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THIS IS BIG GREEN: November 2014

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Big Green arrives nearly on time with its November installment of pure audio glory, featuring a new episode of Ned Trek, seven new Big Green songs, and some strange hooting noises. Hold tight.

This is Big Green – November 2014. Features: 1) Ned Trek 21: Old Maple Glory, including seven new Big Green songs, listed as follows; 2) Song: Doc Flapjack, by Big Green; 3) Song: Yorba Linda Mybalinda, by Big Green; 4) Song: Sugar Shack, by Big Green; 5) Song: Motherlode, by Big Green; 6) Song: Hi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, by Big Green; 7) Song: Super Sugar Christ, by Big Green; 8 ) Song: Nobody Ride, by Big Green; 9) Put the Phone Down: Matt and Joe discuss the 2014 election, and get the vapors; 10) A visit with Secretary Kissinger, author; 11) There’s a caveman in my soup; 12) Matt looks forward to hunting season (not); 13) Song: Don’t Tell Rick, by Big Green; 14) Joe’s green screen antics; 15) Ignominious exit.

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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.

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Sweep up.

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Oh, sweep up! I’ve been sweeping up the tips I’ve made! I’ve been livin’ on Gatorade, planning my getaway!

Grab a broom, hey willya?Apologies to Paul Simon. Actually, except for the Gatorade part, that sounds like the story of my life just lately. Trying to tidy up the cavernous squat house we call the Cheney Hammer Mill ahead of the coming winter months. Nothing worse than a dusty house when the snow is up to the rafters – ask anybody who’s spent a few frigid seasons here on the dark side of the year. So, just plying the old broom across the brick floor.

Marvin (my personal robot) is running the vacuum in the background. Not a vacuum cleaner, you understand – an actual time/space vacuum he created with the orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind so many years ago. Amazing how that thing still runs after years of neglect, no one to tend its complex servos and circuit boards, not even our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee, who used to tinker with the thing from time to time before he relocated to his new lab in Madagascar. (Don’t go there! It may no longer even exist, the way he messes with the space-time continuum.)

While I’ve been occupying myself with domestic duties, I’ve been listening to a one-off CD of some of our Ned Trek songs. They need a little work, but I don’t doubt that we’ll release them in some more finalized form one day. I’m contemplating a late year holiday release or two on YouTube, maybe a collection of Ned songs sometime after that. It’s adding up to a lot of material, actually – about 25 songs and counting, pretty much all of which have showed up on THIS IS BIG GREEN in draft form. I know, I know … sounds like another Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yep, well … that’s how we roll these days.

Hey, listen to me, right? Interstellar tour, new album, YouTube videos. Slow down, maestro, you move too fast. You got to … hoo boy, there’s Paul Simon again. Stop it, man. More later.

Usual Rubbish

Rainy day schedule.

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Okay, kids. Line up for lunch. No, we’re not going outside. Rainy day schedule today. Break out the coloring books and the tunafish sandwiches.

I got my process, man. Or somethin.

If you’re anything like me, that was your favorite kind of lunch hour in grade school. No going out on the playground and putting up your dukes against whatever red neck wanted a piece of you that particular day. Why the reverie? Not sure. I guess all that rain beating down on the roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill has made me think of some of the other sprawling, musty barns I’ve inhabited for years at a time. Other squat houses, apartments, schools, lean-to’s … hell, submarines, even. Don’t knock it! It can rain all it wants, and no leaks (unless you opt for the screen door).

What’s up this week? Just toiling away in the vineyards of Big Green-ville, scratching out weird new numbers, honking noisily into microphones, tapping away at Ned Trek scripts. Mostly just making stuff up on the fly – that’s what we’re best at. And when I say “best”, I mean “not worst”. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) gets into the spirit of honest creative toil once in a while, running his internal adding machine until spools of tickertape unravel from his nether regions. It’s a marvelous … or, rather, Marvin-lous sight to behold.

