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The Lincoln trilogy: a slight digression

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Now, I think you all know that Big Green is bad at predictions. We’re not prognosticators or weather forecasters, and we have no magic stone that allows us to see the future. I can tell you what I’ll have for breakfast tomorrow, but that’s only because I’ve been having the same breakfast for nigh unto thirty years. Anything harder than that is just too damn hard.

That’s a long way of saying that we won’t be releasing our new album this Fall, as we had predicted. After painstaking consideration and much rending of garments (which took about five minutes), we decided to push the release to Spring. Why, you may ask? I offer this simple explanation: the quality goes in before the name goes on. That’s right – making a Big Green album is like building a Zenith radio in the nineteen fifties. The only thing missing is the voice of Bill Conrad.

Now, quality is a relative thing, son

Yes, I know … Big Green isn’t known for maintaining stringent quality control standards. That’s not our jam, mothers. No sir – we try to get the feel right. And when that happens, we know it down to the soles of our cheap-ass shoes. If the overall quality has to suffer, so be it, my friend. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them, well …. we have other principles.

Still, even Big Green has minimum quality standards. The mixes from this new album were just skimming the bar, low as it may be, so we need a little more time. For we will serve no wine before its …. oh, god damnit! Not another slogan!

So, anyway … we’re giving it another six months, just for good measure. And in the interim, since you’ve been such good children, I will regale you with the story of one of our early songs. As I mentioned before, our upcoming album has a bunch of kind of serious songs, or Gumby songs, if you will. The song we’ll be dissecting today comes from a previous Big Green era, when all of our songs were strange ….. very strange.

You would have liked Lincoln

Speaking of quality, the song I’m going to explore is called Quality Lincoln, and it’s actually a medley of three smaller songs, one building on the randomness of the other. Matt and I wrote it back in 1990 or 1991, I believe, and I don’t believe we ever performed it in front of an audience or recorded it seriously. (Not sure it’s possible to record such a silly song seriously, but I digress.)

We did a cheap-ass basement recording of it for our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast back in 2016. You can find the full lyric in our lyrics section. Now you can sing along …. but what does it mean?

We don’t pretend to know the meaning of any of our songs, but here’s my take, based on years of close textual reading, tarot cards, astrological deep dives, and so on.

Shouldn’t happen to our quality nation’s president

So the song starts with:

Lincoln suffered from depression, Joe
but it wasn’t because of the war, you know
and it wasn’t because of his son who died
or the wacky behavior of his bride

Okay, picture a suburban couch potato back in the 1980s. Maybe s/he is watching something about Lincoln or reading a magazine article. This is the take-away (and I don’t mean snacks from the local noodle shop) – Lincoln had a rare disease | that turned him into a chimpanzee | They didn’t have the know-how in those days.

This is the nature of pre-internet conspiracy theory – using legacy media to fill in the blanks, connecting things that are both questionable and wholly unrelated to one another.

How do we get into outer space? It’s all about Colonel Smith, played by the character actor Henry Jones in Lost In Space. The narrator of the song sees Jones play this part (that of a cartoon-like antebellum southern colonel) but also sees Jones play a traitorous Civil War commanding officer in The Big Valley – an officer who was part of the plot to assassinate Lincoln. Same actor, same person. We make the connection like this:

I was a Reb in the guise of a Union Colonel
with all those fools
I butchered a town just to prove to them that I was a loyal
Lincoln tool
Then in order to escape my shame
I wandered into outer space
and here I am

The last section is in the voice of Colonel Smith, describing his ridiculous attempt to blow Dr. Smith sky-high with an exploding cream pie, cursing himself as “the Smith that gave all of the Smiths a bad name,” and ending on a rationalization of his conspiracy to kill Lincoln with a nod to MacBeth:

Safe until great Birnam Wood scaled high Dunsinane
He was the Lincoln who gave every king their bad name

Our promise to you

I know I promised new content in the Fall, so now my credibility is in shambles. That said, on behalf of Big Green, I solemnly promise that we will not use tortured metaphors or obscure television characters in any of the songs on our new album. Take that to the bank.

