Tag Archives: Ned Trek

Banjogeddon.

2000 Years to Christmas

So, wait a minute. You say the Chicago tuning is like the top strings on a guitar? Is that so? What about the standard plectrum tuning? Oh … and I think I turned the peg too many times … unless it’s supposed to sound like that. My bad.

Oh, hi. Just caught me in the middle of a session. No, it’s not the kind of session we usually have here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted squat-house in upstate New York) – something a bit more prosaic. As always, Big Green is making do with whatever is around us at any given time. When we made 2000 Years To Christmas, for instance, we were short on effects, so we had to use the mill’s steam HVAC system to get some decent reverb. Then, when faced with a shortage of horn players during the sessions for International House, we had to retrofit the mill’s HVAC system so it could be used as a brass section. And when our mastering deck broke down in the middle of mixing Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, in a moment of desperation we routed the tracks through the HVAC system, which may explain why that album sounds the way it does. (There has to be a reason.)

Right, so we’re sorting through the songs we’ve written and recorded since 2013, mostly Ned Trek related numbers, with an eye to enhancing the tracks before attempting to release them to the public. And in more than one case, it seems like we’re a little light on the stringed instruments. Only trouble is, our guitars are all out at the guitar laundry …. I mean, the tech. The only thing we have left is a four-string banjo left here by the “Old Ones.” (How many centuries ago? Even Ruk doesn’t remember.) The strings are made of some nameless substance that I’m afraid may have once been a living thing. The tuners are worn away to nubs. There isn’t a good thing to be said about the remains of this instrument. In other words, it’s a perfect addition to our next album … whatever that may be called. (Something with banjo in the title?)

Hey, that's great, Abe.

I have to tell you, it’s been close to a decade since I last played a banjo. (And what’s worse than that, even then, I never knew how to play the effing thing.) That’s why I’m working with our resident expert, Antimatter Lincoln, on how to at least tune the instrument. He prefers the Chicago tuning, being a former resident of antimatter Illinois (or Sionilli, as they call it). After that, he started giving me some pointers. Things like, “Don’t cross the street with your eyes closed,” and “Keep your feet under your knees at all times,” and who could forget, “Avoid the Ford Theatre on April 15, 1865.” No pointers on how to play the banjo, but he did rip into a couple of songs while I was in the room, and let me tell you … he makes me look like a good banjo player. (Notice I said “look” and not “sound”.)

This may end up with some kind of dueling banjos standoff between me and Anti-Lincoln. Who will prevail? Music, my friends … that’s who.

Cold Files.

2000 Years to Christmas

How long do we have to stay down here, man? It’s five below zero. Next time we’re bringing a can of sterno or something. Maybe one of those highway flares. Ah yes – blessed warmth.

Hey, out there in internet-land. Yes, here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, doing what we usually do – nothing much, interrupted occasionally by nothing whatsoever. We lead a sedentary life out here among the ruins of a former mill-driven regional economy, brought low by the greed of post-industrial corporate financiers. So I suppose it is they we have to thank for our adopted abode, right? I mean, if they hadn’t massively dis-invested in this community and moved all their operations to the Philippines ages ago, there wouldn’t be any abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for us to squat in. So it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow someone some good, somewhere. Somehow.

What’s the nothing that we’re doing today? Ah, nothing much. Just digging through our piles of junk in boxes, looking for old recordings and unfinished projects begging to be reborn. I’ve recruited Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to serve as a kind of metal detector/divining rod, using his advanced sensor technology to scan for magnetic tapes or abandoned discs. When he comes close to either one of those types of objects, lights start flashing and his antennae start twirling around counterclockwise. Then a little mechanical bird pops out of a little door in his forehead and crows the hour. That’s when we all break for lunch. (Even if it happens at 10:00 at night. Lunch is whenever the birdy sings, that’s it.)

Joe: Hey, man .. You picking up any signals?

Marvin: squx.

