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?
Usual Rubbish

Sing it loud.

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Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare … disgusting. Oh, well.

Yep, we’ve got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally – he wouldn’t stop blinking. I think it’s all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end.

Right, well…. we’re not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green. No, we are practical mofo’s, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo’s you read about in the Sunday paper.  Fact is, we’re recording an album and we need to freaking hear the bastard – we all admit that. To deny it would be just plain silly.

What’s the album about? Glad you asked. Give a listen to the last episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, wherein I believe we give a rough explanation of the project. I believe we do – don’t quote me on that. It’s probably somewhere between our seventeen apologies for the previous month’s episode and our airing of cousin Rick Perry’s latest song, “Come Back Mean”, which features the immortal lyric:

Kick me a dog
Go scour the neighborhood
Bring me the best kickin’ dog you can find
Go get me Planned Parenthood

Old Rick is singing from the heart right there. (Though it does sound eerily reminiscent of another organ slightly to the south.)

Yes, so… we’re taking all of cousin Rick’s songs, polishing them up a little bit, and placing them on a long playing record (a.k.a. a bunch of MP3s) where they can be downloaded by the likes of you. What you’re hearing on the podcast are “first drafts” – rough mixes of basic tracks. What you will hear on the final album (working title: “Cowboy Scat”) will be finished pieces (of something), which in many cases may sound…. substantially like the podcast versions …. but (and this is important) not necessarily!

Okay, well… I’ve wandered a bit. Nothing new there. Ooops. And there goes the light switch. Technology!

Political Rants

Austeritarianism.

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The international consensus on forced austerity was soundly rejected this past week in both Greece and France. That’s what happens when you let people speak their minds – they sometimes opt for inconvenient solutions. As much as I love Jon Stewart, even he got this one wrong – the Greeks are not political confusniks addicted to cradle-to-grave government benefits. Their financial train wreck is as much a function of wealth privilege over there as it is over here. When they went to the polls this past weekend, they chose the parties that opposed the Euro zone plan, both on the left and the right. That’s not surprising; the bailout basically benefits that country’s financial sector, at the cost of Greek workers. There have always been political groupings on the extreme left and right in Greece, so everyone went for the candidates who (a.) opposed the bailout and (b.) aligned with them politically, generally speaking.

The bankruptcy of what Greek and French voters rejected couldn’t be more obvious. Greece has gone through several cycles of austerity-driven budget cuts, massive layoffs, rate hikes, etc., and the result has been the same. Step 1: You cut budgets, you throw government workers out on the street, and there’s less money in the economy. Step 2: Lower aggregate earnings and consumer spending means less revenue into the government, which in turn widens the budget deficit. Step 3: The Eurozone demands more cuts.  Step 4:  see Step 1. Mix and repeat. Can you say “death spiral”? This is, in essence, what is happening in England and in the United States in slightly less dramatic fashion, though on a much grander scale since their economies are so much larger than Greece’s.

So… the people have spoken. And the markets are reacting. Not real fond of democracy, the investment community. It involves way too much uncertainty. The fact is, they are grappling with many of the same problems that are plaguing us. We had an overinflated housing market, blown up even further by derivatives speculation, then when the whole house of cards came crashing down, our deeply deregulated banking system left some of our largest financial institutions almost fatally exposed. Their crisis was in part precipitated by ours, but because they have a monetary union and not a political union, it seems like 20-odd different crises rather than one big conglomerated one. And just as austerity is lengthening the depression (yes, depression – ask Krugman) over here, it will bring only misery to the continent as well.

This system is obviously broken. Cutting spending may serve other political ends, but it will not fix the problem.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Rooms to let.

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Right up those stairs … watch your step, now … is the master bedroom. The one with the stagnant puddles in the middle of the floor. That’s where that drip in the living room is coming from. We’re conserving water, you see. “Big Green” has to stand for something.

Oh, hello blog post readers from around the world (and Italy, too). This may not be the best time to drop by. I’m taking a potential renter on the grand tour of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our palatial squat here in upstate New York. Times being what they are (and gigs being pretty thin on the ground just lately), we have been forced to consider the possibility of taking on tenants. Yes, I advertised in the local Pennysaver. (Someone said I should move up to the Nickelsaver, but I’m not made of money, frankly.) Gotten quite a few calls, at least by Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s count. He’s answering the phone, which is helpful… but I’m a little tired of the voicemail routine every time I ask him something.

I know what you’re going to say … but that’s okay, go ahead and say it anyway. You know – the trope about how we’re squatters, we don’t own the property, we have no right to rent it out to others. Sure, sure – that’s easy for non-squatters to say. The way I see it, once you’ve been somewhere for a dozen years, you’ve earned the right to, I don’t know, monetize your investment of time and sweat. We’ve put a lot of time into this place, to be sure. Not so much sweat, actually – it’s falling down around our ears. But time, for sure.

