Stray Sonata
Sad Dog
Original Release Date: 12/02/4579
The following first appeared in Issue #5 of Heart Beets.
Much has been said, written, and broadcast about the unbelievable true story of Sad Dog. What we know is limited, and we’ve all heard the same story beats: after escaping from an intergalactic slave ring, the artist, who refuses to release her real name, was found in a dreary back alley, clutching a vinyl album; one that she had carried with her for almost a decade.
But before her rediscovery, before the midnight raid on the recording studio that plunged her back into obscurity, Sad Dog had vibrations of beats in her ears, her paws tapping the rhythm of dozens of tender compositions as she roamed the streets of cobblestone cities. She was given a modest contract to record several tracks for an EP that was to be titled Stray Sonata. The sessions were humming along at a modest clip, the executives eager to get the lead single out to radio stations and record shops.
Down & Out hit the airwaves in February of 4579, much to the delight of fellow creatures. She was on the fast track and the idea of an EP suddenly morphed into a double-album of guaranteed hits. A whirlwind ensued, and late nights behind a synthesizer began to take its toll on the young artist. She resisted the temptations of her fellow beatmakers and put her soul into finishing her 16-track masterpiece.
Then things started to get complicated.
A fur-laden bandit had come to collect his lion’s share. Like many young artists, Sad Dog had not properly read her contract, entrapping her in a deadly game that meant she would have to deliver on time, and with many Space Bucks, or be turned over to the executor of her musical estate: Mad Dog Shea.
A ruthless ruffian among a sea of thieves, Mad Dog Shea proved to have staying power, dipping his paws into many different ventures, including racketeering, interspace theft, and his pet project: musical prodigies. Hoping to go legitimate, in his words, he had signed a bevy of artists to unfair contracts, and when the artist inevitably could not deliver, they were sold into a slave ring, forced to bounce from planet to planet in service of mining, engineering, and manufacturing.
From those who claim they were there that fateful morning, the look on Sad Dog’s face was only of confusion. She had no idea what awaited her. Given almost no time to run, she furious pawed at the one thing within her reach: a copy of her only single.
Then things started to get slippery.
Thrust to the furthest corners of the industrial universe, Sad Dog’s bevy of unreleased songs simply sat. The recording studio changed hands, Mad Dog Shea was arrested and served time for the aforementioned crimes, but nobody seemed to care about Sad Dog, nor the hundreds more who had been torn from the material world by the gangster.
For nearly a decade, the warbled tones of Down & Out were all that we had to remember her by. Collectors fought for pristine copies and it became a hit on oldies stations.
Then things started to get interesting.
Electrician Torca Cereboni was attending to a downed powerline at the edge of the city of Neos Canis when he spotted something at the end of an alleyway. Rain had poured in from a lingering storm that had ravaged the coast for more than a week, and the winds were finally starting to make landfall. As lightning struck ferociously, he stumbled past trashcans and sparkling telecommunications wiring to reach the huddled mass. His attempt to comfort the creature was met with shivering and squeaking. All he could make out in the flashes of lighting was a vinyl record.
The homeless shelter refused to take her, the soup kitchens chased her with spoons, even the social services office locked its doors. The city was teeming with others in the same situation and dared not intervene. Torca, by his own admission, was skeptical about taking in the homeless stray, but his wife insisted.
Warm and dry, finally, it would take Sad Dog time to not only come to terms with what had happened but to tell the story in full.
Then things started to get hopeful.
With no knowledge of her past work, Sad Dog’s pleas for help went unnoticed. Her new host family admired her intelligence and companionship, but they were worried she would end up roaming the universe again, clutching her soiled record. So they put her in touch with Torca’s brother, who had had a mildly successful career nearly 50 years prior as part of a two-man act known as the Martian Transit Authority.
Former subway conductor Gelli Cereboni had conducted more than just the opening and closing of the automated doors of his beloved train. Along with his station manager, they moonlighted as a beat-making duo responsible for the 4532 hit Express Yourself. Mild success meant he had connections, and boy did those connections pay off.
Brought before the Intergalactic Beets Project, the possibility of not only releasing long-lost material but putting Sad Dog back in her place was too tempting to pass up. Our financing provided her studio time, as much as she needed, and the safety which would allow her material, new and old, to flow in time.
Then things started to get frightening.
What we had not prepared for, Audionauts, was that Mad Dog Shea, who we all assumed was still rotting in prison, had commuted his own sentence, using his roving gang of loyalists to bust him out of his solitary confinement.
Their first stop? Well, I guess you can figure that one out on your own.
Only a week had passed before our studios were assaulted and young Sad Dog was wrapped in his evil clutches once more. Our efforts to locate her have turned up nothing but stale crumbs. In an effort to locate our dear friend, we are releasing a brand new single, the title track of her unreleased double album Stray Sonata. Use this song, fellow Audionauts, to spread her unique voice across the universe so that we do not forget her, so that we leave no stone unturned. If you have any information that will lead to her return, please send us a signal immediately.
Side A
Begging
Reference Check
Alleyway Blues
Side B
Stray Sonata
Lap It Up
Little Body, Big Attitude
Shake/Shake/Shake
Side C
Lick It Up
Storm Brewin’
The Big Sleep
Cat Scan
Side D
Fireside
No Kill
Only Throw
Muzzled