Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

Homearriving.

Yeah, there’s some in here, too. Yep, all over the floor. Jesus Christ on a bike. Where are all the freaking buckets? Why don’t squatters have landlords … with buckets?

Oh, hi… Yes, Big Green has made its triumphant return to Earth from its somewhat less-than-triumphant [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, pulling our rental spacecraft into a low, low … very low parking orbit (approximately 100 feet above the Earth’s surface) over the Cheney Hammer Mill, our abandoned mill of a home in upstate New York. And, as will happen when one leaves one’s home for a stretch of weeks, some maintenance issues have emerged to greet us, providing us with distraction even before we’ve had the chance to remove our tour galoshes. They say all roofs leak, but I doubt they all leak this badly. My converted hammer assembly room suite looks like a freaking swimming pool. I think I see fish.

Right, well… that’s the kind of problem you expect. What I didn’t expect was to have to deal with obstinate bandmates after our return as well as throughout the tour. I’m thinking specifically of … wait for it! … Marvin (my personal robot assistant). You may have thought I was going to say the mansized tuber, but really… he’s no trouble, hanging out in his specially climate-controlled terrarium, working his smartphone with both roots, tweeting pictures of himself in a methane sauna on Neptune. (Very therapeutic for cruciferous beings.) No, no… Marvin gets the prize this week. He has refused to leave the circa 2001: A Space Odyssey rent-a-vessel we took on this latest tear through the solar system. He has developed what Mitch Macaphee (our mad science advisor) calls “Hal 9000 Syndrome”. It’s a bit like Stockholm syndrome, except, well, a lot less congenial.

Okay, so Marvin is refusing to open the pod bay doors. This is not a tragedy. We’ve got too much on the agenda to care, frankly, so he can float up there, 100 feet above our heads, and play Captain Bligh to his brass heart’s content. Matt and I have a Christmas podcast to produce, and time is running thin… I mean, short. (Premise is running thin.) Lord knows we want to have an action packed episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN posted before the fat elf flies – an episode full of new recordings, old yuletide favorites, an outtake from our “classic” (i.e. elderly) album 2000 Years To Christmas, and just the sort of incoherent ramblings you expect from us.

No, no…. you don’t have to thank us. Just send buckets. Lots of buckets.

Usual Rubbish

Back to ground.

Okay, then. Is that a wrap? What? It’s already the holiday season? What happened to freaking October? Okay, then… so it’s a Christmas wrap. Satisfied?

Oh, hi. Yeah, I know. After ten weeks on the road, tempers wear a little thin. What, you got a PROBLEM with that? (Sorry. I’ll start again.) Post Thanksgiving slump. This shipboard life is not for me; nor, apparently, is it for anyone else on board. Speaking of bored … this business of bobbing around the solar system is bloody tiresome. I don’t know how sFshzenKlyrn stands it, year after year, millennium after millennium. It’s just as well that he’s a transcendental etheric life form that ignores all boundaries between space, time, and whatever. (Especially the whatever. The man simply cannot take anything seriously.)

And then there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s bouncing around this tin can like… like a robot in a tin can. Of course, he always gets antsy this time of year, when the big robotics convention is taking place back on Earth. He is constantly checking the Web for updates, seeing if any big strides have been made. Always has to be in the vanguard, our Marvin. Get used to it, man – one day, time leaves all of us behind. It’s freaking inevitable. In fact, it’s the great hairy screaming inevitable that is our universe. Who cares if some table-top tractor can solve equations faster than you do? You still can…. well…. lift very heavy things…

And then there’s the marigolds, the marigolds. What? Sorry… there  are no marigolds. Oxygen is running a little thin in this rattletrap we call a spacecraft. We’re somewhere between Jupiter and five miles away from Jupiter, running low on fuel, supplies, and what-not. Ever run out of what-not on an interstellar voyage? You do NOT want to know how awful that can be.

So anyway… it’s back to Earth for us, or the Earth that will be left when we return – an Earth wracked by climate change, war, illness, poverty, and rapacious corporate greed. Home sweet freaking home, just in time to do our annual Christmas Special podcast. Stay tuned!

Usual Rubbish

Seasoning.

Season’s greetings to you all. And we of Big Green say hello as well, whatever the so-called “season” may have to say. (Who ever heard of a talking season?)

Just writing whilest we’re having a little Thanksgiving layover on Titan, moon of Saturn, mother of all Tofurky. (Yes, this is where it comes from.) Taking a little break from the feasting, conversing, and pontificating (Anti-Lincoln is back on his Mexican-American War soapbox again), so this is a good time to open the mail, it seems. Most of our inquiries appear to be about our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, so let’s start with this:

Dear Big Green:

On your podcast, I heard you read a bogus letter asking why so many of your songs are about war. You, of course, never answered the question to anyone’s satisfaction. I now challenge you to do this thing. What is with the war kick?

Sincerely,

Gen. Douglas MacArthur (deceased)

Well, General – thanks for listening to our podcast, first of all. Why do we write about war? I don’t know. Why do we write about Christmas? Sure, we’re not soldiers, but then we’re not practicing Christians, so neither makes sense. I guess you could say we’re just ranging around for material, grabbing anything that doesn’t run away screaming. (And some things that do.) Sometimes we ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to name themes for us using his autonomic radomizer. We’re that desperate, dude.

Here’s another:

Dear Big Green:

I’ve listened to your previously unreleased songs. They sound, well, half-baked. Is that intentional, or are you just too damn lazy to finish them?

Best,

Phil Specter (deceased)

Hey, Phil – it’s a fair question. Yeah, the previously unreleased songs on the podcast are, in fact, literally half-baked. They are first drafts, if you will (or even if you won’t), of recordings for our next collection of material. We’re planning to track the better ones and release them under separate cover. These initial recordings are basically Matt and I playing the songs like we do as a two-man band, with a basic rhythm track, guitar, keys, vocals. That’s it. No wall of sound yet. We’re working on the sheet rock right now, man. Patience!

Whoa, is that the time? Back to the Tofurky fest for me. Cheers.