Tag Archives: Ned Trek

Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: August 2014

Audio

Big Green comes roaring back to life in the dog days of Summer with a gripping new episode of Ned Trek, six new Big Green songs, and more. Oh, yeah.

This Is Big Green – August 2014. Features: 1) Ned Trek 19: Careact, featuring six new Big Green songs, listed as follows; 2) Song: Die-de-die (Spiro’s song), by Big Green; 3) Song: Sick Poor Jerk in a Herd, by Big Green; 4) Song: Well, Well, Well, by Big Green; 5) Song: Romneycare, by Big Green; 6) Song: Some Health Care, by Big Green; 7) Song: Medicare, by Big Green; 8) Put the Phone Down: Matt and Joe read from Recording Magazine, May 1990; 9) Suing Sonny Tufts; 10) Matt’s boid report; 11) News of tunnels and more; 12) Joe’s diploma; 13) General collapse of show

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Usual Rubbish

Crackpot diary.

Twelfth day before the mast. I see a ship on the horizon. The Dutchman? Nay. ‘Tis nothing but a garbage scow. Or perhaps a pleasure craft that’s lost it’s way. Avast.

That sounds odd.Oh, hello, there. I was just engaging in a little imagineering, to borrow a term. It gets kind of quiet around this big old barn of a hammer mill, so you have to think of other things and more exotic places. I am certainly not alone in that. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) went on a flight of fancy this past week. I think he imagined himself a paper shredder in a busy office. Hard to tell, really, except that he kept muttering “stapling machine” to himself, as if he were talking to a neighbor. Then he would make this grinding noise, and confetti would blast out the equivalent of his blowhole. Not my choice of fantasy, but hey … whatever floats it, right?

I’ve taken a few moments between sessions to scroll back through some of the music we’ve made over the last year or so, under the name of Big Green but in support of the Ned Trek program segment of This Is Big Green. In the aggregate, it definitely constitutes a crackpot diary of sorts, kind of like Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, only even more bizarre, in a way. I think it’s the horse voice, and the fact that all of Mr. Ned’s songs have a kind of dressage horse dance meter to them. Then there’s those forties guys. Not sure what to make of them.

Is there an album in this? Glad you asked. I wouldn’t rule it out, but that goes into the project hopper alongside our long-planned “resurrection of songs past” album. We’re halfway between recording systems right now, still using our distressed old Roland VS2480 system with enhancements; hopefully moving to a standard open Mac-based system, perhaps Cubase. Whatever we can get to work for us. We’re semi-primitive, you know, so we have to try things for a while before we make a change.

More on that later. I’ve got to listen to some of those crackpot songs again and see if maybe there’s grounds for having one or more of us committed. They don’t do that so much anymore? Right. Just as well.

Usual Rubbish

Slumming.

Sure, it’s the middle of summer, the doldrums, as it were, and more often than not my feet are dangling off the end of a plank in the courtyard as I sit, hose in hand, splashing water on the dandelions. Hey, weeds have to drink too, you know.

Here comes another oneNot much getting done here in Big Green land. I think you’ve probably guessed as much. Personally, I think productivity is very overrated. All it means to me is more work for less compensation – how can THAT be a good thing?

Still in all, I did take the time yesterday to catalog all of the songs Matt and I (though mostly Matt) have written for our respective Ned Trek characters over the year or so since we finished Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. I have to admit to being a bit surprised … there were fully 25 songs on that list, including one or two asinine fragments. I had no freaking clue! (Of course, that’s evident to anyone who has listened to more than one or two of these Ned Trek numbers.)

I’ve got to hand it to brother Matt. Who the hell ELSE am I going to hand it to? No, really … the man is a songwriting machine. Back in the old days, say, 1980-95, he would crank songs out at an alarming rate sometimes. I reached the point in the 2000’s when I thought, with all the other stuff he has going on – his various naturalist duties, for instance, as chronicled in his very excellent blog, Tales from the Wild, that he wouldn’t find time to write songs. But what the hell – he writes them out on the trail, records them on his phone, patches them together. He’s a ma-ma-machine, I tell you!

Me, my process is the same as it’s ever been. I start singing in the shower, and when my wife comes in and hits me with a brick, I lapse into a dream state that produces, more often than not, useable song ideas. What I do from that point forward depends on how ambitious I’m feeling. Back to the doldrums … often that means, I do nothing at all.

Still, it’s a good alliance, Big Green, a creative collective that is surely not in it for the money (for there is none) or the fame (for there never was) or the glory (for there is no such thing). Just for the hell of it. Yay.