That’s not all we’re monetizing around this place. We’re also renting out pages on our new Web site, http://www.big-green.net. We’re offering the services of Lincoln and Anti-Lincoln as legal advisors. (Not lawyers, mind you. They’re no longer members of the bar association, unless you count the local tavern circuit.) We’re renting out the mansized tuber as a pleasure vehicle – very popular with the kiddies. And we’ve opened our basement studio up to karaoke singers. Should generate some interesting content for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, at the very least.

Oops, got to go. Matt’s hitting a rack tom with a stick and playing a kazoo like a duck call. And there’s no live mic nearby.

Political Rants

Born again (again).

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Yes, I know. The president’s bin Laden victory lap was a bit much by Spock standards. (George W. Bush being more in the Kirk category.) But by the standards of American election year politics, it was pretty subtle. So the resulting outrage from the right was all the more laughable. Seriously – these are the people who had Dubya fly a jet fighter onto an aircraft carrier (which they had turned around to keep San Diego out of the shot), parade around in a flight suit, and then do his famously premature victory speech under an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner. These are the people who incessantly reminded us of their greatness throughout the Bush terms, and who continue to this very day.

Luckily for them, we are Americans and, as such, are born anew each and every morning. We have no collective memory, like a nation in advanced dementia. We do not value knowledge of our own history; in fact, the very term ‘history’ carries a negative connotation. Our politicians take advantage of this, of course – who wouldn’t? – and accordingly serve up the same hash over and over again. Cutting taxes makes everything better. Check! Budget cuts lead to growth and prosperity. Check! Antagonizing and even attacking other countries will make us safer. Check! On we go.

Obviously, the Republicans do not have a corner on this franchise. The Obama administration is carrying forward a lot of their policies for them, including ludicrous destabilizing boondoggles like missile defense batteries in Eastern Europe. But just now the GOP happen to be indulging somewhat gratuitously in the not entirely unrealistic notion that we do not remember yesterday any better than the day before. Right now the conservative candidates for the GOP nomination are lining up behind Romney, as it was always certain that they would, and singing his praises. After a bruising primary fight during which Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, and others unsparingly and unflinchingly heaped scorn upon the Mittster, to see them now stumping on his behalf inspires a kind of cognitive dissonance that should spark our collective memory a bit. But we shall see. 

It is another new day, after all. 

luv u,

jp  

Usual Rubbish

Trifecta.

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Can’t hear you. Can you turn it up? I don’t know… to eleven, or maybe thirteen. Still nothing. Play harder, faster…. oh, wait. Didn’t plug your cord into the console. Sorry. Sorrrreeeee…

Oh, hi. Hey … don’t let anybody tell you (in case anybody ever tries) that producing yourself is easy. It’s not, man, and I’ll tell you why. You are the engineer. And the guitar tech. And the arranger. You get the drinks. And the snacks. It’s bloody maddening – I even have to oil Marvin (my personal robot assistant) when he starts to squeak over there on the percussion riser. Anyway… we’re elbow deep in production on our next album. Yes, it’s a themed piece … almost a rock opera, except with a lot less coherence. It grapples with monumental themes … if you understand monumental to mean, simply, mental.

It’s been busy ’round these parts, I don’t mind saying. Busier than we’re used to, quite frankly. Recording, of course. Then there’s our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. The frenetic pace of once a month is enough to exhaust anyone not used to exertion. Oh, and also … we released a new video of one of the many songs recorded by “cousin” Rick Perry – a little number named “Devil Romney” that was featured on the podcast a couple of episodes ago. That was exhausting. Matt did all the work, of course… but it was plain exhausting just watching him. And then that upload to YouTube really took it out of me.

We are, of course, still making plans for our upcoming trip to the moon as an advance team for the Gingrich campaign. I know what you’re going to say – he dropped out …. of the presidential race. Yes, we know that. But he’s still going to be the nominee. He said so himself, you know. I can only imagine this means he is going to be installed as King of the Moon any day now. I have, in fact, written a celebratory march to commemorate his coronation – a somewhat stilted jubilee for our bloated monarch. If I can find where I left my energy and motivation, I may just have it ready for the next podcast episode.

Until then, please help yourself to the slabs of content we’ve been flinging out in every direction like frisbees. I’ll be in the cellar, making widgets.

 

Political Rants

News jam.

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Lots going on, my friend. I’m just going to blow through a few stories and see what comes out on the other end.

Missile Envy. I’m thinking they should declare April international missile month, since we started with North Korea’s failed launch of their three-stage Galaxy-3 rocket, which they claimed was intended to send a satellite into orbit, and we’ve closed out the month with shots in India and Pakistan both. The first incident, of course, had officials, politicians, and commentators practically foaming at the mouth with both outrage and derision, plus plenty of snark when the thing broke into pieces (like many of our early missiles did). There would be consequences! they intoned righteously, joining in near universal condemnation and promises of further isolation.

