Tag Archives: Songs in the Key of Rick

Usual Rubbish

Lost eppy.

Don’t bother me with that now, Marvin. Yes, I’ve seen you juggle before. But Big Green’s interstellar stage show has no slot for jugglers, even if they toss molten crowbars in the air five at a time. What the hell do you think this is, Ringling Brothers? Perry brothers, damn it. Whole different circus.

Seriously, sometimes it feels like I’m running a two-bit talent agency in lower Broadway in 1947. Ever feel that way? Well … I have, and it’s right now. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has gotten it into his brass head that he needs to warm up our audiences, particularly in venues like Neptune, where the average daily high is something like 55 Kelvin (that’s -218 Celsius to you and I). In that kind of climate, Marvin reasons, a little foot-stomping can’t go amiss. Sure, he’s got a point … but juggling? On a plain-clothes rock stage? Come on.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of you – maybe five or six or even more – who are wondering what the hell happened to our September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast. Good question. Fact is, it’s finished … Matt and I did our meaningless conversation segment just a couple of hours ago. It has, of course, become the “lost” September episode, in as much as October is now upon us. Yet another October – who would have believed we would have two in as many years? What are the chances?

Big GreenAnyhow, the “lost” September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, due out any day now, is another blockbuster extravaganza, with a special episode of Ned Trek featuring no less than five or six brand spanking new Big Green songs, sung in dialect and embedded in the very woof of the program. It is a feast for sore ears. Feast your ears on this shit, and they’ll be sore, for sure. Yes, you’re welcome.

Stuff to do. Got to get back to planning our interstellar tour to support sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And my cat Sara wants a snack. Coming … !

Usual Rubbish

Planning for launch.

I say let’s start rehearsing on Wednesdays. You can’t? Why the hell not? That’s your LUNCH day? Oh, right. Forgot about that.

Big GreenJust trying to pull together some Big Green rehearsals in advance of our anticipated interstellar tour to promote our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Of course, I’m running into the usual scheduling conflicts. I keep forgetting how people arrange their time. Anti-Lincoln (who sometimes shakes a tambourine backwards for us), for instance, has what can only be described as a singular meal schedule: Instead of the usual three meals a day, he eats breakfast all day Sunday, lunch all day Wednesday, and dinner all day Friday. Hey – I don’t judge. If it works for him, that’s great.

This does get to be like being a traffic cop, though. And what usually ends up happening is that Matt and I get together and just run through some songs, or make up new ones, or record an episode of Ned Trek for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. In other words, blow a lot of time on nothing in particular. But that’s how we roll.

What about the tour? Well … details are still in the works. I asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to look at the feasibility of just Stop smoking, already.doing an interplanetary tour within our own solar system as opposed to traveling into deep space and incurring some substantial logistical costs (not least of which are those damned tollbooths between here and Aldebaran – I’m almost certain they’re a scam!). He whirred and flashed and squeaked for about three hours, then emitted a slip of paper that bore a recipe for potato soup written in Mandarin. I beckoned to my translator.

Upshot of this is, we have reached out to some of the tour promoters we’ve used in previous outings. I know what you’re going to say – those tours were disastrous failures and a threat to both life and limb and intergalactic peace and security, right? Point taken. This time will be different. Because everybody knows that when you do the same thing over and over again, eventually you get a different result. Right? (Sure I heard that somewhere…)

Usual Rubbish

Yonder bound.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant), didn’t I tell you to pick those Legos up about three hours ago? Can’t you do anything without being told twelve times?! Are you even awake?! MARVIN!!

I'm your Lincoln ConciergeChrist on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and have dutifully (and pitilessly) posted our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN every month, on the month (or quite nearly). But gainful employ? Naught, my friend. Goose egg.

Arguably, it goes against human nature (and personal robot assistant nature, presumably) to be idle for so long. I’ve seen signs of restlessness, to be sure. Not from anti-Lincoln, of course, who spends most of his day in the forge room, swilling cheap rum that he got from god-knows-where. But his positive doppelganger, Lincoln, tries to keep busy in imaginative though annoying ways. (I keep telling him, I can’t afford a big fat car – it’s just not in the game plan. But just try telling Lincoln not to sell you something.)

Big GreenMarvin is always coming up with pass-times, as well as hair-brained schemes for making money. But I think he’s hit a wall, and it’s understandable. Even his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has wandered off to richer pastures, taking advantage of some time-share property he invented in Madagascar. (Something about hanging gardens … though I’m not sure about what stage of insanity he was in when he told me about it.) So Marvin sits and rusts a little every day, his battery running down. He needs a change of scene, and so do the rest of us.

That’s why I have started making inquiries about doing an interplanetary tour to support extraterrestrial sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Spoiler alert: Terrestrial sales have been abysmal.) Stay tuned for details. Big Green out.