Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

There is a town.

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Well it’s been a while. Time to open up the old mailbag, right? Right, then, right!

Here’s a little missive from alert listener Ozymandius Lake in southern Nevada, somewhere near the Arizona border. (“No fixed address” is a strange name for a street, but anyway…)

Dear ignorant buggers,

It is manifestly obvious to me, Ozymandius Lake, that you people are a bunch of frauds. Stinking, lousy frauds! I may have no fixed address, but that doesn’t mean I’m gullible. You don’t live in the Cheney Hammer Mill! That place was knocked down decades ago. And even if it hadn’t been, it was hardly large enough to accommodate everything that you claim happens there. And that Rick Perry album you’re producing – there ain’t no such thing. I’ve been living in these bottoms for nigh onto twenty years, and I ain’t never seen no Rick Perry album.

Yours respectfully,

O.L.

Well, Ozymandius – taking your last comment first – I would have to say, “look upon my works and despair”, because there is indeed a Rick Perry album on the way, Big Green is indeed producing it, and it is called Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. If you received our podcast out there in Nevada (I think we have a repeater in Reno), you would know that’s true. As for the mill, if it doesn’t exist, I’ve been sleeping in the street for the last ten years. Could explain a lot. I’ll look into it. Thanks, Oz!

Here’s another one, this from Polly (Esther) Batson in Paolo Alto, California…

Dear Big Green,

You haven’t said anything about Big Zamboola in months. Did he return to his home solar system, or is he just lurking quietly in the the cloistered basement of the mill, keeping his titanic gravitational forces to himself?

Best,

Polly

Thanks for the letter, Polly. Didn’t know people wrote letters anymore in this age of Twitter, Facebook, blah blah blah. Anywho, no worries about Big Zamboola. He has kept quiet, true, over the past year or so, mainly because he shares with sFshzenKlyrn, our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, that transcendental quality of being an gaseous entity of no determinate shape or density. Sometimes he just pops up out of nowhere, like a jack in the box. Zamboola in the box, we call him.

Okay, back to the non-existent studio with me to work on that non-existent album. If only I had known of its insubstantial nature before I started working on it!

 

Usual Rubbish

Hello, yes.

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Knee deep in other matters, my friend. That’s about all I can tell you. Thanks. Hope the ankle trouble gets better. (click!)

Oh, hi. Just in the midst of blowing someone off… I mean, ending a phone call somewhat abruptly. Just been one of those weeks. Can’t find time to do anything, including this blog. Shoo-wee. Busy, busy, busy. What other meaningless chatter can I share?

Big Green news: Matt and I are still mixing cousin Rick’s new album. Mixed another song last night. These will be finished versions of some of the numbers we featured on the podcast over the last year. (Hey, collect them all!) We’ve done about half a dozen as of this week. So it goes.

Recorded another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN’s now near-monthly feature, Mr. Ned, a politically charged and wholly insensitive dramatization of the adventures of Willard “Mitt” Romney’s dressage horse, on the model of 60s sit-com “Mr. Ed” – everything from bad scripts to low production values. Talk about a cop job! Anyway, you’ll hear it and hear it soon. Spoiler alert: Willard and Ned walk through a time portal and take a trip through interstellar space. With hilarious consequences. (Well…. hilarious if you are easily amused by childish humor. I, myself, don’t go in for that sort of thing. I find it crude and unrefined. You, however….)

What came in the mail bag this month? Not a lot. Bills, bills, bills, political advertisements, eviction notices, misdirected packages, you name it. No fan mail. No one writes the colonel. We just sit here, fashioning those little fishes out of gold, then melting them down and making them again, over and over. (Oh, christ. I’ve lapsed into Gabriel Garcia Marquez-land.)

Okay, that’s all from the mill. I’m dead on my feet, frankly. Can barely press the keys. (Piano or computer). Sleeeeep, Joe Perry, sleeeeeep…..

Usual Rubbish

Deafening me with science.

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A little louder. Little louder still. Forget headroom! We like our albums LOUD. Turn it up just as LOUD as you can. What? Leave the room? In the middle of a mix?

Okay, well that‘s discouraging. Here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York, mixing our … I mean, cousin Rick’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and I’m just discovering now that I am a lousy engineer. Who know (aside from everyone who listens to my work)? Thank the god of your choice that I have Matt Perry to work with, a.k.a. “Mr. Ears” himself. No, that’s not because he wears Spock-like ear extensions. I’m not saying he doesn’t, mind you … I’m just saying that’s not the reason for the moniker. Though after being summarily ejected from our mixing session due to excessive loudness, I’m thinking about calling him “Mr. Mouth” from now on.

