Tag Archives: Christmas songs

‘Tis the season to be somewhere else entirely

2000 Years to Christmas

No, I didn’t add a sousaphone. I don’t play the freaking sousaphone. I told you, I’m the only one playing. Try listening to what I say, instead of just watching for my mouth to stop moving so you can start talking again. Geez.

Hello out there. Hope all is well with you during this festive time of year. Sometimes festivities can be downright depressing. Oh, sure – there are gaudy Christmas miracles everywhere you look these days. Inflatable snowmen, bloated Santas, flashing lights of every size and color. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) felt compelled to festoon the exterior of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Most sentient beings would say he fell short, but at least he tried.

Christmas cracker concert

Okay, so, as you know, I talked myself into doing a nano concert earlier this year, and thus far the reviews have been … well …. invisible. Audience missing, presumed entertained. Well, that was so encouraging that I decided to do a special Christmas nano concert this year – a Nano Christmas, if you will, in which I would render selections from our sizeable holiday songbook. I can hear the bots applauding already.

So, once again, I’m performing solo for a cheap tablet camera, strumming an instrument I’ve never been able to master, hollering like a crazed chimp. Doesn’t that sound like Christmas? It is our gift to you, dear reader/listener. Not a thing of great value. Not a sausage, though there are such things. An offering like those proffered in days of old. No, I’m not talking about the magi. (Not THAT old!) I mean the days of Matt making Christmas tapes and handing them out to all and sundry. This is the digital interwebs version of that.

Big Green Nano Christmas Concert

Going half way

We don’t observe a lot of traditions. No fish on Christmas eve. No boxing day. No dead carcass of an evergreen tree decaying in the living room. We are non traditional, and that’s why you love us. Of course, we did a whole album of Christmas songs – not the familiar numbers, as you know, but home-made jobs, recorded in the basement, pressed, packaged, shipped, unloaded, and … well … brought back down the basement.

And yes, I know there are twelve days of Christmas. Feels more like twelve hundred, but I digress. Thing is, we’re running on fumes here at the hammer mill. So yes, we will be posting stuff over the holidays. But we can’t afford twelve days of that shit, so we’ll do six. Or seven. No more than seven. But probably six, really.

Hey, half a loaf can still make a sandwich or two, right? We may be starting with the lords a-leaping, but that doesn’t matter, man. It’s the thought that counts.

Watch for those holiday posts on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed. And have a very happy holiday week, people.

The worst of all possible universes

2000 Years to Christmas

Just give me a minute, man. I’m changing the strings on my superannuated cheap-ass guitar. And yes, I’m using new strings. Don’t ask me where I got them. Lets’ just say that someone’s Christmas stocking is going to be a little light this year.

Oh, hi, blog visitors. It’s you’re old pal Joe. Yeah, I’ve made the momentous decision to restring my guitar because I don’t want to even attempt to deliver a Christmas concert on those rusty old cables I’ve been twanging on. And when I say twanging, I mean just what I say. Just give a listen to my recent nano concert on YouTube and you’ll get the picture. And the picture has sound, by the way.

Holiday Tide … I mean, Cheer

Of course, I’ve always been terrible at marketing things. (That’s precisely why I went into advertising, but I digress.) Given that it’s the holiday season, you’d think I’d be hawking our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, like a maniac. But the fact is, those songs are just the tip of the Christmas iceberg here in Big Green land. There’s plenty more where those came from. You’ll see!

Some of those songs are from Matt’s early period, when he recorded Christmas songs on his 4-track cassette deck and distributed them as low-rent, labor-intensive gifts. And then there are some songs from the Ned Trek period, which covers the second half of the 2010s and, technically, is still underway. Many songs in this latter group feature funny voices and bizarre ass lyrics. Oh, and many in the former group, as well.

All about the wormhole

I wish I could say that everyone is looking forward to the holiday season. Fact is, I squat with a bunch of sad sacks. Take Mitch Macaphee (please!). Our Mad Science advisor has spent the past three weeks laughing up his sleeve at Mark Zuckerberg. The reason for that is simple – Mitch has been conjuring wormholes into alternate universes since long before Zuck was a tike. The notion of someone creating a fake universe seems hilariously redundant to him.

Okay, so here’s my question: what if Mitch finds out you can make money at that Zuck scam? Will he borrow Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine and rip open the fabric of space/time? Will he then charge punters fifty bucks a head to step through and shake hands with purple protozoa-men from the fourth dimension? And last, but perhaps most importantly, will he share the proceeds with us? THAT’s what keeps ME up at night.

So, is this your answer to the Metaverse?

The reason for the seizin’

In any case, our Christmas season is starting out like all the rest of them have: fighting off the bailiffs. As you know, we’ve been squatting in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of two decades (or, perhaps, the worst part). The local authorities, bless their hearts, have been trying to evict us for most of that time. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without an eviction notice!

Thus far, we have let our nasty upstairs neighbors answer the door when the cops come calling. Frankly, I think they’ve forgotten we still live down here. And truth be told, I am in no mood to remind them.

Inside November. (Again.)

Man, is that the wind? Sounds like a freaking freight train. There goes the good weather. It was a nice couple of days, but hey …. all good things must end. (Hey Marvin … got any more platitudes I can borrow? Thanks, man.)

Well, it’s November in upstate New York. Things start slowing down a little bit around these parts. That’s partly why we had time to finish another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN and post it this past week. Haven’t heard it yet? Well, this is what you have to look forward to:

Ned Trek 34 – Shitty and a Bit of a Stretch. Another Ned Trek non-musical episode, this one loosely based on the classic Star Trek script “City on the Edge of Forever,” originally written by famed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. Captain Willard, Mr. Ned, Mr. Perle, and the Nixon android all leap into Earth’s history in an attempt to stop a crazed Doc Coburn from changing the past and foreclosing on the future. Will they succeed? Well … robo Nixon does start a home for wayward clowns. That could make all the difference.

Put The Phone Down. Matt and I go into a wide-ranging discussion about Nixon’s happiest days, Seb Gorka’s descent back into internet racist rants, our somewhat spotty memories of the 1970s Eric Idle / Neil Innes parody of Beatle history called The Rutles, a look inside how Matt works on stuff, and a review of the television we used to watch with our parents back in the 1960s and 70s. Some impromptu singing and swanning about on various instruments.

Posted!Christmas Songs. We did a short block of Big Green Christmas songs by way of a little preview of the holidays to come. These include:

  • Christmas Green, a Willard song from one of our early Ned Trek episodes;
  • Jit Jaguar’s Christmas, a relatively recent recording of a quirky, older number we’ve played on the podcast before;
  • Horrible People, a Ned song from a few years ago, featuring the ubiquitous 40s guys on backup vocals;
  • Christmas Presence, a recent re-recording of one of Matt’s several takes on A Christmas Carol (this song appeared on his amazing 1994 Christmas cassette collection);
  • Make that Christmas Shine, another Willard song from that early Ned Trek Christmas special (the one with Santorum’s Christmas planet).

That’s about it for November. We have some more new stuff coming for the Holiday show, which will appear sometime around the holidays (hopefully).