Tag Archives: 2000 Years To Christmas

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Who the hell are we? It’s all a blur to us now.

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Remember those blurry shots of us romping around Forest Hill Cemetery back in our old home town? Sure you do – we’ve used them a million times. There we were, just posing with the marble angels, when the photographer decided to take shots of us running as he ran backwards in front of us. That’s when the world went all wiggly.

Well, that was back in the early nineties. As I said, we’ve been using those as publicity shots for decades, mostly because they’re some of the few decent images of us from when we were youngish. In those days, people didn’t have hi-def video cameras in their pockets. Phones were something wired to the wall (pretty much) and cameras were a thing. (Ask your mother.)

Unlike a lot of nobody bands at that time, we were fortunate enough to know some first-rate photographers, like friend of Big Green Leif Zurmuhlen. (He’s still shooting up a storm for pubs like Nippertown in Albany, NY.) The blurry images were taken by somebody else competent. But the point is that our best shots are from those days when skilled people with cameras happened to be our friends.

Case of mistaken identity

Given that we spent a fair amount of time in a blur, it’s not surprising that we might get confused with other people. I mean, look at the photo – that could be anybody. And frankly, with a name like Big Green, one might expect to encounter doppelgangers. It has two common words, and one of them is a color, for crying out loud.

Well … it happened. Not sure exactly how, but our catalog of poor-selling music got mixed up with that of another act named Big Green. (I believe there’s more than one, actually.) It’s a hip hop artist, and a number of their works were attributed to our account, just as a few or ours have (and continue to be) attributed to their account. As we’re working on a new album, we thought this might be a good time to kind of untangle that mess.

We’ve had some success in this, but it’s not finished. We haven’t heard from the other Big Green, but I imagine they’re grateful for our efforts, as I believe their music is a hell of a lot more popular than ours. I’m expecting a fruit basket from them any day now.

Pump up the jam

Speaking of streaming services, now might be a good time for you to add Big Green (um … THIS Big Green) to your playlists. In fact, while you’re doing that, maybe let our songs run for a few hours and rack up some plays – We’re wearing cardboard belts!

Here’s where to go to find our sorry asses:

This is us on Amazon music. Don’t buy anything – just use your account to play your favorites from our various releases.

We’re also on Spotify. And no, we don’t know Joe Rogan. We’re just on the same streaming service, that’s all. Again, put us on continuous loop – Daddy needs new shoes.

We also have an artist site on Apple Music. This one is a little confused, as they haven’t included our album Cowboy Scat. (That one is still attributed to the hip-hop Big Green, poor sods.)

Big Green is probably on other services that are downstream of the majors, as we’re distributed by The Orchard and by CD Baby. (2000 Years to Christmas and International House are through the Orchard; Cowboy Scat is through CD Baby.)

Free stuff

If you don’t have a hay-penny, god bless you. But if you don’t have access to streaming services, you can listen to our music for free – just let us know that you want to and we’ll make it happen. Be nice to us and we’ll send you a genuine first-edition Big Green button, designed by photographer Leif Zurmuhlen, hand-pressed by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison back in the eighties, and stuffed into a box for 35 years. Just ask!

News, Recording

New year is here: Back to work, lazy mothers!

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Well, that was a nice little holiday break, and we all had a bit of a laugh. But now it’s 2024, dudes – time to get back down to it. No more messing around, no more late rising. You had your vacation, damn it! Nose to the grindstone, my fine little friends.

That’s my version of a pep talk. I’ve never been much in the way of a motivational speaker, especially when the audience is me and my brother. Neither one of us wants to take any of THAT guy’s bullshit. And as you know from long experience, Big Green is a leaderless collective. We don’t subscribe to self-imposed hierarchies. Nor do we subscribe to the daily paper, or even a monthly newsletter. But I digress.

A far safer Forbin Project

I’m not sure, but I think we’re in year two of producing this particular album. And if you include the year or so we spent working out which album we were going to make (new songs or retreads), call it three. Why does it take Big Green so damn long to make a record? Well, there are three reasons:

  1. We’re slow as a mother. Always have been, always will be. That’s just the speed we’re built for, man – can’t help it. What the hell, it took us five years to finish International House, and it takes less than an hour to listen to the s.o.b.
  2. We’re oldsters. That’s part of the reason for #1. Not much we can do about that shit. Stick around long enough and you’ll be old, too.
  3. We’re busy-ass mo-fo’s. Matt in particular has a raft of responsibilities. I myself don’t have a raft, but I have responsibilities. Hence, we record maybe once a week, whether we need to or not.

