Tag Archives: Songs in the Key of Rick

Usual Rubbish

Record plant.

Is that where the part comes in? Doesn’t seem right, but … okay. Just can’t trust my ears. Not after Cowboy Scat, our last million seller. (We’ve got a million in our cellar.)

Hello, Big Greeniacs. We’re hip-deep in mixing, as you might have guessed. This batch of songs, composed and recorded for the next episode of Ned Trek, is proving to be both challenging and time-consuming. What the hell, we’ve been working on these songs since January, and now it’s … what … May? Really? I should get out more. Anyway … we’ve been at it a long time. This better be good.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – we have recorded enough songs since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick to make three new albums, with some left over for party favors. After we’ve finished these six or seven songs, I’m sure we’ll be nudging 70 recordings over five years. We don’t have much trouble coming up with new material. Monetizing it? That’s another issue.

Got a little job for you.Let’s face it … we’re crappy capitalists. (Or crapitalists, if you will.) Matt has no interest in money or notoriety. As for me, well, I couldn’t sell songs to my mother … and I did ask nicely. In a world that measures quality in terms of the price the product commands, we strain to reach the lowest rung. Our production quality is commensurate with the resources available to us. (i.e., we’re not recording at Big Blue North, even though it’s right up the freaking street.) We are evolving in that respect, but like Issa’s snail, slowly … slowly.

Hell, we can’t even afford proper production assistants. When Big Green needs craft services, we’re reduced to asking Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to carry in a pitcher of tap water and some paper cups. When we try to market or even give away our discs, we either toss them into the street in front of the mill or hang them on the branches of the mansized tuber. (That’s why the neighbors have taken to calling him “the record plant.”)

Okay, well, I have some mixing to do. We’re having biscuits tonight. After that, I’ll do more mixing … of cement for the front walkway. There’s something I’m leaving out, but I’m sure it will come to me.

Usual Rubbish

What you hear.

Man, it’s windy again today. That’s what I’m hearing, right? Oh, okay … Anti-Lincoln is just practicing his bass clarinet. Right. Sounds like wind. Lots of wind.

Hey, look …. I know living with other people can be annoying. But we try to be tolerant around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill and let one another live up to his or her true self. And when they achieve that hard-won moment of self-realization, we all point fingers at them and laugh derisively. Particularly when they take up some wind instrument they have no hope of mastering. (Happens more often around here than you might suppose.) That’s what we call “positive reinforcement.”

I don’t want to give the impression that we of Big Green have something against innovation and initiative. Lord, no. The fact is, we rely on other people’s innovation and initiative to make up for our woeful lack of those qualities. We’ve made plenty of recordings that have random horn-like instruments honking in the background or someone plunking on a banjo in a lackluster way. Naturally, we don’t hire session musicians for this. (Very few of them are willing to work in ThereThere's a multitude in this place!exchange for discarded hammer handles from the last century.) So naturally we are left to forage for talent a little closer to home. And when I say “talent”, I’m using the word in a very generic, denatured sense. Bodies with working digits is what I mean.

Take Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Please.) Little known factoid: Many of the horn parts on that album were played by Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and Anti-Lincoln. We used trained monkeys for some tambourine parts. And when I say “trained”, I’m using the word in a very generic …. oh, never mind. Actually, I played the freaking tambourine. I just made it sound like I’m a trained monkey. Though frankly, most people playing the tambourine sound like trained monkeys. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The point being …. we may look like a band of three people, but there’s a virtual multitude involved in everything we do. (Now by “virtual”, I mean literally “in essence or effect, but not in fact”.)

Got all that? Good. Maybe you can explain it to me (and the virtual multitude).

Usual Rubbish

What’s with the cheap-ass show?

Okay, so we posted a cheap-ass podcast for July. So sue me. Go hire Mr. Simon’s lawyer and sue me. Things went all pair-shaped this summer, what can I tell you?

The fact is, we did produce a new episode of Ned Trek. I wrote the script, with Matt’s able help, we voiced it, and Matt finished editing it … and then his computer blew up. So he’s reconstructing it, in between the fifteen thousand other things he’s responsible for. And it has taken longer than anticipated, right? You know the drill. Even more galling in a way is the fact that this was one of our musical episodes, which means that we produced no less than 6 original songs for the sucker. A lot of production for an episode that never got posted. Still … it will go up, eventually. Just wait and see. (Or hear.)

Anyway, we thought we’d take this opportunity to re-run one of our favorite Ned Trek episodes, called The Wrath of Carl, in which Carl Sagan decimates the Free Enterprise crew through the awesome power of his calling bullshit on all of their pseudo-scientific TV-show contrivances, like artificial gravity and … well … interstellar travel. (My favorite moment is when Sagan points out that horses lack the requisite anatomy for speech, at which point Ned loses his voice.)

What a lame ass cop out.What’s on deck for this month, besides this re-tread episode of Ned Trek? Well, we have a selection from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – a little song called Savin’ Myself for America, which is a particular favorite of mine from that album. (Hear it now on YouTube.) We also launch into a shaggy-dog planning session about our next album, which will feature songs from – you guessed it – Ned Trek. We’ve produced about fifty so far, and you can listen to us engaging in the somewhat useless task of winnowing this down to maybe 45. Will this be our first double album? Who freaking knows. (We obviously don’t – just listen to the podcast.)

So there you have it. Another day at the office.