Not sure how Matt can mix an album with his ears ringing, having been recently mentioned by NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati in a speech to students about why he became a scientist in the first place. (Waleed was a neighbor and Matt’s best friend back in the day.) They used to play astronaut in our backyard (as well as the vast stretch of open fields that existed there at that time – perfect landscape for an alien planet). Waleed went on to be an engineer and climate scientist; Matt a conservation officer at a wildlife sanctuary. Waleed works for NASA. Matt wrote One Small Step. So in his own way, each has made his contribution to the nation’s space effort.

Still, I can make a contribution to mixing this album, and I’ll tell you how. One word: Marvin (my personal robot assistant). I’ll just program him to do my bidding, send him into the studio, and he’ll turn all the knobs up to eleven. We’ll be able to hear this album from space, even when it’s not being played. Woo-hoo!

Okay…. enough about me. Just wanted to let you know that the latest episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN is now available. Two new “rough draft” recordings by Rick Perry, another episode of Nedd the Dancing Horse, and a brief remembrance of Neil Armstrong, first man on another world. Not bad for free. Check it out.

Did you say something? Couldn’t hear you over the LOUD MUSIC.

Usual Rubbish

Sing, Rick, sing!

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Turn which knob again? That one? I already turned that one, for crying out loud. Turn it again? Shut the front door!

All these knobs, all these switches… Hey, that’s a good idea for a song. All of these knobs, all of these switches, keep this up and you’ll need stitches, uh-huh. Okay… not a good idea for a song. I’m getting punchy, and small wonder. Matt and I are hip deep in mixing Rick Perry’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick … being a collection of songs that arose from some strange sensory phenomena our dear cousin experienced over the past year. You know how when sometimes you have a little too much to drink or a bit too much …. well, whatever, and the world around you gets all fuzzy and weird, and then the next day you find yourself freighted with all these unexplainable memories of odd behavior, like something your fevered mind cooked up in a dream? Well…. Rick wrote some songs about that.

We’ve been putting rough mixes of these songs on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, for the past few months, to mixed reviews, I must say. Here’s a sampling:

What is that sound in the middle of your last podcast? It almost could have been music but not quite…  – jaypod

Tell tex to pipe down. I’m sleepin’ here.   – brooklynfan#482

[expletive deleted] the [expletive deleted] with a [censored].
– nixon’sghost45

All very promising, wouldn’t you say? It’s this kind of feedback that keeps us going, year after year. Like that guy who wrote me last month with the simple advice of “Get a life.” Isn’t that enchanting? Almost haiku-like in its simplicity. I meditate on it daily.

When will the finished album be ready? Well, that depends on how soon we can get a turn at the power tools down in the basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we reside. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the mansized tuber have been building something down there for weeks. Maybe it’s an ark, for all I freaking know – I hear sawing and drilling through the closed door to the shop. “Are you going to be long?” I yell, “We’ve got to start whittling those CD cases!”

Useless. Oh, well… back to the faders.

Usual Rubbish

Jupiter rising.

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Great red what? Jesus christmas, I don’t have time for that. I’m trying to stay focused on the Mars mission. Then there’s Voyager, all alone out there at the edge of the solar system already… whoops. Someone’s reading this. Look busy!

Hi, friend(s). You may wonder what I’m rambling about. Though probably not, if you’ve visited this blog before. We run on and on about pretty much anything that flows into our heads. Hell, I was looking at a pizza menu the other day that featured deep-fried Oreos. But does anyone want to hear about it? God no. So we’re going to talk about something more interesting today …. like Jupiter. (The planet, not the derivative Roman god.)

The other day some massive asteroid supposedly hit Jupiter. I say “supposedly” because, to be perfectly frank, I think this incident is actually the work of our mad science advisor, Mitchington V. S. Macaphee III, M.S.D., C.M.F.  (For the curious, his honorifics are short for Doctor of Mad Science, conferred by the University of Berzerkistan, and Crazy Mother Fucker … not so much a degree as a description.) Mitch got the interplanetary exploration bug this past summer with the recent Mars probe (which he almost immediately hacked into for his own nefarious purposes). But Mars wasn’t big enough for him. Eventually he turned his attention to the king Kahoona of planets …. (wait for it!) … Jupiter.

