Tag Archives: Leif Zurmuhlen

Trying to overcome the rule of thumb

November 12, 2021 Joseph

Step back a little bit further – you’re out of frame. Okay, now take a step to the right. That’s it. That’s … no, that’s too far. Go back to the left. LEFT! You know, the side your left hand is on. Oh, Jesus!

Oh, hi. Well, once again I’m called upon to do something that I have zero aptitude for. Namely, that’s taking pictures of our band. We do not have an official photographer, which is a shame … because we had a professional photographer before we even had a drummer. (In fact, he sat in on one of our photo sessions as our drummer.) Then we had a drummer, but no guitar player. But I digress.

Bad self portaits

That said, I’m not averse to learning new skills. Neither am I skilled at learning a new verse. The thing is, I am singularly bad at photography. Ask anybody I’ve taken a picture of. I’m always giving them portrait orientation when they want landscape, and vice versa. (Turns out a lot of people prefer portrait – it’s more slimming.)

There’s another thing, too. I think it’s because of these damn camera phones. Back in MY day (get off my lawn!), camera’s were big, bulky things with a massive lens and hard metal shutter buttons. Now, you hold your dumb-ass phone out in front of you, accidentally pressing three or four soft-touch buttons, and next thing you know you’ve essentially butt-dialed Madagascar.

Thumbs up, baby

Then there’s my honking thumb. The sucker keeps getting in the way of the lens. I spend half an hour setting up a shot, getting all the folks together, polishing Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to a high gloss, trimming the root-mesh off of the mansized tuber’s strange protuberances, and so on. Then I take the shot …. and my MF thumb is taking up a third of the frame.

See, this is why I’m not filthy rich. If I was a shameless capitalist opportunist, I would promote this as my distinctive style, an aesthetic flourish, a unique take on the world. A little hot air can go a long way, my friends. Soon my thumb-obscured photos would hang in galleries and museums all over Europe, and I would have many imitators. But alas, like my clumsy thumb, the money-making gene skipped my generation of Perry. Them’s the breaks.

Xmas greetings ahead

Now, I know we’ve been doing nothing but repeats these past few Christmases. This year will be different …. I hope. Stay tuned. I’m thinking another nano concert is in order. Think of it as our Christmas Pageant. I’ll be the third reindeer on the left.

Usual Rubbish

Archive fever.

June 26, 2020 Joseph

Okay, I’ve got the entire album up on YouTube. Now what do we do? Are we famous yet? Famous as Amos (without the cookies, of course)? No? Thought not. Nothing on the applause-o-meter. Dung!

Well, friends, life is full of disappointments. Like the other day, I had dis appointment with my doctor, see? And I had to go and break it, see? (Not the appointment … the doctor’s bowling trophy. It was offensive to me.) Perhaps you yourself are disappointed to see me once again revert to my cheap imitation of a forties guy, like the voices we inserted into some of our Ned Trek songs. If so, you know what it’s like not to have things your own way. Hey, man … I’ve been there. And it looks like we’re going there again. Our new 2000 Years To Christmas playlist has been up for days, and we’ve seen very few plays. What the hell, man … it’s free! Play the damn record!

Ouch, okay … that was a little harsh. Sorry. I imagine you’re disappointed in me again. (Second time in as many paragraphs.) Perhaps I should try more gentle persuasion. Come on, people now … smile on your brother! Everybody get together, and play the goddamn record right now! Whoops, that went south. Well, how bout if I embed the album right in this here blog post – like so:

There we go. Just press the nice, candy-like “play” button, right smack in the middle of the screen. Do it now!

Hoo-man. Marketing is hard work. I think I’ll take the rest of this blog post off. The fact is, I’ve been taking a lot of time off this summer. As most musicians know, this kind of time off is not taken by choice. There’s no bloody place to play practically anywhere, thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and most musicians have been forced to do their performing on line. Me, I’ve been doing what I usually do in the middle of the summer – sorting through the archives, looking for little bits of hidden treasure (or trash, as the case may be). With the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I’ve turned up a few interesting fragments of our past lives. Some old notebooks filled with hastily scribbled lyrics and song lists. A cache of Big Green logo buttons, designed by friend of the band, author/photographer Leif Zurmuhlen. And of course, some old recordings rescued from cassette tapes.

Cuts from our first bootleg cassette compilation, ca. 1983

We played a lot of covers, man! Back in the pre-Big Green days (nominally, at least), before the internet was invented, our set list was a raft of kind of tired covers, some weird stuff, and a sprinkling of original numbers, mostly Matt’s songs but a few of mine as well, and a handful of Tim Walsh numbers (Tim was our first guitarist who, sadly, passed away a few years ago.) Phil Ross was our drummer at the time. The recordings are rough – a couple of mics plugged into a stereo audio cassette machine, that was about it. It’s the kind of thing only a mother could love, so I don’t typically share them. (If you’re dying to hear some examples of us murdering a Jimi Hendrix song, let me know and I’ll get something to you.)

There, see? Now I’m completely relaxed. Just thinking about archive diving puts me in a good mood.

Usual Rubbish

Mark one.

February 2, 2018 Joseph

I don’t know. I’m not comfortable with this, dude. I mean, Big Green is not a corporation. We’re not even a corner store. Hell, we nowhere near the corner.

Oh, hi. Just having a discussion with Big Green’s branding team. That is to say, I’m hanging out with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), Anti-Lincoln, and the mansized tuber, and they’re talking about branding us. Well … the ones who can TALK, at least. Matt has kept out of it because he’s, well, SANE. We’ve been hashing this out for the better part of an hour, and I honestly don’t think we’re accomplishing anything other than annoying the piss out of one another. So, all in all, a very typical brand team meeting.

I don’t know why everyone assumes a band should have some kind of logo or brand identity. That just generally seems like a bad idea, but in our case, it’s patently absurd. We are a creative collective, divvying up the proceeds equally between us – a headless musical beast, if you will, and everyone gets the same share of the nothing we earn. (There’s plenty enough goose-egg to go around, folks.) Still, these guys are talking about a new mark for the band. They’re throwing up ideas and seeing which ones fill a bucket. Or stick to the ceiling. It all depends on how you interpret the metaphor, you see.

This won’t surprise you, but this group has very little imagination. How little? Well … glad you asked. Basically, their ideas for a Big Green logo consist of different colored circles with a picture of each of them in the center. So tubey has one with tubey’s picture, Anti-Lincoln with his, and so on. Never mind what these items say about their concept of this band … this band that NONE OF THEM RECORDS WITH … these logos are an atrocity. And now they’re talking to me about slogans. What a freaking waste of time!

The fact is, we have only worked with one actual logo in the entire time of our modern existence, from 1986 to the present. That’s the one our photographer friend Leif Zurmuhlen created for us back in the day – mark one, if you will. So if we’re going to use ANYthing, we’re going to use that. Take that, branding team! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Run that up your flagpole.

BIG GREEN