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Joe Perry is co-founder of the band Big Green and brother to Matt Perry, other co-founder of Big Green. Shall I go on?
Usual Rubbish

Distinct possibilities.

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The trouble with doing liner notes is that, damn it, there aren’t any liners nowadays. Nothing to put the notes on. Are you getting all this? Great.

Just dictating my thoughts to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). What else are PRA’s for anyway if not taking dictation? I had a dictating machine once, but it went off one day and started an authoritarian government in the Philippines … so now I’ve got Marvin. Sounds like a foot disease. (Don’t tell Marvin I said that. Gratefully, he’s not programmed to read blogs.)

What am I dictating to said personal robot assistant? Just incidental liner notes on our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yes, I know, this is billed to be an album by Cousin Rick Perry, for Cousin Rick Perry, featuring Cousin Rick Perry. That is all true. But it is also the next Big Green album, and damn it, it needs liner notes like carter needs liver pills. (Ask your grandfather, kid.) This is a complicated task, so it is taking up much of Marvin’s time these days. Between draining the water out of the basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill and putting buckets under all the leaks in the roof, Marvin is simply run off his wheels. Woe is he who serves Big Green. Woe, indeed.

Whoa. Indeed! Is that yet another band backing up Cousin Rick? What the hell, that makes an even dozen now. It seems like every track has a different backing band, each one weirder than the last. All of these freaking credits. Once we get done paying the mechanical rights on this sucker, there isn’t going to be enough profit left to buy a discarded sandwich at the local pub. (My go-to place for discarded sandwiches.) Damned job-killing regulations! Who the hell says we have to pay every band that plays with Cousin Rick, let alone list their names on the freaking album?

BMI, ASCAP…. anyone else? All right, damn it. Let’s see. Frank and the Texas Hots. No way am I including them. What else have we got?

 

Political Rants

Resolved.

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You’ve heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates – no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, “He’s over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!”)

And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points:

Romney: “I don’t want to cut our commitment to education”

Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I didn’t hear Romney advocate cutting anything. So… if he’s going to cut the federal deficit without raising revenue – in other words, reforming the tax code in a “revenue neutral” fashion – where are those cuts coming from? Not from defense – he’s adding many billions to that as he’s boasted many times. Apparently not from education. His intimations about Medicaid spending sounded like cheap sleight of hand; how does the federal government save money by block granting programs like Medicaid? You’re still spending the money, only without the knowledge that it’s being spent on what it’s intended for.

Romney: OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.

This counts as kind of a bidding war with himself. Romney’s people have been floating this notion of a $17,000 deduction cap on individual income tax. Wednesday night he worked that up to $25 – 50K. Do I hear $75K? Wait another week. Once again, caught advocating for a deeply unpopular policy of ending major deductions like mortgage interest, Romney is cycling backwards at lightning speed. We still have no information on where “loopholes” and deductions could be found to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts – 20% across the board, which he has endorsed.

Romney: It’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan. Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.

Say what? Since the hell when? A week ago, Romney’s plan was for sick poor people to go to the emergency room – that’s what he told David Gregory, anyway. And if keeping your kids on your “family plan” is common in the marketplace, it’s news to working people.

Then there’s the look. The patient, condescending smile while Obama is talking. It’s actually the same look Romney uses when people are saying nice things about him. Fact is, he uses that all the time when he’s waiting to speak. I call it his screen saver.

Barry: Here’s a free line for the next debate. “Hey, Mitt – glad to see you’ve finally come around to my positions on health care, education, and taxes. I’m thinking about asking you to join my administration.”

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Deafening me with science.

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A little louder. Little louder still. Forget headroom! We like our albums LOUD. Turn it up just as LOUD as you can. What? Leave the room? In the middle of a mix?

Okay, well that‘s discouraging. Here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York, mixing our … I mean, cousin Rick’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and I’m just discovering now that I am a lousy engineer. Who know (aside from everyone who listens to my work)? Thank the god of your choice that I have Matt Perry to work with, a.k.a. “Mr. Ears” himself. No, that’s not because he wears Spock-like ear extensions. I’m not saying he doesn’t, mind you … I’m just saying that’s not the reason for the moniker. Though after being summarily ejected from our mixing session due to excessive loudness, I’m thinking about calling him “Mr. Mouth” from now on.