Thing is, we tend to approach each album like it’s the Forbin Project. Whether you’re building Colossus or Guardian, it’s a heavy lift. Though thankfully, unlike the Forbin project, the fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance … and Patty Duke’s father plays no role whatsoever in our production process.

Leftovers and tailings

Some of you (and you know who you are) have asked if there won’t be a sample or two of the current project available at some point. No man can say! We like to toss random recordings out there from time to time – some are leftovers, some are tailings or abandoned experiments. (As you know, Dark Christmas was one of those from our first album, 2000 Years to Christmas.)

The truth is, we haven’t even done any rough mixes yet, which is kind of nuts. We’re also in the process of upgrading from Cubase 9 to Cubase 12 (yes, I know – they just released 13, the motherfuckers) and changing platforms. And hell, we’ve got at least 25 songs under serious construction, with another 15 to 20 started. And another thing …. OUCH.

We’ll get this sucker done, trust me. Or my name isn’t … uh … whatever it is.

Random Lyric

Here’s an old one by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison:

Now the picture in my mind is hazy
Just like the number’s washed off my hand
I’m just another nameless no one
She’s just another faceless one night stand

From the song “A Name and a Face”. Listen to the demo we recorded in 1986:

BIG GREEN 1986 DEMO

News

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (or not)

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Well, here we go again – it’s the holiday season, and Christmas is upon us once more. What will Santa bring this year? A steaming pile of wombat droppings? More bricks of surplus cheese? He’s full of surprises, that old man. Kind of amazing that he’s made it this far in life without changing jobs. (Actually … we haven’t changed jobs either, so who am I to criticize?)

What someone is saying somewhere

It’s often been said (and still remains said-able) that no band keeps Christmas in quite the same way as Big Green. I don’t know who exactly is saying that, but no matter – we are extremely possessive when it comes to the Yuletide, and we’re not giving it up under any circumstances. It’s MINE, you hear … MINE!! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!

Ahem …. uh … so, what would Christmas be without Big Green? Pretty much the same. And that fact that we latched on to it early on makes no difference to just about anyone. Though I will say that this is an ideal time of the year to listen to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, which you can tap on Spotify, on The Orchard, on YouTube even … pretty much any freaking where. A bit of easy listening to get you through those difficult moments around the dinner table with relatives you’re fortunate to see only once a year. (If they start talking about the perils of critical race theory, crank up the volume!)

A little stocking stuffer

Which leads me to the point of this whole dumb-ass post. As I explained last month, we’re still tracking our next album, and it’s slow-going. And while I don’t have any genuine new content for you this year, I do have some hot holiday leftovers to share.

Back when we recorded 2000 Years To Christmas in the late 1990s, we started with a list of about 18 songs. We started 17 on the DTRS system we were using in those days, 16 of which were completed. The final disc had 13 tracks, so we left three of them off for quality control reasons (that’s the corporate-speak way of saying we weren’t super happy with how they came out). One of those tracks was kind of a borderline case. It’s called Dark Christmas, and we thought it was high time it got tossed out there for folks to hear. So we remastered it and threw it up on our YouTube channel – here it is:

Dark Christmas, by Big Green

So there you have it – a little stocking stuffer, just in time for the holidays. And no, this is not some kind of AI-driven confabulation – I think one listen will tell you that it couldn’t be anything other than us, back in the day. So enjoy, share, add it to your playlists, etc. And cheer up … or not, depending on your preference.

See you in the new year!

Usual Rubbish

Welcome to the song recycling center, Campers

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Get Music Here

You want to use that one? Really? Which version? Hmmm … okay. That one’s not in the best condition. I think Mitch was using it to prop his closet door open. And then there’s the rising damp. Lots of factors go into this, dude. It’s not so simple.

Like most bands, Big Green has a back catalog. The question is, what to do with all that material, sitting idle, not carrying its own weight. I’ve told our old songs to go out and get a job, but some of them are reaching retirement age, and that’s not an optimal time to start the search. The thing is, we’ve got a boatload of new material coming this way, thanks to the transitive property of Matt Perry, in particular. Yes, I (Joe) have written a handful, but Matt’s output far outstrips mine, and good thing too. ‘Cause I’m a lazy-ass mother. Putting it all on the table here.

