Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Taking stock.

Run that one again. Yeah, that’s right. Hmmmmm …. I forgot about that part. Okay, rewind it and let’s hear it from the top. Yep, yep. Heard that before.

Oh, hi. Joe of Big Green here. Just listening back to some old tracks. Every time we’re in-between projects or waiting for something to happen, the amateur archivist begins to take hold within me and I start pulling out the old stuff. Some of it’s on reel to reel, some on cassette, some on DAT, some just written on an old sheet of note paper. When you’ve been doing something for 30+ years, you have a lot of leave-behinds.

While I’ve been waiting for Matt to finish the latest episode of Ned Trek (now in the works), I thought it might be a good time to back up the masters for Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our 2013 album about cousin Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, 2012 presidential candidate, and once again a member of the Republican electoral field. Our Roland 2480, which we used to record that album, is in somewhat shaky condition and has no internal means for backing up data. That means we have to port the sound files over, track by track, to my install of Cubase LE. I’ve done most of the songs; still a substantial way to go. Booooring work, frankly, but you gotta do it. Sort of.

Play it again? Yup.If this keeps up, I’m going to do a deep dive into some unreleased material from yesteryear. I was listening to a live tape of us from back in 1993. That’s never been transcoded, so hell, time to get busy. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can get started on that anytime. Or not. (He thinks transcoding involves switching his gender identity somehow. Not sure where he got THAT idea.)

There is one other thing keeping us pointlessly busy. It’s the new site we launched for Ned Trek. The URL is www.nedtrek.com and it features five selected episodes from the now 24-show run of this ludicrous mockery of classic Star Trek, occasionally set to music. Go there and binge, folks – it’s free, as audio should be.

Off we go again. More archiving. This place is like the Library of Congress.

Usual Rubbish

Just whistle.

I’m sorry – that’s as soft as a piano will go. The very word “piano” means soft, for chrissake. (Sure, piano is short for pianoforte, which means “soft – loud/strong”, implying dynamics, but that’s beside the point!) Just get some freaking earplugs already!

Neighbors. I guess you have to have them, even when you’re living in an abandoned hammer mill. I like to think that we make every effort to be good neighbors. I like to think it because, well, it isn’t true, and thinking things that aren’t true is something of a hobby of mine. Actually, we are crappy neighbors – up until all hours of the night, banging on noisy instruments, tooting on sousaphones, launching rockets, creating energy dampening fields that affect entire continents (note: those last two are down to our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee).

Our neighbor to the north, a guy named Wilson, has been leaving subtle hints that we are making too much noise. Today, for instance, there was a scroll of parchment posted to our front door with a railroad spike. (Apparently Wilson used to work for New York Central or Amtrak or something.) The parchment had two words scrawled on it in a shaky hand: “TOO LOUD”. I brought it to Anti-Lincoln (who has become our de facto legal adviser, being the only individual amongst us to have attended law school in some centrury) so that he might determine the full implications of this writ. He scanned it with a look of consternation, then offered in his characteristically reedy alto voice, “Yep. Somebody writ it.” Not sure where we’d be without him. (Someplace more permanent, perhaps.)

Well? What does it mean?In spite of what our neighbors think (or demand), making music is an intrinsically noisy business. We are working on an album, for chrissake. That means take after take, recording rhythm parts, experimenting with sound – painstaking work that generates a lot of ambient sound, despite Mitch Macaphee’s efforts to soundproof our makeshift studio. His latest attempt involved having Marvin (my personal robot assistant) hold up sheets of foam core, one in each claw. Did it work? Your answer is nailed to our front door.

Well, we’ll plow on in any case. That’s what we do. If we didn’t do that, we’d have to do something else. And then I just don’t know what we would do. (Got all that?)

Usual Rubbish

Slow month.

Y’okay. I know. I’m still working on it, okay? What the hell are you, my mother? I AM WORKING ON IT. Leave me aLONE!

Sorry, man. Catching me at kind of a sensitive time, let’s say. I was just being grilled on where the June podcast (and its half-album of new material) is. Worst part of that whole thing is that, the person grilling me is not a person at all. It’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant) … sort of. I say “sort of” because the shaming tirade he just subjected me to was programmed into him by someone else. Who, exactly? Well … apparently one of the few people who listen to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. So that narrows the possibilities a bit. Someone who has it in for me, big time.

Okay … obviously I owe someone an explanation, even if I don’t know who it is. So here are my top reasons for not having our podcast episode ready at this late date:

  1. Solar Obstruction – At this time of year, the sun is between us and our podcast. What does that mean? I don’t know exactly. The Space Family Robinson used it as an excuse once for not going back to Earth (and ending the show), so I am commandeering it. (Now you’re supposed to say, “But you can maneuver AROUND the sun!”)
  2. Hey ... Great rationale! Can I borrow that?Paper Clip shortage – As you probably know from reading the major newspapers, there is a nationwide shortage of paper clips. This is due to extreme weather caused by climate change – the entire Nevada paper clip crop was lost. Can’t finish a podcast without paper clips. (Oh, you DON’T read the newspapers? Well … that explains your ignorance around this vital topic.)
  3. Work is Hard – Personally, I don’t think this one needs a lot of explanation, do you? Last I looked, work is still really, really hard. That’s why occasionally you get paid for doing it. When work decides to stop being so hard, I’ll start delivering the freaking podcast on time.
  4. Neighbor’s Sousaphone – Kid next door just started playing the sousaphone. I’ll let you know when she gets good at it. (My signal will be uploading the podcast.)

Even with all of these distractions and obstructions, I will endeavor to post the son of a bitch sometime real soon. So call off your robots, people. I hear you!