Not sure how Matt can mix an album with his ears ringing, having been recently mentioned by NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati in a speech to students about why he became a scientist in the first place. (Waleed was a neighbor and Matt’s best friend back in the day.) They used to play astronaut in our backyard (as well as the vast stretch of open fields that existed there at that time – perfect landscape for an alien planet). Waleed went on to be an engineer and climate scientist; Matt a conservation officer at a wildlife sanctuary. Waleed works for NASA. Matt wrote One Small Step. So in his own way, each has made his contribution to the nation’s space effort.

Still, I can make a contribution to mixing this album, and I’ll tell you how. One word: Marvin (my personal robot assistant). I’ll just program him to do my bidding, send him into the studio, and he’ll turn all the knobs up to eleven. We’ll be able to hear this album from space, even when it’s not being played. Woo-hoo!

Okay…. enough about me. Just wanted to let you know that the latest episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN is now available. Two new “rough draft” recordings by Rick Perry, another episode of Nedd the Dancing Horse, and a brief remembrance of Neil Armstrong, first man on another world. Not bad for free. Check it out.

Did you say something? Couldn’t hear you over the LOUD MUSIC.

Political Rants

Week that was.

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A lot of campaign noise this week. The various cable networks are completely possessed by the elections at this point. So…. I’ll try to talk about something other than the presidential race this week, just to give you a break. Let’s see how far I get.

To bomb or not to bomb. This week an old acquaintance posted an image on Facebook of Benjamin Netanyahu holding up that cartoon-like image of a bomb with a lit fuse, with the hilarious comment, “Apparently Iran is run by Boris Badinoff”. What’s not funny is that we’re still talking about this, without considering the consequences, once again. Netanyahu is channeling Bush/Cheney 2003, talking about the most dangerous regimes gaining possession of the most destructive weapons. We have seen this movie before, folks. If Bibi wants war, let him be at the head of the line. Another volunteer for the front!

Boston Klan rally. I’m sure some of you saw that group of senate staffers from Scott Brown’s office, parading around with Elizabeth Warren signs, doing cartoon Indian war hoops and chopping the air smirkingly. When you watch this video, just remember: these people are on the federal payroll. This is your tax dollars at work. And remember something else … this is the logical outcome of Scott Brown making race an issue in this campaign. By what he says, he obviously thinks Native American ancestry is something you can recognize by sight. Unsurprisingly superficial coming from this refugee from a designer shirt ad.  I hope Warren kicks his sorry ass this November.

Sacrifice. Sat in line at a medical office this morning with a guy who served in Vietnam when he was 19. He was drafted. One of the ladies who draws blood at this clinic has a son who’s been to Afghanistan, I don’t know, three times, four times. Lost count. He’s got constant headaches from concussion, has to start getting shots in his neck. How long are we going to ask these people to be the only ones in the country paying a price for our bankrupt foreign policy? If we had had a draft like the one that guy at the clinic faced, Afghanistan and Iraq probably would never have happened.

A child could see that this is unfair. So … why do we keep doing it?

luv u,

jp

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THIS IS BIG GREEN: SEPTEMBER 2012 NARROWCAST

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This is Big Green – September 2012 Narrowcast. Features: 1) Song: One Small Step (in remembrance of Neil Armstrong); 2) Romney’s Dancing Horse, Episode 2; 3) Put the phone down: Matt’s trunk rooster incident; 4) Song: Flying Up Ricky, by Cousin Rick; 5) Random observations on random things; 7) Song: North Camp Pasture, by Cousin Rick; 8) Shotgun exit.

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Usual Rubbish

Sing, Rick, sing!

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Turn which knob again? That one? I already turned that one, for crying out loud. Turn it again? Shut the front door!

All these knobs, all these switches… Hey, that’s a good idea for a song. All of these knobs, all of these switches, keep this up and you’ll need stitches, uh-huh. Okay… not a good idea for a song. I’m getting punchy, and small wonder. Matt and I are hip deep in mixing Rick Perry’s new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick … being a collection of songs that arose from some strange sensory phenomena our dear cousin experienced over the past year. You know how when sometimes you have a little too much to drink or a bit too much …. well, whatever, and the world around you gets all fuzzy and weird, and then the next day you find yourself freighted with all these unexplainable memories of odd behavior, like something your fevered mind cooked up in a dream? Well…. Rick wrote some songs about that.

