Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Under the hood of lost September.

Is this the new itinerary? Looks like last week’s. Which, if I recall correctly, was a hastily updated photocopy of the flight path for Voyager 2. That mission didn’t end well, my fine friend, just you remember.

Yes, yes … we are still preparing the ground for our upcoming interstellar tour to support celestial sales of Big Green’s latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. The itinerary thus far includes stops on gas giants, molten moons, and frozen asteroids hurtling into black holes. Couple of snags, that’s all. Nothing to get excited about. (Man Jack Jesus, this band has to work like an animal to find an audience.)

In the meantime, we have plucked the lost September episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN from the jaws of non-existence (if such a state of being can be said to have anything resembling jaws), and good thing, too: we needed an October episode very badly indeed. What’s it all about? Well, you could give it a listen. Or you could just ask us … and if you did, we would most likely tell you it includes:

Big GreenAnyhow, the “lost” September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN includes:

Ned Trek XIII: Specter’s Stepchildren. Our running satire of Star Trek, Mr. Edd, and the Romney presidential campaign continues with this gripping episode. Mr. Welsh is being coaxed into serving as a sound engineer for powerful aliens who force songs out of Mr. Ned, Mr. Pearl, Rev. Doc Coburn, and Willard Mittilius himself…. with hilarious consequences. Five (or is it six?) new Big Green songs, never before heard, one sung by a horse, one sung by a robot Nixon, one sung by space aliens (accompanied by John Ashcroft), one sung by a chickenhawk neocon (guess who). Don’t miss it.

Idle conversation. As usual, Matt and I ramble on for about 20 minutes about vital issues of the day, random snippets from days past. We talk about our dad, about space probes, about god knows what. Something else, I’m sure. No spotlight songs resurrected from the past this month – we spent our song quota in the Ned Trek episode.

That’s what we’ve got. Now, back to travel plans. Where’s that sextant?

THIS IS BIG GREEN: October 2013

Big Green resurrects the lost September episode of their podcast with the epic Ned Trek 13, featuring five or six new Big Green songs. Found at last.

This is Big Green – October 2013. Features: 1) Ned Trek XIII: Specter’s Stepchildren, featuring five (or six) new Big Green songs, including (a) Ashcroft’s song, (b) Nixon’s song, (c) Ned’s song (Get me outa here), (d) Romney’s song, (e) Doc’s intro, (f) Doc’s song (Bye-bye freedom), (g) Pearl’s song; 2) Put the Phone Down: Matt and Joe discuss news of the day and engage in other pointless jabbering; 3) About the spokesperson for Armstrong; 4) Dad: A brief history; 5) Space probe news; 6) Time for us to go

Lost eppy.

Don’t bother me with that now, Marvin. Yes, I’ve seen you juggle before. But Big Green’s interstellar stage show has no slot for jugglers, even if they toss molten crowbars in the air five at a time. What the hell do you think this is, Ringling Brothers? Perry brothers, damn it. Whole different circus.

Seriously, sometimes it feels like I’m running a two-bit talent agency in lower Broadway in 1947. Ever feel that way? Well … I have, and it’s right now. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has gotten it into his brass head that he needs to warm up our audiences, particularly in venues like Neptune, where the average daily high is something like 55 Kelvin (that’s -218 Celsius to you and I). In that kind of climate, Marvin reasons, a little foot-stomping can’t go amiss. Sure, he’s got a point … but juggling? On a plain-clothes rock stage? Come on.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of you – maybe five or six or even more – who are wondering what the hell happened to our September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast. Good question. Fact is, it’s finished … Matt and I did our meaningless conversation segment just a couple of hours ago. It has, of course, become the “lost” September episode, in as much as October is now upon us. Yet another October – who would have believed we would have two in as many years? What are the chances?

Big GreenAnyhow, the “lost” September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, due out any day now, is another blockbuster extravaganza, with a special episode of Ned Trek featuring no less than five or six brand spanking new Big Green songs, sung in dialect and embedded in the very woof of the program. It is a feast for sore ears. Feast your ears on this shit, and they’ll be sore, for sure. Yes, you’re welcome.

Stuff to do. Got to get back to planning our interstellar tour to support sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And my cat Sara wants a snack. Coming … !

Planning for launch.

I say let’s start rehearsing on Wednesdays. You can’t? Why the hell not? That’s your LUNCH day? Oh, right. Forgot about that.

Big GreenJust trying to pull together some Big Green rehearsals in advance of our anticipated interstellar tour to promote our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Of course, I’m running into the usual scheduling conflicts. I keep forgetting how people arrange their time. Anti-Lincoln (who sometimes shakes a tambourine backwards for us), for instance, has what can only be described as a singular meal schedule: Instead of the usual three meals a day, he eats breakfast all day Sunday, lunch all day Wednesday, and dinner all day Friday. Hey – I don’t judge. If it works for him, that’s great.

This does get to be like being a traffic cop, though. And what usually ends up happening is that Matt and I get together and just run through some songs, or make up new ones, or record an episode of Ned Trek for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. In other words, blow a lot of time on nothing in particular. But that’s how we roll.

