Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Coverland.

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Where’s my great American songbook? I know I left it around here somewhere. What’s that you say, Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? There’s no such thing? That’s just a metaphor for everything written before nineteen sixty? Okay, gotcha.

Look at me, for chrissake. I’m turning the Hammer Mill upside down looking for something that doesn’t even exist outside of our tiny little minds. No, there is no Great American Songbook per se, though I have had “fake” books over the years – the Boston book, the Real book, the Real book with lyrics, etc., all illegal as hell. Strange thing to be declared contraband, but you had to have them …. even if you just played in a contraband. (A band that plays everything backwards, that is.) Seriously, fake books were an essential survival tool in the world of itinerant musicians.

You may well ask why I would need a compendium of old songs. And well you may. Keep asking – eventually I’ll find an answer. Yes, well … as you know, times being what they are, we need to, as the corporatists are fond of saying, diversify our revenue stream. That means selling nuts on the street corner (Marvin’s job), bilking the local vicar (Anti-Lincoln’s job), blackmailing the neighbors with anti-gravity rays (Mitch Macaphee’s job), and plunking out cover songs in the local coffeehouse / bar (ulp … my job). And like filling in for the local retail clerk, none of us are any good at our new jobs. (Particularly Marvin … he keeps over-roasting the filberts in his toaster oven.)

You guys know anything from the Real Book? No?

Not that I’m entirely new to the work. Long-time listeners of Big Green will be surprised to learn that we have, in fact, played covers in front of yawning audiences. I even have video demo tape of covers we did back in the early 1990s which I may even be imprudent enough to post someday (with some encouragement). We used to cover all sorts – Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, The Band, Neil Young, Taj Mahal, fuck all, you name it. What I’m doing now is more like what I did when I was 19 or 20 – folk-pop music from the 60s and 70s, which was, frankly, contemporary music when I was 19 or 20. Hard for me to believe that anyone wants to hear those songs again, but I don’t know …. maybe it’s been long enough. And I need some freaking coin in my hat, dude.

So start busking, right? Where’s my “Real Book”? I mean … someone else‘s Real Book.

Usual Rubbish

Staying afloat.

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Where did I put that bucket? Is that mine you’re using? Well, give it back, damn it. Go find another one to carry your golf balls around in. Jesus H. Christmas.

Yes, greetings from the one-man bucket brigade here at the abandoned and partially submerged Cheney Hammer Mill. Perhaps you heard about all the flooding we got here in upstate New York after that Halloween storm? Well, the old water kept on rising in our neck of the woods, and it ain’t pretty. Trouble is, back when they built these old mills, they located them close to the water for a variety of reasons. Practical, yes …. back then. Now it’s a positive nuisance! The canal behind the Hammer Mill sloshed over in the first 24 hours, and we’ve been flapping around in scuba flippers ever since.

Why am I bailing this place out alone? Because everyone else, well … bailed, frankly. Can’t blame them – this sucks. They’re all off to higher ground, except for Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who has been scouring the neighborhood for discarded golf balls this past week. He’s somehow gotten into his brass skull that they have some intrinsic value. Anyway, he’s pretty much useless with respect to the flood waters. So is our resident mad scientist Mitch Macaphee, who traipsed off to Madagascar as soon as the going got a bit rough. I ask you …. what’s the use of having a mad scientist if the son of a bitch can’t control the goddamn weather? Am I right?

A bit damp for my taste. What about you?

Okay, so … the saving grace of this mill is that it’s shot full of holes by our crazy upstairs neighbors, so a lot of the water is just leaking out through the bullet holes. (And no, they’re not helping me with the flood waters. They’ve trundled off to crazytown for the weekend to see some relatives.) I’m helping it a bit with this bucket … literally the one bucket we have in the joint. Aside from the bucket we use to carry a tune around in. That’s a joke, son. You’re supposed to laugh at this juncture. Or perhaps not.

Anyhow, when the water level gets low enough in the studio, we can start working on those mixes again. Water and music don’t mix, in my experience. Aside from Yellow Submarine, Octopus’s Garden, and that Jimi Hendrix song from Electric Ladyland …. a merman I would be, or something. Help me out here. Grab a bucket, for crying out loud.

Usual Rubbish

Scare tactics.

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What are you talking about? I was very careful in my deliberations about this get up. If someone’s feathers get ruffled, well … it’s not on me, man. Folks got to just calm down.

Yeah, it’s Halloween again, everyone. Kind of a big holiday around these parts. Why, I’ve known these quiet suburban moms and dads to take their kids out in gale force winds, forcing them against the elements to have a good time, damn it.  That’s how memories are made, my friends. Here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we try to make this old barn of a place seem inviting. We can’t afford pumpkins or corn stalks, of course, so we just slip the mansized tuber a fiver and ask him to stand by the front door with a citronella torch. He looks, uh, kind of autumnal … if you squint.

