Note: The following is a partial transcript from an interview with Big Green co-founder Joe Perry. The interviewer was conducted by Marvin (my personal robot assistant).
Part one: The first part
Marvin: In your early years, Big Green lived in not one, but TWO houses on the same street in Castleton-On-Hudson, NY. WTF were you thinking?
JP: Glad you asked me this question, Marvin. (Which is to say, I’m glad I asked your inventor, Mitch Macaphee, to program this question into your tiny brass skull.) The answer is, I haven’t a freaking clue. All I know is that the two houses were next door to one another. One of them had a claw-foot tub. The other had holes in the porch roof. Am I getting warmer?
Marvin: We all are getting warmer, due to climate change. Moving on. Big Green has released three studio albums thus far, the most recent being Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (2013). And though all three are of questionable value, Cowboy Scat is by far the sketchiest. And so, again, I say, WTF were you thinking?
JP: Thanks for that question, Marvin. That was clearly inserted into your memory banks just to piss me off. I admit that we tossed Cowboy Scat together in a hurry. It’s a collection of songs written and recorded for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.
We were posting the podcast every month, and we would rush to complete at least one or two songs for the show. At the end of a year or so, we decided to make an album out of them. So we patched about 21 of them together with tape and dropped them into the internet. Like everything else we’ve ever done, it’s been a drug on the market (that’s an antiquated term that means we haven’t sold many). But hell … we’re crappy capitalists. So what’s new?
Part two: Looking ahead
Marvin: Okay, so does that mean your next album will be a bunch of songs from some random podcast?
JP: No, not some random podcast – OUR podcast segment known as Ned Trek, which we recorded from 2014 to 2018. Why are you so damned belligerent?
Marvin: That does not compute.
JP: Well, then COMPUTE HARDER.
Okay, so it’s very likely that at least one of our future projects will involve pulling together some of the more than 100 songs we wrote and recorded for Ned Trek. Though they are, indeed, podcast songs, we spent a bit more time on them than the Cowboy Scat numbers. Does that mean they’re better? Well ….. I’m a poor judge of that. The only thing I can practically guarantee is that our next album(s) will be a total commercial flop. That is OUR promise to YOU, Big Green listeners!
Okay, what else you got? I’ve got some time wasting to catch up on.
And lastly, the last … part
Marvin: Where did you leave that jar of paraffin chutney I bought? That stuff is damned expensive!
JP: What the …. ? Damn it, Mitch – stop dropping your questions into my interview! I don’t know where your fucking chutney is! It’s bloody inedible, for one thing. And for another thing …. fuck you!
Marvin: Anything you’d like to add that might interest our listeners?
JP: Sure. There’s an abandoned car just up the block. If you know anything about AMC Pacers, this might be just the vehicle for you. There are some raccoons living in it, but they’re pretty nice – I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing the car.