Reviving the nineties

So, some who have known Big Green since its inception recall that we had a flurry of activity in the early nineties. We were playing clubs, schools, etc., with a bewildering variety of guitar players. The decade before, we couldn’t hold on to a drummer for love or money. John White took up with us in the late eighties, so problem solved …. except then we didn’t have a guitarist. Then we got one, then lost one, got another, lost another, etc. Let me know when you’ve heard enough. (I know I have.)

Most of the recording we did in the nineties was with Jeremy Shaw, friend of the band, who played a bunch of gigs with us, did some video, and a few audio demos. One of the demos we did was a group of songs we recorded live and later released under the moniker LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. These were performances straight to DAT tape, no overdubs – we did a bunch of takes on maybe five or six songs. You can hear Jeremy really shredding that thing on Special Kind of Blood, Merry Christmas, Jane, and one or two others.

Look over there: something shiny

Okay, so our new material is nowhere near ready for release in any form. Frankly, we’re still in the composing and rehearsing stage. Then comes the de-composing. After that, Marvin (my personal assistant) fashions an album cover out of used ball bearings, and that’s how the sausage is made. But as of now, we’ve got a long way to go. I mean, we’ve got personnel issues to straighten out, we’ve got hinky tech problems, we’ve got rising damp. Our objective – a new album – is either very, very small, or very, very far away. Don’t ask me to solve THAT rubic’s cube.

Did you post those oldies yet?

What do you do when you don’t have anything new to share? Recycle the old stuff, that’s what. We’re chucking some older numbers onto our YouTube channel, so that fans of that platform can listen to our classic selections free of charge, any time that suits their fancy … even if they don’t have a fancy suit to their name. We uploaded 2000 Years To Christmas some time ago, of course. Now we’re working on our EP from the mid 2000s, the afore-mentioned LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. The first two songs are posted on YouTube, with more to come. What do you know about that? Something shiny.

Seasonal effectiveness disorder

Summer’s almost over, and I know I’m not alone in thinking that it’s about damn time. Still, we haven’t accomplished much this season. Not that this summer should be any different from previous ones. Hey, we’ll keep chucking old songs in the air until we get our arms around the new ones. (They ain’t chuckable quite yet.)

Usual Rubbish

Time to kick out the jams, mother fuckers.

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Get Music Here

Jesus, how the hell did they make that image? Did they use chisels and clay tablets? I can’t even read the fricking thing. You know you’ve been around too long as a band when your earliest promo packages were written in cuneiform.

Well, it’s the doldrums of summer once again, which means we’re digging into the archives and mining our inglorious past for the occasional nugget of … whatever. I’m starting to think that Big Green was founded before the invention of the camera. Actually, it’s simpler than that – we started playing before everyone had broadcast-quality video production studios riding in their pockets.

As a result, there aren’t a lot of shots of us playing, hanging out, cavorting, etc. It’s almost like we didn’t exist before the late nineties, and we most assuredly did. But back in the day, you had to wait for the photographer to show up …. and when you’re broke, it’s a long wait.

Live from someplace

Big Green has some old recordings, of course. And yes, we’re working on new recordings (or at least rehearsing new songs) now, but we’re always digging out the oldies, cause that’s just how we roll. Just this week, I posted the first installment of our E.P. LIVE FROM NEPTUNE on our YouTube Channel – a song called Merry Christmas, Jane, a version of which also appeared on our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. Because it’s YouTube, I covered the video screen with stills from our video demo and other random shots. Again, not a lot to choose from.

Why “Live From Neptune”? It made sense at the time. Mind you, we recorded the songs live to tape in Jeremy Shaw’s basement. This was a year after we played an outdoor concert at his house along with a couple of other bands. (I’ve posted a couple of tracks from that gig on THIS IS BIG GREEN.) We were working up a demo of some original songs, playing a bunch of takes straight into a DAT machine. (This was 1994, mind you.) Merry Christmas, Jane was one of them.

I feel pixilated, damn it!

Stop action headbangers

Then there were the gigs we played at bars around where we lived in upstate New York. Most of those were kind of unmemorable. And again, no photographs … or very few. I have a handful of shots from one night we played at a club named Fat City in West Utica, NY. We played there a bunch of times over the years, sometimes under assumed names, like I-19. (There’s some video of one of those nights on YouTube, courtesy of friend of the band and former I-19 guitarist/vocalist Steve Bennett.)

I suppose it’s just bad luck that back when we were younger and less crispy looking, nobody had a camera. Now that we’re old geezers, there are cameras everywhere. It reminds me how, at one of my day gigs, the standard retirement gift was a company-branded wall mirror. What’s the last thing you want when you’re hanging up your skates? But I digress. Eyes forward, Perry – that’s the stuff. Never mind what’s behind, watch what’s ahead in stead. Harrrrumph!