We’ve been putting rough mixes of these songs on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, for the past few months, to mixed reviews, I must say. Here’s a sampling:

What is that sound in the middle of your last podcast? It almost could have been music but not quite…  – jaypod

Tell tex to pipe down. I’m sleepin’ here.   – brooklynfan#482

[expletive deleted] the [expletive deleted] with a [censored].
– nixon’sghost45

All very promising, wouldn’t you say? It’s this kind of feedback that keeps us going, year after year. Like that guy who wrote me last month with the simple advice of “Get a life.” Isn’t that enchanting? Almost haiku-like in its simplicity. I meditate on it daily.

When will the finished album be ready? Well, that depends on how soon we can get a turn at the power tools down in the basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we reside. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the mansized tuber have been building something down there for weeks. Maybe it’s an ark, for all I freaking know – I hear sawing and drilling through the closed door to the shop. “Are you going to be long?” I yell, “We’ve got to start whittling those CD cases!”

Useless. Oh, well… back to the faders.

Political Rants

Soothsaying.

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The trouble with writing blog posts at the end of a week is that, more often than not, you find yourself on the wrong end of the news cycle, when every blogger and talking head has had more than his/her say. So what the hell – I’m going to comment ever so briefly on a few things and then be quiet for a stretch of days. You’re welcome.

Embassy attacks. Been watching the awful scenes from overseas. Trouble is, it’s always that way for ordinary people in many of those countries. Think of what life is like in Iraq still, with the economy and infrastructure still in a shambles and bombs going off regularly, killing people at random in large numbers. We almost don’t even give it any notice unless the death toll reaches north of fifty or so. And yet, I tune in to Talk of the Nation and get to hear Fouad Ajami, formerly known as George W. Bush’s favorite Arab and a strong advocate of the Iraq invasion, talking about what Arab peoples need to do to join the community of civilized nations.  Doctor, cure thyself. (Again… how wrong do people have to be before they stop being trotted out as “experts”?)

Forty-seven fifty-three and fight. Like practically anyone with a television, I’ve seen excerpts of the Romney fundraising video captured in Boca Raton last May. There’s been a lot of talk about the errors Romney has made, but it seems like his most egregious ones are when he tells the truth. I’m sure that’s exactly how he and his advisers see half of the American people – a bunch of layabouts who want everything handed to them. Think about the picture that paints in your mind – who are they talking about? Are they talking about your mother on Social Security, or your father in the nursing home?

I’ve got news for Mitt Romney – and obviously there’s no way he would know this without being told – but when it comes to nursing home care, practically everyone in this country is poor enough for Medicaid. Here’s some more news: old people used to suffer badly before Medicare, Medicaid, and yes, Social Security. My grandfather had a heart condition for ten years before they passed Medicare. Try that sometime, richy, rich.

If there are a lot of working age people getting government checks or food coupons, it’s because Romney’s party skull-fucked the economy over the last decade… not because they want to be there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re now trying to shift the blame for that onto those who suffer the most.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Jupiter rising.

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Great red what? Jesus christmas, I don’t have time for that. I’m trying to stay focused on the Mars mission. Then there’s Voyager, all alone out there at the edge of the solar system already… whoops. Someone’s reading this. Look busy!

Hi, friend(s). You may wonder what I’m rambling about. Though probably not, if you’ve visited this blog before. We run on and on about pretty much anything that flows into our heads. Hell, I was looking at a pizza menu the other day that featured deep-fried Oreos. But does anyone want to hear about it? God no. So we’re going to talk about something more interesting today …. like Jupiter. (The planet, not the derivative Roman god.)

The other day some massive asteroid supposedly hit Jupiter. I say “supposedly” because, to be perfectly frank, I think this incident is actually the work of our mad science advisor, Mitchington V. S. Macaphee III, M.S.D., C.M.F.  (For the curious, his honorifics are short for Doctor of Mad Science, conferred by the University of Berzerkistan, and Crazy Mother Fucker … not so much a degree as a description.) Mitch got the interplanetary exploration bug this past summer with the recent Mars probe (which he almost immediately hacked into for his own nefarious purposes). But Mars wasn’t big enough for him. Eventually he turned his attention to the king Kahoona of planets …. (wait for it!) … Jupiter.

