Now, let’s see… how does that song go? Hmmmm…. strike up the band, Johnny. One small step… for one bald man. Giant leap for all time. Christmas day, thank you, ma’am. I came in peace… and left my mind!
That’s an oldy. Oh, yes… Christmas 1996 – I remember it well. As soon as we get our thumbs out of our asses on this seemingly endless project, I’m going to trawl through the archives and dust off some of those recordings that have never before seen the light of day. Prepare to be amazed. (Did I say “amazed”? I meant “annoyed.” Or perhaps “nauseated”.) But before you get to thinking that I’m distracting you from our current lethargy with vague promises of archival releases somewhere down the road, let me assure you that your good friends in Big Green are looking over these old songs for some very, very good reasons. And no, I don’t mean nostalgia for a past equally obscure as our present. No, no…. better reasons than that. Aggravated threats, mostly. And projectiles.
Let me ‘splain. We are under contract with Loathsome Prick, our corporate label, to release our long-anticipated (or perhaps no longer anticipated) sophomore album at some time in the next year or so. They had the option to demand the product any time after September 30, and, well, they did (the fuckers). Naturally, when we signed the contract (or, rather, had the man-sized tuber sign for us) we thought the release date would be quite a long ways off. Trouble with that long-ways-off kind of thinking is that, if you think about it too long, it gets a whole lot closer. So here we were, our album still not finished (though completely recorded), and the nice gentlemen at Loathsome Prick jumping all over our shit. What else could we do but cut yet another deal with them? This one was an agreement to play some gigs on Mars to promote the new collection. So now we’re scraping together a few sets worth of music – the usual last-minute scramble. So it goes.
I enlisted Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to descend into the catacombs of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in search of old songs – tapes, lead sheets, lyrics, whatever he could find. After a day or two, he reappeared on the ground 
floor, his brass tarnished, his sensors covered with dust, but his ramshackle arms laden with booty. Marvin had stumbled upon the old sea trunk I had brought with me years ago when we first arrived at the mill. (Seems like just yesterday.) Inside were moth-eaten reams of paper, yellow with age (though they were legal pads, so they actually started out kind of yellow). I showed them to Matt, and he nodded solemnly. Yes, yes… these were the notebooks upon which he and I had penned so many of the songs that had made us obscure back in the day. (That was a hard day.) We began flipping through the parchment-like folios, mouthing the words silently as we went along. Nice work, Marvin. Good robot.
Okay, so finding our notes is one thing; putting together the songs is entirely another. From what I understand, we have about three weeks to get our ducks in a row. Then it’s off to the land of “Opportunity”. (You know… the Mars rover, “Opportunity”? The other one’s called “Spirit”? Never mind.) Somebody water the tuber – this could be a long hike.
