Tag Archives: Rick Perry

Usual Rubbish

Mis takes.

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All I’ve got is a three and a deuce. You’ve got queens? Christ almighty, Mitch. What do you have, a printing press over there? Isn’t that the third hand like that you’ve…. Oh, wait a minute, I have to get to work here…

Hi, everyone. It is I, Joe Perry of Big Green. No, not Joe Perry of Aerosmith. The other Joe Perry. And on behalf of the other members of Big Green, as well as assorted denizens of their entourage, I have been asked to make the following statement. This is NOT a test. This is an ACTUAL OFFICIAL STATEMENT from the band Big Green. Ahem.

The founding members of Big Green, Joseph M. Perry and Matthew J. Perry, hereby disavow and deny any connection, either familial or professional, with the group known as The Band Perry. Any claims made by any person or persons suggesting such a connection are patently false and possibly malicious. Big Green shall henceforth neither confirm nor deny any such claims, as the members feel that this statement is sufficient response. 

There. Now that that’s dispensed with…. Why did we feel the need to do this? Well…. with our new album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick now in the final phase of production – an album that features more than one country western-themed composition – we felt it necessary to draw a sharp line between ourselves and a country group that has appropriated OUR family name, one that has performed in central New York TWICE this year already. Given the confusion over my name and that of the guitarist from Aerosmith, it seemed silly to risk confusing the public even more on the eve of the launch of our new album. Yeah, I know… they’re young, have good hair, and are well rehearsed, and we…. well, we have none of those things. There’s something to be said for due diligence, my friends.

That said, Big Green has, with the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), been carrying out a project that demonstrates a profound lack of due diligence. It’s a collection of sound files called Fade-Out Grooves that we’ve been releasing into the wild via Twitter ( @BigGreenJoe ).  These are the drawn-out hairy endings of songs we’ve recorded and mixed – basically, all of the junk that happens after the fade out. Don’t know about you, but I always wondered how songs that fade-out actually end. Well … now you can know the answer to that conundrum.

So… think of these as appetizers, just to keep you busy until the main course arrives.

Usual Rubbish

Back pages.

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The jury is in on Curiosity. The bad news: there is no water on Mars. The good news? There’s club soda. And tonic water with lime. There’s a lot you can say about the Martians, but you can’t say they’re not civilized.

Got some time on our hands, obviously, so we have the luxury of pondering the findings of the latest Mars probe, made available by our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee (who somehow hacked into Curiosity and has compelled it to act on our behalf as a robotic booking agent on the red planet). Roll, Curiosity, roll, and soon we will be idle no longer. Or something to that effect. Hell – bring back a pizza and the Lincolns will be happy. That would certainly outdo Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and he only has to cross the street to get the great emancipators a third-rate pie. (I’m looking at you, Marvin. You’re not good!)

Well, I hope you all enjoyed our anniversary edition of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our official podcast. A little something for everyone in there, I’m proud to say. Aside from all the pointless yak by Matt and myself, you can enjoy:

  • a little visit with Mr. Ned, Mitt Romney’s dancing horse, and the candidate himself.
  • not one but TWO new songs by cousin Rick Perry: a country number titled “Fed Up” and a Susan Boyle-inspired ballad called “Lone Star”. Think of them as bookends on the empty bookshelf that is Rick’s Texas brain.
  • brief comments by Jack Ossont of the Coalition to Protect New York at an anti-fracking rally in Utica, NY.
  • a blues number culled from the first-ever demo recorded by a group called Big Green.

The last item, a Taj Mahal number named “She Caught The Katy”, which was part of our live show, was recorded back in 1986 in a garage studio (analog Tascam 8-track deck) owned by John Danison – brother of Big Green co-founder Ned Danison – who worked for the band Blotto back in the day. We threw together a four-song demo to promote the band; this was one of those tracks. I’m doing the vocal and plunking on Ned’s electric piano. Matt’s playing bass. Ned is doing the electric guitar and organ parts. The drummer was an Albany guy named Pete Young – he was with us for this recording and that was about it. (We had some drummer issues in those days.)

So hey, what the hell … enjoy. And if you go to Mars this week (or next), bring some ice.