Some people (mostly derelicts along the curb outside the hammer mill) have asked if we’re working on a new album. I have no answer to that. Matt and I just work, and then one day maybe an album appears. It’s a kind of alchemy. I’ve described the process on this blog before, so I won’t bore you with the details of our songwriting and recording methods. Suffice to say that it looks more random that it is, and yet still, it is fundamentally random … and random-mentally fun. That latter part is what’s important.

I’ll keep you posted on our projects. Just enjoy your sandwiches … and try to color within the lines. There’s a good chap.

Usual Rubbish

Inside August.

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Posted another podcast, as you can see, and it’s chock full of whatever the hell we’ve been doing for the past three months. If after listening to it you can explain to me what that may have been, I’d be eternally grateful. Just contact me at:

Joe Perry of Big Green
Behind the hot water pipes
Cheney Hammer Mill
Somewhere in Upstate New York

I’ll get it.

Anyway, here’s what we have on the menu for August:

Ned Trek 19 – Careact
This episode is loosely based on “The Changeling”, an episode of classic Star Trek that features a killer space-probe named Nomad that thinks Captain Kirk is its long-lost mother. In our version, instead of killing everything in sight, the probe gives every living being it encounters single-payer health insurance. Hilarity ensues.

The episode includes six new Big Green songs that sort of drag the plot forward in a somewhat haphazard way. These include:

Spiro’s Song (Die-de-die) – A surprisingly introspective number for the android ex president, featuring android Spiro Agnew on backing vocals and a big beanfeast singalong.

Sick Poor Jerk in a Herd – Ned’s song about his assessment of health care in the good old U. S. of A. …. I mean, Confederacy of Planets.

Sonny who?Some Health Care – Mr. Welsh pulls it out again with a posthumous number about how crappy coverage hastened his untimely end. Perhaps the first song in the English language to use “Space Probe Machine” as a refrain.

Romneycare – A jazzy little number about just what it says, and what Mitt plans to do about it.

Well, Well, Well – Richard Pearle’s ode to profitability and health. A bit overproduced, but perhaps appropriately so, given the singer’s high opinion of himself.

Medicare – Doc Coburn rock out plaintively about the bane of his existence … that damned socialist menace, concocted by LBJ.

Put the Phone Down
Yeah, we talk about some stuff. Mostly disposable, but give it a listen. You never know what we’re likely to say, right? We read out of a 1991 recording magazine, Matt does some funny voices and threatens to sue the memory of Sonny Tufts. That sort of thing.

Usual Rubbish

A la post.

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Hey, it’s a nice day. Think I’ll spend it in the courtyard. Or maybe on the road to Old Forge. Or not. Any suggestions?

Kind of quiet around the Hammer Mill these days. Maybe it’s just the dog days of summer howling a little louder than usual. Everyone seems to be taking a pass on everything, regardless of how little effort may be involved. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) couldn’t be bothered to plug himself in to his wall recharger, complaining that it took too much energy. How does that make sense? Maybe in robot-ville, but no place else.

I’ve done some minimal work on recordings this week, pulling together one mix, tweaking another, enhancing this, pouring chocolate sauce on that. Exhausting effort, as you might imagine. Tonight brother Matt and I will work on this again, with brother Marvin and brother mansized tuber standing by to assist. As I mentioned before, we’re working on six new numbers that will appear in the next episode of Ned Trek, the Star Trek parody series we include in our now less-than-monthly podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.

Didn't you plug yourself in, Marvin?If you’re not familiar with this … um … form of entertainment, go to our podcast home page, scroll down to some of the earlier installments, and give it a listen. Ned Trek is usually the first item in the podcast. At some point, it may acquire a life (or podcast) of its own, but for now suffice to say that it is a monthly skit based on old “classic” Star Trek episodes, starring a crew of modern day neocons headed by Captain Willard M. Romney, his first officer and talking dressage horse Mr. Ned, and others. (Oddly, there’s one hold-over from classic Star Trek – Mr. Sulu, who basically plays the one sane person in the room.) It, well, makes us laugh, if nothing else. Pretty much the reason we do anything, I suspect.

Hokay, well … I’m kind of toasty after having played a set with Puttin’ On The Ritz up in Old Forge last night, so I’ll stick a fork in this. Be free.

