Is that where the part comes in? Doesn’t seem right, but … okay. Just can’t trust my ears. Not after Cowboy Scat, our last million seller. (We’ve got a million in our cellar.)
Hello, Big Greeniacs. We’re hip-deep in mixing, as you might have guessed. This batch of songs, composed and recorded for the next episode of Ned Trek, is proving to be both challenging and time-consuming. What the hell, we’ve been working on these songs since January, and now it’s … what … May? Really? I should get out more. Anyway … we’ve been at it a long time. This better be good.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – we have recorded enough songs since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick to make three new albums, with some left over for party favors. After we’ve finished these six or seven songs, I’m sure we’ll be nudging 70 recordings over five years. We don’t have much trouble coming up with new material. Monetizing it? That’s another issue.
Let’s face it … we’re crappy capitalists. (Or crapitalists, if you will.) Matt has no interest in money or notoriety. As for me, well, I couldn’t sell songs to my mother … and I did ask nicely. In a world that measures quality in terms of the price the product commands, we strain to reach the lowest rung. Our production quality is commensurate with the resources available to us. (i.e., we’re not recording at Big Blue North, even though it’s right up the freaking street.) We are evolving in that respect, but like Issa’s snail, slowly … slowly.
Hell, we can’t even afford proper production assistants. When Big Green needs craft services, we’re reduced to asking Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to carry in a pitcher of tap water and some paper cups. When we try to market or even give away our discs, we either toss them into the street in front of the mill or hang them on the branches of the mansized tuber. (That’s why the neighbors have taken to calling him “the record plant.”)
Okay, well, I have some mixing to do. We’re having biscuits tonight. After that, I’ll do more mixing … of cement for the front walkway. There’s something I’m leaving out, but I’m sure it will come to me.
We could sell old stock out of said boutique. We’ve got hammer handles. There’s also a bunch of old music lying around in various forms. We could sell CDs, but since we only have three full-length releases and a couple of EPs, that would make us a bit like the Scotch Boutique on 70s era Saturday Night Live. (Ask YouTube … or your mother.) I keep digging up old recordings from ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. If people still recorded on cassettes, we could just tape over the tabs and sell those. (Ask your … oh, never mind.)
We’re not only musically obscure, Big Green is also socially obscure, I’m proud-ish to say. We’re the only band I can think of who, when moving into an abandoned hammer mill, draws pointed comments of “there goes the neighborhood” from across the brickyard. Fact is, we’re not even good enough to live in a condemned building. But we don’t let THAT stop us. No, sir … and thanks to the ingenuity of our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee (just back from MonsterCom, an annual gathering of like-minded crazy doctors in Madagascar), none of those local hostiles can get within thirty feet of our front door without being stopped by an impenetrable force field. (At least I’m told that it’s there. Either that, or no one wants anything to do with us. Which is more likely? You decide, my friends.)