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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?
Political Rants

Shameless.

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In our monthly podcast, it’s my job to do a cheap (dirt cheap) imitation of Mitt Romney. (Matt’s got the heavy lifting – he has to talk like a horse.) And I think you can tell if you listen to more than one episode, my impression of him is shifting. But I think you might agree that Willard’s own impression of himself has mutated a hell of a lot faster than anyone would have imagined a few months ago.

We are truly living in a post-modern age of political rhetoric. Romney has a massive right-wing orchestra to blow hard on every note that passes his lips. He makes a claim, and it gets chorused incessantly by FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and countless others like them to millions of Americans. Together they create such a storm surge of bullshit that it pushes far inland to where the mainstream corporate media lives. They who spend most of their time trying to disprove the canard that they are radical leftists feel compelled to report on whatever’s being tossed up, whether it’s the massive Benghazi coverup or the “racism” of Shirley Sharrod. That’s how national news stories are made. That’s how a deadly skirmish in Libya becomes a bigger scandal than Bush’s failure to stop the 9/11 plot.

Then of course there’s the fact that neither candidate wants to talk about global warming. I guess it takes time away from agitating for more drilling, more fracking, more wanton extraction from every available patch of land. Needless to say the right-wing gas machine is totally behind this, but then so is the mainstream and even the mildly liberal media. If I hear one more pronouncement from one of the three white dudes at Politico that we’re heading for a fiscal cliff, I might explode. One morning late this week, I literally watched them complain about the presidential candidates not giving ample time to the debt issue while right behind them a weather map showed the approach of Hurricane Sandy, a.k.a. Frankenstorm, whose confluence is no doubt fueled by our warming atmosphere.

Needless to say, there’s plenty of blame to go around for our current state of denial on a whole range of vital issues. But if someone deserves a trophy for obfuscation, it’s Romney.

luv u,

jp

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This is Big Green – Octobercast 2012

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This is Big Green – Octobercast 2012. Features: 1) Mr. Ned, Romney’s Dancing Horse, Episode 3; 2) Put the phone down: Matt gives his account of playing spaceman with Dr. Waleed Abdalati; 3) Remembering Andy Williams, Barry Commoner, and Sen. Arlen Spector; 4) More madness assorted; 5) Song: Paradise, by Big Green; 6) Song: Kublai Khan, by Big Green; 7) Graceless exit

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Usual Rubbish

There is a town.

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Well it’s been a while. Time to open up the old mailbag, right? Right, then, right!

Here’s a little missive from alert listener Ozymandius Lake in southern Nevada, somewhere near the Arizona border. (“No fixed address” is a strange name for a street, but anyway…)

Dear ignorant buggers,

It is manifestly obvious to me, Ozymandius Lake, that you people are a bunch of frauds. Stinking, lousy frauds! I may have no fixed address, but that doesn’t mean I’m gullible. You don’t live in the Cheney Hammer Mill! That place was knocked down decades ago. And even if it hadn’t been, it was hardly large enough to accommodate everything that you claim happens there. And that Rick Perry album you’re producing – there ain’t no such thing. I’ve been living in these bottoms for nigh onto twenty years, and I ain’t never seen no Rick Perry album.

Yours respectfully,

O.L.

Well, Ozymandius – taking your last comment first – I would have to say, “look upon my works and despair”, because there is indeed a Rick Perry album on the way, Big Green is indeed producing it, and it is called Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. If you received our podcast out there in Nevada (I think we have a repeater in Reno), you would know that’s true. As for the mill, if it doesn’t exist, I’ve been sleeping in the street for the last ten years. Could explain a lot. I’ll look into it. Thanks, Oz!

Here’s another one, this from Polly (Esther) Batson in Paolo Alto, California…

Dear Big Green,

You haven’t said anything about Big Zamboola in months. Did he return to his home solar system, or is he just lurking quietly in the the cloistered basement of the mill, keeping his titanic gravitational forces to himself?

Best,

Polly

Thanks for the letter, Polly. Didn’t know people wrote letters anymore in this age of Twitter, Facebook, blah blah blah. Anywho, no worries about Big Zamboola. He has kept quiet, true, over the past year or so, mainly because he shares with sFshzenKlyrn, our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, that transcendental quality of being an gaseous entity of no determinate shape or density. Sometimes he just pops up out of nowhere, like a jack in the box. Zamboola in the box, we call him.

