Put it all in one stack. That’s right. Now step down hard. Harder. Harder still. Good, good. Nope, that’s too hard. Too hard, damnit! I said too fucking… oh, what the hell’s the use?
Whoa, I wasn’t expecting company. Working hard here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, as usual. Sometimes I think I need a sledgehammer to get through the kind of thick skulls we have in such rich abundance around this place. Does that surprise you? Yes, I know — as bands go, we have a relatively high quotient of scientists in our midst, such as the illustrious Mitch Macaphee, the renowned Trevor James Constable, and the inestimable Dr. Hump (a.k.a. our resident “brain in syrup”). But quite frankly, the rest of us are lunkheads, and it is the weight of our collective stupidity that tends to drag the whole enterprise down towards dumbshit land. Ergo, every endeavor involves an enormous amount of effort, plus a whole discover phase at the outset wherein we discuss topics like “Where did the sun go?” and “How fat does a brick weigh?” as a prelude to doing even the most inconsequential lick of work. Arrrghhhh!!
My apologies. Back to our story. What was I trying to accomplish, exactly? Well, as you know, we denizens of the Big Green franchise are pretty much left to our own devices when it comes to producing, publishing, and distributing our wares. Crikey, we have to make all our own noises, play our own horn parts, bang the drum (slowly), mix our own bloody songs, press our own CD’s, design our own labels… even build our own customers, like Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who owns all of our albums. (Okay, so there’s only one so far. There’ll be others!) That’s what makes us, well… different. Is that the word I’m looking for? Or is it… stupid? Has a more familiar ring. Anyway, we are the DTY band, for sure, and that requires a broad range of skills with which we have only a passing acquaintance, at best. And as one of the primary decision makers in the group (I’m the decider!), I’m tasked with training foot soldiers like the man-sized tuber (though, technically, he’s a root soldier).
Yup, last week it was moving the mill around to find the best reverb chamber effect. This week, we’ve been working on our process for pressing our own CD’s. Pretty simple process, from what I understand. Here’s how it works: you take the “music”, which is essentially a physically intangible entity, shape it into a ball, place it on a blank compact disc, and press down just as hard as you can until the two objects become one. Foolishly simple, right? So here’s the question — why the hell can’t the man-sized tuber do it? I keep handing him disc after disc, and he applies his mighty bulk, to no avail. The disc remains blank, lifeless, empty… like a vacant house on a deserted street in a forgotten country… (sounds like home to me). Perhaps I’m being too hard on the tuber. Perhaps I’m not shaping the intangible ball of music in exactly the right manner. (It’s actually harder than it sounds… not the music, but the technique… or as Matt would say, “techy neeky”.)
So, what the hell — if we can’t make our own CD’s, then I guess we can’t do everything, can we? So what I said a bit earlier, that hasn’t held true even for the amount of time it took me to type this lousy column. Fleeting are the truths by which we live. Speechless am I. (Great… now I owe George Lucas money, too. Jesus!)
