Tag Archives: Ned Trek

Usual Rubbish

Old stock.

2000 Years to Christmas

Huh. Is that what it actually sounded like? Don’t remember that at all. That’s probably down to drug use, I guess. Like all those Dead concerts I never went to. (At least I don’t remember going to any.)

Hello and welcome to another chapter of Archive Summer, with your host, Joe of Big Green. (Kind of a medieval sounding name, right? I am Cleetus of Taberg!) As I mentioned in previous posts, there’s precious little for band members to do during this time of COVID-19 social isolation, unless you’re into performing online … and have a decent internet connection. We could try to do streaming performances, but it would sound like one of those old novelty greeting cards that plays a tinny little loop of “Happy Birthday” when you open it. (Except we would NEVER play Happy Birthday. Copyright, you see …. those fuckers are litigious as hell! In fact, I shouldn’t even say the name of that song, let alone play it.)

You wouldn’t think that, living in an abandoned hammer mill, we would have much of an archive, but that’s where you’re wrong. DEAD WRONG. God no, we carry every piece of flotsam and jetsam from our previous lives along with us, like traveling hoarders. None of it’s worth anything, of course (we hocked all of that years ago), just sentimental value … with the emphasis on mental. The fact is, when you’ve been a “recording” group as long as we have, you tend to have a lot of recordings lying around. Some of them go back to the 1970s, but those are pretty rough and, well … just never mind about those. They’re a bit like those tight-fitting velour shirts dudes used to wear back then – not something you want to advertise. Like most bands, we started life badly imitating people we liked, then started to piece together the ad-hoc approach to music that Big Green is now known for. (To the extent that we’re known, of course.)

Uh, Marvin ... this is a microwave. The DA-88 is downstairs.

Our back catalog includes a mountain of stuff. Super early songs recorded straight to stereo on cassette machines and beat-up living room reel-to-reels. Faux “multi-track” recordings pieced together by bouncing tracks from one cheap recorder to another. A lot of Matt songs recorded on his first four-track cassette deck and subsequent similar machines – there are literally more than a hundred of these. Then we got an 8-track Tascam DA-88 deck in 1995, and we recorded 2000 Years To Christmas on that, among other things. (I’ve got some cassette submixes of unfinished songs from that system). In 2001 we moved to a Roland VS-2416 deck, which we used to make International House and most of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. For the last few years, we’ve been using Cubase Artist to record the Ned Trek songs, most of which you can hear on our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast (now on hiatus) or our Ned Trek podcast. Needless to say, there’s a ton of unreleased material, and I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant), trawling through all of it, looking for, I don’t know, caramels hidden in piles of shit. (Sounds delicious!)

Hey, it’s summer, right? We’ll start posting stuff again soon … but for now, another mint julep. (That’s a drink, Jim.)

Usual Rubbish

Retread.

2000 Years to Christmas

Huh. Ever had the feeling that you’ve lived a particular moment before? Or been someplace you’ve never been to before? No? Okay, well …. I’m having it right now!

Okay, now I don’t know how many of you out there have ever had the pleasure of producing an album that’s made up of songs you’ve already recorded. Show of hands? Let’s see …. five …. six …. ten …. and a few more way in the back. So maybe just fifteen of you. That’s fifteen out of five billion, okay? I think the point’s been made. And if I sound testy, well, it’s been a long goddamn day and I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW.

Um ….. sorry. Anyway, my point is that making an album out of existing songs is like building a staircase from the pieces of your previous staircase. Which is what one of my landlords did once. Then my next landlord fixed a hole in the porch roof by tearing down the entire porch roof and throwing it into the gully behind the house. Don’t even get me started on what he did to the plumbing. But I digress …. again.

Okay, so you know how when you’re shopping at Costco or Hannaford or whatever, once in a while they throw a little something extra in your shopping bag, like a coupon or a hard candy or some discarded fruit? That NEVER happens? Okay … bad example. You know how sometimes you get something cheap and something even cheaper comes along with it? Well, in case you haven’t been paying attention, that’s how we’ve been handling our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, for a number of years now. So with each free installment you get an episode of Ned Trek, and that thing often contains additional giveaways, like a brace of original songs, roughly recorded in our makeshift basement studio.

Hey, I think I've played this part before. You just blew my mind.

You with me? Good. What we’re doing is taking some of those giveaway songs and hammering them into shape. After we do that, we’ll line them up in random order and call it an album. It’s kind of like what we did with our last album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, only our Ned Trek songs were a bit more considered (if no less ridiculous). We don’t have a title or a theme, just 80 or 90 songs to sort through and winnow down to maybe 15 or 16, maybe less. Some we’ll polish, others maybe re-record. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) thinks it’s deja vu all over again, but he’s just channeling Yogi Berra.

Hey, we all have hobbies, right? Not right? Okay. Not my day for being right.

Usual Rubbish

Unresolved.

2000 Years to Christmas

I had that piece of paper five minutes ago. Did you see it? Okay … was that before or after you started the fire in the fireplace? Before … I see.

Well, I HAD a list of New Year’s resolutions all set to share with you, but apparently they have gone up in smoke. Sometimes when I ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to do something, he gets it done via the path of least resistance. Start a fire, I might say, and if he’s holding a piece of paper, whether it’s some scrap from the day before or the original Declaration of Independence, that becomes the means of ignition. (As an aside, if you’re wondering what happened to the original Declaration of Independence, well … ask Marvin.)

Hmmm … let’s see if I can repeat them from memory. Here goes.

Resolution #1: No disputes with our crazy neighbors.
Hey, look … I know they’re annoying and randomly cruel, but they live upstairs and they’re not going anywhere. The least we can do is make an effort to be more tolerant. We can start by overlooking little slights … like when they try out their new fracking rig by drilling a hole in our ceiling and injecting toxic fluid into our living room.

Resolution #2: Finish what you started, fucker.
Yeah, we need this one. After all, we still have a fresh Ned Trek episode under construction, to say nothing of our anticipated fourth album, still in the planning stages. It’s easy enough to get the ball rolling downhill. But when it comes to … uh … okay, that’s a really lousy metaphor for what I’m trying to express. We drop the ball, that’s the rub. Gotta stop that thing.

It's a metaphor, okay? Jesus ... just let it go.

Resolution #3: Don’t. Just don’t.
Well, we weren’t going to. Not sure where you got the notion that we ever would. We’re not that kind of band, okay. So don’t even think about it.

Resolution #4: Tour more.
Okay, this is a controversial one. Not everyone wants to pile into a ramshackle interstellar vehicle and prattle off to another galaxy just to entertain shapeless blob-like creatures that have never even heard of us. You really have to love that sort of thing to do it for a living, you know? So we’re putting it out there – book away, Anti-Lincoln, and let’s see who’s serious about making some deep space magic.

Resolution #5: Keep your dumb-ass blog posts short
As much sense as this makes, I’m afraid we’ve violated it merely by penning this post. What can I say? Half of our new year’s resolutions are straw men anyhow. We can just knock this one down on our way to fulfilling the more important ones.

Resolution #6: Build more straw men
Okay, now you’re just fucking with me. I only have one answer to this, and that’s … fulfill resolution #5.