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NOTES FROM SRI LANKA. (December '99/January '00) Click here to return to Table of Contents. 12/26/1999 Greetings from Big Green-land. There's a lot happening here in anticipation of the new Millennium (so to speak). Not that anyone would notice any difference. The homeless boy Jesus is still on the side of the road, pretty much everywhere you look. And that's with big Bill promising some portion of the cost of one Stealth bomber to various programs in support of the homeless. No changes there. What's Big Green up to these days? Gathering the threads together for our second release. Hot on the heels of our first collection, 2000 Years To Christmas, we're looking to have something listenable within a relatively short stretch of months...or eons. Less than an instant in geologic time. That's Y2k allowing, of course. Here we are in the big fat west wringing our hands over the possibility of having to live like the bulk of humanity for a few weeks. Pathetic, isn't it? Yeah -- I'll be looking at that tv screen on Friday morning, waiting to hear news of multiple chernobyls. But for the most part, the wealthy in the wealthy countries only stand to lose those comforts they deny to the rest of the world. Color me disgusted. Color me green. What's up with you, anyway? Drop me an email at jperry@biggreenhits.com and let me know. I could use the distraction...particularly this weekend. Peace. Don't fly over the Vincennes. jp Click here to return to Table of Contents. 1/2/2000 Happy goo year. Told you nothing would happen. (What was that noise...?) My toaster went sick. It thought it was 1900 and started coughing up rough peasant bread. Finally got a decent meal out of the thing. How is everyone? Well, I trust. It's been an uneventful holiday season over here in middle america. That's a gift, if ever there was one. Watching the year turn around the world on ABC, or CNN, or MSNBC, one could hardly hear a party horn blow without the cheerful sound of post-Cold War triumphalism piping up in accompaniment. It's good to see the news goons out in force, making sure the historical re-write stands. Looks like the new century is starting right where the old one left off. Encouraging. Wow...is that the time? That toast has got to be up by now! CU, jp
1/8/2000 Hey, here we are again. (Where are we? Doesn't matter.) We of Big Green have been gathering together the long threads that will ultimately lead to our second major release on our eponymous label. This one will have nothing to do with Christmas, or any other major holiday. At least, not so you would notice. How does this process work with the world's original virtual pop group? Well you may ask this question...well you may. It's a remarkably mundane process, actually. My illustrious brethren and I gather at my lean-to outside of Colombo (or is it Bangkok? Doesn't matter...) and start deciding which of the 973 songs we've written in the last year will go on the new album. The process follows a sequence something like this: Wed. -- Matt comes over. We listen to tapes. Matt has a beer. We identify 56 songs as possibilities for the new album, playing through them briefly on traditional instruments (kazoos & gutbuckets, mainly). Matt goes home. Following Monday -- Matt comes over. He discovers I've forgotten all the songs we decided on during the previous week's session. Hits me over the head with a refrigerator. Every thing goes black. He writes down another 142 songs on a notepad and leaves by the back door. Following Thursday -- Matt visits me in the hospital to tell me that he's lost the fucking notepad and we have to start over. I call for the orderlies, in case I need to be restrained. See why it takes so long? The fact is, it takes us longer to record a new album than it took Bill Clinton and company to bomb 30-someodd civilian hospitals in Yugoslavia last spring. Hey -- and only 60 percent of Commander Bill's targets were in the civilian sector, while nearly 100% of ours are. That's because we take care in the work we do. When we bomb...it's a labor of love. Take a look at the guest book, if you haven't already. There are some awfully strange people out there. God blessem. Best 2 U... jp Click here to return to Table of Contents. 1/16/2000 Ahoy, It's snowing like a motherless child out there. And I'm sitting in here trying to keep my toes from falling off . There's a challenge. I'm sure many of you picture the BigGreenHits.com command center to be something reminiscent of NORAD; an ultra high-tech underground complex in wherein I am surrounded by multi-colored status panels, security monitors and touch-activated global attack and response devices. Actually, it's much more sophisticated than that. We've built an impervious cocoon at the earth's core from which I control much of what takes place on the surface. That includes weather, stock prices, lunch menus, even individual ideas and moods. Had a thought recently? I thought so. I actually put that thought in your mind using our ultra high-frequency blurtolated metaconceptualizer (version 5.6). Hungry at all? Sure you are. I control that, too. You want ba-loney... ba-loney... ba-loney.... You may ask why -- since I can do all of these things -- don't I put the desire to buy our CD into everyone's mind? The answer is simple: I just don't feel like it right now. But one day. Speaking of total control...anyone been watching the presidential debates? I've missed every one so far. Is it me, or is this even less interesting than usual? Have they started executing people on stage yet, with each candidate racing to the switch to prove who's more utterly wonderful? Call me when I start missing something. Okay. Time to stop the snow. Talk to you later. Keep those cards and emails coming... big hippy love, jp