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THIS IS BIG GREEN: FIRST ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

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This is Big Green – First Anniversary Special. Features: 1) Mr. Ned, the Dancing Horse; 2) Put the phone down: Who’s dead this month; 3) Talk of Hansen and strip mining; 4) Song: She Caught The Katy, recorded by Big Green in 1986; 5) Song: Fed Up, by Cousin Rick; 6) Pondering the plot of Kung Fu; 7) Comments on fracking by Jack Ossont, Coalition to Protect New York State; Song: Lone Star, by Cousin Rick; 9) Opening a surprise package from Dave Thompson; 10) Closing ceremonies.

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Usual Rubbish

All about process.

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Thursday night is still good for me. What about the rest of the week? I’m busy, that’s what. Man’s got to sleep sometime, you know. Blame it on the diurnal rotation of the earth and the fact that my ancestors evolved on this miserable pimple of a planet! (Oh, crikey … now I’m borrowing throwaway phrases from minor characters in Lost in Space.)

What do you say to someone who sleeps six and a half days a week? WAKE UP! That might work. I’ve got a little problem in that direction, I admit. It’s prompted me to ask Mitch Macaphee to install some kind of alarm clock function in Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He gave me a look that would melt iron, but w.t.f. – why shouldn’t I expect a sophisticated robot to have a level of functionality one might expect from a ten dollar wristwatch? (Mitch told me to go out and buy a ten dollar wristwatch, actually. He has a point.)

What’s this got to do with Big Green, the larger world of indie music, and the fate of the universe in general? Over here at the Hammer Mill, we’re always hashing out when to do what. Thursday night is usually the time Matt and I get together to work out arrangements, record, etc. That’s happening at something of a snail’s pace by most people’s standards – by Big Green standards, however, it’s greased lightning. Just look at our discography. Two albums in 15 years, plus some assorted EP and single releases. It took us five years – FIVE YEARS – to record, mix, master, and release our last album, International House. Every time I hear it, I am reminded of …. well, just about everything that happened during that five years. Talk about a mnemonic device!

Anyhow, our upcoming album – Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – is coming along a hell of a lot faster than that. We’ve got basic tracks for all of the songs recorded; mostly tweaking to do from this point forward. Most of the songs have been featured in first draft form on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, so you can hear proto-mixes of almost the entire album if you can stand listening to us gab hours on end. And do bad imitations of famous people. And sing impromptu songs. And insult the dead.

Okay… so you probably haven’t heard the first drafts. Just look for the finished product. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some sleeping to do.

Usual Rubbish

All’s well that ends.

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That’s no good. They will certainly have lifted the phonograph needle by that point. The phonograph needle… you know… the thing that scratches along the record and makes the music come out. Don’t you know anything about technology?

Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there, peering in from the void of cyberspace. Just working my way through some technical issues relating to our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Getting into the minutiae with our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who will actually be making the records this time out. Yes, we do have a corporate label – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., a.k.a. Hegephonic Records – but they are kind of a “hands off” outfit (unless you owe them money; then it’s another story … one involving off duty military personnel, typically …. I’ll stop there).

What all that means is simply this: under our “contract”, we make the product from start to finish. We write the songs, record them, cut the discs, package them, carry them to all of the stores, etc.  Hegephonic does the rest. (That is to say, they rest up until there’s some looting to do. It’s complicated.) So, we’re just trying to work out a few of the details with Mitch, who apparently has never heard of the gramophone record. Have you been to the talkies yet, Mitch? They’re like a freaking conjurer’s trick!

The fact is, Matt and I prefer to concentrate on more artistic matters… like what’s going to happen at the end of every song. Sure, most pop songs just fade away, but the story doesn’t end there, my friends. Indeed, a lot of meaning is lost in that fade-out groove. Big Green, for its part (which part I decline to say), is dedicating itself to recovering some of that lost value for the benefit of listeners everywhere. And we’re going to do that by putting them out on the interwebs – a collection of last gasps, as it were. Some funky, so sullen, some so bizarre even I can’t fathom the implications of their existence. It cannot be so! I find myself shouting when I hear them. And yet it is so.

So…. something to look forward to. That’s what we like to hear. Now … about those photographic plates…. Don’t drop them! They’re glass, you know.

Usual Rubbish

Preppin’ for Tex.

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Got your cowboy hat yet? Oh. Okay, why the hell not? Just go downtown, walk into the cowboy supply store, and pull a ten-gallon hat off the rack. What’s so hard about that?

Oh… hey, man. Caught me, once again, in the midst of lecturing the help. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) refers to it derisively as “reprogramming”, but you know better. All I asked him to do was to purchase his own cowboy gear – that’s all. Is that so unreasonable? Am I expected to pay for everything around here? What the hell – I’m the “job creator”, right? I’m the one using “air quotes” left and right. Haven’t I done my part in this employer-robot assistant relationship? Huh?

