Tag Archives: holiday

What’s Next in Big Green Land

Here’s a quick update on what’s happening with Big Green: Not Much. At least not yet. Yes, the rumors are true, we are working on a new project – our first album since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick ten years ago (to almost universal condemnation). You’ll be glad to know that we are committed to meeting and even exceeding the high standards we set with that album. You heard it here first.

While you’re waiting for the new album to surface, we will continue posting random bits from the archives, including some previously unreleased holiday recordings. So keep one eye on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@biggreenband) and one eye on the road. If you have a third eye, reserve that one for gazing into the eternal void.

Holiday on YouTube

Hey, campers – we just posted another of our live recordings on YouTube. It’s the song “Holiday”, the version we included on our collection LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. The song was recorded in 1994 and features the usual suspects, Matt, Joe, and John, with Jeremy Shaw on guitar. This was part of a day-long session in Jeremy’s basement, a demo project, featuring five original songs played live and captured on DAT tape, no overdubs.

Check it out:

Holiday table.

It can’t be morning yet, right? It’s still freaking dark outside. What? Oh, right. My night mask. I’ll just pull it off and … OH MY GOD … IT’S MORNING!

Well, that’s my revelation for today. What have you got? Hope you’re having a great holiday season, whether or not you celebrate any of the various commemorative feast-days that fall sometime around now. Like Trump in the White House, we’ve been staked out here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York (a.k.a. that farm upstate that every alt band goes to eventually) waiting for someone to tell us it’s safe to venture outside without proper shoes. That’s right – our shoes are a disgrace, my friends. No bones about it. And when you’ve got substandard shoes, Spring can’t come soon enough.

And while we’ve been cooped up in this drafty old barn, we’ve tried to busy ourselves with some low-budget Kringle-ing, sending out some old recordings via social media to our gaggle of patient friends, attempting to make up for the fact that we have nothing new finished … our latest batch is still in the oven, barely even browning at this point. Slow going, to be sure. Fortunately, we have an archive to keep us warm – the fruit of more than 30 years’ effort in the vineyards of no-budget songwriting, gigging, and music production. We’ve got everything from 1/4 inch reel to cassette to DAT tape to hard drives packed with ramblings, false starts, and even some complete songs. You never know what we’ll toss up next.

Okay, Marvin ... What have we got?Or maybe you will. Either way, that’s what we’re dropping on the holiday table under the tree. For a sampling, check our Twitter feed or visit our Soundcloud page and click play on any random upload. It is a mixed bag, I will admit, curated by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has a tin ear … actually, two tin ears and an aluminum voicebox.  Our posts thus far have been mostly Christmas themed selections, including outtakes from our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, and some live takes previously featured on our YouTube page or on our Live from Neptune EP.  These are all full-rez .wav files, and a couple of the live tracks have been remastered, so give it a listen and let me know how much they suck … I mean, what you think.

Whoa, is that the time? Back to bed with me!

Target: clue.

Bloody hell … my mirror cracked. No, I didn’t smash it with a hammer … I just looked into it, trying to freaking shave. Jesus, I’m old. Hey .. can I use your mirror?

Yeah, we’re cracking mirrors around here, no doubt about it. Looking back on about 30 years of making music under the same moniker, and it’s a little stupefying, frankly. True fact: Big Green was founded in 1986 and it’s still kind of rolling, give or take a few members. But regardless of the lineup, we still have the same DNA. The clueless core has remained intact … it hasn’t gone sub-critical yet. That’s ’cause we’re blood, man. Blood brothers, inseparable. (Particularly so, since Matt does most of the work.)

As we continue working on the next raft of songs, I’ve been taking a few minutes here and there to listen to our previous releases, for context if nothing else. Actually, part of it is taking note of stuff that I hate so that I can resolve not to make the same bonehead plays again and again. (Hey … how about that as a name for the next album: Bonehead Plays? Anyone?) Then there’s the stylistic question: what pigeonhole will we be placed in? And will the pigeon charge us rent? I don’t know about you, but my experience tells me that pigeons are lousy landlords. When something goes funky, like a leaking faucet or a broken mirror, they never send a proper workman … just some brother-in-law pigeon who owes them a favor.

We're type-cast ... and it's all Abe's faultOkay, I digress. Here’s the thing. Our first album had a holiday (i.e. Christmas) theme. The second was more of a straight rock record. The third was a mock country album. And yet, when you look us up in any of the music services, we tend to get chucked into “Holiday” or “Seasonal” categories, no matter what genre we assign to the album when we post it. The collection we’re working on rolls all over the stylistic map, starting in Alaska and ending up in Madagascar. Some pretty crazy shit, man. Look for it under “Holiday”.

Prisoners of our past, in search of a clue. That’s the glory of … that’s the story of Big Green. Happy 30th anniversary, kids.

Interim report.

Not a lot to say this week. Been kind of busy. Don’t know where to start. Stopped using personal nominative pronouns. Don’t know why.

Yeah, it was a week spent in hospitals, rehab centers, etc., etc. – suffice to say that there were no terrible outcomes, but it was an engrossing and exhausting experience, nonetheless. I hope to be posting the holiday episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN in the coming days, though I did get derailed this week, I will admit. We had a few mixes left to do, but Matt and I did them tonight and recorded the pointless voice track for the podcast, so …. it could happen. Miracles do happen.