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A few weeks since we played THAT joint.

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Well, summer is almost over and I’m at the point of digging through old files again. I always get to doing that when the days start getting shorter. Last week I burrowed my way through some tax records from the 2000s. (Riveting stuff.) This week, it’s Big Green set lists. Those are perhaps marginally more interesting than old 1040s, but it largely depends on what you like.

For those of you not steeped in Big Green history, here’s the short version: we haven’t played a live gig in decades. Think Beatles post-1966 or XTC post-1982, except without the massive success, cult following, or obvious talent. Picture a handful of underfed guys in their twenties, humping their broken-down amps into some cheap dive. That’s us!

What the ancient tablets teach us

So what about those set lists? First glance, I can’t effing believe we played any of those songs. Of course, we’re talking about the late nineteen eighties, early nineteen-nineties – a time before ubiquitous cell phones, decades prior to the advent of “smart” phones with HD video cameras. The handful of times we put a show on tape, we had to get some freak to bring a VHS camcorder … which were not exactly thick in the ground, my friends.

Thing is, like most bands, we were working to fill out three, sometimes four sets. Fortunately for us, brother Matt has always been a songwriting machine, so we had plenty of material as long as we could convince a guitar player to learn a bunch of strange songs. We played clubs (most of which no longer exist) and colleges (Utica, SUNY PI, Middlebury, MVCC), as well as street fairs, outdoor concerts (usually with other groups), etc.

Strangely, I still have set lists from a couple of these college gigs. Looks like “I Hate Your Face” was always high on the roster. And that effing MVCC gig was an all-original set, no covers. What the ever-loving fuck.

Scoping out the song spectrum

You can tell from these yellowing sheets of poster board that we’ve been all over the map, musically speaking, since the late eighties. Our music runs the full spectrum from extremely silly to kind of serious. Here’s how I map it out in my own unscientific manner:

  • 1987 – 1993 Songs: Silly to Extra Silly
  • 2000 Years To Christmas (1999): Fairly Silly to Silly
  • International House (2008): Mostly Serious (except for Volcano Man)
  • Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (2013): Very, Very Silly

Now, with our upcoming album (still being mixed, by the way), we’re back to wearing the serious pants again. No big laugh riot on this sucker, folks … unless you’re laughing AT us. Then it’s funny as all hell.

Silly is just around the corner

For those of you who prefer the silly Big Green, fear not – we have an enormous trunk full of Ned Trek songs, all produced and waiting for remix. And trust me, there’s some silly-ass shit in that trunk. And that’s not to mention the older material we’ve recorded and never released.

So, good news / bad news: if you like the silly stuff, there’s more coming. If you hate it, well … lookout … there’s more coming.

TBT: That old used to be

You’ve probably heard them already, but here are a few selections from our stage set back in the goofball early nineties:

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Put the kazoo down, man! We’re producing here!

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They say you go to war with the army you have. (I don’t know who “they” are, but they seem to know all about it.) It’s the same with making an album, friends. You make the record with the tools available to you. When Bach made his first album, all he had was an organ. Bet you didn’t know that.

As I’m certain I’ve said before, Big Green typically makes their albums using the equivalent of stone knives and bear skins. Have you met our production budget? Let me introduce you to a little guy named ZERO. And I don’t mean Zero Mostel – I mean nothing, zip, zilch, nada, bupkis. That said, there’s enough to afford a second-hand kazoo, a discarded grade school violin, and at least one maraca.

The tools at hand

The first question is always a practical one – do we have what we need to get started? Maybe yes, possibly no. Sometimes the tools are mismatched with the project. Picture a butter knife in the hand of a hard-rock sculptor. Not that recording and mixing an album is anything like sculpting or painting. God, no! We don’t wear any smocks, and our hands are clean as a whistle. (Trouble is, the whistle is filthy as hell. And that kazoo is disgusting!)