Okay, so here’s how our household works. Those of us who are not involved in the hard sciences share the upper levels of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (I myself occupy a suite just outside the old forge room, basically a storage bay where they kept the hammer handles. I sleep on hammer handles, is what I’m saying.) Down in the basement, next to our makeshift production studio, Mitch Macaphee maintains a mad science lab where he builds, I don’t know, little projects like Marvin (my personal robot assistant), time travel devices, and … crucially… interstellar space vehicles.

You have to understand the fevered mind of the mad scientist. Jupiter has a red spot, right? Mitch sees that as a challenge. Can he make a blue spot? How hard would it be? Would they call it the Great Macaphee Spot if he succeeded?

What happened next should be kind of obvious. I don’t understand the science, so don’t ask me, but sometime last week there was a loud, rocket-like sound in the early morning hours, and the next thing I know, Jupiter has two spots instead of one. Or so Mitch tells me, anyway. Sheesh. I’ve got an album to produce. And a podcast to finish. Don’t bother me with such trifles!

Usual Rubbish

Process, process.

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Smallest town in the biggest state. Father Joseph, what would be my fate? So starts this month’s anthem of the Hammer Mill. Can’t get that tune out of my head, man!

This writing finds us chin deep in production for our next album. Imagine Matt and me in a roomful of 1-inch Ampex tape, all spooled out and tangled like Don Knotts had it in his space capsule in The Reluctant Astronaut. Yes, we always aspire to such heights. “Why not the best?” we ask ourselves, and the answer, of course, is obvious. (Go right to the source and ask the horse.)

Why do we do this thing over and over again? This “making an album” thing? We’re past the age of consent (well past) and not famous on our home planet. Our best-selling album is welded to the hull of Voyager as it makes its way out of our solar system. (We sold one copy to NASA. They bought it because it features a lead vocal by the late Kurt Waldheim.) The fact is, we are driven. When Big Green first rose out of the primordial soup of the mid 1980s, we had several choices. They were:

1) Go back into the soup! It was quite good, actually. Always like a little ginger in with the carrots. Mmmmm-boy.

2) Start a band, but instead of an indie rock group that has to make its own albums, something less demanding. Call it “Various Artists”. That way, on our first day of existence we would have dozens, perhaps hundreds of albums to our credit, many containing hit songs from every era. Instant popularity! Just add crack!

3) Start an indie rock group that has to make its own albums. With help, of course, from our mad science adviser, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the indefatigable mansized tuber, a couple of Lincolns, and others. (Don’t want to suggest for a moment that we do all this work alone!)

So here we are, patching the rough road that is Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, preparing for final mixes and looking for obvious holes. Hey, there’s a good name for a band: The Obvious Holes. Beats the Recognizable Hicks any day.

Keep your eyes open for more fadeout grooves. Think of them as shards left over in the manufacture of the next album. Or something.

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

Trans martian insertion.

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What the f…! Did you see that, Mitch? I tried to swear just then and nothing came out! How the f…. am I going to make it in this…. this… ?? D… ! It happened again! This can only mean one thing. We’re being EDITED FOR TELEVISION!

Sorry for all the yelling and gesticulation (though you probably didn’t see the latter). You always seem to catch me at a bad time. In any case, as you can see, some alien intelligence appears to be manipulating our speech in real-time. When I say “alien intelligence”, I probably should be saying “corporate overlords,” as in the ne’erdowells who run our label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. It’s a lot more likely that they are behind this sanitization of our every utterance. You have to ask yourself, after all … who benefits? Who else? Motherf…ers! (Oooh, man, that’s irksome.)

I am told that the gosh-darned blaggards (See: now I’m self editing. This is how tyranny starts!) are looking to put us on tour, but only if we clean up our behavior a bit. Hegemonic is dead set against obscenity of any kind, unless the obscenities in question are being perpetrated upon the bodies of trade union leaders or disobedient peasants who dwell by some geographical accident on top of the company’s most coveted mineral reserves. Shooting, garoting, and the like have their place (namely, in the toolbox of their security contractors). But there’s no excuse for foul language… This is a FAMILY company!

They must have gotten word that the Curiosity Rover has actually turned up an opportunity or two for us on Mars, thanks to Mitch Macaphee’s timely intervention through use of advanced telemetry. Nothing a record company like more than free advance work (except perhaps free other work). Anyway, looks like we might be heading to the red planet once we get this album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick mixed and in the can. They say Mars looks a lot like west Texas this time of year. Neither is the kind of place to raise your kids. And there’s no one there to raise them if… well, you know.

Oh, great. Now Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is humming “Rocket Man” in the mistaken belief that I was asking him to. Jesus F… ing Christ on a bike!