Tag Archives: songs

Usual Rubbish

Freak week.

I told you yesterday about the roof. Now the internet is down. No, not the WHOLE internet … OUR internet, dumbass! And that electricity you tapped from the house next door? Well … that’s run dry as well. Damned squathouses!

Okay, so these are not the easiest days around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, and we of the Big Green collective are having to think our way through some truly daunting problems. This is pretty basic stuff, right? Keeping the rain out when it rains. (Right now, our roof only keeps the rain out when it’s sunny.) Surfing the internet in your socks. Plugging the electric can opener in and having it do what it’s made to do, not sit there like a paperweight. Stuff that any band should expect to be able to do, even when they’re squatting in an abandoned hammer factory. But noooooo … not us.

No, Marvin! For chrissake. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) heard what I just told you and took it into his little tin head that he should try to open a can with a paperweight. That’s just so wrong. It’s emblematic of the type of help we get around here. Sure, we have our own robot, but he doesn’t know how to do anything useful. Sure, we have a mad science advisor, but he spends all of his time in a makeshift lab in the basement, burning isotopes into larger … I don’t know …. isotopes? (Or does burning them make them smaller?) Why the hell couldn’t we have made friends with either a carpenter or a handyman? Why wasn’t I born a carpenter?

Looks like another bad roof day.Speaking of the Carpenters, Matt and I have been tracking some backing vocals for the next crop of songs – about eight of them, to appear in the next installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN, embedded within the new Ned Trek episode. When will that be ready? Well, it depends on when it stops raining in the studio. It’s a little difficult recording vocals under a painter’s tarp. Ends up sounding muffled, like someone threw a blanket over you. Which, of course, they did. There’s a reason for everything in music.

So … we soldier on. Now if we only had some soldiers. Or some solderers. They could fix our broken patch cords.

Usual Rubbish

Bringing it back home.

What do you mean the broken-down car has broken down? How much more of a heap could it possibly be? Okay, okay … we’ll call the hook. No, not CAPTAIN Hook. Unless he’s opened a towing business in his dotage. Seems unlikely.

Our audience is a little hard to reachWell, as you can see, the bottom is falling out of Big Green, economically speaking. Nothing new, right? As a class, musicians tend to be monetarily challenged, let’s say. Doing music for a living is tantamount to perpetual unemployment, interrupted by occasional contract work. And when you’re a plainclothes band, the gig money sucks. Usually you get a percentage of the door. If you’re more well known, they might give you the WHOLE door. And if you draw a good crowd, they might even throw in a window as well.

Now, when you play mostly original music, like we do, that’s an even bigger problem. Nobody knows the songs, for one thing … when you’re not famous, that is. Even worse, the audience starts requesting songs by the Scorps, or Stairway to Heaven, or maybe Beethoven’s Ninth. (That last one is hard to pull off with a four-piece rock group. Especially the vocals!) Before you know it, you’re walking out of that dump with your tail between your legs, your pride in the toilet, and your self-respect on a slow boat to Madagascar. You’ve been there – don’t deny it!

Now, we’ve tried to adapt to this harsh reality. Playing for plants and trees. Booking jobs in outer space. (Once you’ve solved the transportation problems, it’s easier than it sounds.) Making sandwiches instead of music (it CAN be done). But there’s only so much you can do to alleviate the pain of independent music. Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen. Nobody know but … I don’t know … Weezer? Cue the violins.

Okay, enough about me. Let’s talk technique here. Unlike a lot of interstellar circuit groups, we play our instruments with hands. Not pseudopods. Not antennae. Not mind waves. That makes us more of a curiosity in venues on Neptune. That helps the door take a little. So … keep playing Neptune, right?

Usual Rubbish

Inside the cast.

Well, that’s finished. Took us long enough. I swear, this takes more effort every time, and here at Big Green, we’re built for comfort, not for effort. At least I am. Matt’s the one out in subzero temperatures at the crack of dawn, dragging tree limbs to struggling beavers. Me? I write stuff and bang on the piano. And shit.

Hit it, MarvinI guess I could blame our slowness on the cold, like everyone else, but hell, we were born into this frozen hellscape, raised in its nurturing embrace, and will likely finish out our days frozen to the ground from whence we rose. In other words, yeah, hell … it’s sure cold outside!

So where was I? Oh yeah. The February podcast. Here’s what we’ve got in this installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN:

Ned Trek 22: Mitt’s Brain. Though there is never a one-to-one relationship between Ned Trek episodes and those of classic Star Trek, this one is based on the ludicrous Season 3 episode called “Spock’s Brain”. It’s as asinine as you might expect, with cheap laughs built in at every turn.

Ned Trek includes six new Big Green songs, all apropos of the episode content. These are”

Brain, What is Brain? Sung by Doc Coburn, this 6/8 number explores the implications of the theft of Willard’s brain. Sung with remarkable passion, with a fair amount of hooting and hollering.

Whatever Romney Knows. Willard does the vocal on this swing number, featuring God-knows-who on brushes and some screwy horns. It’s all about the brain and what Willard doesn’t need it for. Ka-pow!

Lost Your Mind. Mr. Ned renders an appropriately opinionated little tune about what a non-event the brain theft truly is. (Ear-worm warning: I couldn’t get this one out of my head for about a week.)

Send in Some Advisors. Pearle sings this song about the new way of starting a profitable war, thin end of the wedge style. A cautionary tale, to be sure.

Nixon Action. Rock and roll number sung by Nixon and Kissinger as the former makes the case for his own rehabilitation and second life as a trusted counsel to the powerful. One word: ridiculous.

Two Lines. Mr. Sulu chimes in with a lament about his puny speaking roles in both the original Star Trek and its current Ned Trek degeneration. Note how the chorus is built from two-line speeches from his many appearances.

We did some talking after that. Nothing to write home about. Enjoy, friends.