Usual Rubbish

Under the holiday hood.

Man goddamn, it’s come and gone again, hasn’t it? Those freaking holidays seem to take fifty years to get here and then they’re gone in five seconds. And we’ve only done one miracle ride!*

Anyway, as some of you already know, we have posted our second annual Christmas podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN: Holidaze 2012, a nearly 100-minute extravaganza that dwarfs even the titanic pointlessness of last year’s effort and renders anew the promise of fractured Christmases to come. Many of you know that I am not given to wild exaggeration, but I have to say that THIS holiday special is THE MOST AMAZING HOLIDAY SPECIAL since the BIRTH of THE JESUS. Let me emphasize that I have to say that because, well, our sponsor, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., has demanded a higher number of downloads on this episode. And when they don’t get what they want, they get something else … which is ugly. So… gun to my head, I most certainly would.

All right – no lie, there is a lot in this episode. Here’s a run-down of the hoedown, with times listed, so you can skip to the parts you like:

    • Ned Trek V (3:18 ) – Mr. Ned and Willard take another romp through the inter-dimensional void of classic television shows, with hilarious consequences. (Introduced as always by a particularly cheesy-sounding Lee Majors.)
    • Put The Phone Down (39:20) – Matt and I launch right in to a lively holiday discussion. Riveting, as usual.
    • Charlie in the Box and the first Semi-Automatic Christmas (42:45) – A whimsical tale of Charlie, Hermy, and the putsch in Santa’s workshop. (a Reeking-Ass production.)

A nice gift idea. From crazy town.

  • Song: Merry Christmas, Children (59:40) – New recording of a previously unreleased Christmas song Matt wrote back in the day. We tried to produce this song for 2000 Years To Christmas, but ended up abandoning the track. This was done over the last three weeks or so.
  • Song: Father Christmas (1:06:43) – Another from Matt’s ample stable of Christmas songs – a new, previously unreleased recording, just in time for freaking Christmas. Again, recorded over the last few weeks – lightning fast for us. Mixed it in my sleep as you can probably tell.
  • Song: Martha’s Christmas (1:12:04) – A cut off of our 1999 album 2000 Years to Christmas. A brief, ironic (because it was the ’90s) ode to the doyen of holiday decor, Martha Stewart.
  • Song: Christmas Spirit (1:17:23) – More from the Matt Perry Christmas songbook. New recording of a previously unreleased song, this one a nod to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A little more holiday mythology, hurriedly recorded and packaged with a bow.
  • Matt’s Christmas Bird Count tale (1:20:00) – Matt tells of getting impaled on an invasive species of weed while managing the annual bird survey. A chilling tale of heroism.
  • Song: Head Cheese Log (1:35:09) – Another cut from 2000 Years To Christmas, this one the album closer, a calliope waltz imagining a yule log made of head cheese. Yeah, we got some ‘splainin’ to do, but that bus left the station a long time ago, friend.

Anywho, that’s what we have in the Christmas stocking for you all. (There may be a moldy orange in the heel, as well – take a look.) If you want to hear the music without the podcast, contact us and we’ll put it together for you. Enjoy!

* “Miracle ride” involves driving around looking at cheesy Christmas displays, referred to by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison as “Christmas miracles.”

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This Is Big Green: Holidaze 2012

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This Is Big Green: Holidaze (December) 2012

Big Green marks the pagan holiday known as Christmas with a full-blown installment of Ned the talking horse, three new Big Green songs, and more. Dig it.

This is Big Green – Holidaze 2012. Features: 1) Ned Trek V, starring Mr. Ned, Romney’s Dancing Horse; 2) Skit: Charlie in the Box and the first semi-automatic Christmas; 3) Put the phone down: Holidays and the recently departed remembered; 4) Song: Merry Christmas, Children, by Big Green; 5) Song: Father Christmas, by Big Green; 6) Song: Martha’s Christmas, by Big Green; 7) Song: Christmas Spirit, by Big Green; 8 ) Matt’s encounter with an invasive species; 9) Song: Head Cheese Log, by Big Green; 10) We collapse in festive exhaustion

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Usual Rubbish

Readying.

The studio is stuffed to the gills already. Yes, it has gills! How do you think it breathes underwater? Didn’t you go to grammar school? Oh, right.

Sometimes I forget that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) isn’t an undereducated human like myself. He is, in fact, a mechanical man. Much must be explained to him, and what can’t be explained must be programmed in by force, if necessary. That’s the lot of a robot assistant, I’m afraid. Work, work, work.

Anyhow… the quintessential American holiday is now over. (We also survived that day that comes before Black Friday … what do they call it? Thanksgiving?) Time to fold up the balloons, disassemble the parade floats, and send the marching bands marching home. While many find the Macy parade enjoyable, it is not a simple matter to serve as the end point of that annual extravaganza. Just finding enough space to store deflated Spiderman is proving more challenging than you might imagine. Sure, without air in his ass, he’s smaller, but – and this is important – not all that much smaller. And then there’s those freaking Smurfs.


As you can imagine, every nook and cranny in the mill is stuffed with gear from the parade. You can hardly turn around in the studio these days. Still, we press on. Matt and I did a couple more mixes for Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick this past week. Gonna be a bit hard with all these deflated balloons lying around, but we’ll manage. Fortunately, many of Rick’s songs are country-like numbers, so the mixing is fairly simple. We take a naturalist approach – not too much FX, not too much compression. Just record it clean, mix it pure, and pour it into a tall, clear glass to check for impurities before quaffing it down. Pure audio ambrosia, that’s what I’m talking about. Sure ding.

We’re also furiously preparing for the holiday episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Last year raised the bar a bit – two hours of pure horseshit. Not sure how to top that without a bigger shovel, but we’ll try.

Weird ass music since 1986