Tag Archives: Rick Perry

Usual Rubbish

Sing, Rick, sing!

Turn which knob again? That one? I already turned that one, for crying out loud. Turn it again? Shut the front door!

All these knobs, all these switches… Hey, that’s a good idea for a song. All of these knobs, all of these switches, keep this up and you’ll need stitches, uh-huh. Okay… not a good idea for a song. I’m getting punchy, and small wonder. Matt and I are hip deep in mixing Rick Perry’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick … being a collection of songs that arose from some strange sensory phenomena our dear cousin experienced over the past year. You know how when sometimes you have a little too much to drink or a bit too much …. well, whatever, and the world around you gets all fuzzy and weird, and then the next day you find yourself freighted with all these unexplainable memories of odd behavior, like something your fevered mind cooked up in a dream? Well…. Rick wrote some songs about that.

We’ve been putting rough mixes of these songs on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, for the past few months, to mixed reviews, I must say. Here’s a sampling:

What is that sound in the middle of your last podcast? It almost could have been music but not quite…  – jaypod

Tell tex to pipe down. I’m sleepin’ here.   – brooklynfan#482

[expletive deleted] the [expletive deleted] with a [censored].
– nixon’sghost45

All very promising, wouldn’t you say? It’s this kind of feedback that keeps us going, year after year. Like that guy who wrote me last month with the simple advice of “Get a life.” Isn’t that enchanting? Almost haiku-like in its simplicity. I meditate on it daily.

When will the finished album be ready? Well, that depends on how soon we can get a turn at the power tools down in the basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we reside. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the mansized tuber have been building something down there for weeks. Maybe it’s an ark, for all I freaking know – I hear sawing and drilling through the closed door to the shop. “Are you going to be long?” I yell, “We’ve got to start whittling those CD cases!”

Useless. Oh, well… back to the faders.

Usual Rubbish

Process, process.

Smallest town in the biggest state. Father Joseph, what would be my fate? So starts this month’s anthem of the Hammer Mill. Can’t get that tune out of my head, man!

This writing finds us chin deep in production for our next album. Imagine Matt and me in a roomful of 1-inch Ampex tape, all spooled out and tangled like Don Knotts had it in his space capsule in The Reluctant Astronaut. Yes, we always aspire to such heights. “Why not the best?” we ask ourselves, and the answer, of course, is obvious. (Go right to the source and ask the horse.)

Why do we do this thing over and over again? This “making an album” thing? We’re past the age of consent (well past) and not famous on our home planet. Our best-selling album is welded to the hull of Voyager as it makes its way out of our solar system. (We sold one copy to NASA. They bought it because it features a lead vocal by the late Kurt Waldheim.) The fact is, we are driven. When Big Green first rose out of the primordial soup of the mid 1980s, we had several choices. They were:

1) Go back into the soup! It was quite good, actually. Always like a little ginger in with the carrots. Mmmmm-boy.

2) Start a band, but instead of an indie rock group that has to make its own albums, something less demanding. Call it “Various Artists”. That way, on our first day of existence we would have dozens, perhaps hundreds of albums to our credit, many containing hit songs from every era. Instant popularity! Just add crack!

3) Start an indie rock group that has to make its own albums. With help, of course, from our mad science adviser, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the indefatigable mansized tuber, a couple of Lincolns, and others. (Don’t want to suggest for a moment that we do all this work alone!)

So here we are, patching the rough road that is Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, preparing for final mixes and looking for obvious holes. Hey, there’s a good name for a band: The Obvious Holes. Beats the Recognizable Hicks any day.

Keep your eyes open for more fadeout grooves. Think of them as shards left over in the manufacture of the next album. Or something.

Usual Rubbish

Mis takes.

All I’ve got is a three and a deuce. You’ve got queens? Christ almighty, Mitch. What do you have, a printing press over there? Isn’t that the third hand like that you’ve…. Oh, wait a minute, I have to get to work here…

Hi, everyone. It is I, Joe Perry of Big Green. No, not Joe Perry of Aerosmith. The other Joe Perry. And on behalf of the other members of Big Green, as well as assorted denizens of their entourage, I have been asked to make the following statement. This is NOT a test. This is an ACTUAL OFFICIAL STATEMENT from the band Big Green. Ahem.

The founding members of Big Green, Joseph M. Perry and Matthew J. Perry, hereby disavow and deny any connection, either familial or professional, with the group known as The Band Perry. Any claims made by any person or persons suggesting such a connection are patently false and possibly malicious. Big Green shall henceforth neither confirm nor deny any such claims, as the members feel that this statement is sufficient response. 

There. Now that that’s dispensed with…. Why did we feel the need to do this? Well…. with our new album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick now in the final phase of production – an album that features more than one country western-themed composition – we felt it necessary to draw a sharp line between ourselves and a country group that has appropriated OUR family name, one that has performed in central New York TWICE this year already. Given the confusion over my name and that of the guitarist from Aerosmith, it seemed silly to risk confusing the public even more on the eve of the launch of our new album. Yeah, I know… they’re young, have good hair, and are well rehearsed, and we…. well, we have none of those things. There’s something to be said for due diligence, my friends.

That said, Big Green has, with the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), been carrying out a project that demonstrates a profound lack of due diligence. It’s a collection of sound files called Fade-Out Grooves that we’ve been releasing into the wild via Twitter ( @BigGreenJoe ).  These are the drawn-out hairy endings of songs we’ve recorded and mixed – basically, all of the junk that happens after the fade out. Don’t know about you, but I always wondered how songs that fade-out actually end. Well … now you can know the answer to that conundrum.

So… think of these as appetizers, just to keep you busy until the main course arrives.