Tag Archives: Songs in the Key of Rick

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

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

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

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.

Usual Rubbish

Home base.

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Wait, I didn’t hear that last bit. Are you saying that we can’t even get in the front door let alone the living quarters? What the fuck. Where is that Goldilocks Planet again? Cygnus?

Oh, hi. Well, we have made our triumphant return to planet Earth, our somewhat disapproving mother, having completed Interstellar Tour 2014 in support of our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And as any of you who travel in interstellar space know all too well, when you get back from a long journey, typically you find that everything has gone to hell in your absence. It’s a severe disincentive to traveling, I can tell you. But what’s the alternative? Hole up in a leaky hammer mill all winter? Not a chance.

Big Green’s loaner rocket touched down in Central New York around 1:00 a.m local time on Thursday, only to find that someone had changed the padlock on the gate to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we have made our home for the past decade or two (because, as Frank Zappa said, all of the bands live together). Different lock, for sure – unlike the old one, this one works, and none of us had the key, so we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to the local constabulary and asked for assistance. (Marvin was promptly arrested for impersonating a robot, which seems unjust and vaguely insulting.)

A tense scene unfolds inside the hammer millOkay, turns out, someone moved into the Hammer Mill during our absence, and they don’t seem eager to relinquish their squatter’s rights in deference to our own. What’s worse is that they appear to be affiliated with that rancher out in Nevada – what’s his name again? You know – that dude that has been grazing his cattle for free on federal land, owes about a million dollars in back grazing fees, and got together a posse of sorts to take up arms and fight off the Bureau of Land Management. The folks in the mill, well … they’re kind of like the Led Zeppelin tribute band version of those Nevada militia dudes. They got the hats, they got the pickup trucks, and … crucially … they got the guns.

Just trying to negotiate entry right now without getting my hair parted by a 30-30 rifle round. That Goldilocks Planet is looking better all the time. I wonder if they have the extraterrestrial equivalent of QE2 up there.

Usual Rubbish

Claiming the veep.

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Interstellar Tour Log: March 25, 2014
Out in the Ort Cloud neighborhood.

Big GreenHear that click? That was the sound of our spaceship doors locking. This Ort Cloud is a rough neighborhood, so best not to take any chances … now on the last leg of our Interstellar Tour 2014, which we undertook to boost sales of our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. A dubious endeavor, to be sure, but one worth at least a thimble of sweat, and we have certainly given it that – with the exception, of course, of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is incapable of perspiration. (Smoke comes out of that sucker, but only when it’s very hot.)

Anyway, we’re taking a brief diversion from our tour schedule to lay claim to the recently discovered deep space object known simply as 2012 VP (or “Biden”), a dwarf planet in a very wide orbit around the sun, way out here in Ort-ville. Hey, so what the hell, we’re staking out our claim, by virtue of the Extraterrestrial Homesteaders Act of 2047, which technically hasn’t been enacted yet … unless you are a time traveler, of course. Not saying we are, but we could be … and we have known a few in our time. Trevor James Constable, for instance. But I digress.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 28, 2014
On the surface of Dwarf Planet 2012 VP.

I claim the Veep for Big GreenRocky landing. We weren’t here five minutes before someone got the idea of sending Marvin out there to plant the Big Green flag – the one friend of the band Leif Zurmuhlen made for us back in the day. Hey, well … it’s a little icy out there, so Marvin took a couple of tumbles before finding a spot flat enough to accommodate a flag on a stick. There’s no atmosphere to speak of, so we asked him to hold the free end of the flag while we snapped a picture or two. When we get those back from the pharmacy on Neptune, we’ll share them with you? (Yes, another episode of Luddites in space.)

Okay, so … this is an open invitation to come and visit us on what I’m calling Dwarf Planet BG 2014. Take that, NASA.

Usual Rubbish

Sickening.

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Interstellar Tour Log: March 18, 2014
Planet #74 in NASA list. Near Aldebaran.

Yes, Big Green is still out here, on our massive Interstellar Tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, still picking our way through the dross of NASA’s list of 715 planets yet to be explored, blah blah blah. Not the best time to leave your mad science adviser back on Earth. I sure hope Mitch Macaphee is enjoying his time on the beaches of Madagascar or wherever that mad science conference is being held. Frankly, we could use his help.

Need thisThe fact that most of these strange worlds have been featured in American movies and television shows from the 1950s and 60s is little help when you’re trying to determine the precise composition (and toxicity level) of a greenish atmosphere. Sure, you can have that kind of trouble back home, in South Carolina or West Virginia … but at least down there you have your pick of mad scientists. Up here, we’ve got Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his converted wall barometer.

