Hope everyone had a lovely festive season. Decided against resolutions… instead I’m just determined to be more creative. Today I’m working on lyrics, trying to get a good body of work completed so I can try to do some recording and get songs out there.

I’ve also discovered Instagram for iPhone. What fun that is so far. Going to attempt a project a friend of mine did last year; photo a day. We’ll see how long that lasts.

My life currently though is just revolving around getting ready for XenaCon at the end of the month. I cannot wait to meet Lucy Lawless and Renée O’Connor. I love those two. And talking to Melissa Good about her work. Gods, this trip is gonna be amazing!

Well I hope y’all have got exciting times ahead!

Best wishes for 2012

At the end of June, my good friend @Sez101 came to visit me for the afternoon. We often get together to discuss all things geeky and plan world domination convention trips and whatnot. On this particular day we went out for lunch, sat in various coffee shops across the city in amongst playing in geeky shops and getting errands done. She’s an avid Sanctuarian, like me,  and I’d been running some ideas by her for the original Sanctuary song I’m still working on. Being the loveable dork that she is she started singing jokey lyrics at me and that led to us bursting into The Monster Mash spontaneously in the middle of Superdrug (I think that’s where we were getting odd looks from other shoppers)

And that led to us seeking out a coffee shop with a quiet corner to allow us to delve deep into our geeky minds and pull out a parody of The Monster Mash based on one of our favourite Sanctuary episodes, season one’s Nubbins, picturing singing it for all our @GA_GD friends, Amanda Tapping and we got carried away with all the fun we were having…

We were very proud of ourselves. Sez is a great partner in crime and this was true more so than ever in this venture. I made a demo and posted it on my tumblr, facebook, twitter…. I can’t believe I didn’t post it here.

So please, if you are a fan of Sanctuary, check out this demo and the lyrics.

The demo can be found here: Nubbin Song [Demo]
The lyrics can be found here: Nubbin Song [Lyrics]

Neither myself, nor Sez, own the rights to either The Monster Mash, Sanctuary and any of the characters mentioned in this song. We are just two nerds having fun and expressing our love for one of our favourite franchises. Please enjoy!

And if you’re a Sanctuary fan, you may also be interested in my Stargate SG-1 inspired song, Ballad of Carter.

Now that I’ve shamelessly plugged myself sufficiently I’ll be off… Battle on!

Currently working on about five things. Gods, stressful trying to organise a thought but it’s fun and it’s nice being able to move between ideas when I reach a block in one. So my current works in progress revolved around Xena (yes, that same song is still being written… trying to perfect it!), Buffy, love, childhood and Sanctuary… I’m excited and trying to get something completed soon.

I’ve been listening to lots of nerd rock and nerdcore artists lately and am feeling very inspired. Really got into The Bossfights lately. Highly recommend them. They are like a nerdy, more hardcore Linkin Park…. very talented guys! And they are teaming up with Sci-Fried on SF’s next project! Let me tell you, I thought my head was gonna explode when that was announced! Gods, I want to so badly see both of those bands tour together and this is just like a match made in heaven for me.

I wanna make a video. I really wanna make a video. I guess I gotta have some better recordings of songs. But what would I make a video for? I’d love to do a Xena video with that being my current obsession at the minute…. or a Stargate one. I gotta get me some cosplay stuff! Ha.

http://laurenfurze.tumblr.com

So I mentioned last month that I was working on at least two Xena-inspired songs. I have the first draft of lyrics for one completed! I’m also, finally, working on the Sanctuary song I started thinking up ideas for before Christmas. But I wanna talk about the Xena song.

I made a joke on Tumblr about some little line Xena would sing to Gabrielle about her abs… and well, the song went from there. It’s Xena’s attempt at writing something for Gabrielle as like a present. I’ve been getting encouragement from fellow Xenites who share my opinion that Xena and Gabrielle were indeed married! This goes back to the shipper song I completed a month or so ago… (check previous posts)

So, here’s the first draft.

Here… I Wrote This For Ya

You know I’m not good at talking
Words are really your thing
But I’m giving this a try
Seeing as it’s only for your eyes…
I know I haven’t always treated you good
I’m usually in a dark and angry mood
You bring me outta that in your special way
I love you more than I can say

I’m sorry I made that crack about your hands
And used your top to tie up that man
And for the time I used messed with your scrolls
And when I put that eel in your bedroll

Your abs are fine
O’ bard of mine
With a smile that lights your face
And that cute, firm… embrace
I love the things you do
I love your perky… attitude
Even your talent for getting kidnapped
Put the wammo on my heart and now I’m trapped

You are the best thing that ever happened to me
The light that guides me
My soulmate to the end of eternity
Not that I deserve you after what I used to be

There you go. Been writing guitar for it all afternoon so hopefully I’ll have some idea how it’s gonna sound sometime soon. Please, leave me comments, criticisms, Xena/Gabrielle references you might like to see included and anything else you wanna say about it!

