Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

Sickening.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 18, 2014
Planet #74 in NASA list. Near Aldebaran.

Yes, Big Green is still out here, on our massive Interstellar Tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, still picking our way through the dross of NASA’s list of 715 planets yet to be explored, blah blah blah. Not the best time to leave your mad science adviser back on Earth. I sure hope Mitch Macaphee is enjoying his time on the beaches of Madagascar or wherever that mad science conference is being held. Frankly, we could use his help.

Need thisThe fact that most of these strange worlds have been featured in American movies and television shows from the 1950s and 60s is little help when you’re trying to determine the precise composition (and toxicity level) of a greenish atmosphere. Sure, you can have that kind of trouble back home, in South Carolina or West Virginia … but at least down there you have your pick of mad scientists. Up here, we’ve got Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his converted wall barometer.

This planet is one of the ones the Robinsons of Lost in Space fame visited. Not quite sure which, since they all looked essentially the same. (One was called Preplanis, I think, right? But then that one blew up.) In any case, no one to perform for … not even a giant talking chicken. Moving on …

Interstellar Tour Log: March 20, 2014
Planet #526 in NASA list. Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy

Big GreenHuh. Thought I just saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson fly by in a strange looking spacecraft. Can’t be. Anyway, we may be at the end of the road here, my friends. Everyone is sick of this tour, including Marvin, the mansized tuber (who’s just been sulking in his terrarium all day long), both Lincolns, and even sFshzenKlyrn, who has more than once taken advantage of his ability to skip between dimensions and simply vanished from sight for hours at a time. It’s a little unnerving when you’re onstage in front of a crowd of tiny robots from the planet Industro and you nod to your guitarist to take a solo, and he’s in another freaking dimension. (Perhaps the Fifth Dimension, in which case he would have to learn some harmony parts pronto.)

Great googly-moogly, as they say in the vernacular. We’re sick of this shit. Next stop, terra firma … I think.

Usual Rubbish

Winging it.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 11, 2014
Planet #253 in NASA list. Out Rigel way.

Next stop on our random interplanetary tour – or if you prefer, interstellar tour 2014, sans itinerary – is planet #253 on the list NASA generated off of their recent survey. (Now, I’m Get off my planet.not an astrophysicist, but I do have some experience with market research, so I’m guessing that this was a phone survey, and that our old friend Waleed Abdulati, NASA’s head scientist, simply hired a phone bank and had them dial distant star systems at random and ask, “How many in your solar system?” “Do you have a companion star or dark matter object?” “Is s/he working?”)

Turns out, much more is known about these unknown worlds than NASA is letting on. We are slowly coming to the realization that all of the science fiction movies and T.V. shows of our youth were not fictional at all … they were fairly accurate depictions of OUTER SPAAAAACE. Old number 253 is a good example of that. Did you ever see Vampire Planet with John Carradine and what looked like a band of refugee actors from European porn movies? Hmmmm… thought not. Well, it was bad. Really bad. And it was apparently filmed here on #253. No performance venues. Just caves and dinosaurs … again.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 14, 2014
Planet #79 in NASA list. sFshzenKlyrn‘s neck of the galaxy.

Big GreenYeah, we’re over near the cluster of nebulosity which sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, calls home. He’s taken his leave for a few days to visit his mother, another etheric creature of undetermined shape and mass. Splooge off the old nebula, that’s our sFshzenKlyrn, and man, he can really smoke that telecaster. (Seriously, I’ve told him not to go through them like cheap cigars – we’re not made of money, you know.)

Planet #79 offers some attractions for a traveling band. Fairly reasonable accommodations (there’s a Motel 6 down here). There’s even a grounded electrical outlet in our room, so we can plug Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in to charge. As a cheap advertising ploy, we plugged in our portable stereo and blasted Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick from Matt’s iPod. That got us, well, arrested and fined, but it was worth the gamble. We’ll be playing in the lounge tonight.

Usual Rubbish

Pick a sphere.

Interstellar Tour Log: March 3, 2014
Planet #47 in NASA list, just south of Aldebaran

Okay, that was the planet of the dinosaurs. Check. Marvin? Be sure to put that one on the “do not visit” list. We should have known that from John Carradine’s experience back in the 1970s, but oh well.

Null set. Right, if you’re just joining us, Big Green is furiously working its way through the list of 715 new planets NASA recently put out, looking for halfway decent venues. We’re not picky, you know. It’s not like we need a proper dressing room with a row of lightbulbs arrayed above a long mirror and chilled Champagne in a bucket. Hell, we’ll settle for an unlocked fire door on one side of the stage. (I can just about hear some indie musician out there saying, “Big Green needs stages to perform on? What a bunch of prima donnas!”)

The first couple of planets on the list have been kind of a bust. Turns out, all NASA managed to do was catalog all of the seemingly habitable planets depicted in science fiction movies and television shows over the past 40 years. Not that that isn’t useful, but frankly, the Planet of the Dinosaurs has little to recommend it …. except for an outsized population of dinosaurs, and some bad-looking cave people with voices straight out of a Jay Ward cartoon. (And names like “Sookee”. Sookee? Really, space people – you can do better than that.)

Interstellar Tour Log: March 5, 2014
Planet #163 in NASA list, near Rigel

Big GreenMarvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered (or was shoved out the door, one of the two) to go down to the surface of this rocky little world and see if there were any performance venues worth pissing in. The place looks a bit like west Texas, so songs from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick should go over pretty well here. I know, it’s a little dicey using Marvin as an advance man, but Lincoln is kind of busy with his model ship building hobby and the man-sized tuber has his roots all tangled in something at the moment. (A couple of visits ago, Marvin was on the surface of a planet for six hours before he figured out it was Metaluna, the planet from “This Island Earth”. Talk about an oversight. How the hell many times do you have to watch that movie before you recognize the set?)

Looks like he’s encountered some kind of life form. Show him the contract, Marvin! Ask him if he needs a pen!