Hey, friends …. something went badly wrong with our blog site last month. We’re just pulling the pieces together again, so bear with us. Some of our most recent posts have been lost in the great server meltdown, and we’re manually updating stuff as we go along.
While you’re busy with other things, we’ll keep trying to plug different cables into empty sockets, turn the bubble gum machine upside-down again, and pour nameless liquids from beakers into test tubes. Hopefully one of those things will work.
Nothing much happening yet this year. We’re still digging our way out from under a mountain of snow and ice. When we see the sunlight, we’ll check in again. Look for a new single in the coming weeks.
Well, it’s that magical season again, people – the time of year when otherwise fairly normal people enter a state of frenzy, turning themselves inside-out to purchase holiday consumer items for family and friends before the 25th of December. Where’s the magic in that, you may ask? No man can say.
For your friends in Big Green, it’s time to look back at where the hell we’ve been all these years. We are more than a quarter century past the release date of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, and while it hasn’t achieved holiday classic status as of yet (give it another fifty!), it does get a few plays here and there. And yeah, we DO listen to some of them, goosing the numbers a bit I suppose. Anywho, here’s my personal Big Green yuletide playlist:
Pagan Christmas
As I mentioned last year, Pagan Christmas tends to be a holiday favorite around this time of year among a select few, typically wiccans and assorted pagan. They’re always good for a few hundred streams, and it does well on YouTube (by our standard, which is pretty small potatoes). It’s kind of upbeat with a pretty simple lyric:
You’re a standing invitation You’re a complete stranger at the top of the list You’re just like a relation You’ll be right there with us while we’re tearing away at our gifts And you’ll stand there gleaming with a ton of decorations
You’re not very different In a couple of minutes I’ll be heating you up You’re not very different In a couple of hours I’ll be serving you up on a plate And you’ll sit there gleaming with a ton of trimmings at your side
Have yourself a Merry Pagan Christmas Sacrifice
Hear it on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Merry Christmas Jane
One of my personal holiday favorites from the broader Big Green catalog is the live version of Merry Christmas Jane, which we tossed up on YouTube some time ago. This one features the nimble-fingered Jeremy Shaw on guitar, and it goes something like this:
Christmas Is All Done
Okay, this one was never commercially released, but we dropped it on YouTube a couple of years ago. It’s a song Matt wrote and we recorded sometime in the nineties, one of the first tracks we finished on our Tascam DA-88, the deck we would later use to record 2000 Years to Christmas. I always liked the atmosphere of this one, though I think Matt wanted to choke me for posting it. (He’s more of a perfectionist than I am … he and nearly all the rest of humanity.)
One Small Step
Okay, now I know what you’re going to say – that ain’t no Christmas song! Actually, it started life as a holiday number, the original version recorded with the group that included Christmas Is All Done. We resurrected it years later, added parts, then released One Small Step as a single. It is one of those rare Big Green releases that has an actual video associated with it. The original Christmas reference in the lyric was written out – it was pretty obscure, in any case.
All Saints Come
This is another number from 2000 Years To Christmas. I particularly like this track because it probably sounds more like we actually sounded as a performing band than any song on that album. It’s a bit of a dirge, but it’s got some crunch to it, and there’s nothing I like more around Christmas time than a little crunch.
What’s new for the New Year?
Well, it’s coming down fast, isn’t it? In 2026 we should be starting production on our next collection of songs, most of which have been written but not tracked. We plan to release a new single sometime early in the year – I’ll be posting about that in the coming weeks. Until then, keep the cards, letters, emails, posts, and rocks coming, have a safe and happy holiday, and don’t forget to tip the wait staff – they work effing hard and deserve every cent.
Sure was a long, long hot summer night. Wait … was that more than one night? THREE MONTHS? Jesus, I slept late. Stupid alarm!
We’re coming to the close of a very quiet summer in Big Green land. Hey, you know how it gets – you spend two years on an album, drop the mother, then you’re on to other things. Matt’s holed up in his private compound deep in the woods of Central New York, churning out songs, writing a book, feeding the beavers at Spring Farm (pictured above), and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Me? I’m flying in my taxi, taking tips and gettin’ …. wait, no, that’s not it. Just keeping the home fires burning, folks. We’ve got pieces of the next project under construction, pre-production if you will (and even if you won’t), and some tracking. It’s a slow roll, but it’s a roll.
Friends in Manila (and Jakarta)
Funny thing about our latest album, In Retrograde, is that it’s doing better in The Philippines than pretty much anywhere else. Who’s number 2 in the Big Green fan club? Indonesia, that’s who. Could have knocked me over with a feather when they told me that. Longtime readers of this blog may remember our shaggy dog tails about our Jakarta-based corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm. If THOSE dudes find out people are listening to us over there, lord only knows what comes next.
What’s their favorite song? Far and away, it’s Matt’s “Could Be On Your Way“, one of my personal favorites on that long-ass album.
It’s a bit of a sleeper, but I like it because it makes us seem like we actually work up arrangements rather than just play random instruments about a million times until it sounds like something.
They got it the wrong way round, see?
Other groups (and they know who they are) look at us like we have two heads because of the way we work. My response to them is, yeah, we have two heads because we’re two people. What’s confusing them, though, is that we use digital recording tools – computer workstation, digital instruments, etc. – but record in a super old-school way. We’re just playing parts, overdubbing, punching in, etc., like we were running a Tascam 8-track deck. No sequencing, no virtual stuff, aside from drum patterns.
Call us Luddites. Call us cavemen. Call us anytime – we’re always glad to hear from you. Yeah, we’re set in our 80s counterculture ways, so what’s new? We may have it the wrong way round, but it’s the right way to our dumb asses. Thing is … how is it that these Southeast Asia listeners are finding “Could Be On Your Way” when it’s seventeen songs into a remarkably obscure 24 song album?
It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma then dunked into conundrum sauce. Sounds delicious!
WTF is next, anywho?
Well, that’s anyone’s guess. We’re in pre-production for another new music project, and then there’s all the Ned Trek stuff that needs to be remastered. Suffice to say, there’s no rest for the weirdies.
