Tag Archives: Songs in the Key of Rick

Usual Rubbish

Late to the party.

2000 Years to Christmas

Here comes another one, hot off the presses. Just in time for the presidential election. Wait, what? When did that happen? Five months ago? I’ll be damned.

Oh, hey there. Just plying our usual trade here in Big Green land. (For those of you listening to an audio version of this blog, I don’t mean Greenland’s big sister; I mean the land of Big Green, the indie rock combo from space. Or from time. From somewhere not here and now, suffice to say.)

I’m guessing more than a few of you think we just while away the hours, conversing with the flowers here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where flowers grow up through the cracks in the shop floor. Well, I hate to disillusion any of our legions of followers, but we are far more industrious than that, my friends – far more. (Someone on the internet once claimed we were the laziest band in music. I almost fell out of my string hammock when I heard that one.)

Long-time listeners know that Big Green’s most recent material is mostly topical, ripped-from-the-headlines kind of stuff. And when I say “headlines”, I don’t mean today’s paper. More like last month’s paper … or last year’s. You see, the thing is, whatever the political situation may be at any given time, when things go septic, we start writing songs about it.

That’s the genesis of our second album, International House, which was basically our document on the Bush II administration. Then there was Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which was made up of songs about the life and times of 2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry, our honorary cousin. Since then, we’ve written and recorded scores of songs for our podcast feature Ned Trek, many of which were about right-wing politicians in general and Trump in particular.

Huh. I guess it's time to release our song about that awesome blimp.

Okay, so you get the topical part. Now here’s the rest of the story – we’re always freaking late to the party. We released International House in the waning days of the Bush Administration – like, the last couple of months. And when did we release Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick? In 2013, a year after Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race! So in keeping with our long tradition of being far, far behind the curve, we are just now in the process of pulling together some songs from our Ned Trek collection, including a number that focus on Trump, months after the fucker left office. As Mr. Ned himself would say, “What the hell!”

In any case, we’ll keep you posted on any new releases from Big Green over the next year or so. In the meantime, we’re looking at posting International House on our YouTube channel, as that’s the only one of our albums that is not available on the YT. Look for the latest on our Twitter feed or our Facebook page. (There, Marvin – I’ve name checked all of our social media properties. Are you happy now?)

Usual Rubbish

Cold Files.

2000 Years to Christmas

How long do we have to stay down here, man? It’s five below zero. Next time we’re bringing a can of sterno or something. Maybe one of those highway flares. Ah yes – blessed warmth.

Hey, out there in internet-land. Yes, here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, doing what we usually do – nothing much, interrupted occasionally by nothing whatsoever. We lead a sedentary life out here among the ruins of a former mill-driven regional economy, brought low by the greed of post-industrial corporate financiers. So I suppose it is they we have to thank for our adopted abode, right? I mean, if they hadn’t massively dis-invested in this community and moved all their operations to the Philippines ages ago, there wouldn’t be any abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for us to squat in. So it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow someone some good, somewhere. Somehow.

What’s the nothing that we’re doing today? Ah, nothing much. Just digging through our piles of junk in boxes, looking for old recordings and unfinished projects begging to be reborn. I’ve recruited Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to serve as a kind of metal detector/divining rod, using his advanced sensor technology to scan for magnetic tapes or abandoned discs. When he comes close to either one of those types of objects, lights start flashing and his antennae start twirling around counterclockwise. Then a little mechanical bird pops out of a little door in his forehead and crows the hour. That’s when we all break for lunch. (Even if it happens at 10:00 at night. Lunch is whenever the birdy sings, that’s it.)

Joe: Hey, man .. You picking up any signals? Marvin: squx.

You may ask if we’ve found anything interesting, to which I would reply, “Funny you should ask!” Actually, our time rooting through the basement was pretty much wasted. Hell, I could have looked on our old hard drives for music projects of every description, unfinished, abandoned, neglected, and so on. We started recording Rick Perry songs (later collected in our ridiculous third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick) in probably 2011, then went right into the Ned Trek songs, which number in the scores – probably 120 songs over the course of six years. In between all that, we started to resurrect some older material from the 1980s and 90s – songs we had done demos of but never full-on recordings. I’m not sure how many of those there are. We’ve played a few rough mixes on THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, but some have never seen the light of day. Or the dark of night.

So now, when we’re bored, we rack up one of those old numbers, hit play and twiddle the dials until it sounds like something that’s not junk. If we do that long enough, we’ll send some of it your way. That’s just how we roll.

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.