Tag Archives: guitar

Usual Rubbish

Getting by with a little help from some fiends

2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, here’s the thing. I’m too big in the frame. It goes against the theme of the series, dude. If there’s one thing Big Green doesn’t like, it’s inconsistency. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles.

Oops! Didn’t know anyone was reading this. You just caught me having a little disagreement with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is serving as my video producer this month. Nothing serious – just an obscure conceptual question that has vexed us since the beginning of this blog post: how nano is nano? What means this? Allow me to explain.

A question of scale

We’re doing a little side project called the Nano Concert. Perhaps you’ve heard us nattering about it in previous posts and on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. You haven’t? DAMN IT! Marvin, did you forget to publish the blog posts again? Why have I been wasting my breath? What’s that? You DID publish them? Uh, okay. Never mind. What was I saying?

Ah, yes. The Nano Concert is really just a virtual mini solo concert by yours truly (Joe of Big Green), playing some old favorites from the beloved Big Green song book. We recorded six songs, played them on the podcast, and are in the process of posting them to our YouTube Channel. Can we truly describe this as a nano concert? Is it more than merely small? Well …. six songs doesn’t even make a set. And I’m too lazy ass to do more than that in one go. So in my book, it’s nano.

I can't play this freaking thing ...

Strings v. keys – the reckoning

The funny thing is, on five of the six songs, I’m playing six-string guitar. Now, those who know me well (and those few fiends who enjoy our music) know that I don’t play any instrument particularly well, but that if you were to rank my ability to play them in order of best to worst, it would go: (1) piano, (2) bass, (7) guitar.

That’s not a typo. I only play three instruments, and guitar is still my seventh best axe. So, why, you may ask, am I playing an instrument I can barely identify from three steps away? It’s the challenge, my friends. What fun is there in playing it safe, right? Any true musician craves a challenge. And though I’m not a TRUE musician, I do crave challenges …. as well as various foodstuffs. (You can’t eat a challenge, friend – just remember that.)

Give it a listen, damn it!

Okay, so … do you want to hear me pounding out some old Big Green tunes on a 23-year-old six-string acoustic guitar? Dive on in, my friends! I just posted the last number on Thursday. This is the first in a series of nano concerts, I like to think, though I may have to actually hire a producer rather than having Marvin twirl the knobs.

Whoops. Sorry, Marvin – didn’t know you were listening. You realize that lever you’re pulling will erase everything we did this morning , right? Step away from the console! Arrgh … never mind.

Anywho, here’s the playlist. Let me know what you think, fiends!

Usual Rubbish

Foot stomping.

2000 Years to Christmas

Start with a one, and a two, and a three, and a … ouch! Damn it, man … I can’t do this in slippers. I need my stomping shoes!

Oh, hi. Yeah, it’s us again, making music again, or dying in the attempt. One thing you can say about this crazy rock music kick, if it ever catches on, is that it’s all about the rhythm section. It’s pretty simple once you get started. And after you learn how to spell “rhythm”, you’ve taken the first step to glory. Then all you need is a sense of timing and some good stomping shoes … and a decent drummer. And of course a bass player. Yes, yes … and rhythm guitar. Oh, yeah … piano. How could I forget that one? Well … maybe it isn’t all that simple after all. But it is contagious, my friends. Mucho contagious.

Listen to me rambling like an idiot. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, or just bad air. Maybe some of that west coast forest fire ash is making its way back east. Whatever. Our project this week is an attempt to find the rhythmic core of every song we do. First, we get someone to strum the chords on a guitar. That might be Marvin (my personal robot assistant), except that he can’t even hold a guitar unless it’s in a zero gravity environment, like the deck of the Jupiter Two. So maybe anti-Lincoln …. or my brother Matt, who can actually play a guitar. (No, that’s too easy.) Then we pull out the rhythm arranger. Now I know you’re probably picturing a computer workstation of some kind with a pad controller midi-ed into it. Well, dream on, my friends. Our rhythm arranger is a bunch of pots and pans arrayed in a circle, and the rest of us beating on them with wooden spoons. (It’s just about getting the flavor, right? Then we bring in the drummer.)

Strum that thing, Marvin.

Is this a fools errand? More than likely. But what other kind of errand are we likely to run … I mean, aside from sending Mitch Macaphee, the world’s third greatest mad scientist, down to the corner store to buy some batteries? You musicians out there know how this works. You just try a bunch of different things, different combinations of instruments and patterns, until something starts to gel. You don’t know how it happens, but it always does. Of course, you have to stir the mix properly, and make certain the water is hot enough, then refrigerate three hours before serving. But enough about Mr. Wiggle. I’m sure you’re just dying to know more about our creative process. Well, I’ll tell you, my friend …. so are we. That’s why we’re sitting around our makeshift living room in an abandoned hammer mill, banging on pots and pans. It’s a conjuring trick.

Next week: how to make Jello. Again.

Usual Rubbish

Fiddle stick.

2000 Years to Christmas

I don’t get it. How come the top string is bigger than the bottom string? And what are all these little machine knobs for? My fingers hurt!

Oh, hey. You know, you’re never too old to learn in this crazy world we live in. I like to think of every day as a journey of discovery. Just this morning, I lifted myself out of the sack and discovered that someone left the bathroom tap running all bloody night. Then I waded into the kitchen and discovered a three-foot gap in the floorboards, big enough to drop a pickle barrel into. And I don’t mean one of those consumer-style barrel-like jars they sell in the specialty shops … I mean a real goddamn hogshead. Almost fell into the son of a bitch. Now THAT would have been some discovery!

Well, in these days of social isolation, when you’re locked up inside your domicile for days at a time, you need to find distractions of one kind or another. And it tends to go that the longer you’re locked away, the more elaborate the distractions need to become. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spent the first weeks of his isolation building simple Lego structures. (I mean real simple, like a thing that looked like three Legos plugged together.) By week three, he had moved on to erector sets. Now he’s taking spare bricks from a less well-maintained section of the mill and he’s building some kind of edifice, slapping cheap-ass mortar between the bricks in a kind of ham-handed (or ham-clawed) fashion. Hey … Marvin builds things. That’s what I’ve discovered.

Hey! Lemme try it!

Me, I decided to immerse myself in music. I pulled out a Lenny Breau album and began to think it may be a good idea to pick up my old acoustic guitar from time to time. Of course, when I did, I realized that I hadn’t changed the strings in about three years, so it sounds a little thuddy. Somehow I don’t think new strings would make that thing sound more like Lenny Breau. So I actually started playing the freaking thing. That was week two. Week three, I was on to the fiddle. Week four, I took a drumstick to the fiddle to see if it would make a decent percussion instrument, since I was such a failure as a fiddler. (If I had been the Fiddler on the Roof, I would surely have ended up the Fiddler face-down on the Pavement.) Now I’m eying the glockenspiel. It’s either that or that dulcimer like gizmo Matt used to have – the thing no one could freaking play, no how. Still … it’s a challenge!

Yeah, you’re right. I have to get out more. This mill ain’t big enough for the one of me.