All posts by Joe

Joe Perry is co-founder of the band Big Green and brother to Matt Perry, other co-founder of Big Green. Shall I go on?

Roll with it.

April 27, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

Whoa, incoming! Keep your heads down, my good friends. Here comes another one! Man, that was close … too close.

Oh, hey out there. No, the Cheney Hammer Mill has not suddenly found itself in the middle of a war zone. (Hell, no, we won’t go!) We’re just discussing reviews for our last few podcasts. These editorial meetings can get kind of brutal, especially when we start looking at what the public has to say about us. Just take a look at the Twitterscape and you’ll see what I mean. We get roasted on Twitter every time we open our mouths … even when Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes one of those squeaking noises that just sounds like talking. It’s brutal out there!

Okay, so we’re thin skinned. That doesn’t stop us putting shit out there, friends. That’s because we have a deep and abiding sense of mission. Just look at the line up we have on hand here. Take Lincoln, for example – perhaps our greatest president (though not with us this week as he decided to attend the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, TX, along with all of the living ex-presidents and his evil doppelganger, anti-Lincoln. And the current president, btw). Talk about motivation! And who can forget Mitch Macaphee, mad scientist extraordinaire, inventor of Marvin, promoter of the interstellar space-time warp, and collector of dark matter, that mysterious substance that comprises most of what we know and hold dear.

No, my friends, we cannot be dissuaded by mere cat calls from beyond the internets. We have an album to finish and a podcast to produce. We are behind schedule on both, and that’s okay, because we are determined to finish. HAARUMPH! Right, then. Sorry. I was listening to a Dale Carnegie tape someone left in the forge room a few decades ago. Sometimes that stuff gets into you head, like the earworm from hell. Anywho, we are basically finished mixing Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – that much is true. We’ve got another episode of Ned Trek in the can. Our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast will be posted by the end of the month. Projects, projects, projects.

I don’t know … maybe it’s time for a tour. Any takers?

Political Rants

Sand and salt.

April 27, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

Non-stop fun here in the land of the free. No coincidence that this is the week they dedicated the George W. Bush presidential library. Some of the key “decision points” of his presidency were in play this week. Let’s start with a honking big one.

Syria. Bush’s political allies (and many in the “muscular” liberal establishment) have been pushing for wider involvement in the Syrian conflict for a good long while now. This week, unconfirmed reports of the use of sarin gas by the Assad regime surfaced this week, by way of the Israeli and French intelligence services, for the most part. The Obama administration intelligence services seem ambivalent and non-commital on this evidence, but not so Admiral … I mean Senator John McCain and some of his clones, who really really really wants another mid East conflict on his resume of error.

McCain is once again proving why he would have been a catastrophic president. He affects to believe that creating a “safe zone” in northern Syria and arming the fractious opposition (which includes a strong element of jihadi fighters from the Gulf) will not lead to a broader confilct that will commit us to another long-term occupation of a Middle Eastern state, ignite a broader international war, and generally result in another Iraq-like catastrofuck. I say, let’s just drop McCain on Syria, since he’s so eager to put someone’s life on the line. And if chemical weapons are a “red line”, we should have drawn it before using white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions in Iraq. If Syria goes to the Hague, they should be in line right behind us.

Seneca Lake. A blockade by activists at the site of a salt cavern natural gas storage site being established by Inergy LLP resulted in arrests a few weeks ago. One of those arrested, Sandra Steingraber, was interviewed on the Capital Pressroom radio program this week along with her attorney. This project involves storing natural gas shipped in from outside the state in salt caverns left from old salt mining operations. Similar facilities across the nation have caused sinkholes, water pollution, etc., and now they want to site this thing on the largest of the Finger Lakes. Steingraber and her fellow protesters are fighting the good fight on this one. Pumping natural gas into geologically questionable formations beneath one of the largest fresh water lakes in the region seems like, well, not a real good idea.

Energy coporations and faulty intelligence. It’s like Bush all over again.

luv u,

Usual Rubbish

Ripping yarns.

April 20, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

Glad we got that sorted out. Another rogue operation shut down. Try to behave yourself from now on, Marvin. Marvin? MARVIN!!!

Right, well…. lots to keep track of. I know it may look easy, being a member of the virtual rock band Big Green, but there’s more to this than meets the eyes (or ears, for that matter). Plenty of demands on our time; enough tasks to fill this drafty old abandoned hammer mill to the rafters, quite frankly. Sure, I know – we haven’t gone on tour in a couple of years. No impromptu trips to Neptune, for instance, to take in the annual Methane Fest or perform at one of our favorite hyper-gravity venues (The Flathouse is particularly memorable, for me at least). But there’s more to being a band than performing, you know. Much more.

