Tag Archives: Matt Perry

Pulling the plug is never as easy as it looks

September 23, 2022 Joseph

I don’t know. I’m effing sick of this. Are you effing sick of this, too? You are? Wow … okay. For how many years? Damn …. why didn’t you say so? I was just doing this to keep YOU happy!

Well, you learn something new every day. Or at least every week. Except last week – I was kind of too busy to learn anything. It gets like that sometimes. Anyway, let’s just agree to say that you learn something new every little once in a while. Maybe every time Sylvie brings you some water. Like in the Leadbelly Song. But I digress.

What the this is

The “this” we’re kvetching about is this thing called blogging. We’ve been doing it for twenty years, and somehow – seemingly unnoticed by us – the world has kind of moved on. Now everything is social media, social media, etc. A few still blog, outside of the corporate shills, but it’s not really a thing anymore, and well … that’s a shame. Still, blogging has its place. I just don’t know whether or not its place is here, exactly.

Since we started this back in 1999, it’s been kind of a chronicle, a travel log, and a journal rolled into one. There have been a lot of twists and turns, like those times we went to the chewy center of the earth, blasting our way through miles of nougat until we hit molten caramel. Or the times we’ve visited the gas giants on the outskirts of our celestial neighborhood. We always felt that people would come away from those stories with valuable life lessons. Lessons like, DON’T TALK TO THOSE SQUATTERS!

The free hand

Now some of you might say, well, so you’ve been writing a stupid blog. What are you doing with your OTHER hand? It may surprise you to know that it actually takes two hands to type this stuff in. The fact is, we need to start doing other things …. things that are more, I don’t know, useful maybe? Not the right word. How about interesting? Probably still not ideal. Nevertheless, we need at least one free hand, even if we’re going hands-free.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Matt’s been writing songs like a house on fire. Even in our salad days he didn’t put out THIS much stuff. And we didn’t have a lot of salad days. Anyway, we’re going to start recording these songs, first as demos, then maybe pull it together in another album. We have the makings of at least one other album in the Ned Trek library – the new stuff, though, is completely different. That’s the one thing we’ve never been short on: material. Everything else, yes, but not that.

Wait for it!

Long story short, I will be posting Big Green stuff on social media, maybe pull some of that into the blog, but these regular posts will be going on hiatus. If I hear a flurry of calls for them to return, I will start posting again … but I’m not holding my breath. Til then, you know where to find us. (Right here.)

Usual Rubbish

Planning a tour on the ground floor

June 10, 2022 Joseph

Okay, I really think you have the order of operations wrong. One thing has to come before the other thing, and you’ve got the wrong thing first. Dude, it’s not that hard – why are you blinking those lights so frantically? This isn’t differential calculus … whatever the hell THAT is.

Oh, hey, out there in normal people land. Just having a little conversation here, nothing to get excited about. Just a handful of friends getting together for a quick jawbone. That’s a big motherfucker, man. I’ve seen smaller jawbones on a donkey. Whoa, is that the time? Okay, well … gotta go, guys! Great chewing the fat with you.

Right … now that I’m out of earshot, JEEEsus, what a bunch of asshats. That’s what I get for raising the issue of touring again. Let me ‘splain.

Cart before the horse

You know the old saying: don’t put the cart before the horse. For one thing, the horse might decide to drive away in the cart. And if you’re applying a different meaning to the expression “put X before Y”, you should always prioritize animals over inanimate objects. That’s a no brainer. (Or perhaps a YES brainer. But I digress.)

I guess the point is, I seem to me among a stark minority of members of Big Green’s broader entourage who believe that we should RECORD and RELEASE an album before we go on tour promoting it, not after. Not sure why I feel that way, but I do, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t get his little brass head around that idea. I mean, I can understand why antimatter Lincoln would be in favor of the before plan – he’s from that backwards universe where everyone eats corn on the cob vertically rather than horizontally.