Usual Rubbish

Next stumbles.

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Process that track. Delete that wave. Get a little drunk and then dig your grave. I don’t know, what is the work song equivalent of my current occupation? Most professions have been reduced to someone sitting in front of a computer terminal, tapping away and grimacing. Here at Big Green, we are no exception. As I am now demonstrating, by sitting in front of a computer and typing. And grimacing.

Well ... maybe not.Sure, I know, we should perform. I think that’s a marvelous idea. Right now, our performances are our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which appears nearly every month right here on this channel (check local listings). We could haul our sorry, superannuated asses down to the local gin mill and slog through some of our hundreds (yes, literally hundreds) of songs, most of which have never been heard outside a small circle of friends, and I wouldn’t rule that out. Maybe we’ll do some Stage-It performances, or something like that. Who the hell knows?

The main thing is (and this is important!) we are still making ridiculous music … still bizarre and asinine after all these years. Right now, the place to hear it is here. And as I look around at the clammy walls of the empty, abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adoptive home, I am reminded of why we got into this in the first place… that spark of an idea that started Big Green decades ago, in a place far (well, not so far) away. That voice that came to me, early one morning, seeping into my cloudy, half slumbering consciousness, to whisper those inspiring words: “You need to make money somehow, you dope-ass loser … get a band going!”

Actually, it was louder than a whisper. And it wasn’t a disembodied voice; it was my roommate at the time, asking for my half of the rent. He was one of those guys who put labels on stuff in the refrigerator, each one sporting his name. To me, though, those labels always read “eat me”.

But enough about ME. What have you been up to, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Tossed together.

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Not much I can add to that, brother. How about another piano? No, no … not a different individual piano instrument, I mean another piano PART! Holy Jebus!

You are genetically weird.Oh, hi. Sorry about my outburst there. No, I wasn’t having an argument with my illustrious brother Matt, I was just rehearsing for our conversation later on today. I know it may seem strange, but I have to rehearse for just about everything that occurs in my life. Which is even stranger, in fact, because I almost never rehearse for gigs. In fact, you might describe me as downright hostile to the idea. (As a friend once famously said, “Rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow.”)

Now I should say here, no one has ever accused Big Green of not blowing. That just never has been part of our DNA. Granted, we have some errant strands in there; some stray genes that make us more susceptible to, say, living in abandoned hammer mills (which, on a rainy day like today, is kind of like living in a water treatment plant) or keeping personal robot assistants … like Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Yeah, we have a lot of personal and genetic history to live down, but we soldier on. Damn the torpedoes! (No, I mean, really, damn them. Those suckers smart.)

Speaking of abandoned hammer mills, we’re hammering out some new songs for the next episode of the podcast. They started out to be “first-draft” essays of the kind we did in 2012 – those rough little numbers that ended up on Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick in slightly less rough shape. But as we go, they keep getting more and more complicated. Recording is more like painting than sculpting, I have to say – you can keep slopping new paint over the old, sometimes until the canvas is inches thick with the stuff. When sculpting, you can only knock so many chunks off that rock before you’re left with … I don’t know … a smaller rock?

Hey, Matt … where’s my spatula? I’m going with the post impressionist look on this one. (Just practicing again. Love to hear the sound of my own echo in this old barn of a place.)

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Rigelian casaba fever.

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Which star is this again? I get them mixed up sometimes. We did Betelgeuse. We did Aldebaran. One big red, the other little yellow. Now it’s time for a blue star … Rigel. Perfect place to play the blues.

Big GreenBig Green playing the blues … on our interstellar tour to support Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick? Well … sure, why not. That’s some of what we started out by playing many, many moons (and many suns) ago, before we started writing a lot of our own music. We played Taj Mahal numbers, real standards like Statesboro Blues, and similar stuff, along with songs by The Beatles, The Band, Neil Young, etc. In our early days as Big Green, we had an alter ego cover band that performed under a series of ridiculous names, including “The Space Hippies”, “I-19”, and others. (One club owner, I recall, refused to hire The Space Hippies, claiming that, if he did, he would be “laughed out of Utica.” That’s when we founded the band, “Laughed out of Utica”.)

