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News

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (or not)

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Well, here we go again – it’s the holiday season, and Christmas is upon us once more. What will Santa bring this year? A steaming pile of wombat droppings? More bricks of surplus cheese? He’s full of surprises, that old man. Kind of amazing that he’s made it this far in life without changing jobs. (Actually … we haven’t changed jobs either, so who am I to criticize?)

What someone is saying somewhere

It’s often been said (and still remains said-able) that no band keeps Christmas in quite the same way as Big Green. I don’t know who exactly is saying that, but no matter – we are extremely possessive when it comes to the Yuletide, and we’re not giving it up under any circumstances. It’s MINE, you hear … MINE!! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!

Ahem …. uh … so, what would Christmas be without Big Green? Pretty much the same. And that fact that we latched on to it early on makes no difference to just about anyone. Though I will say that this is an ideal time of the year to listen to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, which you can tap on Spotify, on The Orchard, on YouTube even … pretty much any freaking where. A bit of easy listening to get you through those difficult moments around the dinner table with relatives you’re fortunate to see only once a year. (If they start talking about the perils of critical race theory, crank up the volume!)

A little stocking stuffer

Which leads me to the point of this whole dumb-ass post. As I explained last month, we’re still tracking our next album, and it’s slow-going. And while I don’t have any genuine new content for you this year, I do have some hot holiday leftovers to share.

Back when we recorded 2000 Years To Christmas in the late 1990s, we started with a list of about 18 songs. We started 17 on the DTRS system we were using in those days, 16 of which were completed. The final disc had 13 tracks, so we left three of them off for quality control reasons (that’s the corporate-speak way of saying we weren’t super happy with how they came out). One of those tracks was kind of a borderline case. It’s called Dark Christmas, and we thought it was high time it got tossed out there for folks to hear. So we remastered it and threw it up on our YouTube channel – here it is:

Dark Christmas, by Big Green

So there you have it – a little stocking stuffer, just in time for the holidays. And no, this is not some kind of AI-driven confabulation – I think one listen will tell you that it couldn’t be anything other than us, back in the day. So enjoy, share, add it to your playlists, etc. And cheer up … or not, depending on your preference.

See you in the new year!

News

Which album comes next? we Would love to know.

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This just in from Big Green Central: nothing new to report. Check again next month. Hah! Just kidding … about the “next month” thing. Yes, we have nothing new to report, but that just means that havoc and mayhem are nothing new to us. And who doesn’t want to hear about havoc and mayhem, right? Nobody – that’s who.

What’s the controversy this month? So glad you asked. The thing is, we’re working on an album of new material, and it’s taking the usual forever for us. Of course, avid Big Green followers will know that we also have a packet of older songs that haven’t been gathered into an album. Those are the songs from Ned Trek, a feature on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, which has been on an extended hiatus for … what … three years? Jesus Christmas.

Tale of Two Records

We’ve been talking about releasing a Ned Trek album for probably as long as Ned Trek has been a thing. It would essentially be our second podcast album, the first being Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick from back in 2013 – in other words, another collection of songs written mostly for laughs, recorded in kind of a hurry under pressure of a deadline. We did, however, put a little more work into the Ned Trek songs, and our recording technology improved marginally through the course of the series … which is why we’re still thinking about doing a release.

But here’s the rub: which album comes first? The Ned Trek songs are mostly done, they just need some polishing … but there’s also about 80 of them! There’s probably less of the new material, maybe 50 songs, but the recordings are still under construction. If we’re spending time recording the latter, we have no time to polish and curate the former. See what I mean?

Kicking the Can

We could settle this the way we settle other important questions – kick the can down the road. Not the metaphor … I mean, write “Ned Trek” on one end of the can, “new songs” on the other side, then kick it down the road a set number of times and see which side it lands on. Isn’t that how everyone makes important decisions?

Hey, look … when we decide which comes first, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, you can listen to all three of our released albums for free on YouTube – just visit https://www.youtube.com/@biggreenband and hit play. AND subscribe! (While you’re there, check out the live tracks and some of the other junk we’ve posted.)