You may ask if we’ve found anything interesting, to which I would reply, “Funny you should ask!” Actually, our time rooting through the basement was pretty much wasted. Hell, I could have looked on our old hard drives for music projects of every description, unfinished, abandoned, neglected, and so on. We started recording Rick Perry songs (later collected in our ridiculous third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick) in probably 2011, then went right into the Ned Trek songs, which number in the scores – probably 120 songs over the course of six years. In between all that, we started to resurrect some older material from the 1980s and 90s – songs we had done demos of but never full-on recordings. I’m not sure how many of those there are. We’ve played a few rough mixes on THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, but some have never seen the light of day. Or the dark of night.

So now, when we’re bored, we rack up one of those old numbers, hit play and twiddle the dials until it sounds like something that’s not junk. If we do that long enough, we’ll send some of it your way. That’s just how we roll.

Inside Christmas.

2000 Years to Christmas

Wait, what? It’s over? That was fast. How about Michaelmas? Is that over too? Okay, well … I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Was it fun? Did everybody have a good time? No? Ah … okay.

Yeah, I know – 2020 sucked, all the way to the end, right? That appears to be the consensus. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green has been known to keep Christmas in an unusual – perhaps singular – way. Like last year, when we built a big plaster volcano and set it off at midnight. Or three years ago, when we all got really, really high, then ended up trampling all over our neighbor’s chocolate pterodactyl farm (though the next day they denied ever even having one in the first place – strange). This year, on the other hand, was a low-key affair, given the COVID restrictions that even we observe … with the exception of our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who eschews masks in favor of an ultraviolet force field device he wears around his neck. (It glows when it’s running – very impressive, particularly after lights out … which in the Hammer mill, comes around sunset.)

Well, at least ONE of us is safe from COVID.

Anywho, you may have noticed that we dropped an episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, lately on a kind of hiatus, but still just about kicking. Yes, like everything else about this year, it’s kind of lame, but at least it hearkens back to a simpler time …. such as the year 2017. In any case, here’s what’s in the show:

Ned Trek 35: The Romney Christmas Special / Ned Trek Reunion Special. Originally broadcast on Christmas 2017, this non-episode of Ned Trek is patterned after cast reunion specials they used to run for, I don’t know, the Brady Bunch, or …. some other tripe. Pearl is played by a different annoying actor. The Nixon Android is present, but only the guy inside the Nixon Android suit, not the voice actor who read his lines. (Note: Ned Trek is an audio podcast.) The show includes a bunch of Big Green Christmas songs, including an early mix of Bobby Sweet, remakes of Plastic Head, Christmas To End, and He Does It For Spite, and others thrown together to round out the farce. (Don’t miss the cheesy T.V. pop version of Away in a Manger at the start.)

Older Ned Trek Songs. We included a few numbers from Ned Trek 15: Santorum’s Christmas Planet, as we haven’t spun these in a good long time. They include Christmas Green (a Romney song), Horrible People (a Ned song), Neocon Christmas (a Pearl song), and Make That Christmas Shine (another Romney song, a version of which is posted on our YouTube channel).

Song: Pagan Christmas. Once again this year, we included this track from our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. For a variety of reasons, this track gets a lot of play around Christmas. Our main streaming platform has us down for more than 300 plays this month, which for us is a lot. Kind of a minor hit with the pagan / wiccan crowd, particularly over the last ten years. Glad to have them as listeners.

Yep, it was a clip show. I know, man. Like everyone else, we’ll try to do better in 2021. Happy new year, campers!

THIS IS BIG GREEN: December 2020

Big Green comes in days late and dollars short with a cobbled-together clip-show extravaganza that includes an encore Ned Trek special, some warmed-over chestnuts from our holiday songbook, and surly commentary. Let that Christmas shine.

This is Big Green – December 2020. Features: 1) Put the phone down: Joe talks about the year that was. Spoiler alert: it sucked; 2) Ned Trek 35: The Romney Christmas Special / Ned Trek Reunion Special; 3) Song: Romney Christmas Special theme, by Big Green; 4) Song: Christmas Business, by Big Green; 5) Song: Plastic Head, by Big Green; 6) Song: Bobby Sweet, by Big Green; 7) Song: Christmas To End, by Big Green; 8) Song: He Does It For Spite, by Big Green; 9) Song: Christmas Green, by Big Green; 10) Song: Horrible People, by Big Green; 11) Song: Neocon Christmas, by Big Green; 12) Song: Make That Christmas Shine, by Big Green; 13) Pagan Christmas, by Big Green; 14) Time for us to go.

