Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Dream off.

2000 Years to Christmas

Turn it to the “golden oldies” station. Yeah, that’s the one. Okay … maybe a little Bob Seeger will wash it away. Hmmm. Turn it up a little. Little more. Oh, god – that’s enough! TURN IT OFF, THE RADIO!

Cheese and crackers, what a night! Now I know you’re used to that being a positive expression when it is issued from the lips of a rock musician, but that’s not the kind of night I’m talking about here, folks. This is one I slept through, for the most part. I was dreaming like a madman, and I heard music in one of my dreams that stayed with me after I woke up. It’s like someone planted an earworm in me while I was sleeping, and I can’t freaking shake it. (Well, I did shake it, literally, but that didn’t help.)

And yes, I know many great songwriters and classical composers harvested some of their best themes from dream music. Again, I am going to back over another popular preconception about musicians. Yeah, I hear music in my dreams, and sometimes it sticks with me when I wake up. But with me, it’s almost always lousy as hell. Whoever does the incidental music score for my dreams is a freaking hack. For crying out loud – everything in my life is the low-rent version of something decent. Some people have sophisticated androids. I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who’s little more than a hopped up samovar crossed with a hot water heater. Some people have tony mansions. I live in an abandoned hammer mill with a bunch of lunatics. Poor little motherfucking me.

There, see? There is a resemblance!

Okay, I feel better now. Got to get these things out of your system, you know. Now if I could only get this dumb-ass dream music out of my head. It’s a plunky little number in 10/4 time that goes absolutely nowhere, so it loops easily, and it goes round and round. And round. I’ve tried going to the supermarket and wheeling around an empty cart while listening to piped in music, but that was unsuccessful. Next, I think I’ll cue up all of the Nixon Android songs from Ned Trek, our other podcast. I think there’s about a dozen of them. Listening to an audio animatronic Nixon sing about his misfortunes in 12 different ways should be an ideal method for burning this plague out of my brain. NOTHING can survive Nixon.

Which reminds me … what the hell happened to our fourth album? We were going to build it out of selections from our Ned Trek catalogue, but thus far, no potato. Maybe that little earworm is trying to tell me to get my lazy ass moving. Jesus. Why not send a telegram, for chrissake?

Usual Rubbish

Broken windows.

2000 Years to Christmas

That putty’s too dry. You can’t do anything with it now. What’d you do, leave it out in the sun? Well, that’s your problem right there. Sun, hot. Sun HOT.

Oh, hi. Just another summer’s day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, Big Green’s longtime adopted home (squat house). Truth be known, we don’t always squat here – sometimes we stand bolt upright. I know that breaks with protocol for squat houses, but hell … we’ve got a lot of head room in this mill. Those old nineteenth century hammer-meisters must have been pretty tall; either that or they all worked on horseback. (I seem to remember one promoter we had once who wanted us to play our music on horseback. He also wanted me to change my name to Tex Piadro. Don’t remember why we let him go, but …. we let him go.)

Well, as anyone who has ever lived in an old apartment building knows, when it comes to structural flaws or things that leak, you’re basically on your own. If you’re a legit renter, you can call your landlord, and s/he will send a) a friend who owes some money, b) a brother in law who purports to be a handyman, or c) his or her own ass with a monkey wrench and a prayer. Our situation is different, of course – being squatters, we have no one to complain to when the place is falling apart around us. But the upside of that is, no useless hacks hammering away at some home maintenance problem they haven’t got a clue about addressing. As squatters, we become the useless hacks. That’s called self-reliance, kids. Look it up.

They obviously need some work. (The windows, that is.)

There’s a lot wrong with this hammer mill. Not for nothing did they abandon it. You would have thought they’d convert it into some kind of multi-vendor consignment mall or indoor craft fair, like they typically do with old mills up here, but frankly the place is just in too rough a shape. (I think it’s more of a rough hexagon than anything else.) We’re trying to do something about the leaky windows, as that’s the most annoying problem right now. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been called into service as a wind-break and rain shield. Basically, we told him to hold up a stretched out garbage bag in front of the window and … well, just keep holding it.

Then Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, started getting busy with the window putty. Don’t know where he found the stuff, but I for one have never seen putty that glows in the dark before. When I asked Mitch about that, he just gave a dry little cackle and kept working. Fair enough.

Usual Rubbish

Inside July (2020).

2000 Years to Christmas

I told you to drop it on Sunday. Did you drop it? No, no …. the PODCAST, not the quart of milk. I KNOW you dropped the milk, for crying out loud. Jesus Christmas.

Hah … speaking of Christmas, we had a little present for you this week in the form of a new installment of our long-running podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Call it Christmas in July, or call it swiss cheese … whatever you like. The audience is always right, am I right? (Only when I’m in the audience.) Sure, it wasn’t as … um … generously proportioned as many of our previous installments. There was no Ned Trek episode, true. And there was no Matt, but we will do something about that soon, my friends. I just have to pry him away from the falcons and beavers long enough to talk into a mic for half an hour. Should be child’s play. (NOT).

Anyway, so what was in this episode, eh? Here’s some of what we inserted, minus the leavening – a veritable audio flatbread of goodness:

Put the phone down. I talk a whole bunch of trash about Big Green’s origin story, its origins, and its origins’ origins. We did, as it turns out, embellish the truth a little bit, but not so much as to cause discomfort. Then I tell the tale of our first demo, which we’ve posted on this very blog. Knowing that most who listen to the podcast never visit our site, I then elected to PLAY the four-song demo on the podcast.

Song: A Name And A Face. Written by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison, this song is actually a pretty apt description of hook-up culture in the 1980s. Ned and I do the singing, Ned plays guitar and some key parts, I play piano, Matt’s on bass, and club drummer Pete Young is on drums. Somewhat sloppy recording, but it sounds clear enough after 30-odd years in the closet.

Song: She Caught The Katy. This is a Taj Mahal song we used to do as part of our club show. I do the singing and the piano part, Ned does guitar and keys, Matt plays his Rick bass, and Pete Young joins us on drums.

I'm ready, Mitch. Press "record"!

Song: Bad Boy. Lennon and McCartney song that Ned loved. He sings, and the rest of us play our various instruments. The only switch here is that the drums are played by singer/songwriter Dale Haskell, friend of the band and school chum of Ned.

Song: Slippin’ and Slidin’. Our attempt at a Little Richard number. It’s a little beyond me, frankly, but I give the vocal a try while Ned, Matt, and Pete Young back me up.

Song: Just Five Seconds. This is a recording from the early nineties, after Ned left the band. Matt wrote this one and does the main vocal. Recorded in Bob Acquaviva’s studio in Utica, NY. Pete Young or Dale on drums? Trick question – it’s a freaking drum machine.

Song: Grandfather’s War. I stumble through an impromptu rendition of this old number from the eighties. Frankly, it sounds better with the beer hall banter in the background.

Song: Nutcracker. One of the many Christmas songs by Matt that didn’t get on to 2000 Years To Christmas. This is a kind of hard-driving number, cheaply recorded on a cassette portastudio back in the late eighties, I think. 1989? Probably.

Song: Honest Man. A song of mine from the nineties, recorded with Matt on my old eight-track DTRS system. Another scratch demo, fit for nought but our tattered old podcast.

That was about it. Enjoy the show. And if you don’t, well … there’s more where that came from.