – The Beatles 44 Rock Lobster – The B-52’s * 45 Jailbait – Wishbone Ash 46 Blockbuster Night – Run the Jewels 47 Sail On – The Commodores 48 Stone Cold Crazy – Queen 49 Sails of Charon – Scorpions 50 Phoenix – Wishbone Ash
51 Powderfinger – Neil Young 52 Script For a Jester’s Tear – Marillion 53 Not For You – Pearl Jam 54 September – Earth, Wind and Fire 55 The Real Me – The Who 56 Roadie – Tenacious D 57 Bobby Brown Goes Down – Frank Zappa 58 Over My Head – King’s X 59 Rikki Don’t Lose My Number – Steely Dan 60 Clap for the Wolfman – The Guess Who
61 Wild Wild Life – Talking Heads 62 Not to Touch the Earth – The Doors 63 Supa Stoopid – Funkadelic 64 Sea of Green – The Sword * 65 Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty 66 Marquee Moon – Television 67 Delivering the Goods – Judas Priest 68 When I Get to Heaven – John Prine 69 She Wont Let Me Fuck – Afroman * 70 After Image – Rush
Afroman intro
71 She – Kiss 72 Careful with that Axe Eugene – Pink Floyd 73 The Whistler – Jethro Tull 74 Stormbringer – Deep Purple * 75 20th Century Boy – T Rex 76 Cinderella Man – Rush 77 Keep Pushin’ – REO Speedwagon 78 Monkberry Moon Delight – Paul McCartney & Wings 79 Lookout Mountain – Drive By Truckers 80 Highway Tune – Greta Van Fleet
81 Rag & Bone – The White Stripes 82 Anti-Social – Anthrax 83 Suite Sister Mary – Queensryche * 84 Red Hot Mama – Funkadelic 85 Her Strut – Bob Seger 86 Sweet Talkin Woman – Electric Light Orchestra 87 Rain Dance – The Guess Who 88 Time Travelling Blues – Orange Goblin 89 Copperhead Road – Steve Earle 90 Walk All Over You – AC/DC
91 For Your Love – The Yardbirds 92 Lido Shuffle – Boz Scaggs * 93 Trashed – Black Sabbath 94 Apeman – The Kinks 95 Illegal Alien – Genesis 96 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Iron Maiden 97 I’m Your Captain – Grand Funk Railroad 98 Peanuts – The Police 99 Satan Prayer – Ghost 100 Renegade – Styx
GETTING MORE TALE #765: “Three Yolks, Two Whites” …and One Fucked Up Tent: The Sausagefest 2019 Story
It’s better than Christmas. It’s better than birthdays. It’s more rock and roll than Lemmy snorting coke off Ozzy Osbourne’s cock. It’s Sausagefest.
We look forward to this rock and roll party every year. It is the highlight of our calendars. We meticulously plan out songs, sketches, jokes, and food. Mountains of meat, sizzling to a soundtrack of pure integrity (with a couple musical exceptions). Male companionship? More like brotherhood.
Preparation is key. I started recording bits for my Sausagefest contributions late last year. All my introductions were “finished” weeks ahead of time, which gave the rare opportunity to listen and go back and fix things that were not working. It was worth it. The intros were well received and Uncle Meat enjoyed the Rob Gronkowski bits that I poached from Family Guy.
Meat and I left town after lunch on Friday, and as per our new tradition, stopped at Value Village to buy new T-shirts for the party. The more ridiculous the better, for him. He found a stupidly bright pink shirt depicting a Dr. Aftab Patla, and for me a shirt that said “OFFICER OF ROCK” on the back.
“Should have said ‘cock’,” commented my pal Jason.
This is the kind of stuff we find funny.
Aftab Patla
Officer of Rock
It was a blazing hot Friday and as soon as I had my new tent and canopy set up, I went down to the river for the first swim of the weekend. Many of the boys had already arrived, and our glorious leader Tom pulled in at the same time we did.
There was an issue early in the evening. Apparently the old laptop that has been playing the Countdown ever since they did the switch to mp3 has a bad audio out jack. The backup plan was to play the Countdown off Meat’s phone, but it refused to play the tracks in the right order. As a team we re-numbered all the id3 tags and renamed all the tracks until his phone miraculously began to do what we needed. All of this done in a big open field on a Samsung phone.