Advanced boxology

Hey look what I found – an old poster or five. You never know what’s in the next box. Actually, the last five boxes had other boxes in them. One of them has the key to time in it, or so the legend goes.

Usual Rubbish

We’re number none with a rocket!

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Get Music Here

It’s the damnedest thing, man. I can’t explain it. I mean, there must be a lot of that stuff floating around out there. Who would have thought the internet was that big? After all, the whole effing thing fits inside my smartphone. I’ll have to remember to ask Antman about that phenomenon – he might have some insights.

Yeah, here we are again, folks. Where is that? Well, we’re sitting around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home, trying to figure out how our recorded music has ended up in so many weird places. (1,880 results? That’s nuts.) After all, we are not exactly experts at distribution and marketing – far from it. In fact, I suspect you would be hard pressed to find a band that’s less commercially successful than us. (WE’RE NUMBER NONE!)

Scattered like snowflakes

Thing is, we sent out a boatload of copies of 2000 Years To Christmas back in 1999/2000 when we first released it. Like any band in those days, we sent them to college radio stations, publications, reviewers, relatives, tax collectors (in lieu of payment), civil engineers (for landfill), and so on. Next thing you know, they’re showing up in remainder bins, CD listings, and random shops from here to Madagascar. (That’s 8,698 miles, by the way.)

Okay, that would be weird enough in itself. What’s even weirder is that we get mixed up with other bands named Big Green. The shuffle up our albums with ones made by these doppelgangers, and it seriously muddies the waters. Frankly, I feel a little guilty about it. We’re bringing their overall popularity down by yards every time our work is associated with them. I’m looking at you, other Big Green.

Putting a stake in the ground

Clearly, we need to make a choice. We can either stand around and do nothing, or take matters into our own hands. Actually, come to think of it, there is a third option: have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) deal with it. I’m looking around and seeing a lot of shaking heads. Not a good idea? Right. Looks like we’re back to doing nothing. Or the other thing. (You see, THIS is why we’re NUMBER NONE.)

Okay, so we’ve been putting music out there pretty consistently for the last twenty years. A couple of years ago, we affiliated with a dude on Discogs to offer the CD of 2000 Years to Christmas. That said, others have been running rings around us. Like this dude on Ebay who’s selling a Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick disc as a British import for $30! Man god damn, if he can get that price for them, I’d be glad to identify as British.

Flogging it to death

All right, so look – we’re working on new material. Thing is, we’ve got old material to shift. So if you’ve got someone with a birthday coming up, or just know someone who loves phenomenally unpopular music, this is the place to go. You heard it here first.

Usual Rubbish

Put it all in the basket, if it fits

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2000 Years to Christmas

Well, now, I’m not sure we need that. At least, not in that quantity. And for god’s sake, none of those. What are we, made of money? Budget, my little friend, budget!

Oh … hi, everybody. Allow me to pretend that I didn’t know you were there. (Thank you for that indulgence.) You just caught us in the midst of a semi-monthly shopping trip. We go to the big market in the middle of this very humble little town and wheel a cart around. Then, once we’ve realized that we don’t have enough money to fill the cart, we push that aside and pick up a shopping basket.

No trouble like money trouble

You know what they say. There’s no reek that beats ass, and there’s no trouble that beats broke. (Is that really what they say? Well …. someone says it somewhere, I’ll wager.) Shopping trips always remind us of how little capital we have to work with. And before you crypto currency freaks start jumping all over my shit with investment opportunities and NFTs, let me emphasize that NO, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY MONEY. WE CAN’T EVEN FILL A SHOPPING CART.

Now that I’ve said that, let me contradict myself. We can afford small things. Not small diamonds, mind you, or little bits of gold. No, things like leeks, individual walnuts, an apple or two. (If we keep going with this, we could end up with a waldorf salad.) In any case, I don’t want to paint too grim a picture. We don’t want any pity – no pity, no thank you. No THANK you. (For more about the significance of this phrase, see Rod Steiger in In The Heat Of The Night.)

Just forget it, Abe. We ain't got the scratch.

Shameless plea for help

Okay, now I’m going to contradict myself again. The thing is, with prices on the rise (and I know you’re heard all about it), we’re getting less and less into that little shopping basket. For instance, instead of five leeks, we’re down to three. We even have to ask the nut monger to cut a walnut in half for us. Can’t imagine the dirty looks we get when we make these requests. It’s humiliating …. JUST HUMILIATING.

