All posts by Joseph

News

This just in: The moon will block the sun. Flee!

Dateline: Upstate New York, March, 2024 – We can report with some confidence that the moon will almost certainly launch an attack on the sun in the coming days. Sources tell Big Green that the assault may occur as soon as April 8, 2024, based on signals intelligence. (Note: the signals we receive come through a sophisticated device we call “television”.) Officials say that the moon’s intention is to block the sun’s rays, throwing large swaths of Central New York into near total darkness at midday.

How should you prepare? First, it’s important that you don’t panic. Remain calm at all times, and encourage those around you to do the same. Second, once you have them all lulled into a false sense of security, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! If we all follow these simple steps, rest assured that the moon shadow shall pass and all will be as it was before. On this you have my personal guarantee.

(Important safety tip: Do not look at eclipse through a telescope … or, really, at all!)

Slow-Ass Mothers

Well, so much for the public service announcement. Now for what’s happening with Big Green. Yes, we’re still working on our new album. Doesn’t feel super new to us anymore, because we’ve been toiling away at it for – what? – two years. The important thing is that it’s new to you, our beloved listener(s).

People have asked why it takes us so long to finish an album. Well, I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s because we’re obsessed about quality and workmanship, not timeliness, but that would be ridiculous. (The second part is true: remember that we’re slow-ass mothers.) As always, the truth is far more mundane. We manage maybe one session a week, and that’s usually just for a couple of hours. I typically record and work on pre-production between those occasions, so that might add up to four or five hours a week.

All right, so … do the math. How long should it take to record an album? Ask Google, and you’ll get about fifteen different answers. (Ask Jeeves, and you’ll get lunch on a tray.) If I take the average of the wild guesses that come up in search, I get two weeks of pre-production and rehearsal, three weeks of recording, maybe another week of post. A serious band might spend 8 hours a day or more in the studio. Assuming a five-day week, that’s 120 hours of recording, plus maybe 60 of pre and post.

120 + 60 = 180; 180/4 = 45. That’s 45 weeks at our pace. And we’re still freaking behind. Jesus. Back to the blackboard.

Fall Forward, Spring Back

If I wet my finger and hold it in the air, I can get a vague notion of how hard the wind is blowing and in what direction. Predicting when our album will be finished requires more sophisticated analysis. We’ll need a divining rod for that.

If I were to guess, gun to my head, I’d say we should have something releasable by Fall 2024. (We’re doing preliminary mixes on about 25 songs at this point.) So you may be seeing a new Big Green album drop about the time you’re turning your clocks forward. Or back, depending on which mnemonic device you use to keep track of daylight savings time. (Mine is “fall forward, spring back” because that just sounds right, but don’t let me influence you.)

Illustration credit: b0red at https://pixabay.com/users/b0red-4473488/

News

Who the hell are we? It’s all a blur to us now.

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Remember those blurry shots of us romping around Forest Hill Cemetery back in our old home town? Sure you do – we’ve used them a million times. There we were, just posing with the marble angels, when the photographer decided to take shots of us running as he ran backwards in front of us. That’s when the world went all wiggly.

Well, that was back in the early nineties. As I said, we’ve been using those as publicity shots for decades, mostly because they’re some of the few decent images of us from when we were youngish. In those days, people didn’t have hi-def video cameras in their pockets. Phones were something wired to the wall (pretty much) and cameras were a thing. (Ask your mother.)

Unlike a lot of nobody bands at that time, we were fortunate enough to know some first-rate photographers, like friend of Big Green Leif Zurmuhlen. (He’s still shooting up a storm for pubs like Nippertown in Albany, NY.) The blurry images were taken by somebody else competent. But the point is that our best shots are from those days when skilled people with cameras happened to be our friends.

Case of mistaken identity

Given that we spent a fair amount of time in a blur, it’s not surprising that we might get confused with other people. I mean, look at the photo – that could be anybody. And frankly, with a name like Big Green, one might expect to encounter doppelgangers. It has two common words, and one of them is a color, for crying out loud.

Well … it happened. Not sure exactly how, but our catalog of poor-selling music got mixed up with that of another act named Big Green. (I believe there’s more than one, actually.) It’s a hip hop artist, and a number of their works were attributed to our account, just as a few or ours have (and continue to be) attributed to their account. As we’re working on a new album, we thought this might be a good time to kind of untangle that mess.