Okay, so here’s how our household works. Those of us who are not involved in the hard sciences share the upper levels of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (I myself occupy a suite just outside the old forge room, basically a storage bay where they kept the hammer handles. I sleep on hammer handles, is what I’m saying.) Down in the basement, next to our makeshift production studio, Mitch Macaphee maintains a mad science lab where he builds, I don’t know, little projects like Marvin (my personal robot assistant), time travel devices, and … crucially… interstellar space vehicles.

You have to understand the fevered mind of the mad scientist. Jupiter has a red spot, right? Mitch sees that as a challenge. Can he make a blue spot? How hard would it be? Would they call it the Great Macaphee Spot if he succeeded?

What happened next should be kind of obvious. I don’t understand the science, so don’t ask me, but sometime last week there was a loud, rocket-like sound in the early morning hours, and the next thing I know, Jupiter has two spots instead of one. Or so Mitch tells me, anyway. Sheesh. I’ve got an album to produce. And a podcast to finish. Don’t bother me with such trifles!

Political Rants

Never forget.

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Anniversaries of 9/11 come and go, it seems, and like most days of remembrance they are not all that memorable in themselves. This past Tuesday (I believe the event actually occurred on a Tuesday, if memory serves) I was up at Syracuse University, walking past a sidewalk medium that held a field of  mini-flags, one for each of the victims of the terrorist attacks. A large sign at one end admonished us to “Never Forget.” Not a very unusual experience on such an anniversary. I’m sure there are fields of flags all across the country at this time of year. Walking past it, though, it seemed like there were so few of them. They were arranged in a big rectangle, with a large space in the middle, and it looked kind of sparse. Is this what more than 3,000 flags looks like?

I think the reason it looked so empty was that there were no flags to represent the hundreds of thousands that have died since that day, and in large part because of that day. The cautionary “Never Forget” is more of a challenge to Americans than its author likely supposed. I can tell you, I will never forget September 11, 2001 – probably the most deeply horrifying day of my life. Remembering that has never been a challenge. What I think we as Americans need to work on remembering is the fact that our political leaders used that atrocity to commit other atrocities in our names. If there is any slippage of memory, it is on that particular slope.

Just remember – by the time September 11, 2001 arrived, the Bush administration was already resolved to invade Iraq and complete the project of regime change that its top foreign policy advisers had signed onto years before. There was plenty of buzz about it in the months leading up to 9/11, and when Al Qaeda struck, the Bush team didn’t miss a beat in commandeering Americans’ shock and outrage towards support of their disastrous invasion and destruction of Iraq. Seeing how easy it was to get people behind the invasion of Afghanistan, they engaged in a full-court press that we would all do well to remember.

There is a complementary notion to “Never Forget;” that is “Never Again.” In complying with the former, we must also embrace the latter.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Process, process.

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Smallest town in the biggest state. Father Joseph, what would be my fate? So starts this month’s anthem of the Hammer Mill. Can’t get that tune out of my head, man!

This writing finds us chin deep in production for our next album. Imagine Matt and me in a roomful of 1-inch Ampex tape, all spooled out and tangled like Don Knotts had it in his space capsule in The Reluctant Astronaut. Yes, we always aspire to such heights. “Why not the best?” we ask ourselves, and the answer, of course, is obvious. (Go right to the source and ask the horse.)

Why do we do this thing over and over again? This “making an album” thing? We’re past the age of consent (well past) and not famous on our home planet. Our best-selling album is welded to the hull of Voyager as it makes its way out of our solar system. (We sold one copy to NASA. They bought it because it features a lead vocal by the late Kurt Waldheim.) The fact is, we are driven. When Big Green first rose out of the primordial soup of the mid 1980s, we had several choices. They were:

1) Go back into the soup! It was quite good, actually. Always like a little ginger in with the carrots. Mmmmm-boy.

2) Start a band, but instead of an indie rock group that has to make its own albums, something less demanding. Call it “Various Artists”. That way, on our first day of existence we would have dozens, perhaps hundreds of albums to our credit, many containing hit songs from every era. Instant popularity! Just add crack!

3) Start an indie rock group that has to make its own albums. With help, of course, from our mad science adviser, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the indefatigable mansized tuber, a couple of Lincolns, and others. (Don’t want to suggest for a moment that we do all this work alone!)

So here we are, patching the rough road that is Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, preparing for final mixes and looking for obvious holes. Hey, there’s a good name for a band: The Obvious Holes. Beats the Recognizable Hicks any day.

Keep your eyes open for more fadeout grooves. Think of them as shards left over in the manufacture of the next album. Or something.