Tag Archives: Songs in the Key of Rick

Usual Rubbish

Release minus … what?

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Still watching that space? Well, give it up. That was a joke, damn it. Don’t take me literally … that way lies madness.

Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of RickWell, here we are, inching closer to the release date of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, Big Green’s third and perhaps silliest album ever. Fully 21 tracks of pure, unadulterated goofiness, each one performed by what is nominally a completely different combo. We’ve got the master all set. We’ve designed the packaging for our limited run of CD-Rs and the graphics for our digital distributors. Now all we have to do is, well, complete the arcane process of acquiring ISRC codes for all of the tracks, manufacturing the discs, doing a run of wax cylinders for those listeners still enamored of that format, and so on.

What is the release date? Good question. Ask our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., a.k.a. Hegephonic. They make all the big foot decisions. (By that I mean, they actually have a sasquatch  serving as their Chief Operations Officer. Explains a lot.) Like many artists (and it’s in deference to the mansized tuber that I include us within that rubric), we get impatient with red tape. So when you see the disc – if you see the disc – you will see our own imprint on the package; a logo for Hammermade Records, and well, it doesn’t exist, but it sounds right, so what the fuck.

The mother of all imprintsSome have told us that we should have called the label Hammermaid, like Milkmaid condensed milk. We don’t listen to some people, particularly if they are Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has a particular liking for condensed milk products because they remind him of motor oil. In any case, we don’t take a lot of pains over trifles like imprints and logos, because in all honesty, that’s not what we’re about. We are the original discorporate rock band. We say no to corporate hegemony. We’re off the grid, man. (Aside from all that stuff involving money, paying for things, etc.)

So again, be forewarned. Release of Cowboy Scat is imminent. After which, we will likely go into hiding (or perhaps the witness protection program) assuming Cousin Rick Perry catches wind of this. (Don’t tell ‘im!)

Usual Rubbish

Inside the Scat.

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Still raining? Oh, sure. Hand me the paddle and the sieve.

Well, most of our homeland in upstate New York is under water today. The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill is practically floating away. What better time to crack out an advance copy of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick? What else is there to do, right?

We just released the June edition of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and in celebration of the arrival of summer, it is a two-hour marathon review of the new album, featuring the all-star cast of Ned Trek:

  • Mr. Ned himself, the talking dressage horse
  • Willard Mittilius Romney, commander of the starship Free Enterprise
  • Doc Tom Coburn, who sounds a lot like Foghorn Leghorn
  • Carl Sagan (deceased), famous astrophysicist
  • Richard Perle, neocon chickenhawk supreme
  • The robot Richard Nixon
  • Mr. Sulu (still strangely hanging out with these losers)
  • Lee Majors (still strangely introducing these losers)
  • Mr. Andy Williams (…. not!) 

You’ll hear biting commentary on every track. Then you’ll hear the track. Then you’ll hear … something else, I’m not quite sure what. (I was half asleep and completely underwater while editing this, it will surprise no one to learn.)

The actual album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick is ready for release, so watch this space: {     }. If you watch it long enough and you don’t see anything, by all means contact us. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to locate some buckets. About fifty of them. And sandbags!

Usual Rubbish

Unique opportunity.

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No, this isn’t spam. This is real life. Real as it gets, man. Gravity, oxygen, water, the whole nine yards.

This is what we need. I was just thinking back to the bad old days in the 1970s when television was king and the internets were just a twinkle in DARPA’s eyes. On about five million occasions – maybe slightly more than that – I can remember watching an ad for 120 Classical Masterpieces introduced by the well-known character actor John Williams (not the classical guitarist … nor the composer of the Lost In Space theme song). Now that we are on the verge of releasing our third and perhaps silliest album ever, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, I only wish we had a marketing powerhouse behind us like John Williams. Or even Guy Williams. (Except that he‘s dead too!)

Looks like, once again, Big Green will do the legwork on our own. We have some volunteer help, as you know. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will tell all of his robot friends to download the album. (They don’t even need a freaking smart phone!) The man-sized tuber will be in charge of rural distribution; we’ve provided him with the requisite maps of Nebraska and Idaho. The rest of the country will be handled by the two Lincolns, who – as candidates for the presidency – have tread that ground before with great success. We have great hopes for anti-Lincoln, who has made some friends in Nashville. (Actually, that’s Nashville, Franklin, Idaho. Look it up.)

