Tag Archives: International House

Usual Rubbish

If you’re built upside-down, walk on the ceiling

Get Music Here

Hmmm. That’s kind of catchy. How about this one? Right …. nothing on the applause meter. Okay, your turn. That’s just goddamned awesome. Now let me try one. Sucks. WHY WAS I BORN?

Oh, hi. Yes, we’re working. As one of those performing rock/pop groups that composes its own material, we, of course, need an editorial process. You just walked in on one of our markup meetings. Here’s how it works: we write out a lyric on a big sheet of white paper, then hang it up on the wall. Everyone gets a chance to cross words out and add words in. We decide with a roll of the dice who goes first. If the winner of the dice roll is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I have to put a bucket on my head. Then Matt is invited to draw a face on the bucket with magic marker. Got all that?

Sausage making 101

I’ve written about our creative process many times on this blog. Think of my posts as helpful tips for songwriting, especially for those who aspire to be as commercially unsuccessful as we’ve been. Now, let me just say right here and now that not everyone is cut out to reach that lofty goal. It takes a certain special something to be this big of a flop. You either got it or you don’t, as the saying goes. And baby, we got it.

How do you write a massively non-commercial song that almost no one will be able to relate to, except perhaps your neighbor’s dog? Well, it’s not as hard as it sounds. You start with subject matter – something real niche-y, like the history of cardboard. We, for example, chose Rick Perry for one of our albums. Now that may seem like a crass attempt at capitalizing on someone else’s fame, drafting behind them as they sail along. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, it’s so far from the truth, it circled the globe and bumped into the truth from the other side.

The ballad of Cousin Rick

Look – if you’re going to be as unpopular as Big Green, you need to pick something to write about that’s even more unpopular. Rick Perry was low hanging fruit in that regard (see Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick). So Matt wrote a boatload of songs about him, and I wrote a handful. That’s our usual ratio. You could say I’m more careful when I write, but that would be a lie. I rely on found words, forced rhymes, and a bottle of tempera paint so that I can squeeze it all over my lyric sheet when I decide it’s garbage. It’s cathartic, trust me – just give it a try.

Does this look convincing enough?

Thing is, as a band we’re kind of built upside-down. I mean, Big Green started out with the weird songs. You know what I’m talking about – Sweet Treason, The Milkman Lives, Going To Andromeda, all that stuff, then those umpteen million Christmas songs. After that, it was International House weirdness, then Cowboy Scat, and finally, Ned Trek. Now we’ve got a boatload of songs about … wait for it …. interpersonal relationships. You know – the stuff that most bands start with before they go all weird and shit. We’re like freaking Benjamin Button, except that I hate that stupid movie.

Where next?

I don’t know, man …. we’ve got some recording to do. Lots of songs, damn it. There’s certainly at least one album’s worth of unreleased material, and maybe even a box set. That’s right – we could record all the songs, put them in a cardboard box, set the box out into the middle of the road, and hope our fans chance upon it. That’s called “marketing”, kids. Ask your mother.

Usual Rubbish

Put it all in the basket, if it fits

2000 Years to Christmas

Well, now, I’m not sure we need that. At least, not in that quantity. And for god’s sake, none of those. What are we, made of money? Budget, my little friend, budget!

Oh … hi, everybody. Allow me to pretend that I didn’t know you were there. (Thank you for that indulgence.) You just caught us in the midst of a semi-monthly shopping trip. We go to the big market in the middle of this very humble little town and wheel a cart around. Then, once we’ve realized that we don’t have enough money to fill the cart, we push that aside and pick up a shopping basket.

No trouble like money trouble

You know what they say. There’s no reek that beats ass, and there’s no trouble that beats broke. (Is that really what they say? Well …. someone says it somewhere, I’ll wager.) Shopping trips always remind us of how little capital we have to work with. And before you crypto currency freaks start jumping all over my shit with investment opportunities and NFTs, let me emphasize that NO, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY MONEY. WE CAN’T EVEN FILL A SHOPPING CART.

