Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

Sing the right one.

Let the eagle soar! Higher than it’s ever flown before! From sandy beach to rocky shore … let the mighty eagle soar!

Oh, hello. Didn’t know you were there. I was finishing up my morning shower just then. Why am I singing John Ashcroft’s signature composition? Well, you know how they tell you that the best way to ensure proper hand washing is to sing “Happy Birthday” while you’re doing it? Well, I thought I needed a song to sing while I wash my ass. And that was the first song that sprang to mind. Just thought I’d share that. (Hiya, Mr. Attorney General!)

So what have we been up to lately? Well, bits and bobs. You know the drill. Everybody’s got their onerous responsibilities to discharge, and Big Green is certainly no exception. Brother Matt has been up to his eyeballs in animal related work, of course. I have been toiling away at my nine-to-five, pulling what’s left of my not-yet-gray hair out. (In bunches.) We’ve got a lot of parts to put down on our next album … it’s just getting to it that’s the problem. Still, where there’s a will … there’s a … will? How does that go again?

Jesus.We’re thinking about another interstellar tour. Now that Pluto is a better-known venue, that seems like a good place to start. Easy to find for our regular audiences. Small, yes. Cold, certainly. And a certain lack of amenities. But Big Green is a decidedly plain clothes gig, man. We don’t kowtow to the suits. That kind of thing is what we call “weak sauce.” We’re sticking it to “the man” – especially Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has apparently entered some kind of beatnik phase. I think he’s been watching reruns of Dobie Gillis. Or Gilligan’s Island, perhaps. He’s rocking a mop top just lately – not sure where he’s going with that.

Well, best get back to work. We will be posting our next episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN before too terribly long, so keep that iPod warmed up.

Usual Rubbish

Density rising.

You may say I’ve got a lot to learn. Seems like this is the perfect spot to learn. No, I’m NOT playing Vegas … not yet, anyway. (Though I did spend a summer in Reno once. Long story, which I’ll spare you.)

Raining like hell here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Wish we had invested in that new roof a few years back, when we were overflowing with Neptunian shekels from our last interstellar tour. Those were the days …. NOT. Yeah, the water is coming in like … well … water from the sky. The mansized tuber is loving it. Not Marvin (my personal robot assistant), though. His brass finish is getting tarnished in the humid summer weather we get up here in upstate New York, and this is certainly not doing it any good. (Kind of vain, actually, that robot. I think he sees himself as a Tyrone Power lookalike. He needs to download some newer movies.)

Over the last few weeks the humidity has been rising. Our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin, insists that it is atmospheric density, not the humidity, that is rising. He has been hammering away at some kind of device that he claims will control the weather, or something to that effect. I could share with you what he told me, but it might cause you some distress. Suffice to say that throughout his diatribe, he managed to end each sentence with the term (and I quote) “BWA-HA-HA-HA!”  I have asked Y'know, I kinda see it.anti-Lincoln, our resident language history scholar, to find me a gloss on that. So far no luck.

We’re still working on our next album, working title “WORKING TITLE”. (We were thinking of renaming the band “Various Artists”, just so that we would show up in the Columbia House 8-track tape catalogs.) It’s slow going, to say the least. We’re re-thinking parts that we put down over the past two years, building on old tracks that were hastily recorded and shipped out via our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Some are rougher than others. And we’re starting with the roughest ones … I hope. (These are pretty freaking rough!)

So, we’ll keep scratching. Keep your eyes open …. especially if you’re driving.

 

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.