Tag Archives: music

Usual Rubbish

Preppin’ for Tex.

Got your cowboy hat yet? Oh. Okay, why the hell not? Just go downtown, walk into the cowboy supply store, and pull a ten-gallon hat off the rack. What’s so hard about that?

Oh… hey, man. Caught me, once again, in the midst of lecturing the help. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) refers to it derisively as “reprogramming”, but you know better. All I asked him to do was to purchase his own cowboy gear – that’s all. Is that so unreasonable? Am I expected to pay for everything around here? What the hell – I’m the “job creator”, right? I’m the one using “air quotes” left and right. Haven’t I done my part in this employer-robot assistant relationship? Huh?

Okay, so why am I asking Marvin to dress up like Tex? So that he’ll match the rest of us, of course, when we start shooting videos to support our upcoming album of Cousin Rick Perry songs. What the hell, we can’t release an album of songs nominally by the governor of Texas without donning ten-gallon (or, at least, 5-liter) headgear. That would be tantamount to malpractice. And what is malpractice but a crutch for cats who can’t blow? (Okay… I murdered that quote, but it had it coming.)

Admittedly, there is more to making a new album than getting matching cowboy suits. Much more. Like shoes. And pizza boxes. Bubble-stuff in a plastic jar. What else? Hmmmm. Corn husks. Put them all in a cement mixer and flip the switch, baby. Round and round they go, and after a few hours, pour it out into a six-up mold and start stamping out those CD’s. Nothing to it.

What about the music part of it? Details, details. We’re working on it, that’s all I can say. All of those first-draft podcast songs? We’re polishing them to a sparkling luster. We’re patching them up like ten miles of bad road. We’re turning knobs, flipping switches, and cranking …. cranks. We’re making the little lights flash like glow-bugs. That’s a bit of doing.

So, yes… we will have an album. Big Green will crawl again across the shattered landscape of American music anyhow. In cowboy hats. Yee-haw.

Usual Rubbish

Thing is.

What’s that? What’s that you say? Can’t hear ya, young man. You’ll have to speak up a bit. Nah, I’m not deaf. I’m either old or living on top of a fracking operation. Or maybe both.

Yeah, hey howdy. Welcome back to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York, where the winters are cold and the derricks run day and night, pulverizing the shale that supports the very ground we walk on to squeeze every last iota of value out of the battered slag that is America. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, our once and future corporate overlords, are working this little piece of borrowed real estate like it’s Irian Jaya and they’re Freeport McMoran. But…. I digress. Always like to start on a bright note. Now on to more serious matters.

Well, it took some doing with all of this earth moving and earth shaking (movers and shakers are we), but we managed to post the June episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Another titanic installment of … well … nothing in particular. Though we have included not one but two first-draft recordings of Rick Perry songs. Could be worth a listen …. just advance over about half an hour of insane blather and you’ll hear the first one; a funky little number called “Aw, Shoot.” It offers, in its own ludicrous way, a thumbnail sketch of cousin Rick Perry’s trajectory from simple country dummkopf to dummkopf on a national stage already. Sounds vaguely like an early 80s soundtrack cut. Think Bam-Bam on Mars. Some of you know what I’m saying.

The other Rick Perry song is, well, an ode to his staying power. He’ll be there, that’s all he’s saying. Wherever there’s a law beatin’ up a gun, he’ll come on like a burning sun. And so it goes.  Big Green will be putting out a collection of cousin Rick songs later this year, with polished up and enhanced selections from these podcasts, plus additional material. (I’m not going to say what kind of material. It may be music, may be fracking fluid. Not sure there’s a difference.)

This month’s podcast also features a Big Green number from back in 2004, called The President’s Brain is Missing. It’s about our old friend George W. Bush, who seemed to fancy himself something of a martial type back in those days. Seemed like he should have a “Green Beret” type theme associated with his heroic exploits, so we just made him one.

Well, there’s the work whistle. Won’t be able to hear myself think for the next 12 hours, so I’ll sign off now.  WHIRRRRRRRRR……

Usual Rubbish

Albumination.

We’re out of the big box retail business. Easy come, easy go. Now what do we do for scratch? Start scratching? What am I, a dee-jay? (Perhaps I am…. )

Leave us face it. As so many of our closest friends and advisors have told us, Big Green’s money-making gene is recessive. The cash bone definitely is not connected to the Green bone. Even when we have a hole to China’s most productive consumer good factory – literally a tunnel to the bank! – it blows up in our faces. The gods want us humble. They have given us a mission, and we must fulfill it. Live simply in an abandoned mill. Make music. Travel to other planets via questionable means. Go forth and do as I tell you. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

What the…. got gods for three minutes and they’re already demanding as hell. Well, you should know that we’re not letting the grass grow under our feet. (Except the mansized tuber, of course – that’s his natural state.) As you may be aware, Matt and I have been busy with our podcast. A grueling monthly broadcast schedule, now in its eighth grueling month. Ever eat gruel for eight months straight? Just try it sometime, Ebeneezer. Even you will be calling for more bread, damn the ha-penny extra. Right…. where was I? Ah, yes. Work. Work, work, work. The podcast demands a great deal out of us – namely, that we turn on the recorder, stand in front of studio mics, and talk total, rambling nonsense like we always do. Then we press stop. (I told you – it’s a great deal.)

Then there are the songs. We’ve done a lot of Cousin Rick Perry songs – it’s becoming a bit of a theme, like Christmas or rare foot diseases. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been good enough to help track some of the numbers. In fact, we’re thinking about pulling it together into an album – finishing the songs we threw together for the podcast and putting out an album of Rick Perry themed material. Would the resulting product be an abomination of sorts? Perhaps in the Eyes (or the Ears) of the Almighty Rick. He is among our more sensitive cousins, to be sure.

So, yes, our hands are full, our hearts (and wallets) light, our spirits…. I don’t know, I’ll go with spongy.