The thing is, you can help … and it won’t cost you a dime. Let me ‘splain. There’s a little thing out there called the internets. Turns out, you can listen to music over the internets through a variety of means. Maybe you have Spotify, or Apple Music, or Amazon Music, or whatever the fuck. Okay, so go to one of these services and look up Big Green – particularly our albums, 2000 Years To Christmas or International House – and play any one (or several) of the tracks. In fact, just build a playlist of both albums and run them on a loop while you cook dinner (and perhaps listen to something else on another device).

Mother lode of sorts

Now, if you’re subscribed to one of these services, the fee for playing our songs is zilch. But we get valuable revenue. It’s an astronomical return. By that I mean, like with a distant star, you need a telescope to see it. I think we get $0.000978 per play on our tracks, but I may be exaggerating. That’s the miracle of the digital marketplace at work, my friends.

Of course, that adds up over the centuries. Who knows – there may come a time in the distant future when we can afford maybe six or seven leeks in out shopping basket.

Usual Rubbish

Another day, another blizzard.

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2000 Years to Christmas

I know it’s not the 20th anniversary any more. Stop reminding me! We’re practically at the 23-year mark, for crying out loud. I’m just too damn lazy to change the promo. Mea culpa, okay? MEA CULPA, GODDAMMIT!

Whoops, sorry. Was a bit on edge just then. I was talking to our advertising manager, otherwise known as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He keeps telling me that I left the 2000 Years To Christmas billboard up too long. The suggestion is ludicrous. Accurate, but ludicrous. I didn’t program him to tell me the truth. (To tell the truth, I actually didn’t program him at all.)

Incremental sales … without the increments

It actually doesn’t much matter whether or not we advertise, frankly. We don’t sell a lot of units, which may be a function of the fact that we don’t put out a lot of new material. I am being generous, of course – we haven’t put out a new album in nine freaking years. Where did that time go? Same place all time goes – into the hole, after the sun. (What does that mean? Well, I had an explanation, but I dropped that into the hole as well.)

Hey, it’s not like you can’t find our albums on the internets. They’re out there. If you look around for 2000 Years To Christmas, you’ll find it in a boatload of places, including many I’ve never heard of, and some destinations I’ve never been to. In fact, that album is on so many outlets, you’d think we would be selling them left and right just by osmosis … or inertia … or some other physical principle. You know what I mean – you toss your album out into the street, and eventually someone will come by and pick it up. (We’re still eagerly awaiting that day.)

With an effing vengeance

It’s not like we couldn’t use a little extra scratch. Winter is descending upon us like a frozen shroud. Or a great frozen wall, dropped by the ice gods. Or some other metaphor I can’t think of because I’m too damn cold. What the hell, do you want me to draw you a picture? There’s white stuff falling from the clouds. It’s snowing in New York. Hal-lah-freaking-loo-yah.

Of course, the mansized tuber is taking necessary precautions, moving in from the courtyard and squeezing into a planter for the duration. Marvin is avoiding the out of doors, which is a little hard to do, as we are officially out of doors. (We broke one last week, and we don’t have any spares.) The rest of us are just huddling around stoves and registers, waiting for it all to be over. So, in other words, a really productive week around the abandoned hammer mill.

Nice place to spend the winter.

Modern insensibilities

One thing I hadn’t counted on with the onset of global warming is the degree to which people’s expectations about winter weather would dramatically change. There’s going to be 10 to 16 inches of new snow on the ground when this week is over, and they talk about it like it’s a natural disaster. Back twenty years ago or so, we used to call that Tuesday. Or Tuesday and Friday.

Hell, we had a method back then for telling how bad the snowstorm is. It was called looking out the window. In other words, if you could look out the window and see something, anything other than white, it wasn’t that bad. The whole mill was like one of those measuring sticks. If the drifts meet the top of the second story windows, well …. it will have snowed a bit.

There’s a little tip to take home with you – no charge.

Usual Rubbish

Getting a little love on the internets

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2000 Years to Christmas

I think you ought to run those numbers again, man. Seriously. I thought you were a statistician. You’re not? I thought every robot was a statistician! Learn something new every day, even in statistics.

Hey howdy, folks! Happy new year from your favorite band in the universe. And while we’re at it, happy new year from us, Big Green, the band you’ve likely never heard of. Chances are good you’ve never seen us perform or listened to our songs or picked up one of our CDs. Nothing wrong with that, of course – you’re just moving with the majority. (Go against the herd, man!)