Okay, so why am I asking Marvin to dress up like Tex? So that he’ll match the rest of us, of course, when we start shooting videos to support our upcoming album of Cousin Rick Perry songs. What the hell, we can’t release an album of songs nominally by the governor of Texas without donning ten-gallon (or, at least, 5-liter) headgear. That would be tantamount to malpractice. And what is malpractice but a crutch for cats who can’t blow? (Okay… I murdered that quote, but it had it coming.)

Admittedly, there is more to making a new album than getting matching cowboy suits. Much more. Like shoes. And pizza boxes. Bubble-stuff in a plastic jar. What else? Hmmmm. Corn husks. Put them all in a cement mixer and flip the switch, baby. Round and round they go, and after a few hours, pour it out into a six-up mold and start stamping out those CD’s. Nothing to it.

What about the music part of it? Details, details. We’re working on it, that’s all I can say. All of those first-draft podcast songs? We’re polishing them to a sparkling luster. We’re patching them up like ten miles of bad road. We’re turning knobs, flipping switches, and cranking …. cranks. We’re making the little lights flash like glow-bugs. That’s a bit of doing.

So, yes… we will have an album. Big Green will crawl again across the shattered landscape of American music anyhow. In cowboy hats. Yee-haw.

Usual Rubbish

Sing it loud.

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Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare … disgusting. Oh, well.

Yep, we’ve got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally – he wouldn’t stop blinking. I think it’s all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end.

Right, well…. we’re not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green. No, we are practical mofo’s, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo’s you read about in the Sunday paper.  Fact is, we’re recording an album and we need to freaking hear the bastard – we all admit that. To deny it would be just plain silly.

What’s the album about? Glad you asked. Give a listen to the last episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, wherein I believe we give a rough explanation of the project. I believe we do – don’t quote me on that. It’s probably somewhere between our seventeen apologies for the previous month’s episode and our airing of cousin Rick Perry’s latest song, “Come Back Mean”, which features the immortal lyric:

Kick me a dog
Go scour the neighborhood
Bring me the best kickin’ dog you can find
Go get me Planned Parenthood

Old Rick is singing from the heart right there. (Though it does sound eerily reminiscent of another organ slightly to the south.)

Yes, so… we’re taking all of cousin Rick’s songs, polishing them up a little bit, and placing them on a long playing record (a.k.a. a bunch of MP3s) where they can be downloaded by the likes of you. What you’re hearing on the podcast are “first drafts” – rough mixes of basic tracks. What you will hear on the final album (working title: “Cowboy Scat”) will be finished pieces (of something), which in many cases may sound…. substantially like the podcast versions …. but (and this is important) not necessarily!

Okay, well… I’ve wandered a bit. Nothing new there. Ooops. And there goes the light switch. Technology!

Usual Rubbish

Lunar new year.

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Hey, what the…? Did I sign off on that? Are you sure? Well, I guess you would know better than I. Wouldn’t you? RRRrrrrr….

Face it, we’ve got bad quality control here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Was a time that not a single hammer went out of here with unsightly flashing or a splinter out of place in their ironwood handles. Not so with Big Green, it pains me to say. We are not perfect – ADMIT IT TO YOURSELF. It’s just because we’ve got irons in so many fires. Too many spoons in the stew. Eleven toes on each foot. I don’t know – you pick the metaphor. I’ve got work to do.

Nah, see… Marvin (my personal robot assistant) posted our March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, before I had had a chance to listen to it. We could be saying ANYTHING, for chrissake. If we had reputations or integrity, we could lose either (or both). There are some advantages to general slovenliness and moral degeneration, but I’ve only just thought of one of them, so…. there can’t be too many. Anyway, it’s out there, warts and all – another wide ranging discussion between Matt and I, discussing everything from the death of Davy Jones and Andrew Breitbart, to Star Trek mythology, to things too obscure to describe in print. Freakish, that’s all I can say. Plus three more songs from Rick Perry – a 70s-pop lament tentatively called “Rick: The Searchable Name”; a doggerel called “Really Rick Perry”, and a primitive rock number entitled, simply, “Santorum”.

