When I was a kid, my parents took me on a trip across this great country of ours. We took in all the national parks, all the dude ranches, all the hamburger joints, all the breakfast cereals, and it was great. The best way I can share it with you is by singing this song. I want you to all sing along with me. “There’s a yellow rose in Texas … that I am BOUND TO SEE….!!!”
Whoa, hey… didn’t know anyone was reading this here blog. I was just practicing in my spare time. What am I practicing? Thought you might ask. Just in case I find myself running for president in sixty or seventy years, I thought I might need a little background on how to warm up a crowd at a retirement center. Now I know just how to do it, sort of. Anywho… we’ve all got to keep ourselves occupied, what with Big Green up on blocks like a 1976 Chevy Monza that needs a ring job. We’ve been blowing oil for about 5,000 miles now, folks. Time for a tune up. [METAPHOR OVER.]
Right, so … what are we doing? Recording, that’s what. I’ll tell you, this podcast of ours ( THIS IS BIG GREEN ) has gotten us back into the studio on a regular basis, and not just to drink beverages. We’re just putting finishing touches on two more Rick Perry songs, to be premiered on the February podcast under 
the moniker of Rick Perry and the Recognizable Hicks. (They are to us what the Dukes of the Stratosphere were to XTC … only with 80% more hick.) Think of it as a thematic strain, like Christmas has been with Matt for umpteen years or more – once you start, they just keep coming.
The podcast versions are like first drafts, mostly, though our Rick Perry songs are as close to finished as anything is likely to get here in the Cheney Hammer Mill. The rest of it is pretty bare bones – Marvin (my personal assistant) playing drums, some twangy guitars, a stray sousaphone. At some point we’ll collect all of these numbers into an album and call it SONGS FROM HELL or RARE FOOT DISEASE or something more appropriate, less offensive, etc.
Anyway, stay tuned. More stuff to come, in one form or another. (Okay… I promise not to sing “Yellow Rose” again. Now will you listen?)
Right, you guessed it. I was being ironic just then. Some people do that for a living. Me? I’m ironic in my spare time. Actually, it’s not merely a matter of personal whim. We’ve just taken on a marketing consultant recommended by our somewhat lackluster label, Loathsome Prick Records. I would tell you her name, but she told me her name must never be spoken. In any case, she – I will call her “Noname” … which rhymes with Edamame in my tiny mind – is going to help us “position” Big Green in the international indie music marketplace. That’s something our label tells us we need to do, like, RIGHT NOW.
Yes, my friends. More power issues here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That long extension cord I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run from the pizza place across the street? Well, someone discovered it, unplugged it, etc. Last time I order a pizza from those cheapskates! And when we found an alternative power source (i.e. the antique store on the other side of the alley… their back door latch is a little unreliable), what happens but Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, decides to crank up the old Orgone Generating Device in the basement where Trevor James Constable left it years ago, and… and… well, I hate when that shit happens.