Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Inside October.

I think time may be stretching, or rather, elongating. I don’t know the correct term – get a physicist on the phone. Or call our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee – he may have the answer. All I know is that July turned into August, September turned into October, and so on. I can feel the holidays crawling up my ass.

How did I end up on this crapfest?In any case, you may have noticed that the October installment of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast has been posted, sent out to ipods and other devices, RSS’ed around the globe, and played on somebody’s smartphone somewhere. Better late than never, I always say … but then, I am one of the people producing the podcast, so from another perspective, late may not be better than never. Be that as it may, here is a look under the hood of this latest audio crapfest:

Ned Trek 20: The Shamesters of Quadzillion. In this, the lastest episode of our ongoing bizarre-ass Star Trek parody, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney and his senior officers are captured and held prisoner on the planet Quadzillion, where they are compelled by the resident oligarchs to compete in the political media arena with other mindless also-rans. Guest stars include Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Chief Justice John Roberts, Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, and Foster Friess. (Classic Star Trek fan reference: Gamesters of Triskelion)

Song: The Bishop. This is a selection from our 2008 album International House. Matt wrote, arranged, and I believe even mixed this track. A mostly acoustic number with some nice-ish choral parts.

Put the Phone Down. Our conversation this month has a number of minor themes, probably the most prominent of which is a virtual visit from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is apparently hawking his new book so broadly it even got onto our lousy podcast. Matt excoriates me for my technical ineptitude, then talks about his encounter with Egbert Bagg. Kissinger joins us for a song.

Song: North Camp Pasture. One of my songs from our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one is about Rick’s hunting camp, which used to bear a remarkably offensive racist name before that became politically inconvenient for the ambitious Rick and his kin. More broadly about the legacy of racism, Jim Crow, in modern American life.

Usual Rubbish

Sweep up.

Oh, sweep up! I’ve been sweeping up the tips I’ve made! I’ve been livin’ on Gatorade, planning my getaway!

Grab a broom, hey willya?Apologies to Paul Simon. Actually, except for the Gatorade part, that sounds like the story of my life just lately. Trying to tidy up the cavernous squat house we call the Cheney Hammer Mill ahead of the coming winter months. Nothing worse than a dusty house when the snow is up to the rafters – ask anybody who’s spent a few frigid seasons here on the dark side of the year. So, just plying the old broom across the brick floor.

Marvin (my personal robot) is running the vacuum in the background. Not a vacuum cleaner, you understand – an actual time/space vacuum he created with the orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind so many years ago. Amazing how that thing still runs after years of neglect, no one to tend its complex servos and circuit boards, not even our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee, who used to tinker with the thing from time to time before he relocated to his new lab in Madagascar. (Don’t go there! It may no longer even exist, the way he messes with the space-time continuum.)

While I’ve been occupying myself with domestic duties, I’ve been listening to a one-off CD of some of our Ned Trek songs. They need a little work, but I don’t doubt that we’ll release them in some more finalized form one day. I’m contemplating a late year holiday release or two on YouTube, maybe a collection of Ned songs sometime after that. It’s adding up to a lot of material, actually – about 25 songs and counting, pretty much all of which have showed up on THIS IS BIG GREEN in draft form. I know, I know … sounds like another Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yep, well … that’s how we roll these days.

Hey, listen to me, right? Interstellar tour, new album, YouTube videos. Slow down, maestro, you move too fast. You got to … hoo boy, there’s Paul Simon again. Stop it, man. More later.

Usual Rubbish

August down.

Hey, let's go to outer spaceMan, it’s so hot in here. Marvin, can you turn up the air conditioning? Oh, right … our air conditioning is a broken skylight. Sigh. Okay … break another skylight, then. Use my forty-foot pole … the one I use to keep my distance from things (and people) I don’t like.

Yes, friends … it is the end of summer, past the dog days. August is coughing up blood, writhing in the blistering sun. (Look on the bright side, brother.) Not much going on around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as you might have suspected. I laid down a piano part on perhaps one of the most ludicrous recordings I’ve ever played on. I saw some bluejays in the courtyard. What else happened? Not mucho.

Whoever said being a musician is tantamount to perpetual unemployment was on to something. (Hey … I think that was me.) You can see why we often opt for these less-than-optimal interstellar tours, in lieu of the more profitable terrestrial variety. Pretty simple, really … crappy work is better than no work at all. We are always open to seeking a new audience, even if that means holding our breath for weeks at a time. (There must be a better way to travel through space. Where’s Gene Roddenberry when you need him?)

Once we get finished with the current set of recordings, Big Green will likely take a romp around the known solar system; maybe a 2-week Autumn tour to promote … I don’t know, whatever we have to toss out there. Trouble is, on most alien worlds, the music fans have six or seven arm-like appendages, so you have to have a lot of product to keep them satisfied. Hell, they can absorb our entire canon and still have several arms free. We’ve got to get busy!

My hope is that, this time, wherever it is we’re traveling to, we have the assistance of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser. His absence was sorely felt on our last, disastrous foray into the galactic hinterlands. Which proves that having a crazy driver is better than no driver at all. (At least out where there’s very little to crash into.)