We’ve had some success in this, but it’s not finished. We haven’t heard from the other Big Green, but I imagine they’re grateful for our efforts, as I believe their music is a hell of a lot more popular than ours. I’m expecting a fruit basket from them any day now.

Pump up the jam

Speaking of streaming services, now might be a good time for you to add Big Green (um … THIS Big Green) to your playlists. In fact, while you’re doing that, maybe let our songs run for a few hours and rack up some plays – We’re wearing cardboard belts!

Here’s where to go to find our sorry asses:

This is us on Amazon music. Don’t buy anything – just use your account to play your favorites from our various releases.

We’re also on Spotify. And no, we don’t know Joe Rogan. We’re just on the same streaming service, that’s all. Again, put us on continuous loop – Daddy needs new shoes.

We also have an artist site on Apple Music. This one is a little confused, as they haven’t included our album Cowboy Scat. (That one is still attributed to the hip-hop Big Green, poor sods.)

Big Green is probably on other services that are downstream of the majors, as we’re distributed by The Orchard and by CD Baby. (2000 Years to Christmas and International House are through the Orchard; Cowboy Scat is through CD Baby.)

Free stuff

If you don’t have a hay-penny, god bless you. But if you don’t have access to streaming services, you can listen to our music for free – just let us know that you want to and we’ll make it happen. Be nice to us and we’ll send you a genuine first-edition Big Green button, designed by photographer Leif Zurmuhlen, hand-pressed by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison back in the eighties, and stuffed into a box for 35 years. Just ask!

News, Recording

New year is here: Back to work, lazy mothers!

Well, that was a nice little holiday break, and we all had a bit of a laugh. But now it’s 2024, dudes – time to get back down to it. No more messing around, no more late rising. You had your vacation, damn it! Nose to the grindstone, my fine little friends.

That’s my version of a pep talk. I’ve never been much in the way of a motivational speaker, especially when the audience is me and my brother. Neither one of us wants to take any of THAT guy’s bullshit. And as you know from long experience, Big Green is a leaderless collective. We don’t subscribe to self-imposed hierarchies. Nor do we subscribe to the daily paper, or even a monthly newsletter. But I digress.

A far safer Forbin Project

I’m not sure, but I think we’re in year two of producing this particular album. And if you include the year or so we spent working out which album we were going to make (new songs or retreads), call it three. Why does it take Big Green so damn long to make a record? Well, there are three reasons:

  1. We’re slow as a mother. Always have been, always will be. That’s just the speed we’re built for, man – can’t help it. What the hell, it took us five years to finish International House, and it takes less than an hour to listen to the s.o.b.
  2. We’re oldsters. That’s part of the reason for #1. Not much we can do about that shit. Stick around long enough and you’ll be old, too.
  3. We’re busy-ass mo-fo’s. Matt in particular has a raft of responsibilities. I myself don’t have a raft, but I have responsibilities. Hence, we record maybe once a week, whether we need to or not.

Thing is, we tend to approach each album like it’s the Forbin Project. Whether you’re building Colossus or Guardian, it’s a heavy lift. Though thankfully, unlike the Forbin project, the fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance … and Patty Duke’s father plays no role whatsoever in our production process.

Leftovers and tailings

Some of you (and you know who you are) have asked if there won’t be a sample or two of the current project available at some point. No man can say! We like to toss random recordings out there from time to time – some are leftovers, some are tailings or abandoned experiments. (As you know, Dark Christmas was one of those from our first album, 2000 Years to Christmas.)

The truth is, we haven’t even done any rough mixes yet, which is kind of nuts. We’re also in the process of upgrading from Cubase 9 to Cubase 12 (yes, I know – they just released 13, the motherfuckers) and changing platforms. And hell, we’ve got at least 25 songs under serious construction, with another 15 to 20 started. And another thing …. OUCH.

We’ll get this sucker done, trust me. Or my name isn’t … uh … whatever it is.

Random Lyric

Here’s an old one by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison:

Now the picture in my mind is hazy
Just like the number’s washed off my hand
I’m just another nameless no one
She’s just another faceless one night stand

From the song “A Name and a Face”. Listen to the demo we recorded in 1986:

BIG GREEN 1986 DEMO