Thanks for reading!
Blessed be.

Shippers unite

So, anyone who knows me know that my favourite band in the world Universe is Sci-Fried.

They rock. True story. In fact, they rock so much that they have their own video game! Another true story.

Chosen One is an RPG based on the song of the same name. It’s modelled on old school RPG games, the likes of Legend Of Zelda, and it features band members KSV, Dr Vern, Dammit Jim and Chuck on a quest to save the princess from the evil warlord Sunshine (it’s an ironic nickname!) Sunshine also happens to Sci-Fried bassist! There’s lots of references to a host of fandoms, games and general geekdom. It’s easy to play. The design and look of the game is quite cool (it was fun to spot all the Sci-Fried things in different areas of the game). It’s a great running commentary for anyone who’s ever played and enjoyed an RPG video game.

It features their friends as characters along the way… and I get to be the wisecrackin’ fairy, sent to aid the quest. Yup, I feature in the game as the fairy guide to KSV which doubles as the game menu.

Let me tell you that is the greatest thing in the world! I am so touched, happy, hyperactive, goddamn excited that they did that for me! I admire Sci-Fried so much, really look up to them as musicians and songwriters and nerds and this is the treatment I get. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU GUYS!

So, yes, I have motivations for people playing this game. Bragging rights. Spreadin’ the Sci-Fried love. The total epicness that is a quality, entertaining game. Not to mention it features some awesome 8-bit versions of some of my fave Sci-Fried tracks.

Please support a talented band.

Download Chosen One FREE from their site and check out their music today!
www.sci-fried.com

Me with Chuck, Dr Vern and KSV of Sci-Fried

So, I went to see Jonathan Coulton at Union Chapel, London on Saturday 11th June. I love that man!
He’s one of my biggest inspirations. He inspired me to learn to record, to write nerdy songs and become a solo artist and acoustic musician. He’s the reason I do what I do!

And so I went to see him. I sat with the biggest smile on my face the entire night.
Paul and Storm were excellent, as always, and very entertaining and inspiring in their geeky ways!
But JoCo was just mind blowning. His songs are genius! Amazing gig. He played a lot of my favourites and I even got to see “Blue Sunny Day” which I didn’t expect. He did a few of the songs of his new album out later in the year and I’m really excited about it. It sounds like it’s gonna be a good one!

And Jonathan Ross and his wife sat in the front row of the chapel. Paul pulled her up during a song which was hilarious! And as ever it was fun to pretend to be a pirate (Captain’s Wife Lament) and then a zombie (Re: Your Brains)

But the icing on the cake was the end of the gig! Paul, Storm and JoCo all came out and signed autographs and posed for photos! I GOT TO MEET JOCO! A MAN THAT HAS INSPIRED ME FOR YEARS AND HAD  A PROFOUND IMPACT ON MY LIFE! And I stood plugging Sci-Fried to him… pretty sure he thought I was nuts. But Sci-Fried inspire me just as much and I wanted to share the Sci-Fried love!

Me with Paul and Storm

Me and JoCo

So that’s why my life is awesome this week!

Thank you Universe. Thank you Paul and Storm. Thank you JoCo.

The brilliant mind of Jonathan Coulton has just the song to celebrate this most wonderful day. Play it loud and play it proud!

One, a Xena-inspired song, is really stumping me though. I’ve written the chorus to it but not sure how to approach the verses. That one’s on the back burner for now but I promise you, it’s coming!

The song that I’m really geeking out  happy about is my song on the topic of fangirls and shipping.

Shipping, derived from the word relationship, is the belief that two fictional characters, typically from the same series, are in a relationship, or have romantic feelings that could potentially lead to a relationship.

I’m quite proud of this one. It’s been a lot of fun to write because I am an avid shipper and have quite a lot of fun discussing ships with friends. I’ve been getting lots of support on Tumblr writing this one and major support from the GAGD gang. Tumblr is like shippercentral for fangirls, I swear! I hope everyone finds it fun and relates to it in someway.

So I promised a few people a demo of the song because they loved the lyrics and wanted a rough idea of what it was going to sound like. I swear I was going to do something of a higher quality than this but the CPU on my laptop is beyond frakked and my laptop kept crashing whenever I tried to do anything more complicated in Pro Tools. Once I have some studio time at work I’ll get to working on this in it’s full arrangement (I’m talking full band… fingers crossed!!!) This is just to show it off to people really…

I’m not sure what to call this song either. If you have any suggestions and/or comments please leave a message at the bottom of the page.

And another new love song is in the works. Also Xena-inspired. Check back for more on those developments.

I don’t think I mentioned this yet but I’m now on Facebook go ‘like’ my page and keep up-to-date with my latest nerd happenings. I’m updating that more often that twitter with what I’m writing about. I think there’s a link on the side of this site somewhere…

Much love,
Geeks unite!