Hey, look …. we’re making modern music. You know – the kind the kids really dig the most. Songs that feature electronic pluck-string instruments, plastic keyboards, and invisible drums. Of course, when I say “modern”, I don’t mean music like what Captured By Robots records and performs. But then we are not oppressed by malevolent automatons set on enslaving us against our will. That kind of thing can kill your buzz super easy.

The show so far

Despite the limitations of our budget and our instrumentation (to say nothing of our musicianship … or lack of same), we’ve come quite a long way on the current project. How long, you may ask? Glad you asked. As I’ve reported previously, we have recorded all of the songs and are now deep in the Pon Farr of mixing. The musicians amongst you will know that mixing is an iterative process – in other words, taking multiple passes to get to the “it” that you’re looking for. (Ergo, it-erative.) How long will the blood fever last? No man can say.

Joe attempting to take the lime back out of the coconut.
Joe attempting to take the lime back out of the coconut.

I can tell you that we’ve done preliminary mixes on about 19 songs as of this writing. We have a few more to plow through, then we’ll assess, review, mark the suckers up, and take another pass. Early on, I set up a spreadsheet to keep tabs on our progress. I of course abandoned the thing within about three weeks, as I HATE being organized. Everyone knows Big Green craves chaos. At least, everyone who knows Big Green …. which amounts to almost no one. But I digress.

Next stop: stopping!

Aside from mixing and mastering, there are a few details we need to tie up. Little things like coming up with a name for the project, developing album art, etc. With us, the biggest challenge is knowing when to stop. My guess is that the work will end kind of abruptly, sometime this Fall, and we’ll drop the album like a load of bricks. Either that or we’ll put it in a time capsule and leave it for future generations to ponder.

What’s your guess? Let us know at info@big-green.net!

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What kind of monster is it – Gumby or Ghidorah?

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Hey – any of you out there remember Milton the Monster? You know, the cartoon show about the big-hearted Frankenstein-like creature that … um … well … talked like Jim Neighbors and … oh, ask your mother!

Well, brother Matt and I find ourselves kind of reviving the role of Professor Weirdo as we continue our work on the upcoming Big Green album (our fourth, by the way, and the first one in more than a decade). As you will see from the intro to Milton the Monster (if you can stand listening to it), we too are struggling with the question of how much tincture of tenderness we should add to the mix. Milton’s theme lays the problem out pefectly:

Six drops of the essence of terror
Five drops of sinister sauce
When the stirring’s done, may I lick the spoon?
Of course, hah hah! Of course!

Now for the tincture of tenderness
But I must use only a touch
For without a touch of tenderness
It might destroy me!
Oops, too much!

Okay, so … this time around we’re a little light on the essence of terror. And we left the sinister sauce out in the rain a little too long. And as Matt tried to add a touch of tenderness, well … I bumped his elbow and the whole damn thing poured into the mix. Damn it all!

Sentimental jerk ass

This, of course, begs the question – is Big Green going soft and sentimental in its old age? Well, that question begs an answer: Hell no, man! We’ve ALWAYS been sentimental. Ask anybody who likes us. And if you can’t find anyone who likes us, then you’re just like everybody else we know. And we HATE people like that!

Seriously, think about it – what is I Hate Your Face if not a sentimental song? There’s a lot of sentiment in that sucker. Sure, maybe not the Gumby kind of sentiment, but more the Ghidorah kind. In any case, you can expect a whole lot of sentiment in our next album. That’s my personal guarantee: a sentimental monster.

Knob-twiddling our way forward

As I’ve said previously, we’ve got a lot of tweaking ahead of us on this project. We’ll be pushing sliders, twiddling knobs, occasionally pulling sliders (but mostly pushing) and plugging things into other things. I will be wrestling computers like a live thing, swearing at them bitterly as they fail and fail again. But (and this is important) we are making progress, completing our first swipe on about one third of the songs.

We will keep you all posted on how the snail is faring as it climbs Mount Fuji. One way or the other, new music will be coming your way in the foreseeable future. Whether it’s the kind that makes Gumby happy or provokes the wrath of Ghidorah, only time will tell.