Luv u,

jp

News

What’s Next in Big Green Land

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Here’s a quick update on what’s happening with Big Green: Not Much. At least not yet. Yes, the rumors are true, we are working on a new project – our first album since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick ten years ago (to almost universal condemnation). You’ll be glad to know that we are committed to meeting and even exceeding the high standards we set with that album. You heard it here first.

While you’re waiting for the new album to surface, we will continue posting random bits from the archives, including some previously unreleased holiday recordings. So keep one eye on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@biggreenband) and one eye on the road. If you have a third eye, reserve that one for gazing into the eternal void.

News, Songs

Holiday on YouTube

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Hey, campers – we just posted another of our live recordings on YouTube. It’s the song “Holiday”, the version we included on our collection LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. The song was recorded in 1994 and features the usual suspects, Matt, Joe, and John, with Jeremy Shaw on guitar. This was part of a day-long session in Jeremy’s basement, a demo project, featuring five original songs played live and captured on DAT tape, no overdubs.

Check it out:

Usual Rubbish

Want to hear a song? That makes four of us.

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2000 Years to Christmas

What man can stand the stress of being torn asunder then thrust back together? Who amongst us can quarter him/herself like a piece of fruit for the sake of a single song? What fool would throw his lot in with a madman who finds joy only in the fulfillment of his twisted vision? This guy, folks. This guy right here.

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten the itch to perform. What can you expect after years of being cooped up in this abandoned hammer mill, miles from civilization? Not a living hell, I will admit, but clearly a living heck. It’s been years since we struck out on tour. (I blame all that striking out.) But we live in an age of miracles, my friends. Musicians now perform from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the advent of the internet machine.

Labor action at the abandoned mill

Trouble is, when I raised the question of Big Green virtual performances, the response was less than encouraging. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was game. Antimatter Lincoln offered to play gut bucket (though frankly very few of our songs call for that rustic instrument). The mansized tuber volunteered a few of his smaller shoots to the enterprise. As for the actual band members, well …. not so much.

Can’t blame them, really. This is the busy time of year. Matt is taken up with his Peregrine Falcon project. (He’s gone big this time around, watching them from the deck of the star ship U.S.S. Enterprise.) John is doing his thing (if he didn’t have that, he’d have to get another thing). So that leaves me in kind of a spot. I mean, I can’t play four parts at once …. or CAN I?

Hell, this band looks damned familiar.

Crypto cloning to the rescue

It seems that our mad science advisor has been working on a little experiment of late. I thought I heard some strange noises coming from the north end of the mill. (That was just before it exploded, too. Coincidence, that.) Anyway, Mitch developed something he calls “crypto cloning.” The “crypto” piece is strictly about marketing – Mitch is keen to monetize this new technology.

Here’s how it works: A subject steps into the cloning device, and s/he is cloned four ways. That’s a big step up from making two of the same thing, Mitch tells me. (Twice as good.) The thing is, the cloning only lasts a couple of hours. At that point, your quadruplegangers hustle back into the protoplasmic host from which they sprang. It’s a kind of reverse-amoeba effect, if you know what I mean.

The quadruplegangers ride again

Before you ask, yes, I did let him test it on me. But only just long enough for the four of me to record one of Matt’s songs – a classic number called Going To Andromeda. Check it out on our YouTube channel or our new Instagram account. (Note: one of my clones came out with a mustache. Strange mutation.)

Usual Rubbish

Celebrating a little early this time.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Man, it has been a long time. But not THAT long. Still, I forgot how the hell that last song ended. And track number seven I don’t remember doing at all! My head is like a cotton swab. Mother of pearl.

Hi, everybody. Now, I don’t want to create the impression that Big Green is one of those old man groups that just reflects back on their own sorry history. That said, I was archiving some old recordings this week. As it happens, that’s what bands sometimes do when they … I don’t know … reach a certain age. I DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS IT.

Whoops – sorry. Anyway, got the chance to listen back to some stuff and it occurred to me that our second album, International House, is nearing a kind of significant anniversary. Quite a coincidence, that.