I have described in previous posts our grueling production schedule for our upcoming collection, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. A full album of 15 to 20 new songs in about a year’s time – that’s greased lightning in our world, my friends. Sure, I know – these are songs culled from a musical about the life, times, and presidential ambitions of our cousin Rick Perry, governor of the great state of Texas, and as such each number will be performed by a different musical ensemble (all of whom strangely resemble us). But it’s a big project nonetheless. Hands full, over here … hands full!

Then there’s our monthly podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, an extravaganza of useless gibberish, lovingly packaged and delivered to our listeners via iTunes. Each episode includes previously unreleased music as well as another installment of our continuing series, Ned Trek – the bizarre outer-space adventures of Captain Willard Mittilius Romney and his First Officer/Dressage Horse Mr. Ned, on board the Starship Free Enterprise. Last month, this most derivative crew of space adventurers visited the surface of Ozark 5, an outpost run by Gov. Louie Gomert, thereby initiating a series of unfortunate events that resulted in a titanic struggle, mano a mano, between Captain Romney and a giant ear of corn. Gripping drama.

So, sure … we’re occupied. It just looks like we’re a bunch of lazy lunks squatting in an abandoned mill.

Political Rants

The week that was. (Again.)

April 20, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

It’s hard to settle on one thing when so much is so fucked up, all at once, so I’m going to just set them up and knock them down.

Boston. I am thoroughly disgusted by this crime, by the callous brutality of it. I am sick with the notion that we might be entering an era when bombs go off in our cities with some regularity – hope to hell not. I am horrified at the loss of life and limb and amazed by the selflessness of those who helped others, not knowing or seemingly caring what price they might pay. I am also angered by the eagerness on the part of some organs of the press and near-press to hang the blame on someone when they don’t know WTF they’re saying.

Gun show. Another majority vote fails to carry legislation out of the rat hole that is the U.S. Senate – the proverbial Box of Crackers has once again screwed minimally useful legislation in favor of doing absolutely nothing. These people are hopeless, so just send them the hell home. If you can’t pass something as watered down and flaccid as Manchin Toomey, hang it up. Shame!

West Texas. Very few industrial accidents are truly accidental. The West, Texas fertilizer explosion is no exception. That plant was, by virtue of its location near a school, a nursing home, and an apartment complex, a disaster waiting to happen. Add to that the fact that they had no disaster planning, no fire alarms, very few safety measures in place, and managed to evade inspections, and you’ve got yourself a town-sized bomb. Will someone go to jail for this? I’ll believe it when I see it. We’re still waiting to see BP execs behind bars.

Maduro. Chavez’s successor won by what the U.S. press terms a razor thin margin – over 200,000 votes (here, that’s a mandate). The opposition, with the encouragement of our government, no doubt, is disputing the results, bringing Venezuela to the brink of a major crisis. This is a very difficult situation for the poor in that country, who are just inches away from having their meager stake in the Venezuelan economy taken away from them. Hard to see a good outcome here.

That’s all for now. Lights out.

luv u,

Usual Rubbish

Advance!

April 13, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

You did what to the whom? When was that again? Christ on a bike – I thought you agreed to stop running these freaking rogue operations out of the basement. What’s that? You ran it out of the attic? That’s not the point!

Ah, hello. Just caught me in the midst of yet another dressing down of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who, apparently, has some kind of crackpot entrepreneurial streak wired into him. (I need to talk to his inventor, the mad scientist Mitch Macaphee, about this.) Every time I turn around … and I mean every time, like, if I were to turn around right now it would happen … he’s got some new racket going. It’s like living with an audio-animatronic P.T. Barnum. Only with slightly less calliope music.

What’s the latest? Well, Marvin has been taking advance orders on our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, a collection of Norwegian carpenter songs … I mean, songs from a now-lost rock opera about the trials and tribulations of our cousin Rick Perry, Governor of Texas … an album which is now in post production and almost ready to rumble. (I understand the musical itself was lost over the side of a pleasure craft on Lake Tahoe … rumor has it, anyway.) Even before we’ve pressed the first MP3 in that painstaking way we do (note: we use a panini press to squeeze all the goodness into every compressed file), Marvin has rifled money out of our market with the promise of delivery later this year.

I see a couple of problems here. First, Marvin has only been taking orders from extraterrestrials. That raises some ethical questions, of course, but also pragmatic ones. For instance, how do we deliver on orders from Aldebaran Seven, placed by etheric entities only Marvin can see with his advanced optical scanners? Even more importantly, how do we bank “money” that is in the form of microwave transmissions from a distant galaxy. I think those are generally considered non negotiable currency here in the U.S. of A. Not on Aldebaran Seven, however.

Bottom line: We’re going to have a legion of hopping-mad Aldeberans after our sorry asses when we fail to fulfill these orders. Bloody robot! Second time this month!

