Tag Archives: live music

Scratching out a whole new way of itching

July 1, 2022 Joe Leave a comment

Okay, that club on Route 5 … was that the Garden Cafe or Looney Tunes? It feels more like the latter than the former, frankly. Jesus, what the hell am I asking YOU for? The only thing YOU remember is random facts about some log cabin and the battle of Gettysburg. And even THAT you get backwards. (Though to you it seems forwards.)

In case you’re worried, no, we’re not writing a memoir of Big Green. Who the fuck would buy that? If nothing else, I can practically guarantee that there will never be a (1) tell-all retrospective, (2) drippy bio-pic, or (3) lost journal having to do with this, the world’s most obscure indie rock group that ever recorded more than 100 of their own songs. That said, we will milk it for a blog post or two. The first one was last week; the second, this week. The third will have to wait its turn.

Back to the Early ’90s

So anyway, in the early nineties we made the questionable decision of basing ourselves in the Utica, NY area, our home town, which at the time was not on a particular upswing culturally. We started by working with guitarist Armand Catalano, playing clubs and campuses around the region, serving up our own songs plus an assortment of covers. As I mentioned last week, the guitar seat in Big Green was governed by the rules of musical chairs, pretty much. Armand played with us, then friend of the band Steve Bennett, and later, other friend of the band Jeremy Shaw.

This was fine, except when we got confused and called guitarists by the wrong first name. There were occasional gaps as well, unsurprisingly. But the gigs we played then represented the least of what was going on in our tiny little world. None of them were in the least high-profile events. We opened for Mere Mortals at MVCC sometime in 1991 , I think. We opened once for Joe Bonamassa’s Bloodline at what is now known as SUNY Poly in Utica, probably in 1993. We played Middlebury College one New Year’s, if I recall correctly. And then there were a bunch of dead end bars.

The output was put out

The thing was, by the early nineties, Matt Perry was writing songs like a house afire. He was writing his Christmas numbers – a new album every holiday season. And he was cranking out a bunch in-between. (No, he didn’t write songs about Saint Swithin’s day – that’s just an ugly rumor about Big Green that some meteorologist started.) We were doing piles of demo recordings, and we managed to get into a studio a few times (the former AcqRok, thanks to friend of Big Green Bob Acquaviva of Mere Mortals.)

We had some live recordings as well. We’ve played a few of them on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and there are a few more we haven’t posted as of yet. Probably the best ones of these are the DAT recordings we made in Jeremy Shaw’s basement in 1993 (or ’94? I don’t freaking know.). Then there was the video demo done by some hipster dude named Angel who worked at a vegetarian restaurant and considered the VHS tape he recorded for us some kind of masterpiece (when it wasn’t).

Yesterday is not today

So, the upshot of all this is, we have a better audio record of the 1990s than we do of the 1980s, when the only technology we could afford was a bic lighter and a pack of Marlboros. Ever try to run sound through a pack of Marlboros? It ain’t pretty. Makes a kazoo sound like a brass freaking band.

Usual Rubbish

Want to hear a song? That makes four of us.

March 25, 2022 Joe Leave a comment

What man can stand the stress of being torn asunder then thrust back together? Who amongst us can quarter him/herself like a piece of fruit for the sake of a single song? What fool would throw his lot in with a madman who finds joy only in the fulfillment of his twisted vision? This guy, folks. This guy right here.

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten the itch to perform. What can you expect after years of being cooped up in this abandoned hammer mill, miles from civilization? Not a living hell, I will admit, but clearly a living heck. It’s been years since we struck out on tour. (I blame all that striking out.) But we live in an age of miracles, my friends. Musicians now perform from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the advent of the internet machine.

Labor action at the abandoned mill

Trouble is, when I raised the question of Big Green virtual performances, the response was less than encouraging. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was game. Antimatter Lincoln offered to play gut bucket (though frankly very few of our songs call for that rustic instrument). The mansized tuber volunteered a few of his smaller shoots to the enterprise. As for the actual band members, well …. not so much.

