All posts by Joseph

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A few weeks since we played THAT joint.

Well, summer is almost over and I’m at the point of digging through old files again. I always get to doing that when the days start getting shorter. Last week I burrowed my way through some tax records from the 2000s. (Riveting stuff.) This week, it’s Big Green set lists. Those are perhaps marginally more interesting than old 1040s, but it largely depends on what you like.

For those of you not steeped in Big Green history, here’s the short version: we haven’t played a live gig in decades. Think Beatles post-1966 or XTC post-1982, except without the massive success, cult following, or obvious talent. Picture a handful of underfed guys in their twenties, humping their broken-down amps into some cheap dive. That’s us!

What the ancient tablets teach us

So what about those set lists? First glance, I can’t effing believe we played any of those songs. Of course, we’re talking about the late nineteen eighties, early nineteen-nineties – a time before ubiquitous cell phones, decades prior to the advent of “smart” phones with HD video cameras. The handful of times we put a show on tape, we had to get some freak to bring a VHS camcorder … which were not exactly thick in the ground, my friends.

Thing is, like most bands, we were working to fill out three, sometimes four sets. Fortunately for us, brother Matt has always been a songwriting machine, so we had plenty of material as long as we could convince a guitar player to learn a bunch of strange songs. We played clubs (most of which no longer exist) and colleges (Utica, SUNY PI, Middlebury, MVCC), as well as street fairs, outdoor concerts (usually with other groups), etc.

Strangely, I still have set lists from a couple of these college gigs. Looks like “I Hate Your Face” was always high on the roster. And that effing MVCC gig was an all-original set, no covers. What the ever-loving fuck.

Scoping out the song spectrum

You can tell from these yellowing sheets of poster board that we’ve been all over the map, musically speaking, since the late eighties. Our music runs the full spectrum from extremely silly to kind of serious. Here’s how I map it out in my own unscientific manner:

  • 1987 – 1993 Songs: Silly to Extra Silly
  • 2000 Years To Christmas (1999): Fairly Silly to Silly
  • International House (2008): Mostly Serious (except for Volcano Man)
  • Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (2013): Very, Very Silly

Now, with our upcoming album (still being mixed, by the way), we’re back to wearing the serious pants again. No big laugh riot on this sucker, folks … unless you’re laughing AT us. Then it’s funny as all hell.

Silly is just around the corner

For those of you who prefer the silly Big Green, fear not – we have an enormous trunk full of Ned Trek songs, all produced and waiting for remix. And trust me, there’s some silly-ass shit in that trunk. And that’s not to mention the older material we’ve recorded and never released.

So, good news / bad news: if you like the silly stuff, there’s more coming. If you hate it, well … lookout … there’s more coming.

TBT: That old used to be

You’ve probably heard them already, but here are a few selections from our stage set back in the goofball early nineties:

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Put the kazoo down, man! We’re producing here!

They say you go to war with the army you have. (I don’t know who “they” are, but they seem to know all about it.) It’s the same with making an album, friends. You make the record with the tools available to you. When Bach made his first album, all he had was an organ. Bet you didn’t know that.

As I’m certain I’ve said before, Big Green typically makes their albums using the equivalent of stone knives and bear skins. Have you met our production budget? Let me introduce you to a little guy named ZERO. And I don’t mean Zero Mostel – I mean nothing, zip, zilch, nada, bupkis. That said, there’s enough to afford a second-hand kazoo, a discarded grade school violin, and at least one maraca.

The tools at hand

The first question is always a practical one – do we have what we need to get started? Maybe yes, possibly no. Sometimes the tools are mismatched with the project. Picture a butter knife in the hand of a hard-rock sculptor. Not that recording and mixing an album is anything like sculpting or painting. God, no! We don’t wear any smocks, and our hands are clean as a whistle. (Trouble is, the whistle is filthy as hell. And that kazoo is disgusting!)