Running with the numbers

I’ve called upon the small coterie of experts in our midst, namely, Mitch Macaphee and his greatest invention (or not), Marvin (my personal robot assistant), to help increase our internet plays a bit. My assumption is that they know all about the internets. One way or the other, they can hardly do worse than we have ourselves.

Take our recent nano concerts (please). The highest number of plays we’ve gotten was 25 on one of the songs; most are in the teens or single digits. Piss poor by any standard. Now, the pretentious artist in me says that we make music for its own sake, not for the approval of the audience. But that artist in me still likes to eat. And frankly he’s not paying rent on the space he’s occupying. I think anyone can see that that’s not fair.

Hit factory, shit factory

Leave us face it, Big Green is not a titan among indie bands. The Big Green video with the highest number of plays is our live version of I Hate Your Face, which comes in at a whopping 688 views. Not exactly setting any land speed records there, my friends. Our single from 2012, One Small Step, has been viewed 219 times on YouTube as of this writing. Again … not earth shaking.

Hey, look .... there's a blip over there in December.

In particular, our song Pagan Christmas, off of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, gets a bunch of plays around the holidays via streaming services, etc. By “a bunch,” I mean hundreds. Of course, via the music streaming services we get maybe 700 song plays a year. Somebody in Romania listened to our asses. How they found them with both hands I couldn’t tell you.

Happen upon us sometime

Hey, you know what they say about marketing on the internet. You don’t? Well, don’t ask me. I’m not some kind of marketing expert or something. What I do know is that, in this capitalist paradise known as digital sales, putting something on the web without paid promotion is like tossing something into the street and hoping someone happens upon it.

You know, that sounds like a good job for Marvin. HEY MARVIN – TAKE THIS BOX OF DISCS AND START TOSSING THEM AROUND RANDOMLY. THERE’S A GOOD FELLOW.

Usual Rubbish

Have a little nano with your Christmas Concert

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2000 Years to Christmas

Have we reached a thousand plays yet? Hmmmm. How about a hundred? No? Right. Hit refresh again. There must be something wrong with that goddamn thing. Stupid YouTube!

Hello, friends. Hope you had a wonderful holiday week. Bet you’re wondering what we’ve been up to. No? Well, I’ll just tell you anyway. Nothing you didn’t already know – that’s the short answer. The long answer is I split a gut getting that nano-Christmas concert done and posted, and it looks like YOU haven’t even seen it yet!

Okay, so a lot of people (a.k.a. Anti-Lincoln) have asked me why we call this a nano-concert. Simple, my dear friend: it’s just my sorry ass on the view screen. That’s it – no bass player, no backup singers, no drums, only me and my distressed-looking Martin, which (I hasten to add) is not an instrument I ordinarily play on gigs. Until now.

A measured response to sloth

I know what you’re thinking. Who in their right mind would spend their entire holiday season break recording and posting a bogus solo concert? This dude over here, man. Sure, I could have done the same as everyone else – drink to excess, swerve my way back home and drop onto the mattress, dead until morning. But that’s not my way. I prefer a much more measured approach to unconsciousness.

Still, the simple fact is that we as a band need to put out more output. (We also need to take in more intake, but that’s another matter.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was an early advocate of the nano-Concert, and so I proceeded with it. Frankly, my expectations were pretty low regarding audience. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

Six of one and a quarter-dozen of the other

Now, I think the hardest part of the nano-concert was deciding which songs to do. It was a Christmas concert, so that narrowed it down a little. Then I had to restrict my list to songs I could reasonably play on guitar, which is fewer still. When it came to actually choosing the numbers, I was all worn out from the first two exercises. (See sloth, above.)

They always said I lack focus, and now I know what they meant.

In the end, I picked two songs from Matt’s 1990 Christmas tape, two songs from his 1991 tape, two songs from 1994, and two from Ned Trek. Some of these songs also appeared on our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. You can also hear one of them on our live EP, Big Green Live from Neptune – namely Merry Christmas, Jane, which I played as a last-minute encore.

Take five

The fact is, Matt wrote so many damn Christmas songs, it would take me five years to play them back to back. And five years is a long time where I come from. Not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but I try not to be overly ambitious in my endeavors. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed our Nano Christmas Concert 2021, and that your holiday season has not been a total dumpster fire. (It it has, tell me all about it!)