Right, so … our first night on Rigel, we started out with our old club date rendition of Corrina, Corrina. The non-corporeal beings of Rigel 3 went wild, as far as we can tell. The only way we can register any type of response is through highly sophisticated scanning equipment we borrowed from Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (they use it to track labor organizers in their mines and on their plantations). According to thRigel looks invitinge sensodyne magenetometer, the charged particles that make up most of the mass of Rigelian “bodies” were vibrating at a particularly high frequency during Corrina, Corrina. I call that success.

Of course, we are having some mechanical problems with our spacecraft. Nothing new there. Just a matter of thrust, or lack of same. Too many Rigelian casabas in the fuel mix, I suspect. We’re likely to stay on Rigel 3 for a couple more days, since we can’t seem to escape its orbit.  sFshzenKlyrn, our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, has gone on to the next engagement ahead of us, since he does not require a space craft to travel between worlds. Handy, that. One day, perhaps he’ll show me how it’s done. Then I’ll make Marvin (my personal robot assistant) do it.

Next stop: Capella.

Usual Rubbish

Inside the holiday podcast.

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Ahem. Still bobbing out here in deep space. Nothing to keep us company but the echoes of our increasingly impatient throat clearings. Ahem!

Well, while we have so much time on our hands, time to crack open that big Christmas present we left all of you who subscribe to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – namely, our annual Christmas Spectacular. What’s inside the box this year? Two solid hours of Big Green madness, including:

Ned Trek XV: Santorum’s Christmas Planet – This special, expanded holiday edition of our (un)popular Star Trek parody features six – yes, six – new Big Green songs, sung in character:

  • Christmas Shine – Captain Mitt Romney’s joyful rumination on getting full value out of his human resources throughout the holiday season. And he’s not going to say it again.
  • Horrible People – Mr. Ned contemplates the fate of all animals during the dangerous Yultide ritual celebrations. (Backing vocals by those ’40s guys.)
  • Dick’smas Xmas – Even the robot Dick Nixon keeps Christmas in his own way. This song gives you an idea of how that all comes down. Expletives deleted, mostly.
  • Doc’s Christmas – Full of crackpot prognostications and characteristic religious fervor, the right honorable Senator Reverend Doctor Thomas Beauregard Coburn belts out another keeper. Foghorn Leghorn is turning in his cartoon grave.
  • Lonely Little Neocon – Richard Pearle takes a moment away from more important duties to croon this tidy little number about how much he misses his favorite pastime – starting major conflicts.
  • Christmas Green – What’s the true meaning of Christmas? Let Captain Mitt explain it to you in no uncertain terms.

Let's talk about the podcast.This month’s episode features Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell (sounding a bit like Walter Brennan), and others as Mitt and the crew encounter a fantastic world on which Christmas happens every other day (and twice on Sunday).


Song: Merry Christmas, Jane, Part II – A holiday rebroadcast of this selection from our 1999 album, 2000 Years To Christmas.

Put the Phone Down – We spend a lot of our conversation remembering our old friend and colleague Tim Walsh, who passed away unexpectedly in November. Tim played guitar with us way back in the day, and we spin a few old recordings of the band we had back then, which was made up of Joe Perry (keys), Matt Perry (bass), Phil Ross (drums) and Tim. These are pretty rough, but you can hear most of what’s going on.

  • Wind Cries Mary – Hendrix number with Tim playing lead guitar. (This starts with an end bit from another recording that features Tim hammering out a blistering Neil Young style solo.)
  • Colors in the Darkness – Song written, arranged, sung, and recorded by Tim while we shared a flat in Castleton-On-Hudson, NY. The first section is all Tim; the second is excerpted from the entire band playing the song out.
  • Nothing To Hide – Another original song by Tim, which he sings. I think we recorded this at my parent’s house in New Hartford, NY, in maybe 1984.

Anywho … that’s the run-down of the show. Let us know what you think. We’ll have our people float a message in a bottle-rocket out to us.