The legendary 100 song Countdown was inaugurated this year by Styx with “Renegade”. We were treated to a slew of classics (Black Sabbath, the Kinks, Drive By Truckers, Queensryche, Tenacious D, etc.) and a few duds (Afroman). There is a certain, shall we say, younger element that has grown as Sausagefest expanded. These highly respected youngsters were responsible for voting in some pretty incredible music from rock to funk. Where they confuse me periodically is shit like Afroman. You will hear me ranting about the rap songs on this year’s video, included at the bottom.
Afroman was one of nine songs that were given to me to introduce. I refused to do it; instead I ranted for a bit about being stuck with a shit song, and asked my radio buddy Erik Woods to do it. So picture that deep radio voice announcing, “this song is called ‘She Won’t Let Me Fuck'”.
I will give the young fellas credit for one thing. When I arrived, I found out they were already campaigning for votes to get “Beth” onto next year’s Countdown. This is, of course, because in 2015 I had to blast the song at full volume to wake up Uncle Meat, and even that wouldn’t do it. Personally I would love if “Beth” made the Countdown next year, as a little wink to the Meat Man, who is not a morning person. You’ll see that in the video as well.
Max the Axe wanted to grab breakfast at the Spatula early Saturday morning. We roused the Meat Man, who was more than a little displeased to find out we arrived before they actually opened. I took the brunt of the blame even though it was Max (his own band leader) who wanted to go! And this is where things go slightly sideways.
Hungry LeBrain
Meat & Max
The Spatula opened just five minutes later, and Max the Axe threw a wrench into things immediately by ordering eggs with “three yolks, and two whites”. Our server didn’t seem to be in the best of moods, having already referred to Sebastien Munier as “Mr. Tattoo” when he walked in. Max’s order was probably not the first one she wanted to take that morning.
“I don’t understand what he wants,” she said to us. “I’m just giving him two eggs.” The rest of us nodded in agreement. Three yolks and two whites? Who the fuck orders that?
“The chefs know how to make it!” testified Max in his own defence. “They use the leftover egg white to make Hollandaise sauce.”
I did my research on this, and just to make everything even funnier, Max got that 100% wrong. According to every recipe I consulted, Hollandaise sauce is made with yolks, not whites!
Max ate his two eggs in peace, but we were actually a bit perturbed at a new, teeny-tiny menu. The legendary Flesherton Fillup breakfast is gone. So is the steak and eggs. It’s all gone, replaced by a simplified menu where you have to build your own replica Flesherton Fillup by ordering the extra meats and add-ons yourself.
“When did you get rid of the Flesherton Fillup?” asked Meat.
“Oh, we haven’t had that in a long time,” said the server.
“We were here last year and you had it then, I’m just surprised,” said Meat.
Condescendingly she answered, “Isn’t a year a long time?”
An underwhelming breakfast couldn’t derail us, though we will consider finding a new breakfast joint next year. Here’s a fact you didn’t know: the legendary Max the Axe is a garage sale aficionado. Who knew that rock stars spent their weekend mornings hitting up garage sales? We took Max to a couple garage sales on our way back, and apparently he just missed an old quadraphonic receiver ($5.00) by about five minutes.
It was a lazy afternoon spent (mostly) in the river, socializing and playing with my new waterproof camera. With flawless timing, Zach the Lamb Lord served up his perfectly marinated side of lamb. He outdid himself this year, with perhaps the juiciest lamb ever cooked by anyone.
The second evening’s continuation of the Countdown rewound a bit for those of us (like me) who fell asleep early the night before. As the sun slowly began to turn into fire behind the trees, we all listened in. Some were cooking steaks, some playing Frisbee, with the rest of us sitting attentively around the fire.
I had four more song intros on day two. Another radio buddy, Jason Drury, helped me out with an intro for the B-52’s “Rock Lobster”. Jason is from Ramsgate in the UK but everybody seemed to have different ideas of where he was from. “Who was that Australian guy?” or “Who was that Irish guy?” Day two of the Countdown had some smoking good tunes, including surprises like “Women in Uniform”, a non-album single by Iron Maiden. When Tom posts the full tracklist for the entire Countdown, I’ll do the same.
“Women in Uniform”
Jason Drury
Sausagefest may have ended, but the next morning offered its own unique challenge: waking up Uncle Meat. “It’s going to be pretty difficult to spin this to make you look good,” he said pointedly, and he’s right. I’m not asking anyone to take my side in this. However, if you don’t think it’s funny as hell, that’s not my problem.
I had to be back in town at a certain time. “When should I start the process of waking him up, given that I want to be home by noon?” I asked his roomate Zach.
“I’d start now,” he said bluntly. It was 8:00 am.