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1/23/2000 Hi-dee-hi, kids... It's a cold day in the sub-continent of upstate New York. The kind of day when a person's thoughts inevitably turn to indoor pursuits, like listening to music, or...writing a song, or...changing a...guitar...string.... Yes, we Big Green-ites lead a sedentary life, frozen in place six months out of the year, never venturing from our warrens for fear of being picked off by underfed predators. Like those major label A&R people who've been camped out on Matt's front yard, waiting to grab him up and co-opt him to pieces. This has been going on for some weeks, now. They'll holler, "$4 million advance plus residuals," and Matt will reply "No, my art is more important than money." And then they'll yell, "$15 million and full creative control, last call!" and Matt will sing back, "Buh-low meeee!" Then the army of hungry A&R men will shout, "What will it take for you to let us make you a beeg country singin' stawr?" And Matt will repeat his oft-heard reply, "You'll never get me into that toreador's get-up again! Not even if you promise me all the Swedish fish I can eat with both hands!" The neighbors are starting to complain. They've called the Animal Control officer twice, now. It's a bad scene, especially since my mother is spokesperson for the Animal Protection League. One or two of the industry's biggest producers may have to be put down, if no one comes to claim them soon. While I admire my brother/partner's ethics, I think he's handling this all wrong. If those Corporate Label A&R types were camped out on my lawn day and night, offering me money and clothes and food and sexual favors, I would start saying yes, yes, yes...just to lull them into a false sense of security. Then after they'd come to consider me a "made man" -- ten years hence, or so -- I'd slip out of my matador suit and start doing things my way. (Beeg country singin' stawr. Hot-damn....) But enough about me. What about you? How about sending me some mail, man? I'm bored out of my fucking mind! Send your missives to: Joe "Big Green Mutha" Perry, 16 Talcott Road, Utica, NY 13502-6110 or, of course, jperry@biggreenhits.com If you're nice to me, I'll send you a commemorative 2KY2C poster (guaranteed to be a collector's item in a thousand years or so), absolutely free. I've got to get back into my cocoon. See you...and don't forget to write the colonel. cu, jp Click here to return to Table of Contents. 1/30/2000 Helloooo... Greetings to all and sundry from my two-story lean-to in the badlands. Wishing you nothing but the best, even if it's only the best of nothing. It's what is euphemistically referred to as "Super Bowl Sunday," and we're celebrating it in the usual way. Matt has hung a banner from his bedroom window that reads, "Flush The Super Bowl." Otherwise, we'll be settling in to observe our traditional "Super Brain Sunday," which entails watching Noam Chomsky videos while chugging fruit juice laced with inositol. The subject of this year's half-time polemic will be: "Al Gore and George W. Bush -- Separated at Birth...or Still Joined At The Ass?" Back on the Big Green front...Yes, those CD's are just flying off the shelves. Every time I shut my closet door, six or seven careen to an ignominious landing on the linoleum. I'm thinking about storing them someplace else, or maybe calling a structural engineer to take a good look at this place. Are we any closer to recording our next album? Funny you should ask. Yeah...in fact, I was just talking to our illustrious drummer John White about getting together to work on some arrangements. Matt and I have already resurrected the preliminary songlist I lost last month. And unless I'm very much mistaken, actual work on our follow-up to the enormously successful 2000 Years To Christmas will begin in earnest by early Spring. No, no...try to contain yourself. Don't claw at the monitor. Stop drooling...we'll tell you when to drool. What else is new? Well, jury selection has begun for the trial of the Street Crime Unit cops in the Diallo case. Venue will be Albany, NY (pretty close to our patch, actually). The NYPD position is already being auditioned in our local Gannett newspaper, with the defense attorney for SCU Officer Kenny Boss (author of five of the 41 shots) resorting to the hypothetical "what if" -- "What if this had gone the other way? What if [Boss] held his fire while his partner was being shot? It would have been a police funeral." One may as well say, "what if Amadou Diallo had been invisible and had a robot friend?" Diallo had no gun. If Boss had held his fire, there wouldn't have been any "police funeral." But Diallo's funeral would probably have taken place anyway, since Boss's colleagues/co-defendants Sean Carroll and Ed McMellon squeezed off a total of 32 shots at the unarmed West African street vendor between them. Officer Richard Murphy placed fourth in the shooting spree, with only four shots fired. On the subject of "police funerals" and related political phenomena, take a look at Alex Cockburn's column in The Nation for Feb. 14th. On the subject of Diallo, give a listen to our MP3 single 41 times , and visit any of the activist sites on line, like 41 shots. All right. Pencils down. jp
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