Jump forward about a week. India launches its AGNI-V A5 ICBM, what is indisputably a ballistic missile. Their officials brag that it is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and that it can reach Beijing or Shanghai – two major cities in a nation India fought a war with in 1962.  The reaction over here? Crickets. Serious crickets. Ho-hum. Boys will be boys. Now this week, Pakistan (which has fought three wars with India) launches their latest ballistic missile. Here is the report from the Daily News:

The United States declined to criticise Pakistan too for test-firing a nuclear-capable missile less than a week after India tested a long range missile, but considered it “most important” that Islamabad had informed New Delhi beforehand.

Once again – a collective yawn. So let me get this straight… when the nation that got annihilated (by our bombs) back in the 1950s launches a satellite, it’s a huge problem. But when two nuclear-power allies launch openly offensive ballistic missiles and brag about their destructive capabilities … that’s okay. Got it.

Gingrich Wins. Actually not, but the way he talks about it, it’s hard to tell. I’m going to miss the Newtster, frankly. He brought a certain element of unpredictability to a pretty bland late primary season, once the more entertaining contenders dropped out and it was left to Old Bland Willard and Rick (Man-On-Dog) St. Bore-em.  That mouth – there’s always something dropping out of it. Though the convention is still months away, so there still may be an opportunity for him to inject a little more color into a very drab coronation.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

What the frank.

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Frank, dropped it again. Gosh darn the blankety-heck. What the bacon-and-eggs is the matter with this motor-trucking washing machine? Cheese and crackers!

Oh, yeah… it’s that time of the week again. Time for all of you out there in cyberspace to peek inside the mad vortex of Big Green’s life here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Sorry about all of that salty language a moment ago. Our clothes washing device (enormously handy invention) is no longer operating properly, causing frustration, even something akin to anger and resentment. Strange, we humans. I do hope my outburst didn’t cause you any consternation. If needed, counseling is available on Big Green’s counseling page.

Okay, so… as you can see, I have been remanded to sensitivity training. I’m having to edit my language (What the frank! Who in hades do these rubber chuckers think they are?) and regularly evince concern over the effect my words and actions may be having on those who experience them. You see, ever since Matt and I started our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN (the April episode has just been posted, btw ), we’ve had to be a bit more mindful of the things that fall randomly out of our mouths when a microphone is placed in front of us. I, for one, have said some hurtful things … things I have had cause to regret. Oh, yes … words that hurt.

What precisely? Well…. listen to the March podcast and you’ll get an idea. For instance, typically we pay our respects to fallen celebrities. Last month it was Davy Jones of the Monkees and Andrew Breitbart of the Interwebs. As Matt pointed out on the air, I was a little less than sufficiently solemn about our remembrance. (I believe I went so far as to suggest Davy may have been taken by primate poachers, which was wrong … just wrong.) This month’s episode is no improvement, and I’m sure I’ll be apologizing when May rolls around. Thank god this isn’t a weekly show! I’ve already said things I regret since posting it. There isn’t enough sensitivity training in the universe for the likes of me.

Fortunately, we have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to monitor our transgressions. It takes a robot, they say. Or a village. Same deal.

Political Rants

Better than.

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There isn’t much I can say about the presidential race except … it’s going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Much has been said about the general lack of enthusiasm about both major candidates. It seems we Americans always find ourselves in this situation. Certainly, we focus too much on famous people (i.e. politicians) and not enough on what is really important (i.e. politics). I supported Obama in 2008, but not because I loved him. Rather, it was because McCain would have been an unmitigated disaster – a point he has proven every time he’s opened his mouth over the last three years. With respect to the presidency, voting is a zero-sum game. If you lose, the other wins. And the other, my friends, gets worse every time around.

In all honesty, the Republican party is more virulent and destructive every time they return to power. It’s hard to imagine an administration more regressive and destructive than that of George W. Bush, but judging by Romney’s advisors – folks like John Bolton – it’s not hard to imagine that we would get just that. They will, of course, attempt to conceal their extremism starting … well, starting last week, when Santorum suspended his campaign and effectively ended the primary season. Romney will now be the nominee, and being the Colorforms (another sixties toy) creature he is, they will now stick a more moderate outfit to his two-dimensional frame. It’s Mitt the Moderate, once again! Come on, ladies! He didn’t mean it when he told Mike Huckabee  that he believes life begins at conception! Come on, Latinos! He was only pandering when he said Arizona’s SB 1070 “papers, please” law was a model for the nation!