Can’t blame them, really. This is the busy time of year. Matt is taken up with his Peregrine Falcon project. (He’s gone big this time around, watching them from the deck of the star ship U.S.S. Enterprise.) John is doing his thing (if he didn’t have that, he’d have to get another thing). So that leaves me in kind of a spot. I mean, I can’t play four parts at once …. or CAN I?

Crypto cloning to the rescue

It seems that our mad science advisor has been working on a little experiment of late. I thought I heard some strange noises coming from the north end of the mill. (That was just before it exploded, too. Coincidence, that.) Anyway, Mitch developed something he calls “crypto cloning.” The “crypto” piece is strictly about marketing – Mitch is keen to monetize this new technology.

Here’s how it works: A subject steps into the cloning device, and s/he is cloned four ways. That’s a big step up from making two of the same thing, Mitch tells me. (Twice as good.) The thing is, the cloning only lasts a couple of hours. At that point, your quadruplegangers hustle back into the protoplasmic host from which they sprang. It’s a kind of reverse-amoeba effect, if you know what I mean.

The quadruplegangers ride again

Before you ask, yes, I did let him test it on me. But only just long enough for the four of me to record one of Matt’s songs – a classic number called Going To Andromeda. Check it out on our YouTube channel or our new Instagram account. (Note: one of my clones came out with a mustache. Strange mutation.)

Usual Rubbish

Have a little nano with your Christmas Concert

December 31, 2021 Joe Leave a comment

Have we reached a thousand plays yet? Hmmmm. How about a hundred? No? Right. Hit refresh again. There must be something wrong with that goddamn thing. Stupid YouTube!

Hello, friends. Hope you had a wonderful holiday week. Bet you’re wondering what we’ve been up to. No? Well, I’ll just tell you anyway. Nothing you didn’t already know – that’s the short answer. The long answer is I split a gut getting that nano-Christmas concert done and posted, and it looks like YOU haven’t even seen it yet!

Okay, so a lot of people (a.k.a. Anti-Lincoln) have asked me why we call this a nano-concert. Simple, my dear friend: it’s just my sorry ass on the view screen. That’s it – no bass player, no backup singers, no drums, only me and my distressed-looking Martin, which (I hasten to add) is not an instrument I ordinarily play on gigs. Until now.

A measured response to sloth

I know what you’re thinking. Who in their right mind would spend their entire holiday season break recording and posting a bogus solo concert? This dude over here, man. Sure, I could have done the same as everyone else – drink to excess, swerve my way back home and drop onto the mattress, dead until morning. But that’s not my way. I prefer a much more measured approach to unconsciousness.

Still, the simple fact is that we as a band need to put out more output. (We also need to take in more intake, but that’s another matter.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was an early advocate of the nano-Concert, and so I proceeded with it. Frankly, my expectations were pretty low regarding audience. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

Six of one and a quarter-dozen of the other

Now, I think the hardest part of the nano-concert was deciding which songs to do. It was a Christmas concert, so that narrowed it down a little. Then I had to restrict my list to songs I could reasonably play on guitar, which is fewer still. When it came to actually choosing the numbers, I was all worn out from the first two exercises. (See sloth, above.)

They always said I lack focus, and now I know what they meant.

In the end, I picked two songs from Matt’s 1990 Christmas tape, two songs from his 1991 tape, two songs from 1994, and two from Ned Trek. Some of these songs also appeared on our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. You can also hear one of them on our live EP, Big Green Live from Neptune – namely Merry Christmas, Jane, which I played as a last-minute encore.

Take five

The fact is, Matt wrote so many damn Christmas songs, it would take me five years to play them back to back. And five years is a long time where I come from. Not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but I try not to be overly ambitious in my endeavors. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed our Nano Christmas Concert 2021, and that your holiday season has not been a total dumpster fire. (It it has, tell me all about it!)