Tag Archives: Bobby Sweet

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.

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.

Casting some pod.

We just did that, man. It’s still summer, right? What? October! What the hell … we’ve got some work to do. First task: find out what happened to July. (I know I left it around here somewhere.)

Oh … hi, friends of Big Green. Seems like I’ve lost track of time just a bit. I’m off by about three months, but hey … who hasn’t lost a quarter, right? It’s probably somewhere deep in the sofa cushions. Except that we don’t have a cushioned sofa here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Just chairs. Stark wooden chairs. We sit, straight as a board, until the darkness comes, then we retire. It’s  hard, but it keeps us honest. (Honestly … it’s hard! The chair, that is.) We ain’t got no time for no podcast stuff round these parts, no how. Now GIT! Ah …. sed …. GIT!

Whoops … lapsed in to Bobby Sweet mode just then. (Not to worry. Bobby Sweet wouldn’t hurt no one. He just has a hankering for big guns.) Yeah, I can blame the calendar, I can blame my momentary lapses into stereotypical rural jargon, but when you come right down to it, the fault is mine. We haven’t posted a podcast in three months, and it’s because we haven’t finished an episode in that long. Hell, it took me all summer and half of the fall to write the script for the upcoming installment of Ned Trek. We recorded the audio last week in a couple of hours, and now it’s off to editorial. Which is to say, we need to cut the living shit out of it.

Did somebody see my summer lying around here?Hey, anyone out there who works with audio and video knows, this stuff is time consuming. Especially when you’re a lazy sloth like me. I’m a bit more like Bobby Sweet than I care to let on, truth be told. I like to sit back and strum on my old guitar, pound out a few chords on the old piano, drop some canned fruit in the old blender and swear at the fact that it still doesn’t work. All I can say is that, despite the distractions, we are working on the THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast and it will appear very soon. Which is to say, it won’t be another quarter. Maybe a nickel. Stay tuned!

Inside December/January.

Did you toss it up there? Good. High enough for everyone to reach, I hope. Sometimes you have to warm the arm up a bit, like the old windmill baseball pitch, then let it fly, and hopefully it lands right in the sweet spot. That’s pretty much all you can do. Server technology is tricky as hell.

Oh, hi. As you may or may not know, we posted our Holiday/New Year episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, this past week, and already it’s generating serious buzz. No, seriously … I try to listen to it, and all I get is a buzz. (I’m told that’s my ear buds.) Now, if YOU listen to it, you’re likely to hear the following:

NED TREK 35: The Romney Christmas Special / Ned Trek Reunion Special. Well, we tried to make an extravaganza this year, and obviously failed. Then we tried to get the lousy show up in time for Christmas, and, again, we failed. However, it has been posted in time for New Year’s, and this special Ned Trek is certainly worthy of a holiday as nondescript as New Year’s. The intention was to put together something that resembles one of those lame reunion specials for The Brady Bunch or The Manson Family (hint: one of those is fake), including some unknown hireling actor playing Jan (or in our case, playing Perle). Also featured is Jimmy Sweetwater, the guy inside the Nixon robot (not the voice actor). The “special” is variously hosted by Gladston Goodstein (aka Peter Lorre), Dr. Carl Sagan, and Lee Majors.

Embedded in the show are six Big Green songs, including:

Romney Christmas Special Theme Song – A ludicrous little number featuring Nixon, Kissinger, actual Perle, Ned, Willard and other voices. Covers some of the thematic underpinnings of this failed adventure in audio entertainment.

Christmas Business – Another Willard number capturing the true confiscatory spirit of the holidays. Refreshingly brief.

Sorry, man. You're not needed this year.Plastic Head – This song is a slight redo of a number Matt did for his 1988 Christmas tape, this version sung by Ned. All about a vehicular encounter with a roadside Christmas miracle coupled with metaphysical transposition. Just listen – you’ll get it.

Bobby Sweet – A new song, roughly about America’s gun culture. At Christmas.

Christmas To End – This is another retread of a song Matt wrote for one of his gift tapes, this one from 1994, re-recorded as a Sulu song. Let the war on Christmas begin … again.

He Does It For Spite – Re-recording of a song from Matt’s legendary 1990 Christmas tape, about a spoiler spirit from the great beyond. True story.

PUT THE PHONE DOWN. Matt and I talk about … uh … I don’t know what. We do bad accents, talk about beavers, sing weird songs, and generally make merry by the standards of this dark time. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it. (And hopefully a whole lot more.)