Now that I’ve said that, let me contradict myself. We can afford small things. Not small diamonds, mind you, or little bits of gold. No, things like leeks, individual walnuts, an apple or two. (If we keep going with this, we could end up with a waldorf salad.) In any case, I don’t want to paint too grim a picture. We don’t want any pity – no pity, no thank you. No THANK you. (For more about the significance of this phrase, see Rod Steiger in In The Heat Of The Night.)

Just forget it, Abe. We ain't got the scratch.

Shameless plea for help

Okay, now I’m going to contradict myself again. The thing is, with prices on the rise (and I know you’re heard all about it), we’re getting less and less into that little shopping basket. For instance, instead of five leeks, we’re down to three. We even have to ask the nut monger to cut a walnut in half for us. Can’t imagine the dirty looks we get when we make these requests. It’s humiliating …. JUST HUMILIATING.

The thing is, you can help … and it won’t cost you a dime. Let me ‘splain. There’s a little thing out there called the internets. Turns out, you can listen to music over the internets through a variety of means. Maybe you have Spotify, or Apple Music, or Amazon Music, or whatever the fuck. Okay, so go to one of these services and look up Big Green – particularly our albums, 2000 Years To Christmas or International House – and play any one (or several) of the tracks. In fact, just build a playlist of both albums and run them on a loop while you cook dinner (and perhaps listen to something else on another device).

Mother lode of sorts

Now, if you’re subscribed to one of these services, the fee for playing our songs is zilch. But we get valuable revenue. It’s an astronomical return. By that I mean, like with a distant star, you need a telescope to see it. I think we get $0.000978 per play on our tracks, but I may be exaggerating. That’s the miracle of the digital marketplace at work, my friends.

Of course, that adds up over the centuries. Who knows – there may come a time in the distant future when we can afford maybe six or seven leeks in out shopping basket.

Usual Rubbish

Celebrating a little early this time.

2000 Years to Christmas

Man, it has been a long time. But not THAT long. Still, I forgot how the hell that last song ended. And track number seven I don’t remember doing at all! My head is like a cotton swab. Mother of pearl.

Hi, everybody. Now, I don’t want to create the impression that Big Green is one of those old man groups that just reflects back on their own sorry history. That said, I was archiving some old recordings this week. As it happens, that’s what bands sometimes do when they … I don’t know … reach a certain age. I DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS IT.

Whoops – sorry. Anyway, got the chance to listen back to some stuff and it occurred to me that our second album, International House, is nearing a kind of significant anniversary. Quite a coincidence, that.

What’s the coincidence, Joe?

Well, I’m gonna tell you. As you will see in my Political Rant this week, this is also the twentieth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Who can forget those heady days back in the early 2000s, when the ground was still smoking from 9/11 and W. Bush was heating up the pork and beans, getting ready to watch some good bomb-dropping? I know I can’t (though fuck knows I’ve tried).

The coincidence is this: it is also the 14th anniversary of International House, which included a number of songs that bear on the early war on terror. The one I kept thinking of today was Enter the Mind, a song Matt wrote about the CIA black sites. Now, some might say that 14 is not a significant anniversary. I beg to differ! I’ll have you know that 14 is the ivory anniversary … or is it the one when you give your spouse the box set of Electric Light Orchestra’s greatest hits? Always get those mixed up. (They’re both the same color, you see.)

A fitting observance. Or not.

There are a lot of ways we could observe this ivory anniversary of International House. We might, for instance, move into a house and out of this drafty abandoned mill. We might throw stones into the middle of the street and hope that passing baptist ministers happen upon them. Or we could, I don’t know, put the whole damn album on YouTube. Either way, we could do something other than talk about it.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of promoting old product. International House was our album-length retrospective on the W. Bush years. Some of the shit we were complaining about back then is still in effect today. But it’s still a period piece, if you will. We wanted an exclamation point on that sucker, not a period, but there you go.

There’s a place in time

Hey, look – we all have history. We all came from somewhere and are headed somewhere else. Maybe those two somewheres are the same-wheres – who knows? The way I see it, if we concentrate on the present long enough, it will be the past. And if we turn our eyes to the future, that future will soon be the present. It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

And so, I’ll listen to more old recordings this week. You gotta know where you’ve been before you work out where you’re going. Had enough of cliches? There’s more where that came from!