Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

When the hell?

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I know what you’re all saying out there. You’re saying, “Where’s my socks?” and “The paper’s late again this morning. Stupid paper carrier!” and “You’ll eat it and like it!” Stuff like that. Am I right?

Squx.Well, right or wrong, I like to think that you’ve been wondering about a couple of things with regard to the band Big Green, denizens of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill and the alien intelligence behind this skimpy little blog. One is, well, when the hell are we going to release another album? I mean, it’s been nearly 18 months since we put out Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. What the hell are we playing at, anyway? Or maybe you’re uttering that same thought in Swahili. It could be anything!

Then there’s the performance question. I know, I know … we’ve been extremely remiss in this area. Big Green hasn’t performed in front of a terrestrial audience in uncounted thousands of years. Sure, we’ve played in the solar system, which is practically in your neighborhood. You could easily see our performances with the Hubble Space Telescope, and perhaps hear them with a radio telescope. That has been the best we’ve been able to do up to now. Squint hard and you can see us.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) took it into his little tin head to do some advertising for us, hiring some firm to do smoke signals on Mars. All he managed to do was confuse NASA royally, and make a bunch of astrophysicists scratch their heads like monkeys and throw bones in the air, hoping they’ll turn into futuristic space shuttles. If that’s brand advertising, I’m an astrophysicist’s uncle. And I’m not. So just pretend you didn’t see that puff of smoke on the red planet, friends. Nothing to see here.

The fact is, we will get around to putting out some more music sometime soon. I’m working on posting some of our existing catalog on YouTube. And we’ve got new music, so ultimately it will be out there. Way out there.

Usual Rubbish

Radio Andromeda.

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So, there’s a station that’s playing our last album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, in rotation. That’s the good news. The bad news? It’s in the galaxy of Andromeda, a very long ride from here, I’m told. Can’t raise it on my crystal set. (Damn … we need some new gear.)

Well, I am exaggerating a little. Apparently the radio waves from the Andromeda station are reaching planet Earth. Trouble is, no one can translate them into something intelligible. The only people hearing it are rocket scientists, and they’re not exactly our audience. Now, shapeless blobs of protoplasm on the planet Mongrovitowa 427K – THAT’S who listens to us (if you can call pseudopod sensory processing of nano-vibrations “listening”). But that counts as airplay in my book. And if we make some eggheads scratch their … well … eggheads, then that’s all to the good. It’s like when the Beatles added that hypersonic message to the family dog at the end of Sergeant Pepper. Except that, well … dogs aren’t typically scientists.

You see where I’m going with this, right? Because if YOU don’t, then neither of us does.

I suppose it should make us feel a bit guilty that we are wasting all this astrophysicist speculation time just so that we can claim some listenership of one of our drug-on-the-market albums. No doubt we are also fulfilling ancient prophecies left and right among the Eric Von Daniken crowd. The space brothers are coming! Oh, no … wait. It’s just Big Green broadcasting from Neptune. What a bloody huge disappointment for someone.

Airplay! Freaking amazing!Anyhow, we’re not just in business to cause people trouble. Matt and I are recording the next episode of Star Trek this very evening. We have been working on six or seven songs to accompany the episode, which will be included in the next installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast. My guess is that a couple of weeks into February we should be ready to post. Slow time of year – ah, for the days when we would post every month like clockwork! Now that we’re old and in the way, it’s a little more of a challenge.

What’s next? Let’s get Andromeda to start broadcasting the Ned Trek show. That will confuse the hell out of those astrophysicists!

Usual Rubbish

Inside the November podcast.

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That was close. No, not the comet – that didn’t end up being close at all. I mean the November podcast. We almost didn’t post before Thanksgiving week, and that would have been a tragedy beyond measure. (Well, beyond my measure, anyway. Not real good at reading the old tragedy yardstick.)

Really big show (or shoe). Anyhow, now that Earth is out of danger (at least from external forces) we can take a few minutes to dissect this month’s episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast and the only avenue we have left for artistic expression. (Cue the violins.) So let’s pop open the hood and see what’s inside, shall we? Here goes …

Ned Trek XXI: Old Maple Glory. Our episodes of the space horse-opera Ned Trek are loosely based on installments of classic Star Trek, as you probably know, except that the ship is named the Free Enterprise and it is commanded by Willard Mitt Romney and his talking dressage horse, Mr. Ned. This episode follows The Omega Glory, roughly speaking, with cousin Rick Perry as the renegade commodore who takes over a primitive, divided planet. The precious resource in contention is syrup. Lots of fist fights.

