Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

Water under the bridge.

Where’s the list? Damned if I know. It’s somewhere in the forge room, I think, under a mountain of iron filings. Well, you TOLD me to file it! Jesus.

Yeah, looks like I blew it again. So what’s new? We were compiling a list of Big Green songs we’ve written and at least cursorily recorded since our last CD release – Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – some six years ago. Lot of water gone under the bridge since then, and a lot of music along with it. It’s almost like there was a little boat all loaded down with songs, and the water carried it under the bridge. Along with, well, a lot more water. Or something like that.

Of course, this is a list of all of the songs we’ve written and recorded for the Ned Trek portion of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast. There are about 70 or 80 of them, all tolled. So if we decide to release another album, it will either (a) have 70 or 80 songs on it, or (b) be the product of a sane mind. Or maybe it’s two or even three albums. After all, it’s been six years, and before that it had been another five years, and before that, like, nine years. Yeah, we’re slow …. slower than most bands. But hey … most bands don’t have a personal robot assistant (Marvin) or a mad science advisor (Mitch Macaphee). If they did, well, recording albums would take a hell of a lot longer.

Right, but ... which one?

Now that I think of it, we almost never mark the anniversary of CD releases. Last year was the 10 year anniversary of International House, our second album, and no celebration, no party streamers, no commemorative live performances, no fireworks, no flagrant branding exercises hoping to chew the last dollars off of its rotting carcass. We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of our first album, 2000 Years to Christmas, and my guess is that we will do TWICE as much celebrating as we did for International House. At least that. Hell, I still have signed CDs from the tenth anniversary of 2000 Years to Christmas. Want one? Post a comment to this post or email us and we’ll see what we can do.

Till then, I had better get started on that pile of filings. Or that file of pilings.

Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: February 2019

Audio

Big Green celebrates the new year two months late with a rollicking show that includes a new installment of Ned Trek, eight brand new songs, and some incoherent rambling of the sort you’ve come to expect. Let us begin.

This is Big Green – February 2019. Features: 1) Ned Trek 39: Patterns of Horse, featuring 8 new Big Green songs; 2) Song: Find Yourself a Nazi, by Big Green; 3) Song: Oh, V-2, by Big Green; 4) Song: Now More Than Ever, by Big Green; 5) Song: Nazi Lunch, by Big Green 6) Song: The Nicest Nazi, by Big Green; 7) Song: Can’t Do It Without Nazis, by Big Green; 8) Song: Can’t Go Wrong, by Big Green; 9) Song: Soldier of Fourchan, by Big Green; 10) Put the phone down: Popeye cartoons; 11) Remembering Peter Tork; 12} Jonathan Harris on YouTube; 13) Singing about shutting up; 14) Writing the next Ned Trek; 15) Playing with Dave Barber, back in the day; 16) Who’s all dead; 17) Time to go – a strange medley.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Usual Rubbish

Inside December (2018).

It’s called snow, Marvin. The white stuff, falling from the sky? That’s not hard rain, it’s freaking snow. What the hell kind of weather station are you, anyway?

Oh, hi. Well … we’re getting into that time of year when larger mammals hibernate. That’s not how we roll, of course, but we do get a little more sedentary (if that can be imagined) as the winter months wear on. Fortunately, we have our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to keep us hopping this December. Here’s what we’ve packed inside this hollow tree:

Ned Trek 38: The Squire of Mara Lagos. Our new installment of Ned Trek is a takeoff on the classic Star Trek episode entitled “The Squire of Gothos” and features me doing really, really poor imitations of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Perle turns out to be a compulsive gambler this week in a Lost in Space-style plot twist. See what you think … and feel free to play it back at 125% speed.

Put The Phone Down. Matt and I begin our yak session with a rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which maybe goes on a bit too long (we are joined by a Dalek after a few choruses). A little later on we go into dueling Sagan mode, give a nod to talking like a chimp, discuss the merits and demerits of the Ned Trek episode, and take a closer look at Matt’s various medals.

Marvin: It's 37 degrees. Me: Wrong.Song: Christmas is Over Here. I mentioned that we included some warmed-over holiday numbers in this episode – this isn’t one of them. This is just the two of us making up a ridiculous song that has never been sung before and likely will never be sung again. Ain’t that Christmas?

Song: Up North. One of Matt’s very first Christmas songs. This recording is, I think, from the late 1980s, a cassette 4-track master, and one of probably 4 versions of this song we’ve recorded over the decades. We include this one because of the ape-like backing vocals towards the end. Not to be missed.

Song: Quantum Christmas. This is an outtake from the sessions that resulted in our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, back in 1999. We did the mix then decided to leave it off the final collection. Matt wrote this, of course, and it plays with the observer’s paradox in quantum physics as a metaphor for avoiding your relatives.

Song: Dark Christmas. Another outtake from the 2000 Years To Christmas album. It think we thought it was just too long to fit on what was already a longish album, but … there were likely other reasons as well. This kind of sounds like what we sounded like back then as a band, so give it a go.

Song: Ornament. This is another 4-track cassette recording, this from Matt’s 1990 Christmas collection (among my all-time favorites) that he gave to family and friends that year. We did a version of this for 2000 Years To Christmas that didn’t end up on the album, but I much prefer this one.

Enjoy it, folks. Now … back to tracking the weather.