What about the tour? Well … details are still in the works. I asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to look at the feasibility of just Stop smoking, already.doing an interplanetary tour within our own solar system as opposed to traveling into deep space and incurring some substantial logistical costs (not least of which are those damned tollbooths between here and Aldebaran – I’m almost certain they’re a scam!). He whirred and flashed and squeaked for about three hours, then emitted a slip of paper that bore a recipe for potato soup written in Mandarin. I beckoned to my translator.

Upshot of this is, we have reached out to some of the tour promoters we’ve used in previous outings. I know what you’re going to say – those tours were disastrous failures and a threat to both life and limb and intergalactic peace and security, right? Point taken. This time will be different. Because everybody knows that when you do the same thing over and over again, eventually you get a different result. Right? (Sure I heard that somewhere…)

Yonder bound.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant), didn’t I tell you to pick those Legos up about three hours ago? Can’t you do anything without being told twelve times?! Are you even awake?! MARVIN!!

I'm your Lincoln ConciergeChrist on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and have dutifully (and pitilessly) posted our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN every month, on the month (or quite nearly). But gainful employ? Naught, my friend. Goose egg.

Arguably, it goes against human nature (and personal robot assistant nature, presumably) to be idle for so long. I’ve seen signs of restlessness, to be sure. Not from anti-Lincoln, of course, who spends most of his day in the forge room, swilling cheap rum that he got from god-knows-where. But his positive doppelganger, Lincoln, tries to keep busy in imaginative though annoying ways. (I keep telling him, I can’t afford a big fat car – it’s just not in the game plan. But just try telling Lincoln not to sell you something.)

Big GreenMarvin is always coming up with pass-times, as well as hair-brained schemes for making money. But I think he’s hit a wall, and it’s understandable. Even his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has wandered off to richer pastures, taking advantage of some time-share property he invented in Madagascar. (Something about hanging gardens … though I’m not sure about what stage of insanity he was in when he told me about it.) So Marvin sits and rusts a little every day, his battery running down. He needs a change of scene, and so do the rest of us.

That’s why I have started making inquiries about doing an interplanetary tour to support extraterrestrial sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Spoiler alert: Terrestrial sales have been abysmal.) Stay tuned for details. Big Green out.

Alrighty, then.

What the hell. Is that what we sounded like back then? We still sound like that now! Man freaking god damn. It’s like being sealed in amber.

Back thenGreetings from the Mill of our discontent. Well, it’s mild discontent, let’s say. Been a long time since the book of love. Wait … why did I say that? Oh, right – I was listening to tapes from the 70s and 80s, so naturally my mind goes back to my neighbor’s Led Zepplin albums. (I didn’t have any; just Simon and Garfunkel, Josh White, and Mario Lanza. Oh, and some weird stuff.) We didn’t sound anything like them, of course. In fact, we sounded strangely like us in the 2010’s. It’s as if we’ve been playing the same tune for forty years. FOR FORTY YEARS…!

Why am I listening to old recordings? Simple … we live in an abandoned hammer mill, we haven’t toured in three years, and there’s nothing else the fuck to do around this dump.  Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is discontented. He even forgot to plug himself in the night before last – now that’s just plain careless.

Speaking of carelesss … I left my wallet in the bathroom. Anything could have happened to it in this den of thieves. Of course, there’ nothing in it except a couple of wadded up notes and a Canadian quarter I tried to drop into a soda machine last week. (The thing spit it back at me, making a compressor hum that sounded eerily like “Oh, Canada.”) Sometimes we fail to value those things that are the most valuable, like … I don’t know … gold, and/or money. And friends, of course. Rich, rich friends.

Big GreenYes, as you can see, we’ve been couped up in this mill way too long. It’s high time we went back on tour, this time to promote Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. That would put us back on track, get our heads in order, crisp our bacon, rock our clown, etc. It might also leave us with some fresh metaphors. Nothing like an interstellar tour to generate some really awesome metaphors.

Hey … don’t forget to check out THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast for August. It’s weird, yes, but you know what you’re getting, and the price is right (i.e. free).

August arrives late.

Well, that was strange. It was just the end of July, and now look at us. Summer evaporated – must have been all that sun.

It took a few weeks, but Matt and I finally got around to thinking that we should post an August episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. I’m sure some of you may have thought we were taking an August break, much like our political class and most people of means in Europe do every year about this time, but no soap. Let’s get this clear: Big Green is a WORKING band. They’ll be no slackers around this abandoned hammer mill, my friends. Yeah, I’m looking at YOU, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). It’s up every morning at 5 a.m. and sweat!

Phew, that was exhausting. Anywho, what do we have on the podcast this month? Well, let’s have a look-see. First off, we’ve got a special episode of Ned Trek, entitled Ned Trek XII: The Manassery. Introduced by Lee Majors, as always, this ludicrous extravaganza features a peerless pantheon of figures from the American conservative tradition, including Ronald Reagan in a role inspired by that of Captain Christopher Pike, post disaster. A must-listen for anyone with way, way, way too much time on their hands.

