Taste the Sad Shitholes of NSW With Spod and Stream His New Album

You may remember me as Australia’s leading musical treasure, who back in 2003 released Taste The Radness, the best cool dude party album ever recorded. It involved me prancing about in pink, sharing flowers and seducing a whole generation of music lovers with my sexual odes to enjoying the human body. But a bloke has no interest in partying forever, so eleven years later I’m updating that album with a more adult perspective on Taste The Sadness. I’m now basically a humble, old bloke sharing the insights of what I learnt on my musical jaunt through this great country.

Make no mistake, there are a lot of great places in New South Wales. Interesting, exciting and wonderful areas full of great food, art, history and culture. There are also many that leave your heart a cold pit of sorrow and despair. I thought I’d share my wealth of knowledge of these shitholes and bastions of depression that dot our coastlines. Visit these places and truly taste the sadness.

The Big Prawn, Ballina

What was once a proud beacon for bored Dad’s driving a carload of kids to the Gold Coast now resides in a derelict field next to a Bunnings Warehouse car park. As you stand with several other bewildered idiots taking photos of this huge piece of shit, you’re left wondering if everyone is being ironic or if we’re all just deadshits capturing a huge, sad relic of entertainment past. I’ll stretch this further to most holiday towns from Sydney to the Gold Coast. With more family’s heading to Bali on cheap flight deals the barren loneliness of these coastal towns breaks my heart.

West Gosford

Gosford should be great. It has a pretty harbour, access to some good beaches and affordable living. But what we have is a city with the ability to make everything look disgusting. The crowning glory is West Gosford, an industrialised USA Megamall wasteland that has shat at the foot of a quite beautiful landscape. It’s like looking into the past and future of humanity at the same time. If I ever get engaged it will be at the Trackside restaurant which is a testament to the glory of West Gossy.

Newcastle Line Train (aka the Deadshit Express)

As someone who can’t afford to live in Sydney anymore, I’ve relocated to the riverside suburb of Brooklyn. This has me commuting on the Newcastle line. Most of the time it’s filled with honest blokes and sheilas having a crack at their Westpac jobs and paying off their Rav 4s. But at certain times of the day it contains a solid quota of top-notch deadshits ruining a peaceful day. I’ve never been as commonly confronted with proud racists as I have on the DSE. From the father and son proudly proclaiming their intention to bash any non-white passenger who remains on the train after Epping Station. To the hi-vis fuckheads screaming at an Indian kid whose only crime is in wearing a hoodie on a cold day. Oh, and not being white. To the mother trying to outdrink her teenage daughter whilst cracking onto her male friend and simultaneously blaming an entire life of misfortune on her. And of course the guys lurching about forcing their Woodstock fuelled charm on every terrified single girl. It’s a special kind of sadness that settles around your neck when you take a seat. All the aggro makes you feel blessed at the calm of sitting next to a couple of smackies on the nod face deep into their Cornettos.

“Taste the Sadness” is available digitally August 22 on Rice is Nice.

Get sad with Spod as he launches the album next month:

September 19 in Sydney with Justin Heazelwood at the Lansdowne Hotel. Entry is free with RSVP

September 26 in Melbourne with Justin Heazlewood and Alex Cameron at the Old Bar.