Yes, distribution is always a headache when most of your fans live on other planets. There’s a cost-benefit issue in trying to ship discs via UPS to Neptune; it’s hard to make that $9.95 per unit generate a profit against the transportation costs, even with our interplanetary handling surcharge of $45,682.53 per disc. Add in the exchange rate headaches, particularly in the Quatloo zone planets, and it’s hard to make your nut that way. Still, we try. Mitch Macaphee has some ideas involving matter transportation technology. All very hush hush at this point. We’ll let you know.

Hey, we live on crumbs. It’s the art that matters, right? That’s why we’re assembling an all-star panel of reviewers for our June podcast – experts who will examine Cowboy Scat from multiple insane perspectives. So stay tuned. This may be the best batch yet.

Usual Rubbish

Fragments of brain.

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If I could think faster than a slow crawl, I would. That’s the issue, always. And don’t look at me like that, Marvin. Not ALL of us have electronic brains.

What would I do with all that brain power? Well, for one thing, I would get our next album out a bit quicker. Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick seems to be in perpetual becoming mode. I know you’re sick of it, I’m sick of it, Matt’s had it up to here, the president has started complaining, the ambassador from Madagascar has issued a protest against Big Green – suffice to say, no one is happy. Hey, well … we’re working as fast as we can. It takes a while to bake all those discs, especially without a convection oven like the big, famous groups have. And then hand painting all those covers. Jesus!

At least, in these modern times, we no longer have to perform the music separately for every disc we sell. That was a real pain in the assets. Eventually, someone – I think it may have been Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, but I’m not certain – told us all about the concept of mastering, then spinning copies off of the master, etc. Up until then, we were recording each copy individually. Talk about quality control issues! Sheesh.

We’ve got an assembly line set up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, just like the good old days when proles were hammering out … well, hammers within these very walls. (Very clammy walls, I should say.) Big Green is applying the lessons first applied by Henry Ford, in that we line up a bunch of underpaid individuals (including robots and man-sized tubers) and have each one handle a piece of the manufacturing process. Then we drastically underpay them, but not so much that they can’t afford to buy one of the discs on their way out the door.

Well, there’s the factory whistle again. Time to get back down to it. LINE THREE! LUNCH IS OVER!

Usual Rubbish

Stuff and … stuff.

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What the fudge. Mother of pearl. Is that the phone again? Take it off the hook – I’m busy, damn it. Busy as John Henry.

What am I doing? Working on our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. A decidedly low-tech collection, recorded in the clammy basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill hear in soggy upstate New York, hammered out with great care and aplomb, dropped out of a three story window, and tied in a bow for your enjoyment. We hope you will be pleased, most pleased. Or at least, not angry, like our landlord, who is demanding all of the proceeds from our album sales in return for 47 months of back rent. (Turns out someone owns this dump after all. Who knew?)

Anyroad, yes, yes, I’m working on a CD package for the limited run we will be burning, mostly for giveaways. Cowboy Scat is going to begin life as a digital release, for the most part. We’ll send a copy to Nashville, one to Texas, one to Wyoming, and a few more of those big, square states out there. The drier the better. We may even send you a copy, one one condition: Don’t Tell Rick!

Yeah, Cousin Rick might be sore when he hears these songs. Can’t blame us. We merely culled them from the score of a musical whose libretto was lost on Lake Tahoe in the 1970s and never recovered. A musical that somehow predicted the meteoric presidential ambitions of a man barely out of short pants by that time. A truly prophetic work! Had it lived….

So, why am I doing the album art …. again … after such a mediocre performance on our previous albums? Simple answer: we are cheapskates. Why the hell else would we be squatting in this abandoned mill for the past ten years plus?

And as they say, it’s the stingy man who pays the most. So … back to my payment plan. Keep those cards and letter coming.

Usual Rubbish

Into the pod.

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Hey, why wouldn’t I want to explain our podcast? You think it speaks for itself? It’s only a little podcast; it needs someone to run interference. Not so hard to understand.