I don't know, Abe. That doesn't look right to me.

What’s that you say?

Now, some of you out there may be asking, what album? And yes, I know lately we’ve been doing little more than posting old archival video of us playing random songs. But just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t snow in the living room as well. (I’ve got to stop using so many cliches, particularly the ones that don’t make any sense.) The simple fact is, we’ve got some songs … a whole lot of them.

What are we doing with said songs? We’re incubating the fuckers. We’re tossing parts back and forth, writing chord charts, barking into microphones, squinting at pages of poorly recorded verse. We’re pulling things apart and patching them back together with bailing wire and scotch tape. We’re …. killing time, frankly. It’s just fun to play new stuff, even when you’re doing it over the internets.

Why the internets? Matt is sequestered in his naturalist redoubt, watching birds, feeding beavers, and somehow writing scores of new songs. So we use sophisticated web-based technology to do our dirty work. Because that’s how we roll.

Where to begin. So many choices.

Now, if we were to go on tour … AFTER finishing the new album, we could start on that pulsar I talked about last week. Nobody’s played there yet, so we could finally be the first to market with something. (Damn, we suck at capitalism!)

Usual Rubbish

And having writ, the hand moves to Jersey

May 13, 2022 Joseph

Yes, that’s a whole different approach. I never thought of doing it that way. Yes, very innovative – thank you for the suggestion. Of course I’ll give you credit. I’ll write it in the sky if you insist. You insist? Hoo boy.

Lesson number one for you young songwriters out there: never take advice on your craft from a robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been putting his two cents in a lot lately, and frankly, it’s worth every penny. We’ve been trying to pull together some new songs for our next project (another word for “album”), and he’s suggesting to me that I should start every song on kazoo.

It’s all about process. Sometimes.

Now, everyone has his/her process. We’ve discussed ours on this very blog. Some songwriters have a favorite instrument, some a favorite room. Some like to start with the music, then the lyric, others the opposite, and some a random mix. Marvin obviously prefers the kazoo. I think it’s fair to say that my brother Matt did at one point in his career. The thing is, Marvin doesn’t need a kazoo to make a kazoo-like sound. He’s got a sound generator that can imitate everything from a Blue Whale to a mosquito. (You should hear his 1993 Buick Regal. It’s spot on!)

My process? Well, mostly it’s not doing anything. But when I do write songs, I typically start with a blank piece of paper. The paper stays blank for a few weeks, until I awake from a nightmare at 2 a.m. and start scribbling randomly. The next morning, I will puzzle over the illegible nonsense I scrawled out the night before, then ball up the paper and chuck it in the trash. That’s usually when I pick up a guitar. Don’t try this at home!

Those instruments!

Some of you might think that it’s better to write songs on an instrument you know. I am living proof that that’s not necessary. The fact is, I don’t know any instruments all that well. Sure, I’m on a first-name basis with a guitar or two, and my piano is a childhood friend, but that doesn’t count for much. Like many songwriters, I reach for the closest instrument in the room and start noodling. (Pro tip: If I stumble on something good, it usually means it’s been used before.)

Worried about plagiarism? Remember what Woody Guthrie said:

“I never waste my high priced time by asking or even wondering in the least whether I’ve heard my tune in whole or in part before. There are ten million ways of changing any tune around to make it sound like my own.“

Yeah, I’ll take some of that. You might also want to remember what Tom Lehrer said:

Plagiarize
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
Remember why the good lord made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize

A case of projection

Is this a roundabout way of saying that we have an album project in the works? Well, dear reader, that would be telling! After all, we have about a hundred Ned Trek songs in the can, waiting to be released in some form, including about seven or eight that have never seen the light of day. And then there’s all that new material from Matt (a.k.a. the songwriting machine of Central New York).

Damn it, man … we have so many irons in the fire, there’s nothing left to do the ironing with. Now we have to throw all those wrinkled clothes in the fire with ’em.

BIG GREEN