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It’s the time of the season for mixing

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Damn, it’s hot out there. Hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum, as Monty Python used to say in a mock-Aussie accent. Mind if I call you Bruce, just to avoid confusion?

Well, it is, after all, summer in the northern hemisphere, which means balmy weather for the lot of us. But for your friends in Big Green, this year the solstice means that the season for mixing has arrived. Yes, brother Matt (a.k.a. “Mr. Ears”) has left the premises to keep a keen eye on his Peregrine Falcon charges … but not before recording his final tracks on our upcoming album, titled [INSERT WORKING TITLE HERE]. After two years of tracking, it’s time to start pushing those faders. (And, of course, pulling them occasionally.)

The job ahead: hard as f#ck

Make no mistake, we have a big project ahead of us: making sense of between 20 – 25 new recordings and arranging them in the general shape of what is still somehow called an “album”. But hey, Big Green has faced challenges before. Remember when we were almost captured by Captured by Robots? No? Well, perhaps I imagined that. Nevertheless, it hasn’t always been an easy road for us. Sometimes it’s uphill, sometimes down, but there are always plenty of potholes and no freaking shoulder. (Not mention the fact that it’s a toll road.)

Getting back to mixing, we try to keep things in perspective. Like all modern DAWs, ours has a virtually endless number of tracks and tools to work with. And yet, our favorite albums are mostly from the analog four, eight, and sixteen-track era. Multitrack recording was mucho expensive in those days, and most non-famous bands had zero access to it. In the 1980s, we got into a proper studio maybe three or four times total; the rest of the time we were bouncing takes between stereo cassette machines while playing kazoos into live mics. (Ah, those were the days.)

Placing the lime inside the coconut

Anyway, despite the distinct technological advances we now enjoy that weren’t available in the 1960s, we rely heavily on our musical forebears for inspiration. In other words, if they twiddled a dial a certain way to get a certain effect, that’s good enough for us. If they put a speaker and a mic in a big closet to get reverb, well …. maybe we won’t do that, but perhaps we should. The one thing they did that we won’t do under any circumstances is work super hard. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them, we have other principles. (Shout out to Groucho.)

Now, that doesn’t mean that we want to imitate the previous generations. I mean, there’s no point in putting the lime in the coconut again, right? That’s been done. We have to break new ground, like any other band. Maybe put the plumb in the artichoke, then mix them all up. (See illustration.)

Unpredictable prognostications

Okay, I’m not going to be irresponsible enough to predict when this album is going to be finished, released, etc. All I can tell you is that [INSERT WORKING TITLE HERE] is fully recorded and on its way to completion. Looking into my magic crystal mixing bowl, I see a Fall release on the horizon. Fall of what year? No man can say, but Fall is a good bet. TO THE MIXER!

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Did Neil blow it? Song sheds dim light on old controversy.

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My pappy always told me that, before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. (Actually, scratch that – I’m thinking of someone else‘s pappy.) Anyway, whoever the source might be, it strikes me as a valid point. That’s why whenever I hear someone criticizing Neil Armstrong for flubbing his first words as he stepped off the lunar module, my first impulse is to say, “Hey … did YOU walk a mile on the moon? Huh? Did ya?”

The thing is, now we’re being told that Armstrong didn’t necessarily botch his little lunar speech – we just heard it wrong. In other words, he’s not the eff-up … we are for not keeping up with his speedy elocution style. Though, in fairness, the poor quality of interplanetary radio communications in 1969 should take some of the blame. I mean, listen to the dude – it sounds like he’s talking through a freaking kazoo.

As it happens, Big Green has weighed in on this contentious issue. Allow me to explain.

Art Imitates Life (Warts and All)

Some of you (and you know who you are) may be familiar with a song we did twelve years ago by the name of One Small Step. It’s a jumping little record I want my jockey to play! (No, wait – that’s Roll Over Beethoven.) Anyhow, as you can see from the video, we grapple with the vexing question of what Armstrong said as he stepped onto the moon. And by “grapple”, I mean bat it around like chimps in a bouncy house.

