Usual Rubbish

Inside the holiday podcast.

Ahem. Still bobbing out here in deep space. Nothing to keep us company but the echoes of our increasingly impatient throat clearings. Ahem!

Well, while we have so much time on our hands, time to crack open that big Christmas present we left all of you who subscribe to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – namely, our annual Christmas Spectacular. What’s inside the box this year? Two solid hours of Big Green madness, including:

Ned Trek XV: Santorum’s Christmas Planet – This special, expanded holiday edition of our (un)popular Star Trek parody features six – yes, six – new Big Green songs, sung in character:

  • Christmas Shine – Captain Mitt Romney’s joyful rumination on getting full value out of his human resources throughout the holiday season. And he’s not going to say it again.
  • Horrible People – Mr. Ned contemplates the fate of all animals during the dangerous Yultide ritual celebrations. (Backing vocals by those ’40s guys.)
  • Dick’smas Xmas – Even the robot Dick Nixon keeps Christmas in his own way. This song gives you an idea of how that all comes down. Expletives deleted, mostly.
  • Doc’s Christmas – Full of crackpot prognostications and characteristic religious fervor, the right honorable Senator Reverend Doctor Thomas Beauregard Coburn belts out another keeper. Foghorn Leghorn is turning in his cartoon grave.
  • Lonely Little Neocon – Richard Pearle takes a moment away from more important duties to croon this tidy little number about how much he misses his favorite pastime – starting major conflicts.
  • Christmas Green – What’s the true meaning of Christmas? Let Captain Mitt explain it to you in no uncertain terms.

Let's talk about the podcast.This month’s episode features Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell (sounding a bit like Walter Brennan), and others as Mitt and the crew encounter a fantastic world on which Christmas happens every other day (and twice on Sunday).


Song: Merry Christmas, Jane, Part II – A holiday rebroadcast of this selection from our 1999 album, 2000 Years To Christmas.

Put the Phone Down – We spend a lot of our conversation remembering our old friend and colleague Tim Walsh, who passed away unexpectedly in November. Tim played guitar with us way back in the day, and we spin a few old recordings of the band we had back then, which was made up of Joe Perry (keys), Matt Perry (bass), Phil Ross (drums) and Tim. These are pretty rough, but you can hear most of what’s going on.

  • Wind Cries Mary – Hendrix number with Tim playing lead guitar. (This starts with an end bit from another recording that features Tim hammering out a blistering Neil Young style solo.)
  • Colors in the Darkness – Song written, arranged, sung, and recorded by Tim while we shared a flat in Castleton-On-Hudson, NY. The first section is all Tim; the second is excerpted from the entire band playing the song out.
  • Nothing To Hide – Another original song by Tim, which he sings. I think we recorded this at my parent’s house in New Hartford, NY, in maybe 1984.

Anywho … that’s the run-down of the show. Let us know what you think. We’ll have our people float a message in a bottle-rocket out to us.

Political Rants

Austerity rules.

Just a few things I want to comment on this week, not at any great length. Bear with me, please.

Human Rights. In what appeared to be an effort to elicit Vietnam’s cooperation in the looming Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade agreement” – really an investors’ rights agreement – Secretary of State John Kerry recently paid a visit to Hanoi to discuss new maritime security cooperation measures, against the backdrop of China’s recent declaration of a kind of demilitarized zone in the South China Sea. None of this is surprising, but what kind of made my jaw hang open was the reporting around the visit. The main hook was that Kerry had been part of America’s expeditionary force in South Vietnam during the war, and he toured some of his old haunts in the south. NPR (not to single them out – everyone else did this, too), practically in a single breath, made reference to this trip down memory lane, then referred to problems with Vietnam’s human rights record, which Washington complains about.

Kerry greets a survivor.Really? Just a little bit of context might be nice. What was Kerry doing there in the 1960s again? Vacationing? No. Oh, that’s right – he was part of a massive invasion force that was grinding Vietnam – particularly southern Vietnam – to a bloody pulp, leaving probably 2 million dead and three countries destroyed; a massive crime that we have never been held accountable for. I think it’s a little premature to lecture Hanoi on human rights, frankly.

Work release. The Fed will be dialing back their “quantitative easing” policy in the coming year. I have mixed feelings about this, frankly. The central bank has been the only organ of American power – public or private – seemingly willing to invest in this economy. Much of that investment has been in vain, as the banks the Fed lends to have been extremely reluctant to lend that money out. Corporations are sitting on their money, not hiring at any great clip. And of course, at every level of government, it’s cut, cut, cut; thousands of public sector jobs eliminated. Austerity rules, once again.

I have this nagging feeling that American capital is unwilling to invest in American workers – that they feel it’s a bad risk, and so they seek richer pastures elsewhere, where workers rights are even less protected the meager safeguards we enjoy here. What we need is some public investment entity to pick up the slack. We need to commit ourselves to full employment – if someone is willing and able to work, and the private sector has nothing to offer them, let the government provide them with work. They, in turn, will spend that money in their local economy, supporting private sector jobs and growth. At the same time we need to stop incentivizing corporate off-shoring of jobs (see the TPP, above).

Austerity isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice, a bad one, and we have to reject it if we want a better life.

luv u,

jp

Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: December 2013

Big Green celebrates another Christmas season with a special 2-hour yuletide extravaganza, featuring a holiday episode of Ned Trek (with six new songs), tributes to a late friend, some garbled messages, and more. Hail, Krampus.

This is Big Green – December 2013. Features: 1) Ned Trek XV: Santorum’s Christmas Planet, including six new Big Green holiday songs (see blog for list*); 2) Song: Merry Christmas, Jane, Part II, by Big Green; 3) Put the Phone Down: Matt and Joe discuss the holiday phenomenon; 4) Remembering Tim Walsh; 5) Song: Wind Cries Mary, featuring Tim Walsh; 6) Song: Colors in the Darkness, by Tim Walsh; 7)Song: Nothing to Hide, by Tim Walsh; 8) Playing at Utica College in 1979; 9) Krampus, out!

Ned Trek XV songlist:

  • Make that Christmas Shine!
  • Horrible People
  • Dick’smas Xmas
  • Doc’s Christmas
  • Lonely Little Neocon
  • Christmas Green

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Weird ass music since 1986