Fortunately for Romney and for the Republican party, pop culture in the United States is a cross between a bulimic twelve-year-old and someone with advanced Alzheimer’s. We’re stuck in the perpetual purge/gorge cycle, and we can’t remember what happened yesterday … or even earlier today. Romney is the perfect politician for that circumstance. He apparently has no actual convictions, so he can seem equally committed to any portfolio of views that might fit a given electoral situation. Even having extensive video archives of him taking contradictory positions somehow doesn’t register. So what is likely to happen this fall? Anyone’s guess.

I’m not an Obama acolyte. There were some serious missteps over the past few years that demonstrate a certain lack of boldness on his part. But there’s no question but that he was better than the alternative, and he remains so today.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Anudder home.

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Where did I put my html tags? I thought I packed them with my socks, but they don’t appear to be in there. WFT, man…. getting a new home is always such a pain.

No, friends. We have not abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That would be something you might expect from the department of redundancy department (of redundancy). We have, however, abandoned our old web site and moved into a new one, designed by, I don’t know, professional web designers… as opposed to my sorry ass, who threw together our last site with Front Page and some tweezers … not to mention some cracked old photo manipulation software. Yeah, that’s right. Do I have to draw you a picture? (Actually… that would have been better than what came out of that software.)

Anywho… out with the old, in with the new. We’ve been using WordPress for Hammermill Days (and, earlier, Notes from Sri Lanka) for over five years, and so we thought, hey, why not build the whole freaking site using the same software? It actually works, you can edit it from anywhere using a Web browser…. How easy is that? Too easy! That’s what Mitch Macaphee says. Being a mad scientist, he thinks things should be hard … at least as hard as building Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was. Sure, he built Marvin out of spare parts and bric-a-brac he had lying about his lab, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Building a sentient being never is, my friends.

Now, the cynical and suspicious-minded amongst you (and you all know who you are) will imagine that this web site face lift is all about our supreme ambition to become special assistants to inevitable president-elect and future king of the moon Newt Gingrich; that we somehow abandoned and discarded our illin’, aging old web site for a shiny, sexy younger one, like … well, like … something some politician did once. That is a dirty lie. Fact is, we have already been invited by Newt Gingrich – future president and current Lincoln in his own mind – to advise him on interplanetary relations including, most specifically, his plans for our nearest neighbor in space. In point of fact, we will be a bit like the late Richard Holbrook, who was given the Af-Pak portfolio. (We will be in charge of the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, so it might be called the LunaMaSa portfolio, in media culture shorthand-speak.)

So anyway… welcome to Big Green’s new home on the Web. Take a look around. Kick the tires. Leave comments. Move in to one of the pages and order expensive dinners. Glad to have yuh.  

 

Political Rants

Commierat.

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Another challenging week for those who value sanity. Let’s see what we’ve got in the old political grab bag:

Go West. Channeling Joe McCarthy, congressman Allen West name tagged the entire Congressional Progressive Caucus as members of the communist party this week. Interesting choice. Is this dude trying to lead us back bravely to 1952? Because if he does, he will not be a congressman at the end of that process. Black people effectively did not have the right to vote in Florida back then, let alone represent their constituencies in Congress. Do go there, Congressman! Stay in this decade, at least.

Memento Santorum. Well, this is disappointing. Just when I was getting used to the knock-down drag-out fight that was the Republican primaries, they come to a screeching halt. My guess is that someone got on the phone to old Rick – time to pack it in, old man, and let Mitt start kicking at his general election strategy. Perhaps Mr. Friess made the call himself – suggested Rick hold his ambition between his knees, so to speak. Probably good advice. Looked like the voters of Pennsylvania were prepared to reject him and his bigoted politics for a second time in six years. Nasty S.O.B., that one. Still…. disappointing. Now it’s all Thurston Goodhair Car-Elevator the Third. Even the banker-Republicans are a little disenchanted, but … they’ll rally.

Gun Play. The alleged killer of Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman was arrested and arraigned this week on charges of second-degree murder. They are essentially accusing him of driving a truck through the truck-sized hole in Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law – the one that essentially legalizes murder for anyone with enough brains to arrange shooting their victim without any witnesses. This law is cousin to similar legislation passed or being introduced in state legislatures across the country through the good offices of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), basically an instrument of the NRA in these cases. Inasmuch as the left has all but completely folded on the gun issue, the gun lobby needs to justify its existence by pressing for ever more absurdly permissive legislation on gun ownership, gun toting, and gun use.

“Stand Your Ground” in Florida amounts to standing any ground at any time; a society of vigilantes reminiscent of the film-inspired myths of the 19th Century American West. What could possibly go wrong?

Crime of the Century. A guy in Utica just attempted to rob three banks armed with a toilet plunger. This followed by what sounds like a keystone-cops type of chase by local law enforcement around an ATM. Who says all of the truly big crimes happen in big cities?

luv u,

jp