Okay, well … that’s done. Now, to our new commission – that of spearheading the efforts of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in his efforts to conquer and rule the moon. He got our names from George W. Bush, no doubt. We have been in the dubya rolodex ever since he went on tour with us back in 2000, which led to our taking on an advisory position in the early (pre-9/11) Bush White House. (We were in charge of his Space Commission, based on our long history in…. well…. space.) Hey… nothing succeeds like success. Except perhaps failure, in our case. Anywho, the first thing Newt has asked us to do – aside from grease the diplomatic wheels with any people found on the moon – is to write a national anthem for our nearest neighbor in space. One that duly celebrates his initiative, his genius, and (he also says) his modesty.

So, well…. Matt and I have to get to work on this. Perhaps John can work up some pedal steel parts. We’ve got stuff to do, Marvin – don’t bother me with trifles! (Unless they’re the tasty dessert kind.)

Usual Rubbish

Albumination.

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We’re out of the big box retail business. Easy come, easy go. Now what do we do for scratch? Start scratching? What am I, a dee-jay? (Perhaps I am…. )

Leave us face it. As so many of our closest friends and advisors have told us, Big Green’s money-making gene is recessive. The cash bone definitely is not connected to the Green bone. Even when we have a hole to China’s most productive consumer good factory – literally a tunnel to the bank! – it blows up in our faces. The gods want us humble. They have given us a mission, and we must fulfill it. Live simply in an abandoned mill. Make music. Travel to other planets via questionable means. Go forth and do as I tell you. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

What the…. got gods for three minutes and they’re already demanding as hell. Well, you should know that we’re not letting the grass grow under our feet. (Except the mansized tuber, of course – that’s his natural state.) As you may be aware, Matt and I have been busy with our podcast. A grueling monthly broadcast schedule, now in its eighth grueling month. Ever eat gruel for eight months straight? Just try it sometime, Ebeneezer. Even you will be calling for more bread, damn the ha-penny extra. Right…. where was I? Ah, yes. Work. Work, work, work. The podcast demands a great deal out of us – namely, that we turn on the recorder, stand in front of studio mics, and talk total, rambling nonsense like we always do. Then we press stop. (I told you – it’s a great deal.)

Then there are the songs. We’ve done a lot of Cousin Rick Perry songs – it’s becoming a bit of a theme, like Christmas or rare foot diseases. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been good enough to help track some of the numbers. In fact, we’re thinking about pulling it together into an album – finishing the songs we threw together for the podcast and putting out an album of Rick Perry themed material. Would the resulting product be an abomination of sorts? Perhaps in the Eyes (or the Ears) of the Almighty Rick. He is among our more sensitive cousins, to be sure.

So, yes, our hands are full, our hearts (and wallets) light, our spirits…. I don’t know, I’ll go with spongy.

Political Rants

Best man.

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The South Carolina food fight – a longstanding electoral tradition – is in full fury, the GOP candidates fighting like dogs, only this time with even bigger dogs – the Super PACs – duking it out in the same ring. This is typically when the worst tendencies come to the fore in the Republican party, and this year should be even uglier than the last two presidential cycles.

In any case, let’s look at some of what’s being said, shall we?

Gingrich in the last debate: “To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

Hah! You’ve got to love this guy, don’t you? He finds it “appalling” that the media would stoop so low as to open a debate with questions of infidelity. Yes, this is the same Newt Gingrich that was Speaker during much of the Clinton administration – the same Newt who made that president’s extramarital dalliances a national issue, to the point of the first impeachment trial in the Senate since Reconstruction. Newt Gingrich, who led the nation to a constitutional crisis over a presidential blow job, is now appalled that his pseudo-romantic foibles are considered a matter of national concern. Welcome to the world you helped invent, big guy.

Romney in the last debate: “I’m someone who believes in free enterprise. I think Adam Smith was right. And I’m going to stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign.”

Who can doubt that Romney stands for free enterprise? It’s the system that made him a multi-millionaire, with so much cash he needs to ship a fair amount of it to the Cayman Islands for safe (i.e. tax-free) keeping. The thing is, like so many modern-day “capitalists”, he has a very narrow understanding of Adam Smith – the man who had little sympathy for the “joint stock companies” of his day and who decried the “vile maxim of the rulers of mankind – all for me and nothing for anybody else.” Smith was a product of the Enlightenment, which of course puts him in a separate category altogether from these robber barons and bigots, who make me think of another more recent philosopher, John Dewey, who described politics as “the shadow cast upon society by big business.” True that.

Rick Perry: “I quit”

Domage. I, for one, will miss Cousin Rick, if only for all those songs he did for us.

luv u,

jp