Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

A la post.

Hey, it’s a nice day. Think I’ll spend it in the courtyard. Or maybe on the road to Old Forge. Or not. Any suggestions?

Kind of quiet around the Hammer Mill these days. Maybe it’s just the dog days of summer howling a little louder than usual. Everyone seems to be taking a pass on everything, regardless of how little effort may be involved. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) couldn’t be bothered to plug himself in to his wall recharger, complaining that it took too much energy. How does that make sense? Maybe in robot-ville, but no place else.

I’ve done some minimal work on recordings this week, pulling together one mix, tweaking another, enhancing this, pouring chocolate sauce on that. Exhausting effort, as you might imagine. Tonight brother Matt and I will work on this again, with brother Marvin and brother mansized tuber standing by to assist. As I mentioned before, we’re working on six new numbers that will appear in the next episode of Ned Trek, the Star Trek parody series we include in our now less-than-monthly podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.

Didn't you plug yourself in, Marvin?If you’re not familiar with this … um … form of entertainment, go to our podcast home page, scroll down to some of the earlier installments, and give it a listen. Ned Trek is usually the first item in the podcast. At some point, it may acquire a life (or podcast) of its own, but for now suffice to say that it is a monthly skit based on old “classic” Star Trek episodes, starring a crew of modern day neocons headed by Captain Willard M. Romney, his first officer and talking dressage horse Mr. Ned, and others. (Oddly, there’s one hold-over from classic Star Trek – Mr. Sulu, who basically plays the one sane person in the room.) It, well, makes us laugh, if nothing else. Pretty much the reason we do anything, I suspect.

Hokay, well … I’m kind of toasty after having played a set with Puttin’ On The Ritz up in Old Forge last night, so I’ll stick a fork in this. Be free.

Usual Rubbish

Cop-out edition.

Is that the press again? The daily press – what did you think I meant? Stupid personal robot assistant!

Okay, well, as some of you may have noticed, we posted an installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN yesterday, the July program. And if you did, in fact, notice, you would know that it’s what used to be called a “summer replacement” show, or perhaps more accurately, a summer re-run. It’s like when they ran The Prisoner as a summer replacement for the Andy Williams show back in 1968, while Andy was off to the Bahamas drinking margaritas or something of that sort. Just like that … except that The Prisoner was “good”

What are we doing instead of finishing our July show? Well, I wish I could say we were doing as Andy Williams does, but it’s not the case. I could give you a raft of explanations as to why we couldn’t finish our June show in time even for July, but then you would just laugh at me. So … here goes:

Wolves! Wolves used to wipe out whole villages until men hunted them down. Wolves learned! But they didn’t learn enough to keep them from eating our June podcast.

Post the clip showColony collapse syndrome. You’ve heard of this scourge that’s been decimating bee populations around the world. Well, it’s conceivable that this may be the reason we didn’t finish our June podcast. Conceivable? Yes. True? No.

Falcon watch. There is a family of peregrine falcons nesting in a box on the side of a twenty story building in downtown Utica, and Matt has been keeping a close eye on them; in one case, climbing over a Victorian wrought iron fence and into a churchyard to retrieve a fallen chick. Unlikely reason for a late podcast? Yes. True? Well, yes.

Actually, once again, we are victims of over-ambitious production (which for us is any project that requires a modicum of effort). We are in the process of completing six original songs for the next episode of Ned Trek, as well as the episode itself, and it’s kind of time-consuming. I expect we’ll post in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, please enjoy this re-run of Ned Trek X, “A Plea for Arms”, one of my favorite Ned Treks, frankly, if only because I get to play Charlton Heston. (I’ve also thrown in our thrown-together recording of Quality Lincoln for your amusement.)

Usual Rubbish

Missing month.

Could have sworn I left it around here someplace. Have you seen it, Marvin? Oh, right. You’ve deactivated yourself for the holidays. Sounds nice … enjoy your break. How ’bout you, mansized tuber? Oh, yeah. He planted himself in the courtyard, out of earshot. Smart move. Wish I’d thought of that.

What am I searching for? The lost month of June, that’s what. It was here a minute ago, seems like, and now, POOF! Gone-zo. And with it, apparently, the June episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Okay, well … it’s not quite as mysterious as that. Our promised June episode is still in production, and not quite finished. Part of the reason is that we are lazy slags, but aside from that, frankly, it’s been a very complicated episode. A full-on, hour long episode of Ned Trek incorporating no less than six original Big Green songs. I am only now finishing out the songs, adding some incidental parts, mixing, etc. Working like a dog over here. (Well, a lazy kind of dog, anyway.)

Like a dawgOkay, I know what this sounds like. It sounds like pretty much every month this year, right? January’s podcast got pushed into February, March’s into April, April’s into May, and now June has evaporated. Four shows in six months is not exactly a land speed record, even for Big Green, so what can I say. As we try to raise our production values from the sub, sub-basement where they reside to the dank level of goodness just above that, we are finding that it takes a bit more effort than just plain sucking.

This is kind of how Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick was born. We started out with a bunch of hastily recorded sketches, then started tracking those, making them marginally more complex until they reached the same level of quality (or lack thereof) as our officially released albums, International House and 2000 Years to Christmas. We’re beginning to do the same deal with these Ned Trek songs, though they make the Cowboy Scat numbers seem, well, normal by comparison. This is some weird shit, man.

Stay tuned … we will post sometime soon. If it takes longer than we anticipate, we might toss in a clip show or something. Another cop out! Say it ain’t so, Joe!