NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(October '00)

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10/1/2000

Houston, we have a problem, over.... (bzzt!)

Do you read me? Sure hope so. As is usually the case when dealing with interplanetary commerce, our fortunes have taken a decidedly malevolent turn. Why do we take these gigs? Is it the money? The prestige? The complimentary buy-one-get-one-free coupons for unfiltered canola oil (while supplies last)?

One at a time. It can't be the money, because we've discovered that our performance fee will be paid in Zenite spoflas (the native currency of our extraterrestrial guitarist sFshzenKlyrn) which, at current exchange rates, now trades at about 17.926 billion to the dollar (and that's before duties!). It can't be the prestige, because we've also discovered at the eleventh hour that the Venus show's headliner Mortadella has insisted we perform not as Big Green, but as the back-up band for some ludicrous tenth-rate circus act billed as "The Atomic Robot Man From Orion," which requires us to dress up like tall buildings and fall over backwards whenever Robot Man approaches.  Finally, it can't be the coupons for canola oil because everybody knows there's no such thing. So, why do we do it? There can only be one answer: sFshzenKlyrn's damnable Zenite powers of persuasion. 

We first began to see the cracks in this deal when we finally got a good look at the vehicle that was to carry us to Venus. Did I say cracks? I should say gaping holes! Suffice to say, my 1968 Volkswagen fastback had more structural integrity than this sucker, not to mention a better heating system. Of course, sFshzenKlyrn's peculiar biology doesn't require anything like oxygen, heat, or atmospheric pressure, so he saw nothing wrong in taking a rag-top space jalopy to the misty planet. And as you may recall, pressure suits were not in sFshzenKlyrn's transport budget. 

Let me tell you, friends -- I'm pretty tolerant of people's affectations, especially those of our friends from other solar systems, but this time I put my foot down. If sFshzenKlyrn wasn't going to supply us with space suits, it was down to me. I worked the phones until I located one of those tux rental shops that also specialized in outer-spacewear, and went down for a fitting. I admit, it felt a bit like copping out. I mean, if everybody else was going to forego oxygen for a couple of days, where did I get off, right? And consequently, I was subjected to a few scoffs and sneers here and there. But we all ended up on the same page eventually (we can't afford to rent three suits, so we agreed to trade off, each getting one day in the suit at a time).

If that had been the extent of our troubles, it wouldn't have been so bad. But then, I forgot what a terrible driver/navigator sFshzenKlyrn is, and how he blew the final week of our interplanetary tour last June (see our tour diary). So here we are, bobbing along in space at a snail's pace, with no functioning instrumentation to tell us where the fuck we are. John's been trying to work out our position with the Johannes Kepler model of the solar system he picked up at a garage sale, but so far no luck. I'm not convinced we're moving at all. If anyone down there on earth has access to a telescope, see if you can spot us (we're the ones in the modified Bel-Aire convertible), then mail the declination and right-ascension to:

Joe Perry of Big Green/Bel-Aire convertible/Void of Space

I should get it. (You can also email me at jperry@biggreenhits.com.) Oh, and one more thing. HAAAAAALLP!

Mass Debates. It's a pity we're stuck up here in space with no television, radio, or string-tied soup cans, because Tuesday Night is the big match-up between Tweedle Dumb (Al Gore) and Tweedle Dense (Dubya). Even without the three of us watching, they should have a large enough audience to satisfy the corporate sponsors that they were right in not running "Survivor" a third time. (Can hardly miss on that one.) This, after all, is a traditional ritual that dates back to a time when there was...very little ....difference....between...Hey! Carly Simon is right. These are the good old days!

Most people look back fondly to the Nixon/JFK debates, when both candidates were falling all over each other to prove which would be the more fanatical anti-communist. But just as interesting is the history of debates that never were. Nixon-McGovern 1972, for instance. (Big Dick said no way, Jose, to that one). I personally treasure the memory of the 1976 debate between Carter and Ford -- the one that started with some kind of network difficulty that delayed the action maybe ten minutes or so. There you had the spectacle of the leader of the world's most powerful nation and his chief electoral rival standing at twin rostrums, waiting for the cue that it was okay to start. That profound silence gave us all a better look at what was coming than anything either candidate said, once they got the sound working. 

Don't stay up too late. Eat more beets.  

jp  

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10/8/2000

Mayday! Mayday!

Or is it Columbus Day? Don't know. Must've passed out. Can't use subject pronouns. Turning into George Bush senior. 