One Small Step, by Big Green

The chorus gets right to the point:

One small step for one bald man
Giant gaffe for all time
We did it!
Now let’s go do the other thing
for Jack-O!

Clearly, we settled on a point of view. But was it the right one? And what’s with the backing vocals? I mean, who sings “mooooon!” and “thing! thing! thing!” as a refrain? But I digress.

The Other Thing

Of course, amateur historians will tell you that the “other things” JFK was referring to in his Rice University address in 1962 had nothing to do with the moon. God, no – they were (1) climbing the highest mountain, (2) flying across the Atlantic (even if you’re a Hitler-admiring freak), and (3) some football game.

Now, it took three days to get to the moon (one-way, non-smoking, off-peak pricing). Climbing Everest took an afternoon, from a running start. True story! How long does a college football game take? Don’t ask me … just wake me up when it’s over. THE POINT IS: going to the moon took longer, so Neil and company deserve extra credit, overtime pay, and so on. That was what we were getting at. Somewhat.

And In Other News …

Work continues on Big Green’s next album. As I reported previously, we’ve got about 23 or 24 songs under construction. Right now we’re patching some rough spots, adding backing vocals, dropping in some additional parts (mostly keys). We should be in the mix phase by sometime this summer, so my wild prediction of a Fall release is still possible. (Or the whole thing might blow sky high. Who can say?)

Look for updates in the coming weeks. Or months. Try tomorrow.

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Big Green albums are hard to finish. Here’s why.

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Did you survive the total eclipse of the sun? Well, if you’re reading this right now, chances are the answer is yes. Now that we’ve fully recovered from that harrowing experience, the time is right to talk about music. (As the killer probe Nomad said on classic Star Trek, “Think about music…”)

Let’s face it – albums are never easy. They require time, patience, and great care, not to mention a crap load of luck. Of course, that dynamic is not exclusive to Big Green. What sets us apart is our process for completing an album. What process, you may ask? Allow me to offer you a brief look under the hood of this smooth-running machine.

Joe on keys

I’ve written at length in previous posts about how mother-effing slow we are. And while sloth may be our secret sauce, here are three key elements that go into building a Big Green album:

1. Specific Gravity

While it’s kind of hard to measure, we like to ensure that our songs maintain a high level of density relative to that of water. Often that process prompts us to add strings, horn sections, chunky guitars, or over-driven organ parts. We come up with arrangements, track them, then burn a rough mix to CD-R. If we drop the disc in a bucket of water and it bobs to the surface, we know our work is not done.

2. Valence

As we record a song, we ask ourselves, “How well will this song bind with other songs on the same album?” After noodling this for a few minutes, we try to put some concrete numbers together. We usually start with the total number of tracks on our last album (in this case, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick had 21). From that number, we subtract the number of valence electrons associated with a specific track. (Note: if you try this at home, you may need to borrow an electron microscope.)

3. Lyric Intelligibility

Hey, we’ve all been there, right? You listen to a song for a year, a decade, three decades, then one day you discover you’ve misinterpreted the lyrics. Instead of “There’s a bathroom on the right”, he’s singing “There’s a bad moon on the rise”. Well, here at Big Green, we try to keep that to a minimum. And when I say minimum, I mean a minimum of thirty instances per album. Sure, it takes work, but the more you confuse people, the more memorable you’ll be.

Matt and his Gibson.

Stream Our Asses

Hey, don’t forget – you can find Big Green’s full catalog on many (if not all) of the major music streaming platforms, including:

Add us to your playlists!

(Image by Julien BLOT from Pixabay)

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This just in: The moon will block the sun. Flee!

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Dateline: Upstate New York, March, 2024 – We can report with some confidence that the moon will almost certainly launch an attack on the sun in the coming days. Sources tell Big Green that the assault may occur as soon as April 8, 2024, based on signals intelligence. (Note: the signals we receive come through a sophisticated device we call “television”.) Officials say that the moon’s intention is to block the sun’s rays, throwing large swaths of Central New York into near total darkness at midday.