Now, I’m not a big one for dress-up, as you know. Never liked it, never. That said, I did put on some old jeans and borrowed one of those blue denim shirts, then combed my hair forward and put on a fake beard so that I would look like George Harrison on the cover of Abbey Road. Set aside the gray hair, it almost works. Anti-Lincoln, however, accuses me of being culturally insensitive. I keep telling him, none of our neighbors are from the north of England. Who will care?

You know, you could pass for Lincooln.

Hah. Anti-Lincoln should talk. HE chose to dress in a seasonally inappropriate costume. Whoever heard of going out on Halloween dressed as Santa Claus? You can’t muddle the major hyper consumer holidays in that way. You’ll make people’s heads explode! Then they’ll expect presents from you. I told him he should go as Lincoln, but he didn’t want to offend our crazy upstairs neighbors, who I believe are from south of the Mason Dixon line somewhere.  No one thinks much of my suggestions on this topic, and with good reason.

Look at Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s going as a hot water heater again this year.  No matter what I say, that’s what he’s dong, even when those people up the street mistook him for an actual hot water tank and installed him in their basement next to the furnace. (It took weeks to get the smell of natural gas out of him.)

Try to help and what happens – am I right?

Usual Rubbish

No quarter.

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I don’t remember this room being this cramped. For crying out loud, what did they do to this place? Where’s my plastic furniture? I was weeks collecting that bedroom set!

Oh well … there’s bound to be a few glitches in any complex negotiation. The important thing is, we’re back, baby! We’ve won the right to squat in our beloved Cheney Hammer Mill once again. And when I say “beloved”, well … that’s a relative term. Next to the potting shed we’ve been crammed into all summer, the mill is a veritable palace. Sure, we have to share it with lunatics, but even that’s not unprecedented. (Just take a look through our back pages and you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

All that said, there are a few restrictions on what we’re going to be able to do as residents of the mill from here on out. Maybe it was a mistake to deputize Anti-Lincoln as our chief negotiator with the crazy upstairs neighbors. Our main thought was that he was, after all, an old country lawyer … or the antimatter equivalent of one. It’s that second element we didn’t fully consider. Antimatter country lawyer means the opposite of country lawyer … so, I don’t know … city outlaw? In any case, Anti-Lincoln didn’t come away with the better part of THAT deal.

So this is what we have to deal with:

No Tap Dancing. Okay, this shouldn’t be a problem for anyone except Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has brass feet and sounds like he’s tap dancing when he’s just walking across the floor.

No Cops. Again, not a problem for most of us … in fact, a positive benefit for some … like Anti-Lincoln, who is (as mentioned earlier) an outlaw.

Nah, none of that, Marvin., thanks to old honest Abe, here.

No Boiled Asparagus. This is getting up my nose a bit. Unfortunately, when I complained about it, our nasty neighbors stuffed raw asparagus up my nose.

Mandatory Clapping for Fireworks. I think I may have mentioned that our upstairs neighbors love a nice fireworks display. Apparently they want to spread the love around a little. And when I say “spread”, what I really mean is enforce through the power of contract law.

No Loose Coins. I can’t figure this one out at all. They prefer that we use paper money. What the hell am I going to do with that barrel full of quarters I’ve been filling since third grade? That’s my retirement, people!

Those are the highlights. There’s more, but I’ll save it until I locate my plastic side table. Thieves!

Usual Rubbish

Deal, no deal.

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Here’s my counter offer. You can use the counter any time you want, even when we’re having brunch in the kitchen on alternate Sundays, as per our agreement, volume 3, chapter 5, subsection 4, paragraph 2 (see also sources in footnote 845). Now what do you say?

Yeah, here we are, making a deal with the devil, folks. Yes, I’m talking about those crazy squatters who invaded and occupied the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our makeshift home, sometime during the summer, consigning us and our various hangers-on to the potting shed in the courtyard. We’re attempting to reach some understanding with them, but it’s a bit more complicated than I had imagined. Apparently one of these yahoos is a contract lawyer. Doesn’t look it.

Anyway, our draft agreement for the return of Big Green to the Cheney Hammer Mill is … well, it’s thick as your ass, maybe thicker. Lots of wherefores and what-have-you’s, which is fine, because what have we right now but big fat nothing? There are few disputes that cannot be settled through studied diplomacy, and while none of us are trained negotiators, our friend Anti Lincoln did once play one on T.V.  … or was that Lincoln Lincoln? Not sure I remember – they look almost exactly alike. It’s uncanny! (Speaking of uncanny, when’s lunch?) So … Anti Lincoln has taken up our part in these talks, and we couldn’t be better represented. (Mainly because we have no money. Don’t tell Lincoln.)

You guys can pick the curtains.

