Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

Remote podcast rundown.

We return to the ongoing saga of Big Green’s Interstellar Tour 2013-14: Cowboy Scat goes galactic.

Interstellar Tour Log: February 5, 2014
Unforgiving surface of Ceres, the alpha asteroid

After a solid week on the surface of this, well, remarkably solid asteroid (a crust of solid titanium! … or so my geologically impoverished mind/brain tells me) we’re coming to the realization that this is not so brief a layover in our Interstellar Tour 2013-14. Given this reality … and the fact that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is insisting that I do so, I will take a few moments to share my usual dissection of our recently distributed podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – now with more Green!

Anyway, here’s what we have for the February podcast,* posted only days ago:

Ned Trek XVI: A Mock Time
Yes, believe it or not, we are on the 16th episode of this ludicrous audio remake of several failed sixties television shows, starring Willard Mittilius Romney as Captain Romney of the Starship Free Enterprise, and his first officer, Mr. Ned the dressage horse (loosely based on Mr. Ed). This month parodies the classic Star Trek episode “Amok Time,” when Spock gets the seven year vulcan itch in the worst way imaginable. Our take involves dancing, insults, and an enormous pile of dung … so it’s not so different from the original. Enjoy! That’s an order!

Put The Phone Down
Matt and I engage in our usual random conversation about changing Matt’s name to “Oliver Remote Control”, why Andy Williams never did a special with us, and how many times worse than Neil Sedaka we truly are. We also remember Pete Seeger, friend of the planet, and discuss our plans for the Super Bowl (which Matt was planning to flush this year).

I'm being played by a talking horse, Jim!Song: Paradise
We’ve played this one on the podcast before. This is a remake of a song Matt wrote in the 90s, part of a larger, kind of slow-mo effort on our part to reclaim at least a portion of the hundreds of songs we recorded for cassette distribution back in the day.

Song: Kublai Khan
Another retread of an older number; this one with shades of Reverend Moon. Written around the same time as Paradise, actually.

That’s the show, in essence. Now … if someone could ship about a dozen box lunches to Ceres, and maybe a cylinder of fireplace matches. Just follow the gas cloud rising from the asteroid’s surface. It’s freaking cold out here.

(*Editor’s Note: those of you hunting for evidence of a January podcast, your hunt is in vain. The February TIBG installment is actually a resuscitation of our January podcast, which got lost in all that discarded wrapping paper. January’s a chaotic month for us, too!)

Usual Rubbish

It’s a gas.

Back to the ongoing saga of Big Green’s Interstellar Tour 2013-14: The Cowboy Scat edition…

Interstellar Tour Log: January 27, 2014
Exiting orbit of KOI-314c

Big GreenJust in the process of attempting to reach escape velocity from KOI-314c, the strangely Earth-like planet recently detected by Earth scientists. Have to say, it was a bit disappointing. For one thing, we couldn’t find any inhabitants. Well, of course there was a vast ocean of liquid methane that might have contained some life forms, but I wasn’t going to be the first to volunteer to check it out. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) got a good look around; no clubs in site. Not even a Denny’s. What the hell is Earth-like about that? Next trip, we bring Mitch Macaphee.

Interstellar Tour Log: January 29, 2014
Entering asteroid belt (Yaaah!)

Asteroids! We’re taking a swing back through our home solar system, on our way to Sirius, and our trajectory appears to run straight through the dreaded asteroid belt that lies between Mars and the outer planets. Sure, we’ve done this before, but not without a trained pilot (or at least someone who plays one on t.v.). Anti-Lincoln claims to have some driving skills, but I think that’s more of the buckboard cart variety. Not a lot we can do with that, frankly, unless one of these asteroids would make a decent location for a re-shoot of High Noon or Showdown at the OK Corral.

Interstellar Tour Log: January 30, 2014
Unforgiving surface of Ceres, the alpha asteroid

Damn it, Marvin!Yes, you read that right. We got a bull’s eye on Ceres, the big brass buckle of the asteroid belt. I’m beginning to understand what’s happening here. Our rented space vehicle has a very primitive voice-activated computer guidance system, a bit like the blue tooth set in my car. When I tell my blue tooth, “call Oscar,” it starts dialing the number of someone in Madagascar. Well, we told our guidance system to take us to Sirius, and it took us to freaking Ceres. Christ on a bike!

Note to astronomers: Anti Lincoln decided to have a little barbecue while we were visiting, so if you see some unexplained vapor emanating from Ceres, yeah, that’s us.

Usual Rubbish

Learning Capellini.

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation, but I’ll say it anyway. There’s something compelling about Capella (the Goat star). What it compels us to do is another thing entirely.

Big GreenBooked into another series of club dates on the fourth stone out from Capella, my Big Green colleagues and I have tried to make the best of it. It hasn’t been easy. For one thing, the locals here are not very fond of country music, and since our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, is largely made up of mock-country numbers,  that puts a damper on things. We’ve had to reach deep down into the song bag to keep these rock-like creatures happy. (And by that crack I don’t simply mean that they like rock music. I mean, they are themselves animate rocks, with stony arms and legs and eyes like geodes. But yes, unsurprisingly, they prefer rock music.)

We asked sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, to remove his cowboy hat for the duration (he tries his best to look the part when we go all Rick Perry) and light into some of our heavier numbers from days past, like Why Not Call It George?, one of Matt’s more rocking ruminations on the scientific method. Here’s an excerpt of the lyric, last verse:

Continental drift can be reversed
great tumblers shift
and Pangaea can be reclaimed
After me it can be renamed
Why not call it George? Call it George, after me

Do you speak Capellini?Always a favorite of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who would very much like to name a continent after himself, particularly if said continent was the result of an experiment gone horribly right.

Well, sFshzenKlyrn turned in a searing solo that sent the rock-like denizens of Capella 4 into fits of geological ecstasy. There was waving and shouting, and if I spoke Capellini, I could tell you what they were saying. Their wallets speak louder than words, however, and they were grateful enough to drop some serious stone on us before the end of our week-long engagement. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a built-in assay lab, and he tells me that the currency rocks on Capella four are mostly feldspar, with traces of iron. Not exactly a fortune, but we’ll leave that to be made elsewhere.

Next stop: Earth-Mass Gassy Planet KOI-314c