Tag Archives: Ned Trek 33: The Nimrod Seven

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.

Old stock.

I think it’s over there, in that cardboard box. No, no – not that one! The one under that one. Or the one under that. I don’t know, just start opening boxes – I’ll tell you when to stop.

Oh, yes, that’s right … I have a fourth wall. Hello, then. What are we doing? Thanks for asking. We are digging through the Big Green archives again. And when I say “archives”, I’m talking about something that’s really much more rudimentary than that term suggests. Call it a series of boxes, some of which have the Kellogg rooster emblazoned on their side. Then there’s those round Quaker Oats boxes …. I used to make pretend ham radios out of those.

What we’re searching for is, well, some ideas for this year’s Christmas pageant extravaganza. Amazingly, there’s a lot of holiday material that hasn’t been released or even heard for the last ten years. Matt did, what, ten years of Christmas tapes, between 1986 and 1995, with one added on after that for good luck. We’ve got an enormous backlog of 4-track cassette recordings from that period, essentially demos, which we can harvest and repurpose like, I don’t know, sorting through a junk yard for something useful. Don’t ask me for metaphors this early in the morning!

So whatcha got, Lincoln?Now, I don’t want to leave you with the false impression that we are constantly recycling music from days of old. Not a bit of it! In fact, the songs on our last THIS IS BIG GREEN – Ned Trek extravaganza are all brand spanking new (and probably in need of that spanking). Not that we haven’t reached into the old grab back in past episodes. Usually around the holidays we start rummaging around for something that will fill a hole in the production. I’m thinking maybe we should just patch in some video of a local 2nd grade school orchestra playing Jingle Bells. Now THAT’S entertainment, people. (Literally every one of those cute little critters playing the same note, all together.)

Okay, so … yes, we’ll be working on a Christmas show. Because that’s how we roll here at Big Green. Next podcast will be another non-musical Ned Trek, then who knows … an actual album? Yikes!

Inside September.

You sent it up the chute already? Okay, then … well … I WAS going to put the good stuff into it first, but I guess it’s been long enough that people will settle for whatever they get. Oh, well … maybe next month.

Yes, you heard right – we’ve uploaded the September 2017 installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN, and this seems like a really good time to talk about what’s inside that honking little MP3 file. Here goes:

Ned Trek 33: The Nimrod Seven. Incredibly, the thirty-third episode of our Star Trek parody, Ned Trek. This one’s based on the classic Star Trek first season episode entitled The Galileo 7, in which Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and some toss-aways get their shuttlecraft stranded on a hostile ape-infested planet.  Well, replace those three regulars with Perle, Coburn, and Sulu, change the shuttlecraft’s name to “The Nimrod 7”, then throw in Seb Gorka, Peter Lorre, the Nixon android, and a Mr. Stephanie or six and you’ve got a poorly-wrought morality play worthy of The Immortal or even fourth-season Big Valley. Oh, yes.

The Nimrod Seven contains no less than eight new Big Green songs:

Song: If You’re Listening To This – A somewhat country-fried Willard song that’s a musical and conceptual adaptation of the “final orders” video Captain Kirk left for McCoy and Spock in The Tholian Web. “You’ll have to use your creed and your opportunities; but temper them with profits from false securities.”  You get the drift.

Song: Commander I’m Dead – A Stephanie Q (or R?) song about the uses of a dead soldier to any canny leader of men. The only lyric I can think of that makes use of the hick-French term “Mercy Buckets”. Non-sequitur backing vocals by The Twenties Guys.

Song: Doctor In The House – A bit of musical braggadoccio from self-reputed alpha male and Nazi progeny Seb Gorka, recently departed from the Trump clusterfuck. Prepare yourself for choruses of “beta cuck”. Tell your wife: here comes Sebastian!

Song: Wait For You – A Doc Coburn song with a real 60s anthem rock vibe. I find myself humming this one a bit as I wait for us to invade all those other places in the travelog.

All settled in?Song: Nimrod – Perle song lamenting his frustrations as commander of the Nimrod 7, the misunderstandings … it’s like everybody speaks a different language! Heavy is the head … and kind of heavy the song.

Song: Neocon Captain – Sulu’s number. Another anthem-like tune that likens the insufferable Perle to Captain Bligh (who ended up governor of New South Wales, by the way.) This is probably my favorite of the tranche (as Sulu songs often are), but you be the judge.

Song: Yo-Ho – A song from Mr. Welsh, with the usual Celtic overtones and undertones. The Yo-ho, Toe-ho chorus is probably borrowed from the Viking episode of Lost In Space, but don’t quote me.

Song: Nixon is Saving Us All – This Nixon song closes out the set; the android’s internal power source is used to fuel the crippled shuttlecraft and, as the title suggests, save us all! Favorite line: “Until we loose the surly bonds and touch God’s face; maybe drop some bombs.

Put the Phone Down. Matt and I banter aimlessly (and occasionally break into song) about what we did over the summer, Seb Gorka, mechanical Nazi men, psycho Batman, and quite a bit more. Give it a listen, anyway.