Thing is, I don’t know how good a lawyer anti-Lincoln ever was. I mean, the real Lincoln had a sharp legal mind. That makes me suspect that anti-Lincoln is a dullard. Or maybe their opposition to one another is played out along some vector other than human intelligence. I’m thinking about suggesting that anti-Lincoln just make a speech in the meeting room, just to turn things upside-down for a few moments while we rummage through the mill and take anything of value. We could then use the proceeds of our ill-gotten gains to hire a decent lawyer, for cryin’ out loud.

In the meantime, we’re being committed to some punishing legal sanctions. It’s all in the agreement. Like page 17 – Mondays and Thursdays are pants optional days. I say “optional,” but the truth is .. they really don’t want to see any pants.  They just want to laugh at our expense. (And again, mea culpa – I didn’t realize I was spending so much.)

Well, let’s hope we can ink this thing soon. It’s getting cold out here, and the potting shed is, well, being used for pots right now.

Usual Rubbish

Mixology.

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Why does it rattle so much? Is that the low end putting out all that noise? Hmmmm … well, there’s only one thing for it. Grease. Lots of grease.

Oh, hi. As is so often my affectation, I will behave as if you just came upon me in a coffee shop or squatting down on the curbside, changing a flat tire. Of course, neither of those things is true in this particular universe, but sometimes we like to act as though we’re interacting on a more personal level and not merely connecting via that series of tubes known as the internet. Okay … that’s a long way of saying, welcome, once again, to Hammer Mill Days, the Big Green blog, where we’re liable to burn half a column just saying hi.  Uh … hi.

We’re at the mixing stage of our current project. What project is that, you may ask? (And well you may.) It’s the next musical episode of Ned Trek, of course, and we’ve been working on a raft of eight songs designed to keep the plot moving forward. Matt and I have been hacking away at these songs for better than six months now, and we’re finally getting to the mixing stage. High time, too. We learned long ago that slow doesn’t necessarily mean good. So if we’re moving slowly, it’s not for goodness’s sake.

Let's get a little more guitar in there.

Mixing a Big Green project is different from most other mixing jobs. We have a peculiar approach to the process, as you might imagine. First we find a stand mixer, like one of those Kitchen Aide thingys you see in yupster kitchens of the 1990s. Then we drop the instruments in one by one, keeping the rotors going at one-quarter speed. Once everything has been dropped in, you add a pint of black coffee and switch the mixer on high. Fair warning – your music is going to slosh out of the bowl and splatter all over your kitchen … I mean, recording studio. Pay it no mind!  Think of the sacrifices made so willingly by those artists who came before you. They didn’t even HAVE electric mixers … they had to do it all by hand, with a FORK. Think about THAT for a minute or two.

Anyway. when you’re done mixing, you pour the album into cordial glasses and serve while it’s still foamy. Then you wait for the accolades to come drifting in. We’re ready, people … are you ready for some rock and roll?

Usual Rubbish

Talking stick.

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Hey, wait … isn’t it my turn? No? What the hell – you just had it. I’m not going to listen to another of your drunken yarns, you ne’er do well. Jesus, what a stupid tradition. Let’s start over.

Oh, hi. Well, since we’re living so close to the ground these days, an almost traditional life style you might say, we’ve decided to take on some of the old practices, just to keep in step with our new way of living. Not sure what ancient peoples dwelt in potting sheds … perhaps there was a Potsylvania after all. (Jay Ward may have been onto something!) Nevertheless, we thought it might make the time go by a bit faster to appropriate some old traditions that we’d seen on TV at some point.

One was the talking stick. You know how it works, right? Whoever has the stick can speak to the group, tell a tale, reveal a secret, cop to a fault or instance of wrongdoing, etc. Then they pass it along. Or sometimes they don’t, and you have to grab it from their ass. God damn, I feel like knocking Anti-Lincoln on the head with the thing, he keeps it for so long. Last time he held it upside down while reading the Gettysburg Address backwards. (I didn’t even know he had an address in Gettysburg. Yes … I know.)

All right, Lincoln. You've had that thing long enough.

Anyway, I have the stick, so it’s time for me to spin a tale.  Ahem! Oh ye, oh ye … I will tell of a time before Big Green … a time when we were playing dive clubs under other forgettable names. When we played with our friend and former guitarist, Tony “Ace” Butera, there was a certain configuration of our band that we decided to call “The Space Hippies”; a moniker we gave to these characters in a Lost in Space episode, one of whom was played by Daniel Trevanti. Tony was calling area clubs, trying to book us, and one guy he talked to – a local bar owner – took exception to that name. “I can’t book a band that calls itself the Space Hippies,” he told Tony. “If I did, I’d be laughed out of Utica.”

After that, I wanted us to be called “Laughed Out Of Utica”. I got voted down on that one, though. Probably just as well. Some things sound like better ideas than they actually are. And that’s one of them. Now who gets the talking stick? Or are we on to another bogus appropriated tradition?