Okay, back to the non-existent studio with me to work on that non-existent album. If only I had known of its insubstantial nature before I started working on it!

 

Political Rants

Everything he bakes.

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Coming down to the wire, here. A little more than two weeks to the general election and it’s going to be a nail biter. Thing is, it shouldn’t even be close, but it very likely will be. And that’s not good news for the 47%. Or the 99%. Because we all stand to be screwed big time if it goes the wrong way.

Right now, Mitt Romney is running around the country like the freaking Candyman, promising everyone everything they want with zero cost. We’ll cut your taxes twenty percent and you’ll get to keep all of your deductions! We’ll make sure rich people pay the same percentage (key term) of taxes that they pay now! All of you middle class folks will be able to deduct 18%, no, 25%, no, 40% of your taxable income! Pick a number! We’ll do all that, raise the military budget a trillion dollars, and reduce the deficit at the same time! I’ll create 12 million jobs! No rain ever again … unless, of course, you like rain!

It is often said that incumbency has its advantages, and it certainly does, but it has many drawbacks. One is that, as president, it’s harder to go around saying what you are going to do because the first thing people wonder is, well, why aren’t you doing it now? You are, in essence, applying for the job you already have. Your performance in that job is an actuality, not an abstraction. On the other hand, if you’re the challenger, you can promise anything, make any wild claim, run against mathematics itself, and act as though you have a big vat of miracle sauce locked up in your car elevator, and that once you take the oath of office, you’ll start ladling that stuff all over everything that’s bad and make it good.

The president did much better in the second debate. Plenty for me to disagree with, to be sure, but a better performance. However, that first debate had an impact. It encouraged voters – particularly women, it seems – to feel more comfortable with the idea of a Romney presidency. I’ve said this before and I’ll likely say it again before November 6 – there is no reason to feel comfortable with the notion of John Bolton running American foreign policy. If you’re worried about the economy, think of what extremist austerity and another decade long war will do to it.

Let go of your childhood wishes. Or you may end up really eating those dishes. More on this later.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Hello, yes.

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Knee deep in other matters, my friend. That’s about all I can tell you. Thanks. Hope the ankle trouble gets better. (click!)

Oh, hi. Just in the midst of blowing someone off… I mean, ending a phone call somewhat abruptly. Just been one of those weeks. Can’t find time to do anything, including this blog. Shoo-wee. Busy, busy, busy. What other meaningless chatter can I share?

Big Green news: Matt and I are still mixing cousin Rick’s new album. Mixed another song last night. These will be finished versions of some of the numbers we featured on the podcast over the last year. (Hey, collect them all!) We’ve done about half a dozen as of this week. So it goes.

Recorded another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN’s now near-monthly feature, Mr. Ned, a politically charged and wholly insensitive dramatization of the adventures of Willard “Mitt” Romney’s dressage horse, on the model of 60s sit-com “Mr. Ed” – everything from bad scripts to low production values. Talk about a cop job! Anyway, you’ll hear it and hear it soon. Spoiler alert: Willard and Ned walk through a time portal and take a trip through interstellar space. With hilarious consequences. (Well…. hilarious if you are easily amused by childish humor. I, myself, don’t go in for that sort of thing. I find it crude and unrefined. You, however….)

What came in the mail bag this month? Not a lot. Bills, bills, bills, political advertisements, eviction notices, misdirected packages, you name it. No fan mail. No one writes the colonel. We just sit here, fashioning those little fishes out of gold, then melting them down and making them again, over and over. (Oh, christ. I’ve lapsed into Gabriel Garcia Marquez-land.)

Okay, that’s all from the mill. I’m dead on my feet, frankly. Can barely press the keys. (Piano or computer). Sleeeeep, Joe Perry, sleeeeeep…..

Political Rants

Bite back the bad news.

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I’m not going to say much about politics this week. Just bracketed with work, school, more work, etc. A few quick comments and I’m out – sorry for the lameness.