How should you prepare? First, it’s important that you don’t panic. Remain calm at all times, and encourage those around you to do the same. Second, once you have them all lulled into a false sense of security, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! If we all follow these simple steps, rest assured that the moon shadow shall pass and all will be as it was before. On this you have my personal guarantee.

(Important safety tip: Do not look at eclipse through a telescope … or, really, at all!)

Slow-Ass Mothers

Well, so much for the public service announcement. Now for what’s happening with Big Green. Yes, we’re still working on our new album. Doesn’t feel super new to us anymore, because we’ve been toiling away at it for – what? – two years. The important thing is that it’s new to you, our beloved listener(s).

People have asked why it takes us so long to finish an album. Well, I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s because we’re obsessed about quality and workmanship, not timeliness, but that would be ridiculous. (The second part is true: remember that we’re slow-ass mothers.) As always, the truth is far more mundane. We manage maybe one session a week, and that’s usually just for a couple of hours. I typically record and work on pre-production between those occasions, so that might add up to four or five hours a week.

All right, so … do the math. How long should it take to record an album? Ask Google, and you’ll get about fifteen different answers. (Ask Jeeves, and you’ll get lunch on a tray.) If I take the average of the wild guesses that come up in search, I get two weeks of pre-production and rehearsal, three weeks of recording, maybe another week of post. A serious band might spend 8 hours a day or more in the studio. Assuming a five-day week, that’s 120 hours of recording, plus maybe 60 of pre and post.

120 + 60 = 180; 180/4 = 45. That’s 45 weeks at our pace. And we’re still freaking behind. Jesus. Back to the blackboard.

Fall Forward, Spring Back

If I wet my finger and hold it in the air, I can get a vague notion of how hard the wind is blowing and in what direction. Predicting when our album will be finished requires more sophisticated analysis. We’ll need a divining rod for that.

If I were to guess, gun to my head, I’d say we should have something releasable by Fall 2024. (We’re doing preliminary mixes on about 25 songs at this point.) So you may be seeing a new Big Green album drop about the time you’re turning your clocks forward. Or back, depending on which mnemonic device you use to keep track of daylight savings time. (Mine is “fall forward, spring back” because that just sounds right, but don’t let me influence you.)

Illustration credit: b0red at https://pixabay.com/users/b0red-4473488/

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Who the hell are we? It’s all a blur to us now.

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Remember those blurry shots of us romping around Forest Hill Cemetery back in our old home town? Sure you do – we’ve used them a million times. There we were, just posing with the marble angels, when the photographer decided to take shots of us running as he ran backwards in front of us. That’s when the world went all wiggly.

Well, that was back in the early nineties. As I said, we’ve been using those as publicity shots for decades, mostly because they’re some of the few decent images of us from when we were youngish. In those days, people didn’t have hi-def video cameras in their pockets. Phones were something wired to the wall (pretty much) and cameras were a thing. (Ask your mother.)

Unlike a lot of nobody bands at that time, we were fortunate enough to know some first-rate photographers, like friend of Big Green Leif Zurmuhlen. (He’s still shooting up a storm for pubs like Nippertown in Albany, NY.) The blurry images were taken by somebody else competent. But the point is that our best shots are from those days when skilled people with cameras happened to be our friends.

Case of mistaken identity

Given that we spent a fair amount of time in a blur, it’s not surprising that we might get confused with other people. I mean, look at the photo – that could be anybody. And frankly, with a name like Big Green, one might expect to encounter doppelgangers. It has two common words, and one of them is a color, for crying out loud.

Well … it happened. Not sure exactly how, but our catalog of poor-selling music got mixed up with that of another act named Big Green. (I believe there’s more than one, actually.) It’s a hip hop artist, and a number of their works were attributed to our account, just as a few or ours have (and continue to be) attributed to their account. As we’re working on a new album, we thought this might be a good time to kind of untangle that mess.

We’ve had some success in this, but it’s not finished. We haven’t heard from the other Big Green, but I imagine they’re grateful for our efforts, as I believe their music is a hell of a lot more popular than ours. I’m expecting a fruit basket from them any day now.

