Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

What’s with the cheap-ass show?

Okay, so we posted a cheap-ass podcast for July. So sue me. Go hire Mr. Simon’s lawyer and sue me. Things went all pair-shaped this summer, what can I tell you?

The fact is, we did produce a new episode of Ned Trek. I wrote the script, with Matt’s able help, we voiced it, and Matt finished editing it … and then his computer blew up. So he’s reconstructing it, in between the fifteen thousand other things he’s responsible for. And it has taken longer than anticipated, right? You know the drill. Even more galling in a way is the fact that this was one of our musical episodes, which means that we produced no less than 6 original songs for the sucker. A lot of production for an episode that never got posted. Still … it will go up, eventually. Just wait and see. (Or hear.)

Anyway, we thought we’d take this opportunity to re-run one of our favorite Ned Trek episodes, called The Wrath of Carl, in which Carl Sagan decimates the Free Enterprise crew through the awesome power of his calling bullshit on all of their pseudo-scientific TV-show contrivances, like artificial gravity and … well … interstellar travel. (My favorite moment is when Sagan points out that horses lack the requisite anatomy for speech, at which point Ned loses his voice.)

What a lame ass cop out.What’s on deck for this month, besides this re-tread episode of Ned Trek? Well, we have a selection from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – a little song called Savin’ Myself for America, which is a particular favorite of mine from that album. (Hear it now on YouTube.) We also launch into a shaggy-dog planning session about our next album, which will feature songs from – you guessed it – Ned Trek. We’ve produced about fifty so far, and you can listen to us engaging in the somewhat useless task of winnowing this down to maybe 45. Will this be our first double album? Who freaking knows. (We obviously don’t – just listen to the podcast.)

So there you have it. Another day at the office.

Usual Rubbish

Taking stock.

Run that one again. Yeah, that’s right. Hmmmmm …. I forgot about that part. Okay, rewind it and let’s hear it from the top. Yep, yep. Heard that before.

Oh, hi. Joe of Big Green here. Just listening back to some old tracks. Every time we’re in-between projects or waiting for something to happen, the amateur archivist begins to take hold within me and I start pulling out the old stuff. Some of it’s on reel to reel, some on cassette, some on DAT, some just written on an old sheet of note paper. When you’ve been doing something for 30+ years, you have a lot of leave-behinds.

While I’ve been waiting for Matt to finish the latest episode of Ned Trek (now in the works), I thought it might be a good time to back up the masters for Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our 2013 album about cousin Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, 2012 presidential candidate, and once again a member of the Republican electoral field. Our Roland 2480, which we used to record that album, is in somewhat shaky condition and has no internal means for backing up data. That means we have to port the sound files over, track by track, to my install of Cubase LE. I’ve done most of the songs; still a substantial way to go. Booooring work, frankly, but you gotta do it. Sort of.

Play it again? Yup.If this keeps up, I’m going to do a deep dive into some unreleased material from yesteryear. I was listening to a live tape of us from back in 1993. That’s never been transcoded, so hell, time to get busy. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can get started on that anytime. Or not. (He thinks transcoding involves switching his gender identity somehow. Not sure where he got THAT idea.)

There is one other thing keeping us pointlessly busy. It’s the new site we launched for Ned Trek. The URL is www.nedtrek.com and it features five selected episodes from the now 24-show run of this ludicrous mockery of classic Star Trek, occasionally set to music. Go there and binge, folks – it’s free, as audio should be.

Off we go again. More archiving. This place is like the Library of Congress.

Usual Rubbish

Mail bag returns.

Mail's in!Well, it’s been a while. Time to open the Big Green mail bag again, at long last. It’s easy to forget this stuff with all that’s been on our plate the last couple of years. You know, production, minor building repairs, breathing (lots of breathing), and the like. But no matter – we’ll just take a moment away from all of that, wave away the moths, and pull the first missive from its tattered envelope.

Here’s one from Castleton-on-Hudson, NY:

Dear Big Green … Are you the same ne’er-do-wells that used to live in that broken down house on Green Avenue? You know … the one that looks like it tumbled halfway down the gorge and landed on its roof? Because it that WAS you guys, you friggin owe me money.

— Baldric McPlumber

Hey, Baldric … thanks for writing in! Yes, that was us, back in an earlier incarnation (or since we’re talking about rural New York, maybe it should be “inTARnation”). We lived in that broken down house in 1984-5, and next door to it in 1981, so if you have any outstanding bills, just hand them to the people currently occupying those structures. Cheers!

Here’s a note from someone in Madagascar:

Dear Big Green … Your last episode of Ned Trek featured a Mormon dentist by the name of Jillian Mustard. Do you know if she’s accepting any new patients? I’ve got a loose filling in one of my molars, lower left.

— Kranis Frackus

Hiya, Kranis … hope all is well in Madagascar! Nope, I don’t think Jillian is accepting any new patients. She is what we call a “fictional” character, cooked up in the sick, sick mind of my illustrious brother. Any resemblance to actual human beings, living or dead, is completely coincidental. (Unless the resemblance is way too close … in which case, you know who you are.)

One more … this one from San Antonio:

Howdy, partners! I see you posted a whole mess of songs about Rick Perry on your YouTube Channel. It’s almost as if you KNEW Rick was going to run for president again. What manner of beast are you that you can see things that haven’t happened yet?

— T-Bone Pickens

Well now, T-Bone. That there is what we New Yorkers call a “coincidence”. You see, not everything in this highly complex world is connected to every other thing. It’s just a happy accident that I got my lazy ass in gear and posted those songs just weeks before Rick made his fateful decision to throw his ten-gallon hat into the ring. Those songs offer a great backgrounder on the candidate. Don’t underestimate him!

There’s more, but then … you have a life.