Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

Cheer up.

Get out of my room, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). You too, tubey. I’m having one of my captain sunshine days, as you can tell. In fact, I’m rear-admiral motherfucking sunshine today, mister.

This means war
In a bit of a mood today.

Oh, fuck…. I mean, fudge. Didn’t know you were listening in. Sorry you had to hear that outburst. Nerves are getting a little frayed around the hammer mill just lately. What the hell, I’ve been sleeping in an abandoned hammer-stock storage silo for the last 10 years, springs poking out of my mattress like in those old cartoons, the windows leaky and cracked, the mortar crumbling to dust between ancient bricks. Not to put too fine a point on it – this place is a DUMP. Now I know why they abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill.

What’s that? They condemned the place? What the hell, Marvin … you had that in your memory banks all this time? Weren’t you just dying to tell me at some point before this? Irrelevant?!? I’ve obviously got to talk to your inventor about upgrading your relevance sensor. To say nothing of your gaydar. The freaking boy scouts should hire your ass. (Damn, there I go again! Sorry, people of Earth.)

I’ve got a case of what’s called Dyspepsia Engineeris, an affliction that usually strikes individuals in the middle of a large music post-production process. Mixing an album consumes every ounce of your creativity, and hell … I’ve only got two ounces to begin with. Needless to say, we haven’t been producing new material, just finishing what’s already in the can. We have, however, dug up some old, previously unreleased stuff that we can play on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, in the spaces where we might ordinarily have published new production. We’ll pour some of that in before it posts, I promise you. And one day, one day, we will return to making music (as opposed to merely mixing it).

Well … now that I’ve chased all of my friends away, I guess I can get back to … to … mixing. Arrgh.

Usual Rubbish

Pop goes it.

Lift the needle. Right about … there. That’s good. Now let’s do the next one. Excellent. We will soon have my entire LP collection transferred to 8-track cartridges, at long last.

Eight tracks
A little timely advice for Marvin

Oh, hello. Just catching up on some housekeeping. You know how it is, especially when you’re living the dream here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Time gets away from you, and you end up neglecting all that stuff you meant to do, had to do, were legally obligated to do, etc. I’m only just now getting around to filing my tax returns for 1983. I think my extension may have run out, but I’m not sure. There’s a stack of letters from the IRS I’ve yet to open….

Right, so I’m falling behind. I think we all are here in Big Green land. Fact is, cousin Rick Perry has a song by that name on our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. It goes something like this….

I’m fallin’ behind, I’m fallin’ behind
T’ain’t never lost before
Always won when I tried
I tell them just what they want to hear
Just as sure as God made corn subsidies
No abortions, no exceptions
We’ll nail scripture to the trees.

Oh, I love Jesus more than any man ever dared
to love another man!
And I remember what he said in the sermon on the mount
Well, some of it.

(c) 2013 by Big Green

…And so on. Now I know that some long-time listeners of Big Green (and there are at least two or three of you out there) will see this and think, What the fuck are they doing? I thought these guys did pop music. This is just irony-soaked cowboy ballads! Well, that’s not exactly right, my friends. You see, Cowboy Scat is a collection of songs from a lost musical about the political trajectory of dear cousin Rick, each number performed by a different group (so the creation myth goes). Some of them are cowpoke groups, some rock, some pop, some weird German 80’s disco, some … well, you get the idea. And you’ll get it even more when we finish mixing the sucker and finally release it into the wild.

Which reminds me. When I do the budget for this release, I have to make sure to include a line for transfer to 8-track. Don’t want to leave any listeners out, no matter what decade they live in.

Usual Rubbish

Lookout. Below.

Okay, now where was I? Wait, don’t tell me. I was complaining about…. something…. No, not the song “Something”. I rather fancy that. Something to do with Web servers.

F'shaw
BG goes all traditional-like.

No matter. Here we are, back to the blog. What’s happening at the mill? Lots. Working on the January podcast, now days behind schedule. Later every month, right? That’s the natural course of business here in Big Green – land. Still…. our first installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN should be worth the wait, if you like weird, asinine, and abysmally non-commercial media content. True hallmarks of the TIBG brand.

Smell something burning? Neither do I. But (and this is the point) we bloody well should, and here’s why … Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is supposed to be thinking up a viable creation myth for our upcoming collection of songs attributed to and written in tribute to cousin Rick Perry, governor of Texas. The album – Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – is such a monumental event in our lives, it fairly demands a creation myth of its very own. As such, we handed that task off to Marvin, and by rights the smoke should be pouring out of his brass visor as we speak.

It is not, my friends. What can I tell you? So look, we’ll just have to cook it up ourselves, I guess, without the help of robotian inspiration. We’re thinking something along the lines of “The Creeping Terror”. Cowboy Scat is all that remains of an epic musical written about the arc of cousin Rick’s political career. Only on the eve of its production, the script was lost over the side of a pleasure craft on Lake Tahoe. Such a tragedy!

Okay, well … we can flesh that out a bit. Give us time. Maybe Marvin can work with …. on second thought, maybe not. Scratch that, friends.