Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

Frankenplay.

How does this sound for a robot voice? “I am not a crook!” What? Well, yes, that IS my Nixon voice, but I’m doing a Nixon robot, remember? How is that supposed to sound, for crying out loud?

Now, who am I again?Oh, hello out there in Real Worldia. No, this isn’t another pointless argument about some instrument none of us plays. We’re just getting ready to record another episode of our Star Trek parody, Ned Trek, now in its 19th episode, featured on our monthly (or near-monthly, at least) podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Not to give away any trade secrets, but I do the voice of the Nixon android, an automaton who holds the entire personal and political history of Richard Milhous Nixon in his memory banks. Likes a good stiff drink every once in a while, Nixon does.

Don’t know if you’ve heard the show, but assuming you haven’t, I’ll give you some idea  of what it’s all about. We take an episode or two of the original Star Trek series and mash it up, replacing the main characters with the following cast members:

  • Willard Mittilius Romney, Captain of the Free Enterprise
  • Mr. Ned, the talking dressage horse, Romney’s first officer
  • Dr. Tom Coburn, ship’s southern-fried surgeon
  • Lt. Richard Pearle, famed neocon and basically a pain in everyone’s ass
  • Mr. Welsh, chief engineer and accent troll
  • Mr. Sulu, helmsman, holdover, and yes, THAT Mr. Sulu

The ship is part of the Confederation of Planets, a dystopian variation of the Star Trek regime, in that it is a grasping, rapacious, hegemonic imperial force bent on exploitation of every planet to within an inch of its life. And, of course, the comedic possibilities that arise from such an entity.

What else? About every other episode we manage to slip a few songs into the mix. The episode we’ll be recording this week will be one of those. Crew members will break into song at random intervals. This is basically our creative output in this stage of Big Green’s lifecycle. What follows this? Compost!

Usual Rubbish

Tossed together.

Not much I can add to that, brother. How about another piano? No, no … not a different individual piano instrument, I mean another piano PART! Holy Jebus!

You are genetically weird.Oh, hi. Sorry about my outburst there. No, I wasn’t having an argument with my illustrious brother Matt, I was just rehearsing for our conversation later on today. I know it may seem strange, but I have to rehearse for just about everything that occurs in my life. Which is even stranger, in fact, because I almost never rehearse for gigs. In fact, you might describe me as downright hostile to the idea. (As a friend once famously said, “Rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow.”)

Now I should say here, no one has ever accused Big Green of not blowing. That just never has been part of our DNA. Granted, we have some errant strands in there; some stray genes that make us more susceptible to, say, living in abandoned hammer mills (which, on a rainy day like today, is kind of like living in a water treatment plant) or keeping personal robot assistants … like Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Yeah, we have a lot of personal and genetic history to live down, but we soldier on. Damn the torpedoes! (No, I mean, really, damn them. Those suckers smart.)

Speaking of abandoned hammer mills, we’re hammering out some new songs for the next episode of the podcast. They started out to be “first-draft” essays of the kind we did in 2012 – those rough little numbers that ended up on Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick in slightly less rough shape. But as we go, they keep getting more and more complicated. Recording is more like painting than sculpting, I have to say – you can keep slopping new paint over the old, sometimes until the canvas is inches thick with the stuff. When sculpting, you can only knock so many chunks off that rock before you’re left with … I don’t know … a smaller rock?

Hey, Matt … where’s my spatula? I’m going with the post impressionist look on this one. (Just practicing again. Love to hear the sound of my own echo in this old barn of a place.)

Usual Rubbish

Tune down.

That doesn’t sound much like a Sousaphone. What if you cup your hands over your mouth … like this? Wa-wuh-wa-wuh. How about that? Too much like a muted trombone? Very well.

Um, maybe.Okay, I admit it … sometimes it’s hard to arrange a song when you’ve only got two musicians in the room, and one of them is me … and the other is my brother. (That’s brother of the same mother, Matt Perry.) The palette is limited, let us say, and of course Matt can’t play guitar and bass at the same time. (I’ve had more than one talk with him about his shortcomings.) And my keyboarding is, well, mostly confined to piano like objects, organs, etc. We’re recording new, mostly very silly songs, and they call for stuff we can’t do ourselves. At least, not without some modifications.

These are songs for the podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and more specifically, for our next Ned Trek episode. Matt wanted a sousaphone like sound, so he attempted to make it himself. On one song, I wanted a harp-like sound, so I fashioned one out of a hair comb and an electric razor. That, too, didn’t work out so well. In any case, we end up just resorting to the usual axes, with a few weird noises dropped in from Neptune. Then we go on an interstellar tour. That’s the Big Green way.

Matt and I have thought about adding members, but I have to tell you, this Hammer Mill is overcrowded even with just the two of us here. I think part of the reason is that this old barn of a place is so stuffed full of creepyness, there’s no air leftover for the rest of us. So the rest of us go celebrate Festivus. And there is much rejoicing. Like when I got those bottlecaps nailed on the bottom of my shoes so I could walk across ice in the winter. That worked … not so great.

Okay, I’ve wandered a bit. Thing is, you might just see us out with a horn player at some point. And maybe someone on kazoo. Stranger things have happened.