Tag Archives: Betelgeuse

Betel-mania.

January 3, 2014 Joe Leave a comment

Frankly, sFshzenKlyrn, I never knew there was any such thing as reverse gravity. Had I known that, I might not have agreed to play this gig. (Said the man floating helplessly in space.)

Oh, yeah – someone’s reading this. Hi, Earth friends. Another dispatch from the road with news of Big Green‘s 2014 Interstellar Tour in support of our album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. I have to pause here to put in a brief plug for our tour sponsors, SPAPOOP petroleum snacks, a division of Koch Industries. SPAPOOP: So good, you’ll forget it’s not edible! Get some today! No, really … today! Right now!

Okay, in all honesty, we had to do the promo to ensure that we have enough fuel to get to our next engagement. That’s the way it works out here on the interstellar club circuit (particularly with these plain clothes gigs). Most of the time, there’s no cover or drink minimum – people just pass the space helmet around. Sometimes it comes back full of SPAPOOP. It’s for that reason our tour advisers at Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm procured the endorsement deal from the Kock Brothers.

Pity, too. We hit it pretty hard on Betelgeuse; if we were paid by the decibel, we would have done pretty well even without the helmet proceeds. Our audience particularly appreciated “Santiny”, “Aw, Shoot,” and “Flying Up Ricky”, waving their long, sucker-tipped fingers in the air in time with the music, emitting sparks from their sinewy antennae. sFshzenKlyrn tells us that’s applause, but it’s hard to be sure. All in all, a good night.

Interstellar Tour graphic Or it would have been, but for the fact that the gravity reversed itself halfway through the evening. I guess that happens all the time on Betelgeuse Five. (That would explain the suction cups on their hands and feet, right? Isn’t nature wonderful!) Still, who knew … and before I could say HAAALLP! I was flying off into the exosphere, a missile without a cause, along with my hapless bandmates.

Sure, that might have been it, friends, except that sFshzenKlyrn is tremendously at home in deep space. He towed us back to the relative safety of our rental craft, using his personal gravitational fields. Good fellow to have around.

Next week: Rigel.

Usual Rubbish

Tour log: quatro livre. (Say what?)

November 4, 2011 Joe Leave a comment

Here’s the fourth installment of our vaunted tour diary. Anybody got a pen? How about a knife? I can just whittle the words. A pen knife? Even better!

Where have all the good tours gone? This one has gone a bit flat, though I will say that we did manage to get the rent-a-ship rolling again, thanks to sFshzenKlyrn. I know what you’re thinking – he probably used some kind of trans-temporal presto-digitation to conjure us up a new ion drive servo chip. No such thing. He just waited until Marvin (my personal robot) was in sleep mode and plucked the chip out of his sorry hide. (Marvin lists a bit now. Not that that’s a bad thing… I have him doing our set lists. Boom-crash.)

Here’s the lowdown on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011:

10.31.2011 – Hallowe’en on Betelgeuse. Surprisingly, this is kind of a big deal up here. Not that they do the costumes or the trick or treat. In fact, it’s kind of an interstellar anti-gravity day – the Betelgeusians (unlike humanity) have mastered the science of gravity. They’ve got this big-ass switch, the size of Texas, and every October 31st (our time) they flip it and then their iridescent pseudopods leave the ground. Talk about fun. (That’s right – just talk about it.)

11.01.2011 – We start the month on the right pseudopod. Hit the stage around 10 p.m. local, played for almost three hours. Matt tried open tunings on his kazoo during “Just Five Seconds”. (We’re way ahead up here.) I’d never seen sFshzenKlyrn play his telecaster with a violin bow before, and during our last set Anti-Lincoln seemed to have gotten his hands on a dulcimer somewhere. Leave Earth a four-piece, return home an orchestra. That’s the magic of space travel.

11.03.2011 – We are the 99 and 44/100 percent! New slogan for Ivory soap – what do you think? No, actually… it’s the current chant down here on Neptune. We’ve joined in the “Occupy Neptune” project for the few days that we’re here. Had a few celebrity drop-ins already this week. Tomorrow’s a general strike. Of course, there are only about five people on the whole planet, but frankly…. that makes organizing a snap. Don’t even need freaking Twitter.

Well, so anyway… keep the faith down there in Oakland, New York, Boston, and everywhere else. We’ll hold down the fort up here on Neptune. In fact, we’ve got the outer planets covered – no worries.

Usual Rubbish

A fungible outcome.

July 8, 2011 Joe Leave a comment

Okay, who’s going to Betelgeuse for the advance mission? Let’s see a show of hands. I meant now, boys, right now. Is that it? Nearly one hand. Call it none.

Man oh Manischewitz, do I have to do everything myself? (No, I wasn’t asking for a show of hands on THAT.) All I ask is a little cooperation on a deadly dangerous deep-space excursion, and I get nothing. Bunch of layabouts. Looks like I’ll have to do it myself – just me and Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Yeah, I mean you, Marvin. I know you didn’t put your hand up. What part of “my personal robot assistant” do you not understand, eh? Sheesh. I’m going to have to ask Mitch to program some obedience into that boy…. when he gets back from Mad Science-a-ganza in Sao Paolo. (Doesn’t sound hugely scientific to me, but…. my studies were in the humanities.)

Yeah, you see, Tiny Montgomery (our sometimes booking agent) has arranged a performance in the Betelgeuse system as part of Big Green’s upcoming [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 – by “part of” I mean to say, it’s the only gig he’s booked thus far. (Tiny’s getting a slow start.) Naturally, we’re getting a little anxious about this seeming exception to Tiny’s near unbroken record of rejection by the managers of interstellar music venues from here to Andromeda. I thought it only prudent that one of us should go out there and check the venue out. And hell, everyone thought it was a GREAT idea so long as they thought I would be doing the honors. But enough about that.

I have to say, truth be known, I prefer recording and broadcasting to live performances most days of the week. That’s why Matt and I are working tirelessly (no tires needed, in fact) on our new audio podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN!, the maiden episode of which should be posted in the upcoming weeks. What’s it about? Well, my friend, it’s the whole Big Green package – talk and jive, live performances (pre recorded, of course), rare sides, reviews, a promo or two. In short, we’ll know when we get there. But one way or the other, here it comes. No, you don’t have to thank us. All part of the service.

As always, we’re just trying to get you more of what you like least about us. Hmmm… did I say that right? Hands?

Official site of the band Big Green