What’s the coincidence, Joe?

Well, I’m gonna tell you. As you will see in my Political Rant this week, this is also the twentieth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Who can forget those heady days back in the early 2000s, when the ground was still smoking from 9/11 and W. Bush was heating up the pork and beans, getting ready to watch some good bomb-dropping? I know I can’t (though fuck knows I’ve tried).

The coincidence is this: it is also the 14th anniversary of International House, which included a number of songs that bear on the early war on terror. The one I kept thinking of today was Enter the Mind, a song Matt wrote about the CIA black sites. Now, some might say that 14 is not a significant anniversary. I beg to differ! I’ll have you know that 14 is the ivory anniversary … or is it the one when you give your spouse the box set of Electric Light Orchestra’s greatest hits? Always get those mixed up. (They’re both the same color, you see.)

A fitting observance. Or not.

There are a lot of ways we could observe this ivory anniversary of International House. We might, for instance, move into a house and out of this drafty abandoned mill. We might throw stones into the middle of the street and hope that passing baptist ministers happen upon them. Or we could, I don’t know, put the whole damn album on YouTube. Either way, we could do something other than talk about it.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of promoting old product. International House was our album-length retrospective on the W. Bush years. Some of the shit we were complaining about back then is still in effect today. But it’s still a period piece, if you will. We wanted an exclamation point on that sucker, not a period, but there you go.

There’s a place in time

Hey, look – we all have history. We all came from somewhere and are headed somewhere else. Maybe those two somewheres are the same-wheres – who knows? The way I see it, if we concentrate on the present long enough, it will be the past. And if we turn our eyes to the future, that future will soon be the present. It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

And so, I’ll listen to more old recordings this week. You gotta know where you’ve been before you work out where you’re going. Had enough of cliches? There’s more where that came from!

Usual Rubbish

Getting by with a little help from some fiends

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2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, here’s the thing. I’m too big in the frame. It goes against the theme of the series, dude. If there’s one thing Big Green doesn’t like, it’s inconsistency. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles.

Oops! Didn’t know anyone was reading this. You just caught me having a little disagreement with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is serving as my video producer this month. Nothing serious – just an obscure conceptual question that has vexed us since the beginning of this blog post: how nano is nano? What means this? Allow me to explain.

A question of scale

We’re doing a little side project called the Nano Concert. Perhaps you’ve heard us nattering about it in previous posts and on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. You haven’t? DAMN IT! Marvin, did you forget to publish the blog posts again? Why have I been wasting my breath? What’s that? You DID publish them? Uh, okay. Never mind. What was I saying?

Ah, yes. The Nano Concert is really just a virtual mini solo concert by yours truly (Joe of Big Green), playing some old favorites from the beloved Big Green song book. We recorded six songs, played them on the podcast, and are in the process of posting them to our YouTube Channel. Can we truly describe this as a nano concert? Is it more than merely small? Well …. six songs doesn’t even make a set. And I’m too lazy ass to do more than that in one go. So in my book, it’s nano.

I can't play this freaking thing ...

Strings v. keys – the reckoning

The funny thing is, on five of the six songs, I’m playing six-string guitar. Now, those who know me well (and those few fiends who enjoy our music) know that I don’t play any instrument particularly well, but that if you were to rank my ability to play them in order of best to worst, it would go: (1) piano, (2) bass, (7) guitar.

That’s not a typo. I only play three instruments, and guitar is still my seventh best axe. So, why, you may ask, am I playing an instrument I can barely identify from three steps away? It’s the challenge, my friends. What fun is there in playing it safe, right? Any true musician craves a challenge. And though I’m not a TRUE musician, I do crave challenges …. as well as various foodstuffs. (You can’t eat a challenge, friend – just remember that.)

Give it a listen, damn it!

Okay, so … do you want to hear me pounding out some old Big Green tunes on a 23-year-old six-string acoustic guitar? Dive on in, my friends! I just posted the last number on Thursday. This is the first in a series of nano concerts, I like to think, though I may have to actually hire a producer rather than having Marvin twirl the knobs.

