Tag Archives: Marvin

Inside February (again)

February 23, 2018 Joseph

Jesus, Marvin. When I told you to release the podcast, I didn’t mean put it on the end of a stick and hold it over your head. I meant “release it” in a more modern, technical sense. Are you sure you’re a robot? Oh, okay. That’s news to you. Whoops.

Well, it appears that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has learned where his last name came from. Red letter day for him, at least. Me? I have to walk you through a podcast you probably haven’t heard because my mechanical friend thinks the act of dropping an episode is something akin to playing lacrosse. No matter – push on!

Here’s what we have in this month’s THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast:

Ned Trek 36: Grope in the Fold – This installment of our now long-running Ned Trek series (a parody mashup of classic Star Trek, Mr. Ed, and that thing they call the Republican party) commandeers a second-season (1967) script entitled “Wolf in the Fold”. Action includes some first-rate screaming, a gripping courtroom scene, and numerous instances of Mr. Ned telling Perle to shut up. Simply can’t be missed.

Put The Phone Down – Matt and I sit down for our usual rangy discussion of whatever floats into either of our tiny brains. This month’s random topics include a recap of the Ned Trek episode you just heard; a brief riff on a local meat market and its longstanding sausage-based slogan; Matt’s recollection of a backstage fight between actors playing Buffalo Bill and Jesus Christ in a locally-produced musical back in 1978 or so; Our thoughts on the unusual, perhaps singular, playing style of our late friend and one-time guitarist Tim Walsh; Some news of beavers and sweet potatoes …. and so on.

Song: Two Lines – A Ned Trek / Sulu song from a couple of years ago; one of my personal favorites. Sulu sings of the anguish of only having two lines in any given episode. Chorus features common two-line speeches from Sulu’s role in classic Star Trek.

Song: Silent as a Stone – Deep archive pick. This song long predates our Big Green moniker, but it’s still us. Recorded in the long departed Music Workshop studio in Utica, NY (producer: Bill Scranton) back in 1981, this very weird little number features some of that insane Tim Walsh guitar work Matt and talked about. Head scratcher, but that’s how we sounded in 1981.

Song: It Should’ve Been Me – Closer on our 2013 album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Just because.

Song: Don’t Tell Rick – A song we produced after Cowboy Scat. It’s basically a plea to our audience of five not to tell Rick Perry about the album; particularly about the lyric in “It Should’ve Been Me” about playing with his dong. Still working on the video.

Song: Slipping and Sliding – Our cover of a Little Richard number. (Don’t tell Rick!) This is another deep archive pick, from our very first recording as Big Green – a demo tracked at Ned Danison’s brother’s garage studio back in 1986 or so. One of the songs we did in those days.

Peace out.

Usual Rubbish

Song listlessness.

February 9, 2018 Joseph

Did you look in the silo? Okay. How about the forge room? No? Then take a look, for crying out loud. Not a moment to spare.

Well, I am proud of myself. It took all weekend, but I pulled together an exhaustive list of all of the songs Big Green has ever written, from our very first days to the present. Yes, I left out the future, but two out of three isn’t bad. Besides, predicting the future is hard. Don’t know if you noticed. That’s why we leave it to people like Kreskin … and Criswell. (You remember Criswell, right? Criswell predicts!)

Trouble is (and there is always trouble here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill) Now that I’ve completed the list, I … well … can’t find it. I would describe it to you, but you probably won’t find it either … unless you have a gift of prophecy, again, like Criswell. Well, I don’t have a mentalist here at the mill. Though it’s fair to say that most of our entourage are mental, in the colloquial sense. My only resource in situations such as this is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who most assuredly does not have a gift of prophecy, but he does possess some of the finer qualities of a bloodhound when it comes to finding lost things.

Amazing! How do you sniff out a list? Not sure. He took a look around the courtyard. No luck. He did turn up some promising papers in the forge room, but alas, they were forgeries. Another twelve hours of exhaustive search and I will resort to recreating the list from scratch. That part’s easy. Just start from “Sweet Treason” and work your way forward. (That original recording of Sweet Treason is a little scratchy, come to think of it.)

Why am I undertaking this seemingly pointless task? Well … not sure. When you’ve got a lot of songs and even more time on your hands, you try to find ways of busying yourself. Maybe when I finish the list, I’ll just sit in my room and play our entire canon from beginning to end. Probably about 300 songs, but that’s a wild guess.

Oh, excuse me. MARVIN? DID YOU TRY MITCH’S LAB? BE SURE TO WEAR YOUR BLAST SHIELD!

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.

Weird ass music since 1986