Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

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.

Usual Rubbish

Inside April.

Jesus, that’s god-awful. Turn that shit down, man! What the hell are you listening to, anyway? Some kind of reality show reruns? Oh …. it’s our podcast. Nevermind.

Okay, so we have this podcast, see? And it kind of sucks, see? But we’re proud of it anyway, so that naturally leads me to want to tell you all about the latest episode, hot off the presses here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?

Item the First: Ned Trek XXIII – Doo-Dah Dancing – This episode of our post-modern satirical space opera (a bizarre-ass mashup of classic Star Trek, Mr. Ed, and the 2012 Presidential election) is loosely based on the 3rd season classic ST episode entitled “Turnabout Intruder”, in which Captain Kirk’s body is taken over by an ex-girlfriend/scientist – typical season 3 ridiculousness, and perhaps the most asinine episode ever. In this distorted version of that degraded reality, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney is forced to exchange consciousness with a one-time dance partner with ambitions to, dare she say it, take over the Free Enterprise and rule … the universe! Special appearances by Peter Lorre and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among others.

That's freaking childish.Song: Aw Shoot, by Big Green – This song is from our 2013 album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. It’s a funky little number, somewhat reminiscent of the theme music from a bad 80’s foreign sci-fi film whose name I won’t mention. Scandinavian accents are kind of a giveaway.

Put the Phone Down – Matt and I discuss a range of issues touching on matters of vital importance to the future of humankind … NOT. Mostly some bad singing, talk of racist friends of the family, insults heaped upon the memory of Al Jolson, and so on.

Song: Poor Dick, by Big Green – Another selection from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one tells a tale of Rick Perry taking desperate measures to save his pal Dick Cheney by procuring a replacement heart for the ailing Vice President, taking care not to pick one that pumped life-giving blood through the veins of a socialist. Rick finds the perfect donor: Breitbart! Hilarity ensues. Only song I know that uses “aveoli” in a rhyme scheme.

Usual Rubbish

Pod-where? Dunno.

Not a real good bookkeeper, I admit it. Never have been particularly good with numbers. Don’t know much about geometry. (There’s a song in this somewhere.)

Tubey and the stump in the courtyard.So what happened to the March podcast? Well, as you’ve guessed if you follow our various pointless postings in cyberspace, we have moved to a bi-monthly format, given the production demands of Ned Trek, particularly the musical episodes. We’re currently producing five or six songs for what will ultimately be the June episode, and we should be recording the April episode in a week or so. So … production is moving forward, but like Issa’s snail climbing Mount Fuji, it is proceeding “slowly … slowly.”

My illustrious brother had a cold for a couple of weeks, like half of humanity up here in the great frozen north country. He spends a good deal of his day outdoors, feeding and entertaining all manner of wild critters. Not so different from being in the restaurant business, actually, and you know how demanding THAT can be. In any case, that pushed our production schedule back a couple of weeks … enough time for Mitch Macaphee to flesh out our plan to start a Mars colony before the end of the decade. (Well, THAT certainly took a strange turn.)

That leaves us a brief opportunity to mark the return of Spring and all the traditional rites associated with it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has taken it upon himself to erect a maypole in the hammer mill courtyard. Sure, it’s only five feet tall … and yeah, he made it out of the remnants of a sawed-off telephone poll, but it’s a good conversation piece, at least, and now the mansized tuber has some companionship out there as the warmer months arrive. Spring is busting out all over.

Cowboy Scat on YouTube: We posted another couple of songs to the YouTube playlist. For any of you who haven’t heard the whole album, here’s how to give it a listen.