Pump up the jam

Speaking of streaming services, now might be a good time for you to add Big Green (um … THIS Big Green) to your playlists. In fact, while you’re doing that, maybe let our songs run for a few hours and rack up some plays – We’re wearing cardboard belts!

Here’s where to go to find our sorry asses:

This is us on Amazon music. Don’t buy anything – just use your account to play your favorites from our various releases.

We’re also on Spotify. And no, we don’t know Joe Rogan. We’re just on the same streaming service, that’s all. Again, put us on continuous loop – Daddy needs new shoes.

We also have an artist site on Apple Music. This one is a little confused, as they haven’t included our album Cowboy Scat. (That one is still attributed to the hip-hop Big Green, poor sods.)

Big Green is probably on other services that are downstream of the majors, as we’re distributed by The Orchard and by CD Baby. (2000 Years to Christmas and International House are through the Orchard; Cowboy Scat is through CD Baby.)

Free stuff

If you don’t have a hay-penny, god bless you. But if you don’t have access to streaming services, you can listen to our music for free – just let us know that you want to and we’ll make it happen. Be nice to us and we’ll send you a genuine first-edition Big Green button, designed by photographer Leif Zurmuhlen, hand-pressed by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison back in the eighties, and stuffed into a box for 35 years. Just ask!

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New year is here: Back to work, lazy mothers!

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Well, that was a nice little holiday break, and we all had a bit of a laugh. But now it’s 2024, dudes – time to get back down to it. No more messing around, no more late rising. You had your vacation, damn it! Nose to the grindstone, my fine little friends.

That’s my version of a pep talk. I’ve never been much in the way of a motivational speaker, especially when the audience is me and my brother. Neither one of us wants to take any of THAT guy’s bullshit. And as you know from long experience, Big Green is a leaderless collective. We don’t subscribe to self-imposed hierarchies. Nor do we subscribe to the daily paper, or even a monthly newsletter. But I digress.

A far safer Forbin Project

I’m not sure, but I think we’re in year two of producing this particular album. And if you include the year or so we spent working out which album we were going to make (new songs or retreads), call it three. Why does it take Big Green so damn long to make a record? Well, there are three reasons:

  1. We’re slow as a mother. Always have been, always will be. That’s just the speed we’re built for, man – can’t help it. What the hell, it took us five years to finish International House, and it takes less than an hour to listen to the s.o.b.
  2. We’re oldsters. That’s part of the reason for #1. Not much we can do about that shit. Stick around long enough and you’ll be old, too.
  3. We’re busy-ass mo-fo’s. Matt in particular has a raft of responsibilities. I myself don’t have a raft, but I have responsibilities. Hence, we record maybe once a week, whether we need to or not.

Thing is, we tend to approach each album like it’s the Forbin Project. Whether you’re building Colossus or Guardian, it’s a heavy lift. Though thankfully, unlike the Forbin project, the fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance … and Patty Duke’s father plays no role whatsoever in our production process.

Leftovers and tailings

Some of you (and you know who you are) have asked if there won’t be a sample or two of the current project available at some point. No man can say! We like to toss random recordings out there from time to time – some are leftovers, some are tailings or abandoned experiments. (As you know, Dark Christmas was one of those from our first album, 2000 Years to Christmas.)

The truth is, we haven’t even done any rough mixes yet, which is kind of nuts. We’re also in the process of upgrading from Cubase 9 to Cubase 12 (yes, I know – they just released 13, the motherfuckers) and changing platforms. And hell, we’ve got at least 25 songs under serious construction, with another 15 to 20 started. And another thing …. OUCH.

We’ll get this sucker done, trust me. Or my name isn’t … uh … whatever it is.

Random Lyric

Here’s an old one by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison:

Now the picture in my mind is hazy
Just like the number’s washed off my hand
I’m just another nameless no one
She’s just another faceless one night stand

From the song “A Name and a Face”. Listen to the demo we recorded in 1986:

BIG GREEN 1986 DEMO

Official site of the band Big Green