Dream off.

2000 Years to Christmas

Turn it to the “golden oldies” station. Yeah, that’s the one. Okay … maybe a little Bob Seeger will wash it away. Hmmm. Turn it up a little. Little more. Oh, god – that’s enough! TURN IT OFF, THE RADIO!

Cheese and crackers, what a night! Now I know you’re used to that being a positive expression when it is issued from the lips of a rock musician, but that’s not the kind of night I’m talking about here, folks. This is one I slept through, for the most part. I was dreaming like a madman, and I heard music in one of my dreams that stayed with me after I woke up. It’s like someone planted an earworm in me while I was sleeping, and I can’t freaking shake it. (Well, I did shake it, literally, but that didn’t help.)

And yes, I know many great songwriters and classical composers harvested some of their best themes from dream music. Again, I am going to back over another popular preconception about musicians. Yeah, I hear music in my dreams, and sometimes it sticks with me when I wake up. But with me, it’s almost always lousy as hell. Whoever does the incidental music score for my dreams is a freaking hack. For crying out loud – everything in my life is the low-rent version of something decent. Some people have sophisticated androids. I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who’s little more than a hopped up samovar crossed with a hot water heater. Some people have tony mansions. I live in an abandoned hammer mill with a bunch of lunatics. Poor little motherfucking me.

There, see? There is a resemblance!

Okay, I feel better now. Got to get these things out of your system, you know. Now if I could only get this dumb-ass dream music out of my head. It’s a plunky little number in 10/4 time that goes absolutely nowhere, so it loops easily, and it goes round and round. And round. I’ve tried going to the supermarket and wheeling around an empty cart while listening to piped in music, but that was unsuccessful. Next, I think I’ll cue up all of the Nixon Android songs from Ned Trek, our other podcast. I think there’s about a dozen of them. Listening to an audio animatronic Nixon sing about his misfortunes in 12 different ways should be an ideal method for burning this plague out of my brain. NOTHING can survive Nixon.

Which reminds me … what the hell happened to our fourth album? We were going to build it out of selections from our Ned Trek catalogue, but thus far, no potato. Maybe that little earworm is trying to tell me to get my lazy ass moving. Jesus. Why not send a telegram, for chrissake?

Old stock.

2000 Years to Christmas

Huh. Is that what it actually sounded like? Don’t remember that at all. That’s probably down to drug use, I guess. Like all those Dead concerts I never went to. (At least I don’t remember going to any.)

Hello and welcome to another chapter of Archive Summer, with your host, Joe of Big Green. (Kind of a medieval sounding name, right? I am Cleetus of Taberg!) As I mentioned in previous posts, there’s precious little for band members to do during this time of COVID-19 social isolation, unless you’re into performing online … and have a decent internet connection. We could try to do streaming performances, but it would sound like one of those old novelty greeting cards that plays a tinny little loop of “Happy Birthday” when you open it. (Except we would NEVER play Happy Birthday. Copyright, you see …. those fuckers are litigious as hell! In fact, I shouldn’t even say the name of that song, let alone play it.)

You wouldn’t think that, living in an abandoned hammer mill, we would have much of an archive, but that’s where you’re wrong. DEAD WRONG. God no, we carry every piece of flotsam and jetsam from our previous lives along with us, like traveling hoarders. None of it’s worth anything, of course (we hocked all of that years ago), just sentimental value … with the emphasis on mental. The fact is, when you’ve been a “recording” group as long as we have, you tend to have a lot of recordings lying around. Some of them go back to the 1970s, but those are pretty rough and, well … just never mind about those. They’re a bit like those tight-fitting velour shirts dudes used to wear back then – not something you want to advertise. Like most bands, we started life badly imitating people we liked, then started to piece together the ad-hoc approach to music that Big Green is now known for. (To the extent that we’re known, of course.)

Uh, Marvin ... this is a microwave. The DA-88 is downstairs.

