Tag Archives: music

Usual Rubbish

Inside August.

Did you upload the episode on time? Marvin? Can you hear me? Oh, Jesus. Not again. Right … Hey, anti-Lincoln! Plug Marvin in for a couple of hours. Make yourself useful!

Hi, good people. I’m pretty sure Marvin (my personal robot assistant) uploaded the August episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – our fifth anniversary broadcast! – over the last couple of days, but until he has a decent charge on him I can’t be sure. If you listened to it, you know a lot of what I planned to tell you today. But because I am a pedantic motherfucker, I fully intend to tell you about it anyway. Here’s what we got under the hood.

Ned Trek 29: Error of Mercy – This latest episode of our Star Trek political parody audio melodrama is based on the classic Star Trek episode titled “Errand of Mercy”. (For you non-aficionados, here’s the IMDB listing.) The crew of the Free Enterprise arrives at the planet Origami just ahead of the Confederation’s arch rivals, the Cleenton Empire. The episode features a bad, bad imitation of Bill Clinton, a perhaps worse imitation of James Carville, and a lot of cheap shots. Perle ends up wearing another barrel, so it’s probably worth a listen.

Marvin, did you ... ? Forget it.Put The Phone Down – We start with some strained renditions of a song by The Troggs, as sung by Peter Lorre, the Daleks from Dr. Who, and others, then rip right into a discussion of current affairs. That more or less follows the theme of my political rant this week – the assholes vs. the fuckers, in essence, though we also spend some time on “Bernie or Bust” and the Green Party. (Don’t get me started!)

Live Songs – These are audio tracks from the excerpts of our live video demo we posted over the past few weeks on our YouTube Channel. These include Sensory Man, I Hate Your Face, and Why Not Call It George? Fairly raucous, more or less in line with cuts from our Live From Neptune EP. The recordings were made pretty proximate to one another, probably within a year or so (1993-4). This was at the end of the period when we performed with guitarist and friend of Big Green, Jeremy Shaw.

Anyway, a lot of good-ish listening here, so enjoy. Or at least try to enjoy. I just want to spread a little sunshine as I move through the world, that’s all. Just call me “little joey sunshine”. (Sure beats “fucker”.)

Usual Rubbish

Poditosis.

All right, then. Time for the now quarterly ritual – that of passing the podcast from one computer to another and listening to it until we collapse from incoherent self-amusement. That’s what I call “Friday”.

I know, THIS IS BIG GREEN is late once again. I would use summer as an excuse, but you know that’s lame. We NEVER take summers off – just ask the missus. I would use old age as an excuse, but hell … we’ve been old since we started the podcast, and it used to be monthly, so what gives? Well … other stuff tends to get in the way. Matt has his various jobs, columns, reports, and committees to deal with. I’ve got my day job, night duties, plus the Cutty Sark model that I’ve been building in the dark for 12 years, etc. (Apologies to Graham Chapman for lifting that.)

Then there’s the freaking play, of course – Ned Trek, which takes up the bulk of our creative time … writing it, editing it, toasting it, spreading margarine all over it, then recording the voices, editing the audio, chucking in the alley, flying kites for six days, etc., until the show emerges from the butt end of this long and alimentary-like process. There’s got to be a better way, right? Well, if there is, I have yet to hear about it. What the hell … we’re not good.

Where's that podcast? I don't effin' know!Simultaneous to this production schedule is our music production schedule, which involves writing, tracking, and mixing songs using stone knives and bearskins. (The kind of primitive tools used in the late 1990s, early 2000s, before time began.) We’ve got a start on two new songs thus far in this cycle, likely destined for a future Ned Trek episode. They’re ridiculous enough, let’s put it that way. Then there’s an oldies project we got a start on, not to mention the omnibus Ned Trek song collection we plan to release at some point before we keel over. (Better start picking up the pace on some of these projects. I’m feeling kind of woozy.)

Anywho, I expect you’ll see a new THIS IS BIG GREEN episode drop later this week. Don’t quote me – I am notoriously unreliable.

Usual Rubbish

About your face.

I don’t know. Do you really think it’s that insulting? Not sure why anyone would take it personally, frankly. Unless, of course … they have a particularly hate-able face. A hate-friendly face, if you will. Oh, well.

Yeah, here we are, in the midst of one of our summertime projects. Always something to do here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, even if that something is virtually nothing. You could say this entire blog – all 17 years of it – amount to virtual nothingness, am I right? In any case … we’re just hashing out what the rest of the season is going to look like. We’ve got some archival material yet to go through; the kind of stuff that accumulates over three decades of playing and writing and recording together. A mountain of … something. Give it a listen, then you pick the descriptor.

This week’s “Wayback Wednesday” release was another selection off of our 1993 video demo – just us playing our set list live in front of a madman’s camera. We posted Matt’s song “I Hate Your Face“, the first verses of which goes like this:

God, I hate your convulsive face
Four, sixteen, a million, your annoying face
has got me sick and I’ve got to go

God, I made a big mistake
Eight sixty-four, a million, a huge mistake
when I parked it here
Did I stay too long? You know I stayed here far too long
Back in the day

Teenage angst? No sir. He wasn’t a teenager when he wrote it, for one thing. I won’t speak for Matt, but it always felt to me like a parody-punk song, complete with faux-teenage angst. By the way … this isn’t about YOUR face. Just putting that out there. It’s another face entirely, folks.

What’s left? Well, from the video, there’s a bunch of cover songs, a couple of which we may be able to get away with posting. (Expect pop-up ads.) We also have a lot of audio content – a bunch of live songs, some even listenable. We also have a handful of studio numbers that we can put out.

I know, I know … stop talking, start posting. Right, right.