Bit more to the left, Zamby. Bit more. Bit more. Nope, nope, that’s it. I said that’s it. Whoa, damn it! Whoa, you mother fucker, whoa!
Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there. Big Zamboola (or “Zamby”, as I’ve been calling him lately) was just helping me with at little household chore, to wit, moving the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill a few paces to the left. Yes, I did say household chore — Zamboola holds the house and I tell him where to plunk it. (Insert derisive laughter here.) Why move the august mill from one place to another very similar place? Well, it’s complicated, as you might expect. It’s a topic that twists and snakes around back on itself, ties itself in knots, squealing all the way, like most everything in the life of Big Green. Not sure you want to get into it on such a lovely day as this. Weather sucks where you are? Well, then — let’s have at it… or as my illustrious brother used to say, pass the fucking potatoes.
You know how most musical recordings employ a range of sound effects, some of which, say, mimic an echo or the reverberation of a primitive cave? Haven’t noticed? Oh, yes — it’s a fact. You may be surprised to learn that most of that stuff is done by sophisticated machines, powered by — are you sitting down? — a little thing 
called “computer technology”. Don’t think it will catch on, frankly, though Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is all over that shit like a cheap robot. I digress… one major drawback of this amazing aural effects technology is that it costs money, and as you know, money does not grow on trees around here. No, they don’t call us “Big Green” for the contents of our wallets, my friends. Anyway, we have long since resigned ourselves to using the old ways of recording — time-honored techniques for adding verve and dimension to our records. (For definitions of “verve” and “dimension”, check your local library or record shop.)
It may interest you to know, for instance, that the cavernous reverb on Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” was achieved by planting a speaker at one end of a Manhattan elevator shaft and a microphone at the other, so the story goes. And nearly every recording fanatic has seen photos of the big reverb chambers at Abbey Road studios. Well, okay… so what do 
you suppose we use to get the same effect, eh? Got a great big brick building here. Got one next door. What the fuck — Johnny White said, “Why the hell don’t we just bounce the sound around between ’em?” and I had no good answer for him. So we set it up, but I’ll be god-damned, the echo was just too damn short. What to do? “Well, that’s easy,” said Mitch Macaphee, “make the space between the buildings bigger… only not too much bigger.” Then what we needed was a sky hook with a whole lot of heft — that’s Big Zamboola all over. Only trouble is, his sense of direction is not all that it should be.
Yeah, well — nothing’s as easy as it seems. We may just have a little extra reverb on this record. Listen for it, friends. Maybe we’ll just call it “Generation Reverb”. I’m open to suggestions. Whoops… excuse me. Drop it, Zamby! Drop it now!