Our back catalog includes a mountain of stuff. Super early songs recorded straight to stereo on cassette machines and beat-up living room reel-to-reels. Faux “multi-track” recordings pieced together by bouncing tracks from one cheap recorder to another. A lot of Matt songs recorded on his first four-track cassette deck and subsequent similar machines – there are literally more than a hundred of these. Then we got an 8-track Tascam DA-88 deck in 1995, and we recorded 2000 Years To Christmas on that, among other things. (I’ve got some cassette submixes of unfinished songs from that system). In 2001 we moved to a Roland VS-2416 deck, which we used to make International House and most of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. For the last few years, we’ve been using Cubase Artist to record the Ned Trek songs, most of which you can hear on our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast (now on hiatus) or our Ned Trek podcast. Needless to say, there’s a ton of unreleased material, and I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant), trawling through all of it, looking for, I don’t know, caramels hidden in piles of shit. (Sounds delicious!)

Hey, it’s summer, right? We’ll start posting stuff again soon … but for now, another mint julep. (That’s a drink, Jim.)

Retread.

2000 Years to Christmas

Huh. Ever had the feeling that you’ve lived a particular moment before? Or been someplace you’ve never been to before? No? Okay, well …. I’m having it right now!

Okay, now I don’t know how many of you out there have ever had the pleasure of producing an album that’s made up of songs you’ve already recorded. Show of hands? Let’s see …. five …. six …. ten …. and a few more way in the back. So maybe just fifteen of you. That’s fifteen out of five billion, okay? I think the point’s been made. And if I sound testy, well, it’s been a long goddamn day and I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW.

Um ….. sorry. Anyway, my point is that making an album out of existing songs is like building a staircase from the pieces of your previous staircase. Which is what one of my landlords did once. Then my next landlord fixed a hole in the porch roof by tearing down the entire porch roof and throwing it into the gully behind the house. Don’t even get me started on what he did to the plumbing. But I digress …. again.

Okay, so you know how when you’re shopping at Costco or Hannaford or whatever, once in a while they throw a little something extra in your shopping bag, like a coupon or a hard candy or some discarded fruit? That NEVER happens? Okay … bad example. You know how sometimes you get something cheap and something even cheaper comes along with it? Well, in case you haven’t been paying attention, that’s how we’ve been handling our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, for a number of years now. So with each free installment you get an episode of Ned Trek, and that thing often contains additional giveaways, like a brace of original songs, roughly recorded in our makeshift basement studio.

Hey, I think I've played this part before.

You just blew my mind.

You with me? Good. What we’re doing is taking some of those giveaway songs and hammering them into shape. After we do that, we’ll line them up in random order and call it an album. It’s kind of like what we did with our last album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, only our Ned Trek songs were a bit more considered (if no less ridiculous). We don’t have a title or a theme, just 80 or 90 songs to sort through and winnow down to maybe 15 or 16, maybe less. Some we’ll polish, others maybe re-record. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) thinks it’s deja vu all over again, but he’s just channeling Yogi Berra.

Hey, we all have hobbies, right? Not right? Okay. Not my day for being right.

Unresolved.

2000 Years to Christmas

I had that piece of paper five minutes ago. Did you see it? Okay … was that before or after you started the fire in the fireplace? Before … I see.

Well, I HAD a list of New Year’s resolutions all set to share with you, but apparently they have gone up in smoke. Sometimes when I ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to do something, he gets it done via the path of least resistance. Start a fire, I might say, and if he’s holding a piece of paper, whether it’s some scrap from the day before or the original Declaration of Independence, that becomes the means of ignition. (As an aside, if you’re wondering what happened to the original Declaration of Independence, well … ask Marvin.)

Hmmm … let’s see if I can repeat them from memory. Here goes.

Resolution #1: No disputes with our crazy neighbors.
Hey, look … I know they’re annoying and randomly cruel, but they live upstairs and they’re not going anywhere. The least we can do is make an effort to be more tolerant. We can start by overlooking little slights … like when they try out their new fracking rig by drilling a hole in our ceiling and injecting toxic fluid into our living room.

Resolution #2: Finish what you started, fucker.
Yeah, we need this one. After all, we still have a fresh Ned Trek episode under construction, to say nothing of our anticipated fourth album, still in the planning stages. It’s easy enough to get the ball rolling downhill. But when it comes to … uh … okay, that’s a really lousy metaphor for what I’m trying to express. We drop the ball, that’s the rub. Gotta stop that thing.

It's a metaphor, okay? Jesus ... just let it go.

