The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass

Out February 9, 2023

on Stone Soup

BUY IT FROM BOOKSHOP.ORG HERE or email me for a signed copy

ONE OF VULTURE’S BEST COMEDY BOOKS OF 2023

“like being taken on a rock n roll road trip by Holden Caulfield with a head injury in the best of ways.” – Dave Hill, comedian, rocker, awesome dude

“humour of the absurdist school pitched somewhere between Monty Python and Spinal Tap” – Louder Than War

“What really propels the story forward, is Stone’s narrative voice — comic and wistful, shot through with a lackadaisical intelligence, and injected with a heavy dose of the countercultural tone that created both Thomas Pynchon and indie-rock music journalism.” – Brian Slattery, New Haven Independent

Two music obsessives embark on a hilarious quest to track down Buttery Cake Ass’ Live In Hungaria, an album as legendary as it is obscure. Their pursuit of one of the greatest bands ever unknown takes them down many a bizarre path teeming with grand ideas and grander egos in this ode to record shopping and what it’s like to be in your first band. Packed with puns, allusions, and references across a wide range of culture, both popular and not, Stone offers up a big slice of the fun and frustration of playing rock n roll. “When we were 15, my best friend and I used to make up fake bands to ask for at record stores,” Stone recalls, “and the day I heard him ask the clerk at Cutler’s in New Haven, CT if they had anything by Buttery Cake Ass was a moment of euphoric glee that I will never forget. Writing The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass was an attempt to capture the sheer joy and inventiveness of comedy back then, circa 1992, before irony seemed to set in everywhere a few short years later and the goal switched to making people groan instead of eliciting genuine full-on ecstatic laughter. In the process, I got to re-examine my own obsessive record collecting through a new lens as well as revisit the ridiculous aspects of playing in my first few bands, bringing me to a greater appreciation and love for both.”

“reads as if Douglas Adams wrote it if he was raised in a record shop by Monty Python and Kurt Vonnegut” – Lance Marwood, V13.net

“this is like a marathon Quentin Tarantino interview” – T. E. Lyons, LEO Weekly

“Aug Stone’s writing combines the absurdist insider humor of This Is Spinal Tap with the satirical self-importance of Ian Svenonius’ Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group to create something that is sure to resonate with deep music-obsessives. But fans of quirky outsider fiction will also find plenty of anodyne anti-heroes to root for (and laugh at) in this funny tale of rock and roll ridiculousness.” – S.W. Lauden, Remember The Lightning

“Stone…does have the Pynchon comic tone and the penchant for pushing ideas to an absurd end.” – Boston Groupie News

“The Ballad of Buttery Cake Ass kneads digression into the temporal substance of an emerging truth far richer than anything baked in the ovens of Pynchon completists. It is the really real of the event itself. Reading about music really ought to be full of all kinds of felt intensities and a longing for this fruity tapestry of vibrant matter is the reason that The Ballad of Buttery Cake Ass came into being and must be read by your eyes.” – Mikey Georgeson, David Devant & His Spirit Wife, rocker, awesome dude

“Aug Stone! Top of The Pops! I loved this book.” – Eddie Argos, Art Brut, rocker, awesome dude

“a love letter to collecting” – Chris Bisha, 360° Sound

“This is one hell of a fun trip, Aug has written a fantastic musical documentary which is somehow full of auditory sensations, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything quite like this; when the band play live the writing matches the tempo and I felt I was there, I could hear the music and see the lights, the band were suddenly with me…” – Jason Denness, Gnome Appreciation Society

The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass was published on February 9^th, 2023 and is available in all good book and record shops worldwide, as well as online in physical and digital formats

FULL PRESS LIST

Listed in Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of 2023 (So Far)

INTERVIEWS:

New Haven Independent: Author Writes A Record Store Epic

PennyBlackMusic

360° Sound: Aug Stone talks record collecting, new book

Dagger Zine: Inside the Mind Of Aug Stone

Hartford Courant: Prank album request about a fake rock band inspires a new local novel: ‘The Ballad of Buttery Cake A**’

REVIEWS:

Louder Than War

V13

LEO (Louisville Eccentric Observer)