Tag Archives: songs

Usual Rubbish

The month that was.

Wait, shhh… Did you hear that sound? Yeah, that sound. That’s the sound of another podcast being posted. Praise be.

What’s in the program this month? Well…. pretty much anything we could find lying about the Hammer Mill. Bits and bobs, as they say. Is it lame? You be the judge! My lips are sealed on the quality issue. But I will talk about what’s in the bulging box that is THIS IS BIG GREEN – OCTOBERCAST 2012. An hour and twenty of sheer audio madness, featuring:

Mr. Ned, Romney’s Talking Horse – Episode 3: Ned Trek. The most ambitious in the Mr. Ned series yet, Romney’s famous talking dressage horse takes Willard on a journey through a space/time wormhole to an alternative dimension of television mediocrity. Yes, Mitt is made commander of the starship Free Enterprise, and he and his crew of neocons take on an extraterrestrial threat that only a cash-starved special effects department could conjure. Hi-jinx ensue. (Special guest appearance by former president Richard Nixon.)

Song: Paradise. This is a rough mix (basically faders up) of a recording we started a few months ago as part of a long project focused on resurrecting some of our older songs that were never properly recorded or released. Paradise is a song ripped from Matt’s back pages. Not sure what it’s about – you’d have to ask him – but it’s got elements of archeology in it, which is something that has shown up in some of his other songs, like Primitive, Christmas with the Australopithecus, and others. Probably watched too many Dr. Leakey T.V. specials back in the ’70s, that’s my guess.

Song: Kublai Khan. Another Matt song from about the same period. Actually, this one is  loosely themed on the live and exploits of Sun Myung Moon, late founder of the Unification Church and owner of the Washington Times.  Given that our podcast is typically focused on this sort (i.e. dead people), I can hardly believe that we neglected to mention the salient fact that Dr. Moon passed away. Next episode!

That’s about all for this month. Give it a listen, and then send your complaints to:

Mitt Romney
Governor of Sucktopia
Richy Richland, New Hamphire.

Usual Rubbish

Me, me, me.

When I was a kid, my parents took me on a trip across this great country of ours. We took in all the national parks, all the dude ranches, all the hamburger joints, all the breakfast cereals, and it was great. The best way I can share it with you is by singing this song. I want you to all sing along with me. “There’s a yellow rose in Texas … that I am BOUND TO SEE….!!!”

Whoa, hey… didn’t know anyone was reading this here blog. I was just practicing in my spare time. What am I practicing? Thought you might ask. Just in case I find myself running for president in sixty or seventy years, I thought I might need a little background on how to warm up a crowd at a retirement center. Now I know just how to do it, sort of. Anywho… we’ve all got to keep ourselves occupied, what with Big Green up on blocks like a 1976 Chevy Monza that needs a ring job. We’ve been blowing oil for about 5,000 miles now, folks. Time for a tune up. [METAPHOR OVER.]

Right, so … what are we doing? Recording, that’s what. I’ll tell you, this podcast of ours ( THIS IS BIG GREEN ) has gotten us back into the studio on a regular basis, and not just to drink beverages. We’re just putting finishing touches on two more Rick Perry songs, to be premiered on the February podcast under the moniker of Rick Perry and the Recognizable Hicks. (They are to us what the Dukes of the Stratosphere were to XTC … only with 80% more hick.) Think of it as a thematic strain, like Christmas has been with Matt for umpteen years or more – once you start, they just keep coming.

The podcast versions are like first drafts, mostly, though our Rick Perry songs are as close to finished as anything is likely to get here in the Cheney Hammer Mill. The rest of it is pretty bare bones – Marvin (my personal assistant) playing drums, some twangy guitars, a stray sousaphone. At some point we’ll collect all of these numbers into an album and call it SONGS FROM HELL or RARE FOOT DISEASE or something more appropriate, less offensive, etc.

Anyway, stay tuned. More stuff to come, in one form or another. (Okay… I promise not to sing “Yellow Rose” again. Now will you listen?)

Usual Rubbish

Nail and tooth.

BANG! BANG! BANG! goes the hammer. POP! POP! POP! goes the rivet gun. RING! RING! RING! goes the phone. It’s our neighbors, the antique dealer. He’s telling me to shut the hell up. “Turn it down, the radio!” he shouts over the phone, and I smile quietly to myself.

Why am I amused by this? Hey… when you call a dump like this “home”, you must find amusement wherever it may be lurking. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we are always looking for new distractions. Is that because Big Green is not what you would call a “performing” band? Perhaps, perhaps. Fewer reasons to venture out of the mill, particularly now that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes our grocery runs for us. “You trust him with money?” I imagine you’re thinking right now. My imaginary answer would be, “No; we program him to work as a day laborer before he goes to the store. That’s how we roll.”

Well, goddamn-a, why do we need a robot’s money… when a Google search on “Big Green International House” turns up more than five million sites? No man can say. Perhaps it is that vow of poverty. Not that any of us took such a vow, but perhaps someone else took one for us. In any case, we have to keep busy somehow, right? And aside from Googling our own names (and album titles) there must be something productive we can do.

So hell, I’m building a new Big Green web site. It will be big… and green. Perhaps shiny, perhaps not. I’m not super crazy about shiny, to tell the honest truth – it makes things look too much like what’s looking at them. Anyway, that’s what all the hammering is about – that’s the sound of Web development up here in the sticks. That’s what it sounds like when someone is building a Web site you can really sink your teeth into. A site that is chewy, not cakey… just the way you like it.

As you might expect, we’re doing this – as we do our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – on a shoestring. A little infusion of venture capital wouldn’t go amiss right now, truth be told. Get Bain on the phone. No answer? Hmmmm…. must have closed up shop. Start picking numbers randomly out of the phone book. (I’m addressing Marvin, you people – don’t try this at home.) Someone out there must be looking to drop some cash on an ill-considered venture.

Uh-oh. The phone. It’s my neighbor again. Or it’s Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm. Either way, I’m fucked.