Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

When the hell?

I know what you’re all saying out there. You’re saying, “Where’s my socks?” and “The paper’s late again this morning. Stupid paper carrier!” and “You’ll eat it and like it!” Stuff like that. Am I right?

Squx.Well, right or wrong, I like to think that you’ve been wondering about a couple of things with regard to the band Big Green, denizens of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill and the alien intelligence behind this skimpy little blog. One is, well, when the hell are we going to release another album? I mean, it’s been nearly 18 months since we put out Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. What the hell are we playing at, anyway? Or maybe you’re uttering that same thought in Swahili. It could be anything!

Then there’s the performance question. I know, I know … we’ve been extremely remiss in this area. Big Green hasn’t performed in front of a terrestrial audience in uncounted thousands of years. Sure, we’ve played in the solar system, which is practically in your neighborhood. You could easily see our performances with the Hubble Space Telescope, and perhaps hear them with a radio telescope. That has been the best we’ve been able to do up to now. Squint hard and you can see us.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) took it into his little tin head to do some advertising for us, hiring some firm to do smoke signals on Mars. All he managed to do was confuse NASA royally, and make a bunch of astrophysicists scratch their heads like monkeys and throw bones in the air, hoping they’ll turn into futuristic space shuttles. If that’s brand advertising, I’m an astrophysicist’s uncle. And I’m not. So just pretend you didn’t see that puff of smoke on the red planet, friends. Nothing to see here.

The fact is, we will get around to putting out some more music sometime soon. I’m working on posting some of our existing catalog on YouTube. And we’ve got new music, so ultimately it will be out there. Way out there.

Usual Rubbish

Radio Andromeda.

So, there’s a station that’s playing our last album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, in rotation. That’s the good news. The bad news? It’s in the galaxy of Andromeda, a very long ride from here, I’m told. Can’t raise it on my crystal set. (Damn … we need some new gear.)

Well, I am exaggerating a little. Apparently the radio waves from the Andromeda station are reaching planet Earth. Trouble is, no one can translate them into something intelligible. The only people hearing it are rocket scientists, and they’re not exactly our audience. Now, shapeless blobs of protoplasm on the planet Mongrovitowa 427K – THAT’S who listens to us (if you can call pseudopod sensory processing of nano-vibrations “listening”). But that counts as airplay in my book. And if we make some eggheads scratch their … well … eggheads, then that’s all to the good. It’s like when the Beatles added that hypersonic message to the family dog at the end of Sergeant Pepper. Except that, well … dogs aren’t typically scientists.

You see where I’m going with this, right? Because if YOU don’t, then neither of us does.

I suppose it should make us feel a bit guilty that we are wasting all this astrophysicist speculation time just so that we can claim some listenership of one of our drug-on-the-market albums. No doubt we are also fulfilling ancient prophecies left and right among the Eric Von Daniken crowd. The space brothers are coming! Oh, no … wait. It’s just Big Green broadcasting from Neptune. What a bloody huge disappointment for someone.

Airplay! Freaking amazing!Anyhow, we’re not just in business to cause people trouble. Matt and I are recording the next episode of Star Trek this very evening. We have been working on six or seven songs to accompany the episode, which will be included in the next installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast. My guess is that a couple of weeks into February we should be ready to post. Slow time of year – ah, for the days when we would post every month like clockwork! Now that we’re old and in the way, it’s a little more of a challenge.

What’s next? Let’s get Andromeda to start broadcasting the Ned Trek show. That will confuse the hell out of those astrophysicists!

Usual Rubbish

Inside the November podcast.

That was close. No, not the comet – that didn’t end up being close at all. I mean the November podcast. We almost didn’t post before Thanksgiving week, and that would have been a tragedy beyond measure. (Well, beyond my measure, anyway. Not real good at reading the old tragedy yardstick.)

Really big show (or shoe). Anyhow, now that Earth is out of danger (at least from external forces) we can take a few minutes to dissect this month’s episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast and the only avenue we have left for artistic expression. (Cue the violins.) So let’s pop open the hood and see what’s inside, shall we? Here goes …

Ned Trek XXI: Old Maple Glory. Our episodes of the space horse-opera Ned Trek are loosely based on installments of classic Star Trek, as you probably know, except that the ship is named the Free Enterprise and it is commanded by Willard Mitt Romney and his talking dressage horse, Mr. Ned. This episode follows The Omega Glory, roughly speaking, with cousin Rick Perry as the renegade commodore who takes over a primitive, divided planet. The precious resource in contention is syrup. Lots of fist fights.

New Songs. Strewn carelessly throughout the Ned Trek episode are rough drafts of new Big Green songs that loosely describe the emotional currents of the program. Most of these have a sixties rock vibe about them; two are positively psychedelic, particularly the Nixon robot song, “Yorba Linda Mybalinda”. Ned’s song “Nobody Ride” is kind of trippy as well. Doc sticks with the sixties rock milieu with “Doc’s Flapjacks”, and Rick Perry does a celebrity comeback number called “Sugar Shack.” Willard Mitt Romney chimes in with “Super Sugar Christ”, a snappy little swing number. Spotlight on Richard Pearle for “Motherlode”, another ode to unbridled greed. We’ve even included a College pep song for Rick Perry entitled “Hi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi,” sung a capella.

Old Song. For good measure, we tossed in a replay of our number from last year, “Don’t Tell Rick!” – our frantic plea to the listener of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick not to blow us in to Governor Perry.

Random Conversation. Our “Put the phone down” segment includes some very impromptu singing, a dissection of the 2014 mid-term election, and other random rants.

So hey … give it a listen, then give us a shout. We always read our email. (Explains a lot.)