Did you listen to this month’s podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, the May 2013 episode? I’ll take that as a no. Still, you might be missing out on something extra … well … strange. Wouldn’t want to be the only one who didn’t partake, right?

This was a relatively lively episode, full of bright sallies of wit and infinite jest. Here are some highlights (and no, I don’t mean the magazine most often perused in dental office waiting rooms):

NED TREK X: A PLEA FOR ARMS – Our latest installment of our increasingly possible podcast dramatic series, Ned Trek, featuring Captain Willard Mittilius Romney, commander of the starship Free Enterprise, and his talking dressage horse / first officer Mr. Ned. This time out, Willard leads a landing party back to one of the outerspace backwaters he attempted to convert during his callow youth. Special guest star is …. (that would be telling!)

PUT THE PHONE DOWN – Matt and I talk through a broad range of topics and pull news from the pages of the October 1941 issue of Country Gentleman. Care for a Lucky, anyone? It’s the cigarette recommended by 6 out of 10 doctors.

SONG: Surprise Party – This recording was made back in 1987 on a four track Tascam portastudio casette machine; another deep archival bit, rescued from a murky past. Written to mark someone’s birthday.

SONG: Don’t Tell Rick – First posting of a rough mix of our new song, Don’t Tell Rick, which will accompany the release of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. We are having second thoughts about all the stuff we said about Rick, obviously, and well, he’s got guns and rangers. Any questions on that?

SONG: Dinos – We’ve played this number before on the podcast. This has got to be the most ridiculous recording we’ve ever made, but you be the judge. I simply can’t say anymore.

Hey, may … download it. It’s freakin’ free, which means you, too, can afford it.

Usual Rubbish

Lookout: Cleveland.

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Is it coming round again? Hah. Some mad scientist YOU turned out to be. I could get better weather reports from an open window. Stupid Macaphee.

Mitch and his diabolical machine
Mitch and his diabolical machine

Yes, hello and welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, located in upstate New York, once a land of relatively stable weather, but now … rollicking storms. Sometimes I feel like we’re living in a bowling alley, our sorry asses parked in the lanes. I keep wondering if all this atmospheric upheaval is in anyway related to that massive gizmo Mitch Macaphee is always messing with. He just built it last month, and it’s got dials and levers and wheels and lights, and it belches black smoke into the air above the mill. Just like old times, really. Then it rains like hell.

If my suspicions are correct, I suppose that means I owe you all an apology. Or at least Mitch does. Understand – we do not control Mitch, we just utilize his expertise from time to time. He can be quite handy with minor repairs on spacecraft, for instance, like that time when our ion drive went out halfway to Neptune, and we didn’t have a space buoy, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) got automatonic space sickness and couldn’t do the EVA to fix our guidance tracking antenna, so we had to send Major West, and … well…

It gets more complicated after that. Suffice to say, Mitch means well, even if he is trying to destroy the planet (well … he put that on his bucket list, at least). We will try to keep you posted on new developments as Mitch continues to twirl knobs, throw switches, and rub his hands together in glee.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for our upcoming May podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which will feature another spellbinding episode of Ned Trek, some previously unreleased music tracks, and ridiculous conversation about killer chickens and other phenomena.

Keep an ear out, too. It’s really more about hearing than anything else.

Usual Rubbish

Fire away.

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Where did I leave my garlic press? Marvin? Marvin! Jesus. What kind of a dung hole is this, anyway?

Oh yeah … that kind of a dung hole. The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill kind. A place where garlic presses go to die, apparently. This is the third one I’ve lost this month. And I used to have a blender, seems like, though our electrical service is a bit spotty anyway, so it hardly matters that that thing disappeared. Somebody around this mill has sticky fingers. I’m looking at you, mansized tuber! Oh, right. No fingers. Still … those roots seem a little grabby.

Where am I going with all of this? Not sure. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is helping me today with my weekly chore of straightening out the kitchen. Don’t know if any of you have ever lived with a rock band, but let me tell you – no one wrecks a kitchen more completely than wayward musicians, down on their luck. Open cans of kipper snacks strewn about like poker chips. Half-eaten bowls of cereal. Do I have to draw you a picture?