Watched the Biden / Ryan matchup. My thought about presidential and vice presidential debates is that you tend to feel the person you agree with was the winner. Only makes sense, right? This was a much easier contest to watch than the last one, I must say, but it retained one of the central themes of the presidential debate: Romney/Ryan does not want to talk specifics about anything, and are now in full flight from their own positions.

The purported “numbers guy” seems very reluctant to use any when it comes to talking about their tax plan. They are planning to cut marginal tax rates to 20% across the board, while increasing military spending something like a trillion dollars or more above current spending levels. Ryan was claiming that this can be balanced by closing loopholes on upper income earners. Horseshit. Where’s the proof? They don’t have any numbers. They can’t name deductions that they would suggest in any negotiations with Congress. They’re talking about an enormous gap that their plan would greatly expand, they claim they can close it, but they offer no details. They’ve got a secret plan to cut taxes and balance the budget while raising military spending: it’s called “Just trust us.”

The laser focus on the Benghazi terror attack is instructive about how efficient the right-wing echo chamber is. Fox News blows this story to its many millions of viewers, along with Rush and the gang; the more mainstream outlets pick it up out of nervousness. What the hell – they are blowing this thing up as if it were a bigger failure than 9/11. They certainly talk about it more than Afghanistan, where Americans are killed every week, for chrissake.

That’s all for now. More later.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Distinct possibilities.

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The trouble with doing liner notes is that, damn it, there aren’t any liners nowadays. Nothing to put the notes on. Are you getting all this? Great.

Just dictating my thoughts to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). What else are PRA’s for anyway if not taking dictation? I had a dictating machine once, but it went off one day and started an authoritarian government in the Philippines … so now I’ve got Marvin. Sounds like a foot disease. (Don’t tell Marvin I said that. Gratefully, he’s not programmed to read blogs.)

What am I dictating to said personal robot assistant? Just incidental liner notes on our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yes, I know, this is billed to be an album by Cousin Rick Perry, for Cousin Rick Perry, featuring Cousin Rick Perry. That is all true. But it is also the next Big Green album, and damn it, it needs liner notes like carter needs liver pills. (Ask your grandfather, kid.) This is a complicated task, so it is taking up much of Marvin’s time these days. Between draining the water out of the basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill and putting buckets under all the leaks in the roof, Marvin is simply run off his wheels. Woe is he who serves Big Green. Woe, indeed.

Whoa. Indeed! Is that yet another band backing up Cousin Rick? What the hell, that makes an even dozen now. It seems like every track has a different backing band, each one weirder than the last. All of these freaking credits. Once we get done paying the mechanical rights on this sucker, there isn’t going to be enough profit left to buy a discarded sandwich at the local pub. (My go-to place for discarded sandwiches.) Damned job-killing regulations! Who the hell says we have to pay every band that plays with Cousin Rick, let alone list their names on the freaking album?

BMI, ASCAP…. anyone else? All right, damn it. Let’s see. Frank and the Texas Hots. No way am I including them. What else have we got?

 

Political Rants

Resolved.

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You’ve heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates – no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, “He’s over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!”)

And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points:

Romney: “I don’t want to cut our commitment to education”

Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I didn’t hear Romney advocate cutting anything. So… if he’s going to cut the federal deficit without raising revenue – in other words, reforming the tax code in a “revenue neutral” fashion – where are those cuts coming from? Not from defense – he’s adding many billions to that as he’s boasted many times. Apparently not from education. His intimations about Medicaid spending sounded like cheap sleight of hand; how does the federal government save money by block granting programs like Medicaid? You’re still spending the money, only without the knowledge that it’s being spent on what it’s intended for.

Romney: OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.

This counts as kind of a bidding war with himself. Romney’s people have been floating this notion of a $17,000 deduction cap on individual income tax. Wednesday night he worked that up to $25 – 50K. Do I hear $75K? Wait another week. Once again, caught advocating for a deeply unpopular policy of ending major deductions like mortgage interest, Romney is cycling backwards at lightning speed. We still have no information on where “loopholes” and deductions could be found to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts – 20% across the board, which he has endorsed.

Romney: It’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan. Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.

Say what? Since the hell when? A week ago, Romney’s plan was for sick poor people to go to the emergency room – that’s what he told David Gregory, anyway. And if keeping your kids on your “family plan” is common in the marketplace, it’s news to working people.