Resolution #3: Don’t. Just don’t.
Well, we weren’t going to. Not sure where you got the notion that we ever would. We’re not that kind of band, okay. So don’t even think about it.

Resolution #4: Tour more.
Okay, this is a controversial one. Not everyone wants to pile into a ramshackle interstellar vehicle and prattle off to another galaxy just to entertain shapeless blob-like creatures that have never even heard of us. You really have to love that sort of thing to do it for a living, you know? So we’re putting it out there – book away, Anti-Lincoln, and let’s see who’s serious about making some deep space magic.

Resolution #5: Keep your dumb-ass blog posts short
As much sense as this makes, I’m afraid we’ve violated it merely by penning this post. What can I say? Half of our new year’s resolutions are straw men anyhow. We can just knock this one down on our way to fulfilling the more important ones.

Resolution #6: Build more straw men
Okay, now you’re just fucking with me. I only have one answer to this, and that’s … fulfill resolution #5.

And for you.

2000 Years to Christmas

T’was the night before Wednesday, and all through the house not a minion was haunting, not even the louse … who lives upstairs. And this isn’t a house, it’s a freaking mill. Anything else?

Hah. So much for seasonal poetry. Not my best effort, I’m afraid. Hope all is well in your part of the country at this festive time of year. Did racist uncle Bob come up from Montgomery County? Did he break the electric blinds in the dining room again? Thought so. He does that every year, for crying out loud. Then he starts crying out loud. And your pretty little Christmas goes up in flames. Not a sound around the holiday table; just the ticking of the grandfather clock. The ticking! THE TICKING!

Whoa, THAT took a dark turn. My apologies. It’s kind of a subdued Christmas around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill this year. Sure, we stand at the ready to fill 20th anniversary orders for our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, a space odyssey. We’re anticipating order #1 … any day, now! In the meantime, one selection off of that now generation-old album, Pagan Christmas, got more than a hundred plays on Spotify last week. That prompted us to include it in this month’s THIS IS BIG GREEN (TIBG) podcast episode, which features a re-broadcast of a musical Ned Trek episode from a couple of years ago, plus some holiday songs, plus …. me talking like an idiot. That’s a holiday trifecta. You’re welcome, America!

What do you get for the Lincoln who has everything?

What else did we get you this year? Well …. there’s a couple of rare coins in my pocket. (Quarters, which are rare when you’re broke.) We also took a few moments to re-post a special Christmas episode of Ned Trek we played two years ago on TIBG. It’s called “It’s a Profitable Life” and it features no less than five Big Green Christmas songs …. and none of them pulled from 2000 Years to Christmas. If you haven’t heard it already, or don’t remember it, well … give it a listen. It’s got Paul Ryan in it, for crying out loud … or a bad imitation of same. And in case you haven’t heard! No, it doesn’t stack up well against the more mainstream holiday classics, but that’s because it’s a cheap-as-hell podcast performed by non-actors derisively portraying well known political figures as thieves and imbeciles. In other words, a dead ringer for the real thing.

Did Santa bring anything else this year? Well, we shall see. If you are very, very good, there may be an orange in the toe of this stocking. Or a lump of coal. If it’s the latter, for crying out loud … don’t burn it!

THIS IS BIG GREEN: December 2019

Big Green mails in its last show of 2019 with an encore musical episode of Ned Trek, some seasonal songs, and a wan attempt at celebration. Bring on the new decade, people … this one sucked!

This is Big Green – December 2019. Features: 1) Put the phone down: A brief intro from that mother Joe; 2) Ned Trek 33: The Nimrod Seven (an encore presentation); 3) Song: If You’re Listening To This, by Big Green; 4) Song: Commander I’m Dead, by Big Green; 5) Song: Doctor In The House, by Big Green; 6) Song: Wait For You, by Big Green; 7) Song: Nimrod, by Big Green; 8) Song: Neocon Captain, by Big Green; 9) Song: Nixon Is Saving Us All, by Big Green; 10) Put the phone down … again; 11) Song: Pagan Christmas, by Big Green; 12) Song: Bobby Sweet, by Big Green; 13) Song: Christmas Spirit, by Big Green; 14) Song: Vital Signs, by Big Green; 15) Exit, all.