It gets worse … particularly when we’re producing an album. People tend to keep strange hours … like ninety-seven o’clock (really strange hours). There’s a lot of work that goes into putting together an album as complex and nuanced as Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. You may think it’s just another crackpot enterprise, cooked up by a bunch of ass-clowns in upstate New York. And, well … you’re right, but (and this is important) there’s still a lot of work that goes into putting it together. (Is there an echo in here?)

Right now, the song count on this sucker is at 21. I can’t guarantee it will stay there, but if it does, it will be the longest album we ever made and maybe a little too long for a standard CD. Thank god those little discs are as archaic as dinosaurs! Digital releases mean no limits! Make it 35 songs! Quick, write 14 more!

All right, back to the search.

Usual Rubbish

End game.

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I’ll hold the ingots, and you swing the hammer. No, wait. We have to heat them up first. Where’s my butane lighter? Left it on the stove, I think….

Oh, hi. Just caught the core members of Big Green (and its motley entourage) in the process of preparting our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, for publication and distribution. Very complicated process. You know how bizarrely complex our creative process can get; the very task of writing and recording these albums involves no less than 14,000 individual muscle actions per song (and that’s not including all the grimacing). Christ on a bike – by the time we got our last album International House to market in 2008, my face muscles were frozen in place until well after the holidays.

So, how does the manufacturing and distribution work? Simple. We melt down the .wav files into a slurry, pour them into rectangular forms, and cut them into shards – or “ingots” – about the size of a pack of cigarettes. We get Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to sand the edges off of each block of music, then carefully insert them through the mail-slot like hole in the specialized distribution mechanism our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee fashioned for us during his last vaction in Barbados. (He was bored with all of the waterskiing.) That sends the ingots deep into cyberspace and the hungry ears of listeners all across the universe.

Now, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick presents a special challenge. Let me explain. Our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, had 13 tracks. International House had 16. Cowboy Scat promises to include no less than 21 tracks! An unheard of bonanza, true, but think of the ingots! So many corners to sand down… Poor Marvin! What’s more, because Cowboy Scat is rumored to be the soundtrack to a lost musical, each track is attributed to a different music group that sounds strangely like us. That simple fact complicates its distribution in ways that I cannot describe here … for reasons … I cannot describe here.

Anyway, none of these difficulties will dissuade us. We will release this album – you have Mitch’s personal guarantee. (Just leave me out of it, okay?)

Usual Rubbish

Roll with it.

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Whoa, incoming! Keep your heads down, my good friends. Here comes another one! Man, that was close … too close.

Another day at the Hammer Mill
Another day at the Hammer Mill

Oh, hey out there. No, the Cheney Hammer Mill has not suddenly found itself in the middle of a war zone. (Hell, no, we won’t go!) We’re just discussing reviews for our last few podcasts. These editorial meetings can get kind of brutal, especially when we start looking at what the public has to say about us. Just take a look at the Twitterscape and you’ll see what I mean. We get roasted on Twitter every time we open our mouths … even when Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes one of those squeaking noises that just sounds like talking. It’s brutal out there!

Okay, so we’re thin skinned. That doesn’t stop us putting shit out there, friends. That’s because we have a deep and abiding sense of mission. Just look at the line up we have on hand here. Take Lincoln, for example – perhaps our greatest president (though not with us this week as he decided to attend the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, TX, along with all of the living ex-presidents and his evil doppelganger, anti-Lincoln. And the current president, btw). Talk about motivation! And who can forget Mitch Macaphee, mad scientist extraordinaire, inventor of Marvin, promoter of the interstellar space-time warp, and collector of dark matter, that mysterious substance that comprises most of what we know and hold dear.

No, my friends, we cannot be dissuaded by mere cat calls from beyond the internets. We have an album to finish and a podcast to produce. We are behind schedule on both, and that’s okay, because we are determined to finish. HAARUMPH! Right, then. Sorry. I was listening to a Dale Carnegie tape someone left in the forge room a few decades ago. Sometimes that stuff gets into you head, like the earworm from hell. Anywho, we are basically finished mixing Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – that much is true. We’ve got another episode of Ned Trek in the can. Our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast will be posted by the end of the month. Projects, projects, projects.

I don’t know … maybe it’s time for a tour. Any takers?