Then there’s the look. The patient, condescending smile while Obama is talking. It’s actually the same look Romney uses when people are saying nice things about him. Fact is, he uses that all the time when he’s waiting to speak. I call it his screen saver.

Barry: Here’s a free line for the next debate. “Hey, Mitt – glad to see you’ve finally come around to my positions on health care, education, and taxes. I’m thinking about asking you to join my administration.”

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Deafening me with science.

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A little louder. Little louder still. Forget headroom! We like our albums LOUD. Turn it up just as LOUD as you can. What? Leave the room? In the middle of a mix?

Okay, well that‘s discouraging. Here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York, mixing our … I mean, cousin Rick’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and I’m just discovering now that I am a lousy engineer. Who know (aside from everyone who listens to my work)? Thank the god of your choice that I have Matt Perry to work with, a.k.a. “Mr. Ears” himself. No, that’s not because he wears Spock-like ear extensions. I’m not saying he doesn’t, mind you … I’m just saying that’s not the reason for the moniker. Though after being summarily ejected from our mixing session due to excessive loudness, I’m thinking about calling him “Mr. Mouth” from now on.

Not sure how Matt can mix an album with his ears ringing, having been recently mentioned by NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati in a speech to students about why he became a scientist in the first place. (Waleed was a neighbor and Matt’s best friend back in the day.) They used to play astronaut in our backyard (as well as the vast stretch of open fields that existed there at that time – perfect landscape for an alien planet). Waleed went on to be an engineer and climate scientist; Matt a conservation officer at a wildlife sanctuary. Waleed works for NASA. Matt wrote One Small Step. So in his own way, each has made his contribution to the nation’s space effort.

Still, I can make a contribution to mixing this album, and I’ll tell you how. One word: Marvin (my personal robot assistant). I’ll just program him to do my bidding, send him into the studio, and he’ll turn all the knobs up to eleven. We’ll be able to hear this album from space, even when it’s not being played. Woo-hoo!

Okay…. enough about me. Just wanted to let you know that the latest episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN is now available. Two new “rough draft” recordings by Rick Perry, another episode of Nedd the Dancing Horse, and a brief remembrance of Neil Armstrong, first man on another world. Not bad for free. Check it out.

Did you say something? Couldn’t hear you over the LOUD MUSIC.

Political Rants

Week that was.

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A lot of campaign noise this week. The various cable networks are completely possessed by the elections at this point. So…. I’ll try to talk about something other than the presidential race this week, just to give you a break. Let’s see how far I get.

To bomb or not to bomb. This week an old acquaintance posted an image on Facebook of Benjamin Netanyahu holding up that cartoon-like image of a bomb with a lit fuse, with the hilarious comment, “Apparently Iran is run by Boris Badinoff”. What’s not funny is that we’re still talking about this, without considering the consequences, once again. Netanyahu is channeling Bush/Cheney 2003, talking about the most dangerous regimes gaining possession of the most destructive weapons. We have seen this movie before, folks. If Bibi wants war, let him be at the head of the line. Another volunteer for the front!

Boston Klan rally. I’m sure some of you saw that group of senate staffers from Scott Brown’s office, parading around with Elizabeth Warren signs, doing cartoon Indian war hoops and chopping the air smirkingly. When you watch this video, just remember: these people are on the federal payroll. This is your tax dollars at work. And remember something else … this is the logical outcome of Scott Brown making race an issue in this campaign. By what he says, he obviously thinks Native American ancestry is something you can recognize by sight. Unsurprisingly superficial coming from this refugee from a designer shirt ad.  I hope Warren kicks his sorry ass this November.

Sacrifice. Sat in line at a medical office this morning with a guy who served in Vietnam when he was 19. He was drafted. One of the ladies who draws blood at this clinic has a son who’s been to Afghanistan, I don’t know, three times, four times. Lost count. He’s got constant headaches from concussion, has to start getting shots in his neck. How long are we going to ask these people to be the only ones in the country paying a price for our bankrupt foreign policy? If we had had a draft like the one that guy at the clinic faced, Afghanistan and Iraq probably would never have happened.

A child could see that this is unfair. So … why do we keep doing it?

luv u,

jp