As you may have guessed from the tenor of my opening statements, this Venus gig has gone terribly wrong (what else, right?). I told you last week about the ludicrous arrangements we were conned into -- the ramshackle spaceship and the renegade Atomic Robot Man from Orion. I also may have mentioned the fact that we somehow agreed to letting sFshzenKlyrn (the renegade sit-in guitarist from Zenon) take the controls. That may not have been our first mistake, but it was certainly the worst among many. Like many from his sector of the galaxy, sFshzenKlyrn has absolutely no sense of direction (with an infinite lifespan and a body impervious to all elements, who needs a compass?). As a result of his navigational deficiencies, we've earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first Earth band to land on the surface of the sun. 

Matt started getting suspicious when he noticed the sun seemingly growing larger with each passing hour. sFshzenKlyrn laughed this off, explaining that, at this time of year, the sun was between Earth and Venus, and that he knew a shortcut that would shave days off of our travel time. An hour or so later, as I saw Mercury rolling by my cabin window like an overripe tangerine, I recalled the predicament Dr. Smith had gotten the Robinsons into vis a vis the sun and its withering heat -- so hot it could, according to Prof. John Robinson, "reduce the hull of this ship to butter!" Just as I was approaching sFshzenKlyrn to voice my concerns, there was a great thud, and there we were, our nosecone stuck in the molten crust of sol. Bad luck. 

Before the burning sun had had the chance to transform our hull into that popular dairy product, John wrested the controls from sFshzenKlyrn's...um...grip and pulled us back into deep space. We were late for the gig, of course. It was a blessing in disguise. The Atomic Robot Man had already done his thing by the time we arrived, having conscripted trained mimes to sit in as tall buildings. So we were off the hook. All there was left for us to do was to stand still for another one of sFshzenKlyrn's annoying group photographs -- this time including the lead singer from Mortadella (extreme right), who actually had to stand back a few miles to fit in the frame. (We're all holding our breaths, incidentally, to avoid exposure to the Mortadellan's plutonium-laden exhalations.)

Have we learned any valuable lessons as a result of this harrowing experience? (Do we ever?) Only time will tell. As we limp back to our reconstituted six-room lean-to on the outskirts of Colombo, it's hard to see how we might benefit from any enterprise that netted us 237 Zenite spoflas (approximately 12 cents) and the darkest suntans we've had since childhood. (We're thinking of changing the band's name to Malibu Barbie. Don't tell Mattel.)

Planet Waves. The Venus passage places you in the path of some pretty strange interstellar transmissions, most of which seem to be emanating from that little blue planet known as Earth. Tuesday night, in the midst of our unwitting trans-solar insertion, we picked up the signal of the gruesome first Presidential Debate. The first thing we saw on our video monitor was the image of Al Gore (at that instant, we thought we were tapping into a rehearsal session for the Atomic Robot Man from Orion, but the sight of Dubya set us straight).  

I have to say, I was a little disappointed in Dubya. After all the free advice we gave him during last summer's tour, he still came off as, well, uninteresting. I think a minor prosthesis is in order. Lookit -- the guy wants to come off like Ronny Reagan, right? He's constantly trying to pull off that little Ronny "gee-whiz" smile, isn't he? Well, why should he ask people to settle for what amounts to a cheap imitation of Ronny's successor, when simply by employing an inexpensive face mask, he can look just like the gippet...I mean, the gipper himself? 

Hey, Dubya's got the brains to play Reagan. All he needs is the face. Tell him to give me a call -- I'll fix him up. And then no one will care that he's a pinhead. 

Profile-o-mania. The thing about Rudy Giuliani is...the guy just loves to hear himself talk. Rising to the defense of his trigger-happy Street Crime Unit once again, Rudy suggested that as many as 2 out of 5 black men harassed by SCU could be arrested for some kind of crime. Of course, this contradicts his own Police Department statistics, which show that 78 percent of 45,000 people stopped by SCU in 1998 were released without charge (and 90 percent of the total  were blacks and Latinos). A slight disparity. 

Then again,  maybe Rudy was awarding bonus points. Perhaps the boys get extra credit for bringing in a dark one, with additional points for beating him up. If that's the case, Amadou Diallo should work out to be the SCU equivalent of a triple word score. 

See you back on that wacky planet Earth. Wear your love like heaven. 

jp

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10/15/2000

Greetings. Important message to follow. 

Back on Terra Firma, I'm glad to say, after our somewhat harrowing experience on the surface of the Sun. Sri Lanka seems downright cool to me now. I'm thinking about importing a parka from that great northern country we used to call home...what was it called? 

There were a few minor problems when we got back home. First of all, it seems our interplanetary work visas were not exactly in order. In fact, they were forgeries. Our Zenite guitar player sFshzenKlyrn obtained them for us, of course. It turns out that, instead of going to the proper authorities and dealing with a lot of red tape, he took the streamlined approach of applying for our documentation at our neighbor's tree house. That's the same tree house we commandeered while our lean-to was being resurrected, incidentally. It is now occupied by our neighbor's 12-year-old son and his pals. They were more than happy to help sFshzenKlyrn out. (I suppose the fact that my work visa was written in crayon on the back of a waffle box should have tipped me off.)

