Tag Archives: original songs

Usual Rubbish

And having writ, the hand moves to Jersey

Get Music Here

Yes, that’s a whole different approach. I never thought of doing it that way. Yes, very innovative – thank you for the suggestion. Of course I’ll give you credit. I’ll write it in the sky if you insist. You insist? Hoo boy.

Lesson number one for you young songwriters out there: never take advice on your craft from a robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been putting his two cents in a lot lately, and frankly, it’s worth every penny. We’ve been trying to pull together some new songs for our next project (another word for “album”), and he’s suggesting to me that I should start every song on kazoo.

It’s all about process. Sometimes.

Now, everyone has his/her process. We’ve discussed ours on this very blog. Some songwriters have a favorite instrument, some a favorite room. Some like to start with the music, then the lyric, others the opposite, and some a random mix. Marvin obviously prefers the kazoo. I think it’s fair to say that my brother Matt did at one point in his career. The thing is, Marvin doesn’t need a kazoo to make a kazoo-like sound. He’s got a sound generator that can imitate everything from a Blue Whale to a mosquito. (You should hear his 1993 Buick Regal. It’s spot on!)

My process? Well, mostly it’s not doing anything. But when I do write songs, I typically start with a blank piece of paper. The paper stays blank for a few weeks, until I awake from a nightmare at 2 a.m. and start scribbling randomly. The next morning, I will puzzle over the illegible nonsense I scrawled out the night before, then ball up the paper and chuck it in the trash. That’s usually when I pick up a guitar. Don’t try this at home!

Those instruments!

Some of you might think that it’s better to write songs on an instrument you know. I am living proof that that’s not necessary. The fact is, I don’t know any instruments all that well. Sure, I’m on a first-name basis with a guitar or two, and my piano is a childhood friend, but that doesn’t count for much. Like many songwriters, I reach for the closest instrument in the room and start noodling. (Pro tip: If I stumble on something good, it usually means it’s been used before.)

Worried about plagiarism? Remember what Woody Guthrie said:

“I never waste my high priced time by asking or even wondering in the least whether I’ve heard my tune in whole or in part before. There are ten million ways of changing any tune around to make it sound like my own.“

Yeah, I’ll take some of that. You might also want to remember what Tom Lehrer said:

Plagiarize
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
Remember why the good lord made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize

I can't play this bloody thing!

A case of projection

Is this a roundabout way of saying that we have an album project in the works? Well, dear reader, that would be telling! After all, we have about a hundred Ned Trek songs in the can, waiting to be released in some form, including about seven or eight that have never seen the light of day. And then there’s all that new material from Matt (a.k.a. the songwriting machine of Central New York).

Damn it, man … we have so many irons in the fire, there’s nothing left to do the ironing with. Now we have to throw all those wrinkled clothes in the fire with ’em.

Usual Rubbish

One hit.

2000 Years to Christmas

Well, I wouldn’t call it a hit, exactly. Kind of more like a near hit. You know – the term George Carlin wanted to substitute for “near miss”. Let’s just say, hit-adjacent. That’s a bit more like it.

Oh, hi. Just having a little discussion with my chief discography advisor and personal robot assistant, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Yes, he’s wearing two hats on his tiny brass head today, largely because we currently have no incumbent in the position of chief discography advisor. I’m told most bands have trouble filling that post. The trade schools just can’t churn them out fast enough, I guess. Oh, well …. couldn’t pay them anyway.

Right, well … we were just going over our canon. You know – our body of work. It’s kind of a decrepit body, frankly, hunched over and showing its age in a dozen different ways, but nevertheless, we’re sifting through our output, looking for hidden gems … or at least a fieldstone or two. (Lodestone, perhaps?) Why have we taken on this weighty project when there’s still so much good sleeping to be done? Glad you asked. It seems Marvin has been listening to the radio again. No just any radio …. national PUBLIC radio, as it happens (no, wait … that’s the CBC), and he heard a segment called … I don’t know …. “one hit wonders”, or something like that. Marvin doesn’t have speech, so I have to interpret his various flashing lights and rotating gears into pidgin English …. then into French, then back into English with a stopover in semaphore. So damn time-consuming!

It was on that little one down there. But it was STILL a big hit.

Anyway, Marvin thinks we might qualify as one-hitters because we had a hit record on Aldebaran. Personally, I think that’s kind of a stretch. Though I suppose, because Aldebaran is a binary star, it might actually count as two hits. Perhaps the song played backwards on its companion star, where everything is a perfect mirror image of what’s on the surface of the red giant itself. Or perhaps not. In any case, we never got a dime out of that particular success story, just a bucketful of radioactive goop that Mitch Macaphee got really excited about. Funny thing, that … just a week or so after he took possession of the goop, that bank he owed money to disappeared into thin air. So in a way, you could say that goop was good for something. It’s a foul goop indeed that doesn’t glow somebody some good.

Okay, well … this is getting us nowhere. Marvin, I really don’t thing NPR is going to be interested in our Aldebaran “hit”. I somehow can’t picture them playing “The Dino Song” to a national audience. (However, if you Big Green fans out there ask nicely, we will definitely play it for you. Just tweet at me @BigGreenJoe and we’ll get it done … somehow.)

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.