New Songs. Strewn carelessly throughout the Ned Trek episode are rough drafts of new Big Green songs that loosely describe the emotional currents of the program. Most of these have a sixties rock vibe about them; two are positively psychedelic, particularly the Nixon robot song, “Yorba Linda Mybalinda”. Ned’s song “Nobody Ride” is kind of trippy as well. Doc sticks with the sixties rock milieu with “Doc’s Flapjacks”, and Rick Perry does a celebrity comeback number called “Sugar Shack.” Willard Mitt Romney chimes in with “Super Sugar Christ”, a snappy little swing number. Spotlight on Richard Pearle for “Motherlode”, another ode to unbridled greed. We’ve even included a College pep song for Rick Perry entitled “Hi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi,” sung a capella.

Old Song. For good measure, we tossed in a replay of our number from last year, “Don’t Tell Rick!” – our frantic plea to the listener of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick not to blow us in to Governor Perry.

Random Conversation. Our “Put the phone down” segment includes some very impromptu singing, a dissection of the 2014 mid-term election, and other random rants.

So hey … give it a listen, then give us a shout. We always read our email. (Explains a lot.)

Usual Rubbish

Next on the list.

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Let’s see. Step three hundred seventeen. Plug lead E7 into jack B47. Check. Step three hundred eighteen. Remove cap from light-pipe cable and insert into port F1. Check.

Finished yet? Nearly ready.Oh, my goodness. Didn’t know you were reading this. Bet your eyes are glazing over. I’m just working through the instructions for this do-it-yourself project studio. It came in a big, flat box, some assembly required. In fact, quite a bit of assembly required. That explains the bargain-basement price. That fellow in Bangalore seemed very anxious to unload this little gem. At least he was an engineer – I am, at best, technically challenged, and at worst, a danger to public safety. Have you ever manually wound a transformer before? I know I haven’t.

Typically I would leave such menial tasks to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), but as you may have noticed from the last few postings, he has been making himself quite scarce. Last week he took a trip to Cincinnati to visit the National Museum of Robotics and Animatronics. Didn’t even know such a thing existed. Anyway, he was gone for about five days, came back with a few scratches and a cardboard pirate hat for his trouble. I know … it sounds suspicious to me as well, but there are certain questions you just should never ask of your personal robot assistant.

Why are we building our own studio? Well … the one we have right now is getting a little long in the tooth. I expect you know this, as I’ve mentioned it often enough. Big Green has recorded one album (2000 Years To Christmas) on an eight-track Tascam DTRS system, two albums (International House and Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick) on a Roland VS-2480 with various peripherals. The eight track machine is basically a doorstop. The VS-2480 is 13 years old and is not well. It’s choked with projects and has no practical means of exporting data. We are still recording on that system, but just around the edges … gently, gently. Hence … the do it yourself studio. Either that or a Kickstarter Campaign. Still scratching our heads on that.

Head scratching, step three: Press nail of index finger on scalp and move finger back-and-forth.

Usual Rubbish

Genericville.

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Do we have 1.5 children? Only if you double-count the man-sized tuber. Let’s ask anti-Lincoln to do the counting – ever since the war, he sees everything twice.

Stupid comet!Oh, hello. Just working up our census form. Don’t mind me. Didn’t know there was going to be a 2014 census, but I guess that’s understandable, since we don’t get a lot of news flowing into the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our squathouse. Just yesterday some dude in a Fedora knocked on the front gate and handed me a questionnaire. He said I had to finish it by Saturday or his friend might set the mill on fire. (I think the friend’s name was Giancarlo.) How old is Mitch Macaphee? No … I mean before the youth serum?

Questions, questions. Way too much on Big Green’s plate lately, I can tell you. We’ve got the THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast, of course – always time-consuming. Our next episode of Ned Trek, for instance, will feature as many as 6 or 7 new songs, never before heard (and probably never again), all apropos of the ridiculous story line. This is part of the biggest crop of new material to come out of Big Green in, I don’t know, twenty years or so. Over the past year or so, we’ve written and began recording something like 30 new songs; that’s since we finished Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick last year.

Then there’s the pressure to get out and play in front of an audience, for chrissake. We considered doing a gig or two on Mars this month, but given the fact that the red planet is going to be buzzed by comet Siding Spring this weekend, we thought better of it. We have had run-ins with comets before; can’t say that we ever got the better of those confrontations. Chilly little hunks of ice, those comets. No pity. Who can blame them? They’re billions of years old, and only get a little sun once every million years or so, then it’s back to the Ort cloud. But I digress.