Whoops. Sorry, Marvin – didn’t know you were listening. You realize that lever you’re pulling will erase everything we did this morning , right? Step away from the console! Arrgh … never mind.

Anywho, here’s the playlist. Let me know what you think, fiends!

Usual Rubbish

Rough sledding.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Take a look out the window and let me know what you see. What? What do you mean you don’t see anything? Did you open your eyes first? Okay. It’s just that you’ve made that mistake before, but …. let it pass.

Hey, greetings from the great north country! As you may have noticed, particularly if you live in the northeastern United States, we’ve gotten a little bit of snow this week. In fact, it appears to be up to the second story of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house. That would be fine, of course, except that … well … we have to come and go occasionally, to get provisions, to frequent the local tavern (I’m talking Anti-Lincoln here), to mail parcels, etc. All of that vital, life-giving activity has been brought to a halt in the wake of a fearsome nor’easter that isn’t fit for Christmas, New Years, nor Easter. (That’s why they call it a nor … uh … never mind.) Yes, winter is here with a vengeance. I think it’s pissed at us for the previous couple of mild winters, likely fueled by runaway climate change.

Okay, so, if you were snowed into an abandoned hammer mill in upstate New York, what would YOU do to pass the time? I can think of one thing right off the bat: Christmas carols. Sure, we can gather ’round the old spinet, old uncle George will plunk out the tunes from the sheet music, and Frankie and the girls and I will sing five-part harmony on the classic yuletide favorites, like Pagan Christmas and Merry Christmas, Tarzan and other seasonal hits. We’ll have to get Tiny to sing the lead on Merry Christmas, Jane (Part 2), of course, and then we can all sip some mulled cider as we gather around the TV yulelog broadcast and sing along with Head Cheese Log.

Fa-la-la-la whaaa?

What’s that? You’re not familiar with those carols? Why, those are selections from Big Green’s 1999 debut album, 2000 Years To Christmas, now celebrating the first anniversary of its 20th anniversary. It’s been 20 for a whole year now! This past year we put the entire album on YouTube so that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) could listen to it without cranking up the phonograph like a Model T. No need to roll out the spinet, my friends – just call up YouTube, load the playlist, and hit play. We’ve even posted the lyrics so that you can sing along. So if you’re snowed into your abandoned hammer mill, no way to get out, tired of watching static on your rabbit-ear TV set, this is an easy way to pass the time. Send us a video of you signing along with the album on YouTube, and we’ll send you a free copy of the disc. (I think we’ve got one or two of them kicking around the place.) If you prefer the mp3 version, just get the disc and rip mp3s from it. Simple!

Anyway, happy sledding, my friends. Time to dig a tunnel to the bar … I mean, the bank.

Usual Rubbish

Old Man Fall.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, I know, I know – heat costs money. Unless we start burning shit, right? I mean, we’ve got a lot of fuel in this joint, don’t we? And when that runs out, we’ve got a mad science advisor on hand. He can either invent some way to keep us warm, or we can burn those many notebooks he has, all stuffed with theorems to destroy whole planets. We’d be doing humanity a favor!

Howdy, everyone. Sure, we want to do humanity a favor. But we also want to do ourselves the favor of keeping from freezing to death. If the coming winter turns out to be anywhere near as chaotic as this past summer, people will be porting us out of this dump with a pair of ice tongs. Oh, the humanity! And yes, I am being a bit paranoid over the question of how we are going to heat this place, particularly as the nights are get colder and damper. And spookier. But let’s face it – as squatters here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have no means of acquiring energy from mega-corporations and using it to keep ourselves toasty. Besides, the idea is loathsome to us. Give in to big corporations? Bah! We’d sooner, well …. burn something other than what they’re selling.