Anyway, keep your eyes open and leave some room in the stocking. Something tells me there’ll be a podcast episode with your name on it dropping down the chimney. Or something. (I’ll probably do a political rant as well, just because they’re pissing me off so much lately.)

More later, people.

Roasted.

Mother of pearl. Is that the time? I thought the sun was getting kind of bright in here. Pull the blinds. No blinds? Arrgh. Hang another sheet over the window.

Noodles?Rolled out of bed a little tardy today. Who can blame me? After a gut-full of grub, a man’s thoughts turn to hibernation. Big Green doesn’t ordinarily celebrate major holidays, but we did relent this year and enjoy a modest Thanksgiving feast, prepared by the steady hand of our confidant Anti-Lincoln, who has elected to stay at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill while he considers his next steps. (I think he’s contemplating some brand of global domination, but no details yet. Can’t rush a genius!)

Some of you may recall that Lincoln’s favorite dish was Chicken Fricasee. Well, that obviously meant something to Anti-matter Lincoln, if only in the sense that he wanted to run in the exact opposite direction with his holiday meal plan. What’s the opposite of Chicken Fricasee, you may ask? In anti-Lincoln’s twisted mind, it’s dry noodles with tamari sauce sprinkled lightly over them. I think he dropped a couple of mint leaves in there, but that may have been an accident – we keep the tamari right behind the mint leaves. Coincidence? I don’t think so!

So bloody hell, you never saw a band tear into a plate of noodles like we did last night. And when I say “plate”, I mean one modest plate. Two forks on every noodle. Pretty feisty little dinner, but at least we were together. Stupid togetherness! I think only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) got his fill at our holiday table. And that’s only because he takes his nourishment via two leads from a dry cell under his chair. Note to self: I’ve got to get him another cell for Christmas this year.

No “Black Friday” shopping for us, friends. After that singular repast, we will just stick close to the mill for a couple of days and do a little work on our annual Christmas podcast. I’d tell you what we’re planning, but that would be telling. (It would also require us having planned something, which we most certainly have not.)

Under the holiday hood.

Man goddamn, it’s come and gone again, hasn’t it? Those freaking holidays seem to take fifty years to get here and then they’re gone in five seconds. And we’ve only done one miracle ride!*

Anyway, as some of you already know, we have posted our second annual Christmas podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN: Holidaze 2012, a nearly 100-minute extravaganza that dwarfs even the titanic pointlessness of last year’s effort and renders anew the promise of fractured Christmases to come. Many of you know that I am not given to wild exaggeration, but I have to say that THIS holiday special is THE MOST AMAZING HOLIDAY SPECIAL since the BIRTH of THE JESUS. Let me emphasize that I have to say that because, well, our sponsor, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., has demanded a higher number of downloads on this episode. And when they don’t get what they want, they get something else … which is ugly. So… gun to my head, I most certainly would.

All right – no lie, there is a lot in this episode. Here’s a run-down of the hoedown, with times listed, so you can skip to the parts you like:

    • Ned Trek V (3:18 ) – Mr. Ned and Willard take another romp through the inter-dimensional void of classic television shows, with hilarious consequences. (Introduced as always by a particularly cheesy-sounding Lee Majors.)
    • Put The Phone Down (39:20) – Matt and I launch right in to a lively holiday discussion. Riveting, as usual.
    • Charlie in the Box and the first Semi-Automatic Christmas (42:45) – A whimsical tale of Charlie, Hermy, and the putsch in Santa’s workshop. (a Reeking-Ass production.)

A nice gift idea. From crazy town.

  • Song: Merry Christmas, Children (59:40) – New recording of a previously unreleased Christmas song Matt wrote back in the day. We tried to produce this song for 2000 Years To Christmas, but ended up abandoning the track. This was done over the last three weeks or so.
  • Song: Father Christmas (1:06:43) – Another from Matt’s ample stable of Christmas songs – a new, previously unreleased recording, just in time for freaking Christmas. Again, recorded over the last few weeks – lightning fast for us. Mixed it in my sleep as you can probably tell.
  • Song: Martha’s Christmas (1:12:04) – A cut off of our 1999 album 2000 Years to Christmas. A brief, ironic (because it was the ’90s) ode to the doyen of holiday decor, Martha Stewart.
  • Song: Christmas Spirit (1:17:23) – More from the Matt Perry Christmas songbook. New recording of a previously unreleased song, this one a nod to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A little more holiday mythology, hurriedly recorded and packaged with a bow.
  • Matt’s Christmas Bird Count tale (1:20:00) – Matt tells of getting impaled on an invasive species of weed while managing the annual bird survey. A chilling tale of heroism.
  • Song: Head Cheese Log (1:35:09) – Another cut from 2000 Years To Christmas, this one the album closer, a calliope waltz imagining a yule log made of head cheese. Yeah, we got some ‘splainin’ to do, but that bus left the station a long time ago, friend.

Anywho, that’s what we have in the Christmas stocking for you all. (There may be a moldy orange in the heel, as well – take a look.) If you want to hear the music without the podcast, contact us and we’ll put it together for you. Enjoy!

* “Miracle ride” involves driving around looking at cheesy Christmas displays, referred to by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison as “Christmas miracles.”