Hmmm…. Should I account for multiple personalities on this census form? Yes, I’m back on anti-Lincoln again (and his alter ego, anti-Edgar Allan Poe).

Usual Rubbish

Inside October.

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I think time may be stretching, or rather, elongating. I don’t know the correct term – get a physicist on the phone. Or call our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee – he may have the answer. All I know is that July turned into August, September turned into October, and so on. I can feel the holidays crawling up my ass.

How did I end up on this crapfest?In any case, you may have noticed that the October installment of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast has been posted, sent out to ipods and other devices, RSS’ed around the globe, and played on somebody’s smartphone somewhere. Better late than never, I always say … but then, I am one of the people producing the podcast, so from another perspective, late may not be better than never. Be that as it may, here is a look under the hood of this latest audio crapfest:

Ned Trek 20: The Shamesters of Quadzillion. In this, the lastest episode of our ongoing bizarre-ass Star Trek parody, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney and his senior officers are captured and held prisoner on the planet Quadzillion, where they are compelled by the resident oligarchs to compete in the political media arena with other mindless also-rans. Guest stars include Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Chief Justice John Roberts, Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, and Foster Friess. (Classic Star Trek fan reference: Gamesters of Triskelion)

Song: The Bishop. This is a selection from our 2008 album International House. Matt wrote, arranged, and I believe even mixed this track. A mostly acoustic number with some nice-ish choral parts.

Put the Phone Down. Our conversation this month has a number of minor themes, probably the most prominent of which is a virtual visit from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is apparently hawking his new book so broadly it even got onto our lousy podcast. Matt excoriates me for my technical ineptitude, then talks about his encounter with Egbert Bagg. Kissinger joins us for a song.

Song: North Camp Pasture. One of my songs from our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one is about Rick’s hunting camp, which used to bear a remarkably offensive racist name before that became politically inconvenient for the ambitious Rick and his kin. More broadly about the legacy of racism, Jim Crow, in modern American life.

Usual Rubbish

Crackpot diary.

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Twelfth day before the mast. I see a ship on the horizon. The Dutchman? Nay. ‘Tis nothing but a garbage scow. Or perhaps a pleasure craft that’s lost it’s way. Avast.

That sounds odd.Oh, hello, there. I was just engaging in a little imagineering, to borrow a term. It gets kind of quiet around this big old barn of a hammer mill, so you have to think of other things and more exotic places. I am certainly not alone in that. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) went on a flight of fancy this past week. I think he imagined himself a paper shredder in a busy office. Hard to tell, really, except that he kept muttering “stapling machine” to himself, as if he were talking to a neighbor. Then he would make this grinding noise, and confetti would blast out the equivalent of his blowhole. Not my choice of fantasy, but hey … whatever floats it, right?

I’ve taken a few moments between sessions to scroll back through some of the music we’ve made over the last year or so, under the name of Big Green but in support of the Ned Trek program segment of This Is Big Green. In the aggregate, it definitely constitutes a crackpot diary of sorts, kind of like Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, only even more bizarre, in a way. I think it’s the horse voice, and the fact that all of Mr. Ned’s songs have a kind of dressage horse dance meter to them. Then there’s those forties guys. Not sure what to make of them.

Is there an album in this? Glad you asked. I wouldn’t rule it out, but that goes into the project hopper alongside our long-planned “resurrection of songs past” album. We’re halfway between recording systems right now, still using our distressed old Roland VS2480 system with enhancements; hopefully moving to a standard open Mac-based system, perhaps Cubase. Whatever we can get to work for us. We’re semi-primitive, you know, so we have to try things for a while before we make a change.

More on that later. I’ve got to listen to some of those crackpot songs again and see if maybe there’s grounds for having one or more of us committed. They don’t do that so much anymore? Right. Just as well.

Usual Rubbish

Slumming.

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Sure, it’s the middle of summer, the doldrums, as it were, and more often than not my feet are dangling off the end of a plank in the courtyard as I sit, hose in hand, splashing water on the dandelions. Hey, weeds have to drink too, you know.

Here comes another oneNot much getting done here in Big Green land. I think you’ve probably guessed as much. Personally, I think productivity is very overrated. All it means to me is more work for less compensation – how can THAT be a good thing?

Still in all, I did take the time yesterday to catalog all of the songs Matt and I (though mostly Matt) have written for our respective Ned Trek characters over the year or so since we finished Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. I have to admit to being a bit surprised … there were fully 25 songs on that list, including one or two asinine fragments. I had no freaking clue! (Of course, that’s evident to anyone who has listened to more than one or two of these Ned Trek numbers.)