Anyway, we had to fork over our entire earnings for the enterprise -- 237 Zenite spoflas -- to the ministry of interplanetary travel. Then, of course, there was the money we have to give those kids for our bogus documentation (apparently, sFshzenKlyrn got the papers on credit, and now we owe the usurious little fuckers $500...including 40% interest, compounded daily!) On Zenon, it seems, there's a sucker born every minute. 

Now, I wouldn't  want to give you the impression that I'm overly obsessed with money. Not in the least. We of Big Green do what we do for the sheer pleasure of doing it. It is the joy we derive from making music that compels us to undertake such perilous journeys, not bald greed. That's not what this band is all about. We have long since renounced all forms of material possession, including our own physical bodies. Even when there is some level of remuneration involved in our performances, our true compensation is purely spiritual, not monetary, and...hey -- who put that picture there!! Matt? John?  

It's a fair cop. I admit to some level of money lust. But I'm not going to let it rule me. Those kids in the tree house didn't mean any harm. (...little bastards...) And I'm sure one day they'll fully understand the implications of what they did, then do what any decent American kid would do -- open a Colombo branch office for Patton Boggs. 

But this is no time for regrets. We've got twenty new songs on the way -- none of which have ever been heard outside the walls of our humble lean-to. And now the challenge for Big Green will be finishing those songs before the neighborhood kids repossess the place and put us out onto the street. 

Harrumph! Well, a U.S. warship has been attacked in Yemen, and in every corner of the world's last remaining superpower, rogues and politicians are expressing their shock and outrage. Of course, the two (or is it one?) major party candidates are vying to see who can grunt louder over this episode, decrying this cowardly terrorist act at every opportunity. The suspects are being lined up by the corporate media as we speak -- no doubt NBC News is dusting off its chilling animated graphic of Osama Bin Laden's head superimposed over the helpless earth. 

They say politics stops at the water's edge, and in a real sense, this is true. Both (or is there just one?) major corporate parties read off the same page when one of our many warships is attacked somewhere around the globe. That's because they draw on the knowledge and experience of the same group of seasoned foreign policy experts -- a brain trust that ensures the continuation of the same global policy no matter which party is in the White House. (You'd probably recognize them if you saw them...)

So don't fret, voters! No matter who wins this November, you'll get the same militant foreign policy you've known and loved for decades now -- the one that has starved over half a million Iraqi children since 1990 and has pushed a "settlement" on the Palestinians more draconian than the maximalist dreams of Ariel Sharon just a decade ago (and they call this prison "peace"). That's your personal superpower guarantee!  

As for the rest of the world, look out. If somebody doesn't pay with their lives for this USS Cole incident before the month is out, I'll eat my lean-to. And as the Sudanese know very well now, it won't much matter who does the paying, if you know what I mean.  

Be careful, my friends. Wherever you are in the (third) world, I hope that inevitable cruise missile doesn't have your name on it. 

luv,

jp 

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10/22/2000

G'morning, world. 

It's kind of nippy here in Sri Lanka this morning; temperature somewhat more reminiscent of October in upstate New York, the land of Big Green's genesis so many eons ago. In as much as we are a "virtual" entity, geography doesn't matter. We bring the Autumn with us wherever we go -- even where there ain't no Autumn.  

Work progresses on our next album, albeit slowly. It's the same old story. Matt (pictured left) and I scribble down some random lyrics, mix it together with our rudimentary instrumentation, then pour it into John, who renders the raw materials into some manner of rhythmic enterprise. On some projects it takes a little longer than on others -- usually because we've left out some crucial portion of the formula. Or we forgot to plug John in. (We have to leave him unplugged most of the time. We've got cats, you see. Then there's those pesky fire codes.)

In columns past, I've written about our composition techniques and the various paradigms we follow. Matt's are probably the most controversial. It isn't the carbon content of the raw ingots so much as the low specific gravity of the final product that give Matt's songs their rugged musicality and extreme tensile cohesion. Of course, there are technical reasons for this as well, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say that, where Matt is concerned, the content goes in before the song goes out. That's his personal quality guarantee. 

But hey -- Big Green isn't just about content. We labor tirelessly in service to our muse, composing for the sake of art, not money or fame. We want to leave something of lasting value, so that years after we've departed from this wiggly world, people will know our music and associate it with something good...a new model of Volkswagen, for instance. You know, like Nick Drake and that "Pink Moon" Cabrio ad. VW advertising has always been a reliable indicator of a composer on the ascendancy, going back to Volkswagen's initial rollout in May of 1938. Talk about a big media event! If Wagner wasn't a household name by then, he certainly was after this feisty little introduction by der Fuehrer.

