They say that Pluto is a big surprise. That may be true for most people, even rocket scientists, but not for the interstellar collective known as Big Green. Ha, ha!
I mean, that stuff about surface features suggesting frozen bodies of methane – um, we knew that. What the hell, you don’t even have to GO to Pluto to know that much. All you need is Mitch Macaphee’s trans-dimensional light-enhancement planetometer. He showed me the gizmo just this past weekend. It looks strangely like that old oscillator we picked up at a garage sale. I guess he probably hollowed it out and filled it with some of that mad science technology. Now it flashes on and off like a … uh … like a flashy thing.
Well, Mitch can tell a lot about distant, frozen planets just by looking at those little lights go on and off. When I tell him about NASA’s revelations, he just rolls his eyes, then mouths the word “NASA” while he makes a face. I know, you probably think he’s still sore over the fact that the agency rejected him when he applied as a teenager, but I think he almost has to be more mature than that. How would he get through the day if he obsessed over every little slight? Such an attitude would have turned him into a deeply bitter, paranoid wreck of a man. Which, of course … um … he is. So that thing I just said … strike that.
We’re thinking about stopping over to Pluto for a brief engagement, maybe four or five shows, back to back. Which sounds shorter than it is. See, if we play consecutive days, it will take something like a month, because each Plutonian day is worth more than 6 Earth days. (See … Mitch told me that, too. HE knows all aBOUT Pluto.) We’re going to try out a few of our Ned Trek songs and see if the Plutonians start throwing frozen methane at us. (Not much more to put your hands on out there, frankly.)
Well, be that as it may. We’re posting a new, old episode of Ned Trek. That’s my news.
Okay, so … this will come as no surprise to any long time followers of Big Green, but we make recordings using technology roughly equivalent to stone knives and bear skins, as the late Leonard Nimoy once put it. (My guess is that he had 1000 times the resources when he cut “Mr. Spock’s Songs from Outer Space,” but I digress.) We are plagued by technical glitches and the spotty performance of superannuated recording equipment, including a first generation digital workstation with no practical means of exporting song data or sound files (namely a Roland VS-2480 from the year 2001). It is choked with projects and ready to keel over.