Tag Archives: Soundcloud

Mailbag redux.

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve done this, but I think it’s about time we open up the old mail bag and respond to some of the cards, letters, emails, messages in bottles, skywriting, notes tied to bricks thrown through windows, etc. we’ve received over the past, what, ten years?

Full disclosure: Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was tasked some years back with screening our fan mail. I’m not sure he fully understood the parameters of that assignment. Our intention was for him to use the kind of screen that would allow some of the messages to pass through. I guess we should have been more explicit. He appears to have tossed most of them out. Robots!

The thing is dusty as hell, but (cough!) here goes . First, here’s a little message from someone with the code name “Ask” in the United Kingdom:

Aw, this was a really nice post. Spending some time and actual effort to make a superb article… but what can I say… I hesitate a lot and don’t seem to get anything done.

– Ask.

Hey, thanks for your message, “Ask”. I’m not an expert on personal efficiency, but you should get that hesitation thing looked at. You might need a new set of spark plug wires. Luckily, you have the National Health Service over in England, so that shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.

Here’s another one, from this side of the pond:

Hey Big Green,

When the hell are you going to get up off your sorry asses and perform somewhere? It’s been years since you had a decent gig. Why are you wasting your time, posting shit on the internet and making up fan letters? It’s just disgraceful.

– Francis McDonald, Keokuk, IA

Well, Francis, I’m glad you asked this question. I’ve been trying to think of a way to raise this issue with my bandmates, and you have helpfully teed it up for me. I’ll tell you, if you hadn’t asked about this, I might have had to invent a fan letter like yours out of thin air. Thanks for saving me the trouble. I hate work!

Okay, Marvin. You can open it up now.

I think top two reasons we never play live is that we are (a) lazy and (b) old, in that order. That said, I personally do play with other groups on occasion. After the last time I performed, late last year, I spent about two months in physical therapy. As soon as I can save up the credit for more PT visits, I’ll take another gig.

For those of you who missed Big Green’s handful of live performances back in the day, you can hear some recordings of us playing live on either our Soundcloud channel or our YouTube channel. If you hear this and want more, let us know.

So anyway.

Music is a universal language and love is the key. Or maybe SOUND is the key. Love is the lock. No, wait … love is the music, language is the universe, and Francis Scott is the key. That sounds right-ish.

Well, we’re coming up on a little anniversary here at Big Green village, housed in the historic abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in historic upstate New York. (A lot of history up here. Did you know that this area is as old as any other area on Earth?) What’s the anniversary, you ask? Thank you for asking. It’s actually the tenth anniversary of the release of our second album, International House, which we released back in fall of 2008. My goodness … has it been that long? Well, I guess it has. It also happens to be the fifth anniversary of the release of our third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And in case that isn’t nearly amazing enough, next year will be the 20th anniversary of the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas.

Okay, so here are the ratios: 10:2, 5:3, and 20:1. Got all that? Good, because god knows I’m not paying any attention. Don’t get the wrong impression – we’re not one of those neurotic bands that keeps track of every insignificant date in our long history. Lord no, we gave that up on December 3, 1990 when I got that flat tire. WHY? WHY DID IT HAPPEN TO ME? Or was that Matt who got the flat tire? Maybe so. Right, then forget the why, why stuff. So anyway, we put International House out ten years ago. Kind of amazing, seeing as it took us five years to make that album in the first place. Five years, sixteen songs – you do the math. (Don’t ask me how.)

Aw, cheese and crackers!Well, so … how to celebrate? Our plan is to reissue songs off of International House via Soundcloud, so that the people can hear what they’ve been missing all these years. Because, hey listen … it’s all about the people. And what the people need is a way to make them smile. (Fun fact: every single phrase in this blog post is a lyric from some crappy pop song. Well … give or take a few.) All that’s on our Soundcloud site right now is some odds and ends, but that’s going to change, mister. You just wait and see.

And yes, we will get back to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Patience, my friends, patience.

Clown computing.

Wow, okay. Do that again. No, not that one … I mean the hand stand. Okay, NOW the somersault. Can you do cartwheels? Not the donuts, you idiot! The circus trick! Wait … where are you going?

Well, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is off to find a Dunkin Donuts or Crispy Creme somewhere. He’s so damn suggestible. The mere mention of sugar-saturated junk food gets his wheels rolling, quite literally. Marvin was just showing me some of his acrobatic exercises from his days with P.T. Barnum. Now, I know what you’re going to say …. Marvin was just manufactured sometime around the year 2000; how could he possibly have worked for P.T. Barnum? Well, god only knows what materials our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee used in putting Marvin’s electronic brain together, but I suspect part of it may have come from a circus wagon. Robots – where would they be without other people’s memories?

Now that you’re pondering that impenetrable mystery, here’s another one. I was noodling around on our distributor sites and discovered that I can port songs from our first two albums – 2000 Years to Christmas and International House – over to our SoundCloud site. Well, for some reason it seemed like a good idea to start doing just that. The first one we posted was our 2011 single, One Small Step:

Call that a cartwheel? Sheesh.Since I’ve been in an archiving mood pretty much all summer, I will likely start posting selections from International House (our 2008 album) in the coming weeks and share them here, forthwith, etc. Not new material, of course …. just a cheap-ass retrospective on where we’ve been. Something for you to chew on while we work out where the hell we’re going. I don’t know, maybe another interstellar tour, or maybe we’ll go all in on another album, or maybe just watch Marvin try to do cheap circus tricks. So long as he doesn’t dress up like a rodeo clown and start juggling bowling pins. That’s a bridge too far.

Of course, now Marvin is giving me that “it does not compute” look. I get that a lot. Or maybe it’s just Marvin’s default expression; he’s got brass fixtures for eyes, nose, and ears, so it’s a little hard to read.

Six days.

No, it’s not the fifth day, Marvin. It’s the sixth. Doesn’t that processor between your ears do simple sums, for crying out loud? Six, man, six!

Yes, I am correcting Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on his math. Or his calendar skills. Not sure which, actually. I put him in charge of counting down our “Six Days of Christmas” celebration. Why six? Well, turns out we couldn’t afford twelve. And since we were too sick to finish our Holiday extravaganza on time, we all thought it only appropriate to provide a small … even half-assed compensation. You’re welcome, America!

For those of you who missed it, this is what our lame celebration consisted of:

Day One: Post of “A Very Neddy Christmas” on NedTrek.com. This is a rerun, yes, of our Ned Trek parody of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, featuring four songs, some bad celebrity imitations, and all the rest of it.

Day Two: Soundcloud post of Vital Signs, a song off of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. This is one of my personal favorites from that collection. But who the hell cares what I think, right? Damn straight.

Day Three: Soundcloud post of Merry Christmas, Jane, a song off of our EP Live From Neptune. This was recorded live to stereo DAT back in 1994, I think, with Jeremy Shaw on guitar. (We’ve played this on the podcast a couple of times.)

SIX days! Are you MAD?Day Four: Photo album of Matt and Joe, posted on Facebook. These are promo shots taken in, I don’t know, 1987, by our niece Mona. I think we were trying to mock a U2 photo spread in Rolling Stone for Joshua Tree, but it’s hard to tell.

Day Five: Soundcloud post of Jit Jaguar’s Christmas. This is a ridiculous Christmas song Matt wrote quite a few years ago that we recorded I think in 2013 as part of our ongoing project to record our back catalog. Pretty pared down, but I like this recording. Rough and ready.

Day Six: This shit. Hey … it’s like getting a load of wooden balls. We’ve got a pageant under construction, so … think of it as some delayed holiday joy. Keep your eyes open, people, and happy new year.