Hey, look …. we’re making modern music. You know – the kind the kids really dig the most. Songs that feature electronic pluck-string instruments, plastic keyboards, and invisible drums. Of course, when I say “modern”, I don’t mean music like what Captured By Robots records and performs. But then we are not oppressed by malevolent automatons set on enslaving us against our will. That kind of thing can kill your buzz super easy.

The show so far

Despite the limitations of our budget and our instrumentation (to say nothing of our musicianship … or lack of same), we’ve come quite a long way on the current project. How long, you may ask? Glad you asked. As I’ve reported previously, we have recorded all of the songs and are now deep in the Pon Farr of mixing. The musicians amongst you will know that mixing is an iterative process – in other words, taking multiple passes to get to the “it” that you’re looking for. (Ergo, it-erative.) How long will the blood fever last? No man can say.

Joe attempting to take the lime back out of the coconut.
Joe attempting to take the lime back out of the coconut.

I can tell you that we’ve done preliminary mixes on about 19 songs as of this writing. We have a few more to plow through, then we’ll assess, review, mark the suckers up, and take another pass. Early on, I set up a spreadsheet to keep tabs on our progress. I of course abandoned the thing within about three weeks, as I HATE being organized. Everyone knows Big Green craves chaos. At least, everyone who knows Big Green …. which amounts to almost no one. But I digress.

Next stop: stopping!

Aside from mixing and mastering, there are a few details we need to tie up. Little things like coming up with a name for the project, developing album art, etc. With us, the biggest challenge is knowing when to stop. My guess is that the work will end kind of abruptly, sometime this Fall, and we’ll drop the album like a load of bricks. Either that or we’ll put it in a time capsule and leave it for future generations to ponder.

What’s your guess? Let us know at [email protected]!

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What kind of monster is it – Gumby or Ghidorah?

Hey – any of you out there remember Milton the Monster? You know, the cartoon show about the big-hearted Frankenstein-like creature that … um … well … talked like Jim Neighbors and … oh, ask your mother!

Well, brother Matt and I find ourselves kind of reviving the role of Professor Weirdo as we continue our work on the upcoming Big Green album (our fourth, by the way, and the first one in more than a decade). As you will see from the intro to Milton the Monster (if you can stand listening to it), we too are struggling with the question of how much tincture of tenderness we should add to the mix. Milton’s theme lays the problem out pefectly:

Six drops of the essence of terror
Five drops of sinister sauce
When the stirring’s done, may I lick the spoon?
Of course, hah hah! Of course!

Now for the tincture of tenderness
But I must use only a touch
For without a touch of tenderness
It might destroy me!
Oops, too much!

Okay, so … this time around we’re a little light on the essence of terror. And we left the sinister sauce out in the rain a little too long. And as Matt tried to add a touch of tenderness, well … I bumped his elbow and the whole damn thing poured into the mix. Damn it all!

Sentimental jerk ass

This, of course, begs the question – is Big Green going soft and sentimental in its old age? Well, that question begs an answer: Hell no, man! We’ve ALWAYS been sentimental. Ask anybody who likes us. And if you can’t find anyone who likes us, then you’re just like everybody else we know. And we HATE people like that!

Seriously, think about it – what is I Hate Your Face if not a sentimental song? There’s a lot of sentiment in that sucker. Sure, maybe not the Gumby kind of sentiment, but more the Ghidorah kind. In any case, you can expect a whole lot of sentiment in our next album. That’s my personal guarantee: a sentimental monster.

Knob-twiddling our way forward

As I’ve said previously, we’ve got a lot of tweaking ahead of us on this project. We’ll be pushing sliders, twiddling knobs, occasionally pulling sliders (but mostly pushing) and plugging things into other things. I will be wrestling computers like a live thing, swearing at them bitterly as they fail and fail again. But (and this is important) we are making progress, completing our first swipe on about one third of the songs.

We will keep you all posted on how the snail is faring as it climbs Mount Fuji. One way or the other, new music will be coming your way in the foreseeable future. Whether it’s the kind that makes Gumby happy or provokes the wrath of Ghidorah, only time will tell.