Political Rants

Chain gang.

April 13, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

The thing that keeps popping into my mind as more details of the president’s budget emerge is the notion of how small-bore our political leaders are about everything. We face enormous problems – climate changes, massive unemployment, deindustrialization, economic inequality, rampant militarism, an out-of-control justice and penal system, rampant gun violence, and so on – and yet our politicians behave like the wizened, stingy little men they are and fail again and again to recognize the scale of what’s confronting us. Obama is no exception, his desire to reach a “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans so overriding that he appears to have forgotten who stood out in the sun, rain, whatever, for hours and voted for him last November.

Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that a Democratic president, serving in the wake of two decades of steady decline for the poor and working class, would opt for a plan that would cut the meager supplemental retirement checks of elderly people in order to preserve preferential treatment for the nation’s wealthy, who have been doing just fine since the Reagan years, thank you very much. He talks about balanced approaches and shared sacrifice, but what he seems to forget is that the vast majority of us have already carried more than our share of sacrifice. Many have paid with their jobs/careers, others with their homes, their retirement funds. And they are supposed to give up more on top of that? Ludicrous.

This is not a new formula, nor is it a surprise. Obama has been signalling this decision for a few years. He is just following the example of previous Democratic party presidents, particularly that of Bill Clinton, who was a master triangulator and who ruled in a way that assumed the poor, the workers, people on the left, and people of color had no where else to go politically. The only remedy for this cynicism is push back. Politicians respond to public pressure – it there is any “law of gravity” in politics, that is it. Look at how quickly the Occupy Wall Street movement changed the conversation over a year ago. It has since drifted back to austerity and small-mindedness, but that can be overcome. Look at the gun debate, at immigration, at gay rights. There is movement because politicians are looking at the masses of people moving these issues forward.

So… if anyone is going to save the poor, the disabled, the elderly, from a greater level of penury (imposed to service the interests of the rich), it will be us. Make a ruckus…. or they’ll fuck us. That is all.

luv u,

Usual Rubbish

Scatology.

April 6, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

That’s right, it’s “crab nebula”. What does it mean? How the hell should I know? What am I, some kind of astronomer or something?

Jesus Christ on a bike (which he may well could have been, had he lived in modern times), your brother goes and writes a song lyric and the next thing you know people expect you to tell them what the Sam Hill it means. If I knew that, then I would know what the hell Matt is talking about half the time when he talks … and I clearly don’t, even though he is my own flesh and blood. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother. It’s his songs that are heavy. Mucho heavy, baby.

What song am I being asked about? Well, it’s one of the tracks on our forthcoming album … I mean, collection, entitled Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Rumor has it the songs are part of the soundtrack of a musical about our cousin Rick Perry, but that the musical itself was lost over the side of a pleasure craft on Lake Tahoe.) The song in question is called “Evening Crab Nebula”, and it takes the form of three pieces of sage advice to Cousin Rick from one of his political consultants; one pep talk regarding his primary opponents; one cautionary trope about unseating a president; and this observation about the dangers of being too devout in your beliefs:

If you’re gonna’ follow that evening star
better be sure how wise you are
If you’re gonna’ follow that evening star
better not follow it all too far
or you’ll be choked and froze in the vacuum of space
Can’t treat the Crab Nebula
like it’s there to direct yuh
by pointing out some pertinent
biblical place

Now is that so hard to decipher? Well, of course it is. All political advice is that way, right? That’s why those consultants get the big bucks. (Where have I heard that lyric before? Hmmmm….)

Political Rants

Ripped from the heads.

April 6, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

This is just another survey of current issues in the news – don’t mind me. Tired, can’t focus.

Best friend — Some best friend you got there, doggy.

The Koreas. Yes, there are two of them. And yes, there was a war. But that’s about all Americans know about the Korean peninsula except that “North Korea started the war!” and “Kim Jong Sombody is crazy!” Meanwhile, we are flying stealth bombers and stealth fighters and nuclear armed B52s over South Korea in ostentatious demonstrations of force, using some of the very same aircraft that once turned the North into an apocalyptic hellscape. Earth to Obama: There is no military solution to this problem. You’ve got a State Department full of diplomats – send a few over to fashion a treaty with the North, and this will stop being a problem.

K-9 abuse. A few weeks ago, when the latest gun nut incident took place in nearby Herkimer, the State Police used a dog to sniff out the suspect in an abandoned building. The dog was shot dead, as you may have heard. Since then there have been several news stories about K-9 patrols, how the police care about them, etc. Bullshit. These animals should never, ever be put in harm’s way in this manner. There was no reason to sacrifice that dog for the sake of capturing this suicidal dead-ender who had nowhere to go but jail or the grave. I think the police lose sight of the fact that, for all their utility, working dogs are dependent upon humans for their welfare. They are, in essence, like toddlers in that they are trusting, inquisitive, and unable to make their own decisions. They rely on us to keep them from needlessly sacrificing themselves.

Rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t allow a young child to do something, don’t ask a dog to do it either.

Debt Patrol. Egyptians may have thought things were going from bad to worse over the last couple of years. Now the IMF has pulled into town, and the likelihood is that their misery has just begun. Mubarak had already substantially “liberalized” the country’s economy. Now their foreign reserves are extremely low, thanks in part to years of political upheaval and disruptions in tourism and other industries. Next stop, the Bolivia / Argentina treatment. One would hope that, once they’ve endured some of that, they will follow South America’s lead and break free of the global neoliberal institutions of economic control that have led so many to the land of misery.

luv u,

Usual Rubbish

Enter the pod.

March 29, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

The thing is, you have to take a crowbar to the lid, like this. Unggh. Unggggh. Arrrgh! Okay, that’s harder than it looks.

Oh, hi, stalwart friends of Big Green. It is I, Joe of Big Green. Just caught me in the process of trying to get the lid off of the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our very popular (in the plant kingdom) monthly podcast, just posted over the last couple of days and ready for download. We want to give people an idea of what they can expect when they download this sucker – all 1 hour and 45 minutes of it, or thereabouts. Wouldn’t want you having to cope with a pig in a poke, especially a porker of those dimensions. You have a right to know what’s in that great big bag of stupid… and know you shall.

Here’s what’s included in March Fiendraiser 2013 (our bogus fundraising episode), to wit:

Ned Trek VIII: The Corn of Ozark Five – Captain Willard Mittillius Romney and First Officer Mr. Ned (the talking dressage horse) are invited down to a little get-together with Louie Gomert, governor of Ozark Five … only to find their commander thrown into a titanic battle, mano-a-mano, with a hideous creature from beyond space already. Introduced by former Secretary of State and War Criminal at Large, Dr. Henry Kissinger.

Put The Phone Down – Our monthly gab session covering a range of topics, from birthday wishes to the entire universe, this month in dead famous people, strange reappearances, and so on. We also shake the tin cup for financial support. Or at least moral support. (We have even less morals than we do financials.)

Previously Unreleased Big Green tracks – We toss up three recordings like skeet and invite you to blow them to bits with your pump rifle of music criticism (talk about tortured metaphors!). Two demos from our 2008 International House album project; one that didn’t make it onto the final album, a song called Round Up; the second a demo version of Matt’s song Come Back Home. There is also a new, first-draft recording of a song we used to play in our terrestrial live performance days – a song called The Milkman Lives.

So listen in good health, friends. As always, let us know what you think … even before you think it.

Political Rants

Ten years after.

March 29, 2013 Joe Leave a comment

It’s been a decade since the start of a war that never should have happened, and we are still waiting for some accountability. More than 4,400 Americans killed – more than the number killed on Sept. 11 2001 by 19 individuals from countries other than Iraq. (Mostly from Saudi, but you get the point.) Estimates are in the hundreds of thousands for Iraqi deaths related to the conflict – Les Roberts’ Iraq Study Group had it well north of 600,000 back in 2006, and that was adjusting for concentrated areas of losses like Fallujah. That puts us in Milosovic territory for sure, and more like Suharto-land. The Serbian leader was brought to justice; not so much Indonesia’s dictator. The difference between those two cases have less to do with the magnitude of the crimes, more to do with the magnitude of their geopolitical allies.

That’s why I have long been a skeptic of the International Criminal Court. I have said this before, shouted it on the podcast, and I will say it again here: until they haul someone from a powerful country to The Hague, the effort will be a meaningless exercise. Iraq is an excellent test case. Given the number of deaths, given the destruction of a society, given the craven nature of the attack and the fact that it was an aggressive war – the most serious category of crime – our leaders should have been indicted at the very least. Nothing. Freaking. Useless.

Not only are the architects of the disastrous Iraq war not being held accountable, they are in fact skating from television program to television program, attempting to rewrite Iraq into a screaming success. They are, in effect, flaunting the law, daring it to come after them because they know it won’t, taunting the cowardly administration that shields them. Even worse, they are working to get us into the next conflict, in Iran, Syria, wherever. Not only aren’t they sorry about the catastrophe they brought upon Iraq and ourselves, they are only too eager to repeat the crime.

To paraphrase the president, are we really powerless in the face of such carnage? I think perhaps, but only by design. American political life demonstrates again and again how powerful the will of the people can be. Look at gay rights. Look at immigration. Our government has worked to insulate us from the experience of war by canceling the draft, borrowing the funds to keep the fighting going, etc. Perhaps we are simply not connected enough to act dramatically.

Perhaps. But nothing ever changes unless we do.

luv u,

Official site of the band Big Green