This planet is one of the ones the Robinsons of Lost in Space fame visited. Not quite sure which, since they all looked essentially the same. (One was called Preplanis, I think, right? But then that one blew up.) In any case, no one to perform for … not even a giant talking chicken. Moving on …

Interstellar Tour Log: March 20, 2014
Planet #526 in NASA list. Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy

Big GreenHuh. Thought I just saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson fly by in a strange looking spacecraft. Can’t be. Anyway, we may be at the end of the road here, my friends. Everyone is sick of this tour, including Marvin, the mansized tuber (who’s just been sulking in his terrarium all day long), both Lincolns, and even sFshzenKlyrn, who has more than once taken advantage of his ability to skip between dimensions and simply vanished from sight for hours at a time. It’s a little unnerving when you’re onstage in front of a crowd of tiny robots from the planet Industro and you nod to your guitarist to take a solo, and he’s in another freaking dimension. (Perhaps the Fifth Dimension, in which case he would have to learn some harmony parts pronto.)

Great googly-moogly, as they say in the vernacular. We’re sick of this shit. Next stop, terra firma … I think.

Usual Rubbish

Winging it.

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Interstellar Tour Log: March 11, 2014
Planet #253 in NASA list. Out Rigel way.

Next stop on our random interplanetary tour – or if you prefer, interstellar tour 2014, sans itinerary – is planet #253 on the list NASA generated off of their recent survey. (Now, I’m Get off my planet.not an astrophysicist, but I do have some experience with market research, so I’m guessing that this was a phone survey, and that our old friend Waleed Abdulati, NASA’s head scientist, simply hired a phone bank and had them dial distant star systems at random and ask, “How many in your solar system?” “Do you have a companion star or dark matter object?” “Is s/he working?”)

Turns out, much more is known about these unknown worlds than NASA is letting on. We are slowly coming to the realization that all of the science fiction movies and T.V. shows of our youth were not fictional at all … they were fairly accurate depictions of OUTER SPAAAAACE. Old number 253 is a good example of that. Did you ever see Vampire Planet with John Carradine and what looked like a band of refugee actors from European porn movies? Hmmmm… thought not. Well, it was bad. Really bad. And it was apparently filmed here on #253. No performance venues. Just caves and dinosaurs … again.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 14, 2014
Planet #79 in NASA list. sFshzenKlyrn‘s neck of the galaxy.

Big GreenYeah, we’re over near the cluster of nebulosity which sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, calls home. He’s taken his leave for a few days to visit his mother, another etheric creature of undetermined shape and mass. Splooge off the old nebula, that’s our sFshzenKlyrn, and man, he can really smoke that telecaster. (Seriously, I’ve told him not to go through them like cheap cigars – we’re not made of money, you know.)

Planet #79 offers some attractions for a traveling band. Fairly reasonable accommodations (there’s a Motel 6 down here). There’s even a grounded electrical outlet in our room, so we can plug Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in to charge. As a cheap advertising ploy, we plugged in our portable stereo and blasted Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick from Matt’s iPod. That got us, well, arrested and fined, but it was worth the gamble. We’ll be playing in the lounge tonight.

Usual Rubbish

Pick a sphere.

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Interstellar Tour Log: March 3, 2014
Planet #47 in NASA list, just south of Aldebaran

Okay, that was the planet of the dinosaurs. Check. Marvin? Be sure to put that one on the “do not visit” list. We should have known that from John Carradine’s experience back in the 1970s, but oh well.

Null set. Right, if you’re just joining us, Big Green is furiously working its way through the list of 715 new planets NASA recently put out, looking for halfway decent venues. We’re not picky, you know. It’s not like we need a proper dressing room with a row of lightbulbs arrayed above a long mirror and chilled Champagne in a bucket. Hell, we’ll settle for an unlocked fire door on one side of the stage. (I can just about hear some indie musician out there saying, “Big Green needs stages to perform on? What a bunch of prima donnas!”)

The first couple of planets on the list have been kind of a bust. Turns out, all NASA managed to do was catalog all of the seemingly habitable planets depicted in science fiction movies and television shows over the past 40 years. Not that that isn’t useful, but frankly, the Planet of the Dinosaurs has little to recommend it …. except for an outsized population of dinosaurs, and some bad-looking cave people with voices straight out of a Jay Ward cartoon. (And names like “Sookee”. Sookee? Really, space people – you can do better than that.)

Interstellar Tour Log: March 5, 2014
Planet #163 in NASA list, near Rigel

Big GreenMarvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered (or was shoved out the door, one of the two) to go down to the surface of this rocky little world and see if there were any performance venues worth pissing in. The place looks a bit like west Texas, so songs from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick should go over pretty well here. I know, it’s a little dicey using Marvin as an advance man, but Lincoln is kind of busy with his model ship building hobby and the man-sized tuber has his roots all tangled in something at the moment. (A couple of visits ago, Marvin was on the surface of a planet for six hours before he figured out it was Metaluna, the planet from “This Island Earth”. Talk about an oversight. How the hell many times do you have to watch that movie before you recognize the set?)

Looks like he’s encountered some kind of life form. Show him the contract, Marvin! Ask him if he needs a pen!