I gently woke him by telling him I wanted to start getting ready to go. He could nap a bit longer but I would eventually need his help taking down the canopy. I put on Kiss Alive II and toiled on packing up my stuff. I stopped the album a couple times while I was working, but when “Beth” came on, I did what I had to do. I blasted it for him. This was his alarm clock.
I waited a while longer, asked some advice. I shook his tent a little and told him to get up. An anonymous man (who has an excellent real first name) suggested I remove a couple of the tentpoles. That seemed reasonable. It didn’t do much though. I gave it a little more time, and then removed the final two tentpoles. Meat lay there motionless.
“Is there anyone even in there?” someone asked. Oh, he was in there. Trust me.
“Maybe now you should take the top of the tent off,” said a second anonymous man. Unnecessary.
Like an animal trapped in a net, first an arm thrust forth. It failed to penetrate the tent. Then an unsuccessful leg kicked up. Then another arm, and another leg. Then, as the frenzy built, the tent transformed into a ball of limbs, trying to smash their way through. If you stuck that crazy rat from Stranger Things 3 in a bag, it would have looked a lot like Meat in his tent. We watched the activity from a distance, guffawing so loudly that I have never come so close to actually piss myself laughing. I could feel a bead of pee forming. The futile struggle to open the tent, from a safe orbit, was simultaneously pants-wettingly funny and tear-forming sad! Max was the first to have mercy on Uncle Meat, and opened the tent for him.
Because I gave him the tent, he threw one of the tent poles into the forest in retaliation. That’s OK; I have lots of spares!
He was justifiably mad. So was Chuck, for me blasting “Beth” at a still fairly early hour. These people don’t get it. You cannot go anywhere with Uncle Meat when you want to, unless you take extreme measures. You are at the mercy of his whims, his hangover, and his appetite for cigarettes. Oh sure, he’ll keep you laughing the whole way home (at least when his voice isn’t completely fucked) but actually getting him packed and into the vehicle is its own entire movie to itself. The Sausagefest spinoff movie would have to be called Bedsheet Puptent: The Waking of Meat.
I got home 30 minutes earlier than I had to be, which was fucking perfect. So, thank you Meat for not bearing a grudge, but I got home in excellent time. Thank you for your cooperation! I cheered him up by messing with Dave Haslam on the way home, in the car behind us. That put the smile back on Meat’s face. Even though Haslam was completely innocent in all this, he had to pay the price to get Meat back in a good mood.
It was actually a nice ride home, spent listening to a soundboard bootleg from Iron Maiden’s Matter of Life and Death tour. “That was their best album since Seventh Son“, he said. I claimed Somewhere in Time. It matters not. It was a great listen, even though a few days earlier Meat was complaining about a live Kiss show sounding “too bootleggy”.
It was an awesome Fest, but aren’t they all? I’ve never experienced a dud. Our most excellent host and his companions in the shenanigans put on a great show every year. Stay tuned for the full Countdown. Until then, enjoy the video which captures the flavour of the Fest. See how many songs you recognize from the Countdown!
A labour of love brought to us every year with blood, sweat, years and possibly other bodily fluids: It’s Sausagefest!
New wrinkles this year include a water proof camera for those aquatic shots. Look for a guest appearance by legendary rock star Max the Axe (he’s kind of a big deal).
The Countdown this year included a number of favourites; see if you can pick ’em out in the video.
Oh, there are stories too. Max the Axe ordering two and half eggs at the Spatula. Uncle Meat trapped trying to escape a collapsed tent; a brutal trick by his “friends”. Also the first time I may genuinely peed myself laughing. These stories will be shared when the mind and body have had time to heal. There was also a UFO sighting at 3:30 am Saturday morning.
Thanks Erik Woods, Jason Drury, and Dave Jutzi for your help with my recordings this year!
This is what we do with our rock and roll vacation.
Heard some Priest, Maiden, Drive By Truckers, Orange Goblin, Boz Skaggs, Queensryche, Funkadelic, and lots more. Wonder what’s up for Day Two? Stay tuned right here.
Didn’t get much writing done this weekend — sorry about that. It’s the time of year when the annual Sausagefest begins to dominate my creative time.
I finished all my recordings this weekend, though I’m going to sit on them a few days before I submit them to Uncle Meat. I want to make sure they’re perfect and I’m happy. Nine songs/nine intros plus associated sketches and bits. 63 meg; over an hour of play time. Several months of recording dating back to last year, with one track having over 100 layers of audio!
I say this every year, but I think these are my best Sausagefest intros and bits yet. Next task: new tent and new camping equipment. 2019 is gonna rock. Less than a month to go!
mikeladano.com 