There are a lot of drawbacks to living in an abandoned hammer mill. Lack of heat is one of them, sure, but the real problem with our Big Green lifestyle is that we tend to sleep through the worst weather, no matter how bad it gets. That is not a good thing. It’s not that we’re particularly comfortable here. It’s just that we’ve been musicians so long that our diurnal clock has ceased to function properly. You’re supposed to be up all night, in bed half the day, then it’s supper for breakfast and you’re off. (Supper used to be my very favorite breakfast!) Of course, we used to drink like fish … or like fishes. Maybe just Phish. (I think they drink Saranac, actually.) If we still did that, well …. we’d jam more.

See? There is a resemblance.

Which makes me think, hey …. in this weird ass COVID world we now inhabit, why don’t we join all of the other out-of-work musicians and start jamming on YouTube or Zoom or some other web platform? Well, I can think of one reason – our internet access is dotty, to say the least. I’d like to say we have a legitimate node or ingress to the Web here at the mill, but I don’t want to be accused of lying. Let’s just say that it’s sub-optimal, so if we ever do start cranking out virtual performances, live or pre-recorded, we’ll probably have to tap into somebody’s broadband wifi. I’m looking at you, Ken’s Barber Shoppe!

No doubt about it – Fall is the season that hangs us up the most. Always has been. But here at Big Green, we make the best of things, even if things are …. well … just things. Maybe we can convert Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of space heater. (He was partially constructed from an old hot water tank, as legend has it.)

Usual Rubbish

Archive fever.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, I’ve got the entire album up on YouTube. Now what do we do? Are we famous yet? Famous as Amos (without the cookies, of course)? No? Thought not. Nothing on the applause-o-meter. Dung!

Well, friends, life is full of disappointments. Like the other day, I had dis appointment with my doctor, see? And I had to go and break it, see? (Not the appointment … the doctor’s bowling trophy. It was offensive to me.) Perhaps you yourself are disappointed to see me once again revert to my cheap imitation of a forties guy, like the voices we inserted into some of our Ned Trek songs. If so, you know what it’s like not to have things your own way. Hey, man … I’ve been there. And it looks like we’re going there again. Our new 2000 Years To Christmas playlist has been up for days, and we’ve seen very few plays. What the hell, man … it’s free! Play the damn record!

Ouch, okay … that was a little harsh. Sorry. I imagine you’re disappointed in me again. (Second time in as many paragraphs.) Perhaps I should try more gentle persuasion. Come on, people now … smile on your brother! Everybody get together, and play the goddamn record right now! Whoops, that went south. Well, how bout if I embed the album right in this here blog post – like so:

There we go. Just press the nice, candy-like “play” button, right smack in the middle of the screen. Do it now!

Hoo-man. Marketing is hard work. I think I’ll take the rest of this blog post off. The fact is, I’ve been taking a lot of time off this summer. As most musicians know, this kind of time off is not taken by choice. There’s no bloody place to play practically anywhere, thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and most musicians have been forced to do their performing on line. Me, I’ve been doing what I usually do in the middle of the summer – sorting through the archives, looking for little bits of hidden treasure (or trash, as the case may be). With the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I’ve turned up a few interesting fragments of our past lives. Some old notebooks filled with hastily scribbled lyrics and song lists. A cache of Big Green logo buttons, designed by friend of the band, author/photographer Leif Zurmuhlen. And of course, some old recordings rescued from cassette tapes.

Cuts from our first bootleg cassette compilation, ca. 1983

We played a lot of covers, man! Back in the pre-Big Green days (nominally, at least), before the internet was invented, our set list was a raft of kind of tired covers, some weird stuff, and a sprinkling of original numbers, mostly Matt’s songs but a few of mine as well, and a handful of Tim Walsh numbers (Tim was our first guitarist who, sadly, passed away a few years ago.) Phil Ross was our drummer at the time. The recordings are rough – a couple of mics plugged into a stereo audio cassette machine, that was about it. It’s the kind of thing only a mother could love, so I don’t typically share them. (If you’re dying to hear some examples of us murdering a Jimi Hendrix song, let me know and I’ll get something to you.)

There, see? Now I’m completely relaxed. Just thinking about archive diving puts me in a good mood.