Not that we're depending on government intervention to help cement our place in musical history. But hey...if someone passes that particular Elvis tray around, we won't turn it down.

Mass Debates (cont.) We'll, the major party candidates have had their go at one another. And the most remarkable result is how little of substance separates them policy-wise...and marketing-wise. They're both playing to the same general audience (middle American "families") on behalf of the same corporate sponsors (energy companies, pharmaceutical firms, agribusiness, etc.). It's battle of the shills -- who can seem more blandly positive about draconian policies regarding the poor, the incarcerated, those bothersome middle-easterners, etc. 

Perhaps the most telling moment came during the exchange over the death penalty. A member of the "Town Meeting" audience mildly confronted Dubya about his glee regarding capital punishment, as smirkingly expressed in the previous debate. Dubya of course pulled out an expression of the utmost gravity. Given Texas' highly politicized judiciary and ludicrously inadequate public defender system, a "Gore of the people" would have had plenty of ammunition on that one. But being a long-time supporter of Capital Punishment, Gore was basically in full agreement with Tex, taking the "controversial" opinion that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime (controversial only in the sense that there is no factual basis for thinking so). 

No wonder they're neck and neck in the polls. They've only got one neck. The only thing keeping Gore from moving further to the right (for the sake of marketing himself more successfully) is the fact that Bush is shoulder to shoulder with him. They should consider a merger. Dump the veeps. Make it Bush/Gore 2000. They're made for each other. Then liberals don't have to feel so bad about voting for this guy (right). Or at least someone who isn't suspended atop an ocean of corporate swag. 

Hey, you in the "Third World" -- Clinton's biting his lip, so keep your heads down. Gotta go. 

luv,

jp

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10/29/2000

'ello. 'owareya?

It's late October here in Sri Lanka and we're slowly coming to the realization that the holiday season will soon be upon us once again. As I look out my lean-to window, over the construction barrels and into the brickyard just across the street, my mind trips over the memory of seasons past -- of carols, camaraderie and cups of Cheer. 

Did I say Cheer? It might have been Tide. Or Biz. It was a liquid detergent, in any case, whatever the brand. 

Many have asked (and I won't say how many or which ones...) about our strange obsession with the pseudo-Christian shopping holidays; for instance, why our first "commercial" release was something like 2000 Years To Christmas and not just a...well...normal record. That has as much to do with where we are when we write the songs as anything else. As you already know from your grammar school geography, Sri Lanka is about as close to the north pole as you can get without snowshoes. (That's why it gets so hot here in the winter months.) Because of the earth's rotation, we spend the year circling around that battered little encampment known to retailers everywhere as "Santa's Workshop". You can actually see it from here (Right now, I can see the smokestacks peeking over the line of Gingko trees on the other side of the brickyard.) 

Matt, John and I have gone on commando missions (see photo) to get a closer look at Santa's little operation. It's pretty scary. He's running some kind of sweatshop there -- rows of machines manned by genetic mutants wearing pointy hats and curly-toed shoes. (It looked like they were filling an order for Nike...) That fat old man runs a tight ship, too. He's got some big goon named "Cornelius" walking the aisles, keeping up the pace and firing anyone who collapses from the stress. One mutant was so exhausted, he made a train with square wheels. He was immediately sent to "Hermie," their dreaded in-house Nazi dentist. I could go on, but...

Anyway, from this vantage point, we get a lot of material from which we then fashion songs like "Head Cheese Log" and "Martha's Christmas." One of our earliest Christmas numbers -- "Up North" -- is about one such commando raid. Read all about it. And the three most important elements of songwriting?  Location, location, and location. 

Got questions? Don't let them fester! Send them to your primo source of Big Green lore, yours truly, at jperry@biggreenhits.com.  You won't be sorry. 

Getting It Reich. Speaking of sorry, has anyone noticed this ugly thing happening in North America known as the presidential election? I don't mean ugly in the sense of mean spirited. I mean ugly in as much as, for the rest of the world, both major candidates offer the same thing: continued economic and military hegemony. In other words, more of the same, friends...more of the same. 

One thing you can depend upon is continued large expenditures on "Missile Defense" technologies, despite the failure of the project's various beneficiaries (TRW, Lockheed, etc.) to demonstrate any level of technical success. Not that that should make a difference, in any case. When the U.S. has the world's most advanced nuclear arsenal (including weapons systems that would circumvent even a fully functional Missile Defense system), suggestions that US planners seek only peace seem a bit, well, disingenuous.

But what the hell can you expect? It's just another case of Goring and Goebbels working off the same page. Big Herman wields the deadly arsenal, and little Joe sells it as needed defense against all kinds of malign international forces, seeking to destroy us. Everybody's got their little job to do. And everybody's wearing the same smart uniform. 

Wake me when it's over. 

luv, 

jp

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