I’ve got to hand it to brother Matt. Who the hell ELSE am I going to hand it to? No, really … the man is a songwriting machine. Back in the old days, say, 1980-95, he would crank songs out at an alarming rate sometimes. I reached the point in the 2000’s when I thought, with all the other stuff he has going on – his various naturalist duties, for instance, as chronicled in his very excellent blog, Tales from the Wild, that he wouldn’t find time to write songs. But what the hell – he writes them out on the trail, records them on his phone, patches them together. He’s a ma-ma-machine, I tell you!

Me, my process is the same as it’s ever been. I start singing in the shower, and when my wife comes in and hits me with a brick, I lapse into a dream state that produces, more often than not, useable song ideas. What I do from that point forward depends on how ambitious I’m feeling. Back to the doldrums … often that means, I do nothing at all.

Still, it’s a good alliance, Big Green, a creative collective that is surely not in it for the money (for there is none) or the fame (for there never was) or the glory (for there is no such thing). Just for the hell of it. Yay.

Usual Rubbish

Missing month.

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Could have sworn I left it around here someplace. Have you seen it, Marvin? Oh, right. You’ve deactivated yourself for the holidays. Sounds nice … enjoy your break. How ’bout you, mansized tuber? Oh, yeah. He planted himself in the courtyard, out of earshot. Smart move. Wish I’d thought of that.

What am I searching for? The lost month of June, that’s what. It was here a minute ago, seems like, and now, POOF! Gone-zo. And with it, apparently, the June episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Okay, well … it’s not quite as mysterious as that. Our promised June episode is still in production, and not quite finished. Part of the reason is that we are lazy slags, but aside from that, frankly, it’s been a very complicated episode. A full-on, hour long episode of Ned Trek incorporating no less than six original Big Green songs. I am only now finishing out the songs, adding some incidental parts, mixing, etc. Working like a dog over here. (Well, a lazy kind of dog, anyway.)

Like a dawgOkay, I know what this sounds like. It sounds like pretty much every month this year, right? January’s podcast got pushed into February, March’s into April, April’s into May, and now June has evaporated. Four shows in six months is not exactly a land speed record, even for Big Green, so what can I say. As we try to raise our production values from the sub, sub-basement where they reside to the dank level of goodness just above that, we are finding that it takes a bit more effort than just plain sucking.

This is kind of how Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick was born. We started out with a bunch of hastily recorded sketches, then started tracking those, making them marginally more complex until they reached the same level of quality (or lack thereof) as our officially released albums, International House and 2000 Years to Christmas. We’re beginning to do the same deal with these Ned Trek songs, though they make the Cowboy Scat numbers seem, well, normal by comparison. This is some weird shit, man.

Stay tuned … we will post sometime soon. If it takes longer than we anticipate, we might toss in a clip show or something. Another cop out! Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Usual Rubbish

Thin broth.

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Hey, Lincoln. No, not you, Anti-Lincoln – I mean your positively-charged doppelganger. Lincoln … close that window, will you? It’s freaking freezing in this barn. I don’t care if you’re practicing your big speech to an imaginary multitude in the courtyard. Do it in front of an imaginary open window!

Big GreenYes, here we are … Big Green is once more ensconced in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, where the Buffalo never roamed and where peregrine falcons coexist with Web cams (no lie!). We have re-occupied our decrepit squat house, wresting it back from the yahoos that took possession of it while we were out on our multi-planet tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. A triumphant return … not.  We’ve had better tours, to be sure. (And better interstellar tour buses. That recycled rocket was a real rattle trap from start to finish.)

How did we convince the Cliven Bundy wanna-be’s to lay down their weapons and let us back into our abandoned mill? The same method we always use: soup to nuts, my friends, soup to nuts. We had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) cook up a crock of Servin' it up at the mill.his signature turnip and spare-tire consumme – a staple on our interstellar extended tours – and we offered it to the nuts occupying our adopted home. They couldn’t resist, flocking out to the courtyard to partake of that rare delicacy. While those hayseeds were choking it down, we slipped passed them and locked the front door behind us.

Sure, there was some complaining, a little KA-POW, KA-BLAM! mostly for show, but they eventually mounted their battered station wagons and rode off into the sunset. As their silhouetted figures receded from view, I meant to thank them. What for? I don’t know. Giving us a reason not to have that same soup again as our “welcome home” supper. In fact, if I NEVER taste another SPOONFUL of that BLOODY TURNIP and SPARE TIRE SOUP AGAIN, it will be MUCH … TOO … SOON!

All right, then. I feel much better now. Back to the studio.