All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Inside July (2019).

Look, I know it was a hard assignment, but frankly … you’re more cut out for that sort of thing. Why don’t you sit and relax for a while. Oh, right … best stand.

The squatters upstairs got a bit louder this week. Of course, it was the fourth of July holiday, so they started shooting off bottle rockets, M-80s, and what sounded like quarter-sticks of dynamite. We sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) up to read them the riot act, and he got his ass handed to him. I mean literally – they removed his ass and handed it to him, then kicked him down the stairs. Not sure who to send next … maybe anti-Lincoln?

Well, with all that going on, I did squeeze in enough time to post another installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN, though it’s kind of a clip show, frankly. Some of the material will seem familiar to longtime listeners, some not. What can I tell you? It’s a little hard to mix new Ned Trek episodes with gun-happy muleskinners living upstairs, keeping us up all night with their noisy parties and other goings on. Partly as revenge on those mothers, I chose to include some vintage live recordings of Big Green’s club days, cranking them up as I listened back the episode, shaking the rafters a bit. (Some of them, I understand, like rafting in the Adirondacks … and are, therefore … rafters.)

Maybe if we just play super loud ...

So, here’s what we have this month:

Ned Trek 18: Captain Frickasee. This is an episode we originally cast back in 2014, based on the malevolent doppelganger episode of classic Star Trek … uh, just to narrow that down, the one where Kirk gets duplicated by a transporter malfunction (they used that plot device more than once). Willard’s evil twin, instead of being the very pinnacle of toxic masculinity, turns out to be a southern conservative politician … the one most Republicans pretend to be. (Apologies to those easily offended by jokes about southerners.)

Live Songs: This month’s TIBG features six “live” tracks of Big Green, circa 1990-1994. These include performances recorded in front of audiences and demos recorded live to tape in a somewhat more controlled environment. All tracks feature John White on drums, Matt on bass and vocals, and me (Joe) on keys and vocals. The songs are:

  • How ‘Bout The War? – This track, poorly recorded at some dive in upstate NY, features Tony “Ace”  Butera on guitar.
  • Greater Good – This was recorded at a backyard music fest at Jeremy Shaw’s house and features Jeremy on guitar.
  • Sensory Man and I Hate Your Face – Two excerpts from a video demo we recorded with Jeremy Shaw in 1993, clips of which can be seen on our video page.
  • Merry Christmas, Jane and Special Kind of Blood – Selections from a 1994 live-to-DAT demo we did at Jeremy’s house, featuring him on guitar. (We released these on our Live From Neptune EP. )

Anyway, that’s the week that was. We’ll be posting another show before too long with a new Ned Trek episode … as soon as we find our asses with both hands.

Political Rants

The unitary peril.

Happy Independence Day, everyone … and welcome to the next phase of our slide towards authoritarianism. It’s a track we’ve been on for decades, frankly, and our pace has accelerated with the dubious election of Donald Trump (a.k.a. Drumpf) as our president. Trump is taking the concept of the unitary executive, popularized under Bush II, to a whole new level, testing institutional constraints on presidential power, many of which apparently boil down to voluntarily-observed norms of behavior, ethical standards, etc., but very little in the way of black-letter law. Even in the case of explicit legal constraints, this president is demonstrating that there is very little in the way of available recourse to a chief executive that ignores or even violates the law. Who holds the president accountable, particularly if the Senate is a perennial no-show?

Now, as Trump prepares for his big, honking, tank-infested fourth of July show in D.C., his administration is contemplating an executive order that would violate a Supreme Court decision regarding exclusion of the citizenship question on the U.S. Census. If they move forward with this, welcome to the dictatorship. When our institutions cannot compel a president to comply with a duly-rendered opinion handed down by the highest court, that amounts to a constitutional crisis far beyond anything we have seen up to this point. What higher authority is there to compel a change of behavior on the part of the administration? There’s no inspector general, no ombudsman overseeing the presidency – just Congress … and honestly, if Congress finally gets up on its hind legs and tells Trump “enough!”, what happens if he ignores them?

Trying to keep the mad king happy.

We have a long tradition of republican rule in the United States, obviously attenuated by a foundational regime of racial, ethnic and gender-based exclusion that has kept whole classes of people from participating in the political process (and continues to do so). But that long, troubled history does not immunize us against dictatorship. Military rule in Chile was once thought impossible in a country with longstanding civilian rule, then came their September 11th (1973) and the Pinochet dictatorship. The fact is, it not only can happen here, it almost certainly will happen here if we don’t stand up and resist.  It is cliche to say that democracy is not a gift – that it must be fought for. Let’s remove that notion from the context of pointless wars. We need to fight for our freedom right here, right now.

How? Stand up. Call, visit, petition your representatives to hold the president accountable. March, protest, and participate in strikes when tactically appropriate. Make your voice heard. We have to turn this thing around and put authoritarianism back in the box … before some slightly more competent “Great Leader” comes along and takes up the reins from our current clown-president.

luv u,

jp

Podcast, Songs

THIS IS BIG GREEN: July 2019

Audio

Big Green drops a bomb on independence day with a clumsily patched-together show that features an archive Ned Trek selection, some old live tracks, and a drunken narrative to serve as your guide. Cue fireworks.

This is Big Green – July 2019. Features: 1) Ned Trek 18: Captain Frickasee (encore presentation); 2) Put the phone down: Where the hell did that Matt guy go; 3) A brief history of Big Green guitarists; 4} Song: How ‘Bout The War (live), by Big Green with Tony “Ace” Butera; 5) Song: Greater Good (live), by Big Green with Jeremy Shaw; 6) Song: Sensory Man (live demo), by Big Green with Jeremy Shaw; 7) Song: I Hate Your Face (live demo), by Big Green with Jeremy Shaw; 8) Song: Merry Christmas, Jane (live demo), by Big Green with Jeremy Shaw; 9) Song: Special Kind of Blood (live demo), by Big Green with Jeremy Shaw; 10) The Middlebury College gig, circa 1993; 11) Time to go.

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