Big GreenThen there’s Matt and my usual broad-ranging conversation about nothing in particular, interrupted not once but twice by previously unreleased recordings of Big Green songs. The first, “Plenty of Time, Plenty of Blood”, is a number pulled from the archives; another four-track cassette recording, probably from 1990-91, somewhere in there. The second, right at the end of the podcast, is a recent recording of a song called “Ask For Leave”. This is one of those rough-draft recordings, not quite fully tracked, which we did a hasty mix on for the podcast.

Yeah, I know – it goes on a bit too long. But if you can stand two hours of THIS IS BIG GREEN, perhaps you can also endure 78 minutes of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our new album. Give it a listen. (If you’re short on scratch in these hard times, contact us and we’ll send you a copy gratis, while supplies last.)

THIS IS BIG GREEN: August 2013

This is Big Green – August 2013. Yet another special 2-hour podcast, featuring: 1) Ned Trek XII: The Manassery; 2) Put the Phone Down: Matt and Joe look back on two years of podcast not-so-goodness; 3) Woodpecker nest report; 4) Brubaker: A brief history; 5) Googling Cavanaugh; 6) Song: Plenty of Time, Plenty of Blood, by Big Green; 7) NSA spying scandal; 8) Song: Ask For Leave, by Big Green; 9) Exit, already. Download at your own peril … but for chrissake, download it!

Another week.

Here we are, another week ahead, one behind. I feel like a week sandwich.

Big GreenNot much time to gab. What’s new? We recorded another installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN this week, and I realize now that we never decided what the hell recordings we were going to cut into the show. We’ve got a truckload, of course. I know one that Matt had suggested is going to be included – an old ’90s recording we did on Matt’s 4-track cassette machine. Lo-fi, yes … but hey, that’s how we roll.

We’ve also got some half-finished recordings we started before turning to Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This is a project we’ll probably pick up on again. Matt in particular has a huge backlog of songs we’ve never properly recorded, so we started hammering away at those (only natural, living in a hammer mill. Everything looks like a nail, right?) We’ve got some technical issues to work through … like a low-cost multitrack deck that is coughing up blood after producing two albums.  But we’ll make adjustments, no doubt. Anywho … another one of those recordings will probably surface on this month’s podcast.

We’ll also have another episode of Ned Trek – this is Ned Trek 12, I think, every bit as ludicrous as the previous 11. We’ve been talking about spinning this off into its own podcast, just because they’re getting so long. Or making it into an animated YouTube features. Or pounding nails through it and launching it into space. Who knows what we’ll do? We certainly don’t.

All right, sandman’s beating me to death. Time to bail. Hope all is well in Swaziland. Or Madagascar. Or wherever the hell you are.

What’s in the box? (part 3)

Holy mother of pearl. My throat is in shreds. Just got done with a 23-page script for the next episode of Ned Trek, a now-regular feature on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Spoiler alert: I do the voice of Reagan. Well….

All that yakking can make a man sore tired. And tomorrow I play the 47th in a 194-part series known as the reunion gigs of Puttin’ on the Ritz, a band of many, many strange people (and I am one).

But that is not what you’re here for, to be sure. No, no, I’m sure you’re anxious for me to conclude my three-part explanation of the 21 songs contained on Big Green’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. It’s like waiting for the next episode of Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad … except that those things are, well, good-ish.

Anywho, here’s the splainin’ … and then, to bed, damnit.

Santorum From Behind – Sounds obscene, I know, but it’s necessary, believe me. Now that he’s out of the race, Rick is just trying to give old Mitt some helpful hints about that that object in his rear view mirror that’s closer than it appears.

Santiny – A meditation on Santorum, the Rick with the unsearchable name. I hear he keeps a fetus in a jar … a fetus named “Santiny”. You gotta pray.

Big GreenAw Shoot – In a world beyond time … Okay, this is like the theme song to a bad Euro-Sci Fi flick, except it’s about Rick. Unnamed German band takes the long view of Rick’s run, with hilarious consequences. Aw …. shoot.

Am I Really Rick Perry? – A thoughtful Rick contemplates the nature of his own identity, the thingness of things, the rightness of right, and so on, bidding a fond farewell to Andy Breitbart. Kind of a fifties vibe to this one. L.S.D. did exist then, didn’t it?

Poor Dick – Our cousin’s hero, Dick Cheney, is in trouble deep. Who better to save his considerable bacon than Ranger Rick himself. What’s the caper? Find a suitable ticker for transplanting into the heart of darkness. Poach it from another true believer… with hilarious consequences. Another country number, pure and simple.

Flying Up Ricky – Hit with the rapture, Rick disappears into thin air, leaving behind a crew of lamenting braceros, ever grateful for his able abuse. Ah, gratitude. A bit of ersatz salsa on this one.

Lone Star – Our cousin finds his true calling at the Lord’s side during his temporary sojourn in the great beyond, remembering all there is left for him to do in his desert home. Think Susan Boyle after a sex change operation (and major throat surgery).

What’ll You Do Now, Rick? – Next steps are always tricky, expecially when you tripped over most of the previous ones. Someone drafts a legend for Rick. Rock-ish.   

It Should’ve Been Me – The last word from our good cousin: “You’re never alone in Texas when you can play with your dong.” Country exit reminiscent of country entrance.