Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Getting by with a little help from some fiends

October 15, 2021 Joseph

Okay, here’s the thing. I’m too big in the frame. It goes against the theme of the series, dude. If there’s one thing Big Green doesn’t like, it’s inconsistency. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles.

Oops! Didn’t know anyone was reading this. You just caught me having a little disagreement with Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is serving as my video producer this month. Nothing serious – just an obscure conceptual question that has vexed us since the beginning of this blog post: how nano is nano? What means this? Allow me to explain.

A question of scale

We’re doing a little side project called the Nano Concert. Perhaps you’ve heard us nattering about it in previous posts and on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. You haven’t? DAMN IT! Marvin, did you forget to publish the blog posts again? Why have I been wasting my breath? What’s that? You DID publish them? Uh, okay. Never mind. What was I saying?

Ah, yes. The Nano Concert is really just a virtual mini solo concert by yours truly (Joe of Big Green), playing some old favorites from the beloved Big Green song book. We recorded six songs, played them on the podcast, and are in the process of posting them to our YouTube Channel. Can we truly describe this as a nano concert? Is it more than merely small? Well …. six songs doesn’t even make a set. And I’m too lazy ass to do more than that in one go. So in my book, it’s nano.

Strings v. keys – the reckoning

The funny thing is, on five of the six songs, I’m playing six-string guitar. Now, those who know me well (and those few fiends who enjoy our music) know that I don’t play any instrument particularly well, but that if you were to rank my ability to play them in order of best to worst, it would go: (1) piano, (2) bass, (7) guitar.

That’s not a typo. I only play three instruments, and guitar is still my seventh best axe. So, why, you may ask, am I playing an instrument I can barely identify from three steps away? It’s the challenge, my friends. What fun is there in playing it safe, right? Any true musician craves a challenge. And though I’m not a TRUE musician, I do crave challenges …. as well as various foodstuffs. (You can’t eat a challenge, friend – just remember that.)

Give it a listen, damn it!

Okay, so … do you want to hear me pounding out some old Big Green tunes on a 23-year-old six-string acoustic guitar? Dive on in, my friends! I just posted the last number on Thursday. This is the first in a series of nano concerts, I like to think, though I may have to actually hire a producer rather than having Marvin twirl the knobs.

Whoops. Sorry, Marvin – didn’t know you were listening. You realize that lever you’re pulling will erase everything we did this morning , right? Step away from the console! Arrgh … never mind.

Anywho, here’s the playlist. Let me know what you think, fiends!

Usual Rubbish

Inside September: The Concert That Wasn’t

September 24, 2021 Joseph

What are we calling it? A mini concert? No, that’s too diminutive. A midi concert? Nah … that sounds like I’m running everything with a sequencer. How about a nano-concert? After all, Anti-Lincoln loves peanut butter and nano sandwiches. That’s as good a reason as any.

Well, as usual, your friends in Big Green are putting the cart before the horse. in fact, we’ve gone so far as to actually put the horse in the cart and start pulling the cart around with our teeth. We’re giving him a fun fun horsey ride, only now we’re all going to need orthodontic care and neck braces. But I digress.

What I’m really trying to say (and failing miserably) is that our September THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast includes a solo performance of some six Big Green songs, and instead of coming up with a snappy name for that performance, we just dropped it into the grand pachinko machine known as the internet and left it for you, our listeners, to decide what the hell is going on.

So, well after the fact, we are offering this modest guide to the September Podcast and the six songs I played on acoustic guitar and piano:

Round Up

This is a song I wrote in the mid nineties after hearing a story about a rowdy, racist ATF get-together known as the Good Ol’ Boys Roundup. It’s a bit about that actual party, but really more about the racist culture of law enforcement writ large.

Hey, Caveman

My illustrious brother Matt wrote this song in the 1990s. The title is a callback to an incident in the eighties, I believe, when a friend of our hollered “Hey Caveman” out a second story window to a passerby on the street (a man in robes with a large staff, no less).

Hey, Abe .... what's your favorite nano sandwich?

Do It Every Time

A solo version of a song from our second album, International House. Features some fancy guitar work (NOT) by yours truly.

Meet Me in the Middle

A song I wrote just prior to the COVID pandemic, phase one, when a lot of people were hoping for a bridge of kindness between the two imaginary peaks of Kilimanjaro. This one I actually play on piano, which is an instrument I’ve actually played before. No prior release on this one, though I did do a semi-proper recording of it.

Johnny’s Gun

Another song from International House, this time with gravy. This is a song I wrote after a mass shooting in Brookline, Massachusetts back in 1994. A guy named John Salvi shot up an abortion clinic. The song isn’t really about Salvi – more just about our culture of violence, how we celebrate it in some contexts (i.e. war) and revile it in others (mass shootings at home).

Rich Man

This is an old song, from probably around 1986 or so – maybe the first Big Green song I ever wrote. Another not-previously-released number, along with Meet Me In The Middle, Roundup, and Caveman.

That’s the story, Morey. I have videos of these performances and will post them on our YouTube channel by and by, so that you can see how ridiculous I look when I’m trying to play a guitar and sing at the same time.

Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: September 2021

September 19, 2021 Joseph

Big Green emerges from its long slumber to deliver a pasted-together program of songs from their back catalog recorded live by Joe – a virtual basement mini-concert, if you will, served up on toast. Hey presto.

This is Big Green – September 2021. Features: 1) Put the phone down: Where the hell we’ve been; 2) Joe rehashes the sordid history of Big Green, again; 3) Song: Round Up, by Big Green – live solo version; 4) Song: Hey Caveman, by Big Green – live solo version; 5) A humble non-COVID cough; 6) Song: Do It Every Time, by Big Green – live solo version; 7) Song: Meet Me In The Middle, by Big Green – live solo version; 8) Song: Johnny’s Gun, by Big Green – live solo version; 9) What’s behind Johnny’s Gun, aside from Johnny; 10) Song: Rich Man, by Big Green – live solo version; 11) Coming repulsions … I mean, attractions; 12) Time for us to go.

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