Usual Rubbish

Fighting gravity.

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Shore it up, boys. Let’s keep the roof on this thing. Sure, it used to be the floor, but when something’s keeping the rain off your head, it’s a roof. Unless it’s a hood … or an umbrella. Never mind.

Hey, well, here we are again, man. Trying to keep a broken home together. I don’t mean that daddy left and ain’t coming back (even though that’s roughly true); I mean we’re fixing a hole where the rain came in … and it’s the size of the freaking roof. We’re borrowing wood from the floor to shore up the roof. We’re borrowing planks from the south wall to block up the gaping hole in the north wall. This is like the fabled Ship of Theseus. This isn’t a home … it’s a philosophical paradox! Is it the same potting shed as when we moved here? Only your logic professor can say for certain.

Sure, sometimes the demands of home ownership (or home occupancy) keep us from our real work, the work we were put here to do. And that’s a good thing. I don’t feel like filling potholes today. And when the hell is this town going to invest in a pothole killer, for crying out loud? What do I refrain from paying my taxes for, eh? I mean, what is my lack of money buying? (Perhaps Lincoln can tell me.) Well, as you can see, this is distracting, and it is keeping us from the important job of producing more Big Green songs and sending them out into the cybersphere, where they can begin lives of their own and toil in silent obscurity.

See what I mean, Lincoln? We need this.

That’s not to say that we haven’t been writing songs. No, that’s still happening with some regularity. It’s the part about fixing the songs in some moderately sophisticated way to an electronic medium that will allow them to be conveyed to other people’s ears at a time of their choosing. That thing we haven’t been doing a lot of. Hell, we’re just getting to the point of mixing the group of songs we started at the beginning of the year. Now if that isn’t slow, I don’t know what slow is. Though I do know it’s not as fast as fast. That’s just logic, my friends. Ship of Theseus stuff. Look it up.

Anyway, back to the hammer and nails. (We took those out of the floorboards, too.)

Usual Rubbish

Smash flops.

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I don’t know – what do you think? It’s been a few weeks. Actually longer. Starting to lose track. When you’ve been at sea as long as we have, you forget what the shore looks like. Though if memory serves, it sure looks like shit.

Ah, forgive me. You caught me in the midst of my musings. My mind tends to wander as I squat here in the humble potting shed that sits in the courtyard of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our erstwhile squat-house now under occupation by hostile neighbors. (See what I mean? I can’t even write short sentences anymore.) Living here offers an opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going. Where we’ve been is nowhere. Where we’re going is, who the hell knows. And the midpoint between nowhere and who the hell knows is … I don’t know, fuck-all? Something nicer?

For some reason, this week we were talking about whether or not Big Green would do another album. After all, our last release was in 2013, when we dropped Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And we haven’t forgotten what happened then … we dropped it and it broke into a million pieces. Then we dropped another one; that one broke into a million pieces. So we tried carrying the third copy around more carefully. That’s when one of those Texas rangers shot the thing so full of holes that now every copy has bullet holes in it. See for yourself!

SEe? Shot full of holes.

Anyhow, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that we would put out another collection, particularly since we have tracked somewhere between 80 and 100 songs under the rubric of Ned Trek since we released our last album. (Sure, some of those numbers are meant for laughs, but what the hell …. Cowboy Scat wasn’t?) In fact, I myself can discern as many as three distinct albums in that big bag o’ songs, but given the amount of effort involved in preparing and releasing a collection, my guess is that we will start with one, albeit kind of a long one. (Again, Cowboy Scat was 21 songs. Yes … 21.)

I still haven’t given up on my notion of having an online jukebox. Everyone else has, of course. So maybe an album is the thing. Probably the best we can manage, living in a potting shed.

Usual Rubbish

Weather or knot.

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Hmmmm. That looks like light coming in. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that’s a wall, not a window. So, I don’t know… somewhat problematic.

Okay, it turns out that a potting shed is not the best place to hide during a hurricane or other extreme weather event. Who knew? Seemed sturdy enough when we moved in. I know you’re used to hearing us complain about nearly everything, but we had very few complaints about the shed, aside from the fact that there was no screen for the fireplace. Our landlord’s response? “Run for your lives! The potting shed doesn’t HAVE a fireplace!”

Yesterday the wind started kicking up and water came pouring down from the heavens like one of those super soaker shower heads. (Actually the shower head is like the rain, but never mind.) Then the entire structure started to sway lazily in the wind. Far from keeping the weather out, the shed was practically inviting it in, and frankly, this shed isn’t big enough for me and some screaming ‘nado. Well, there was some noise, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) sounded the alarm klaxon (really just a digital recording he plays back on such occasions). The shed lifted up and came down like a tossed coin, rolling around on its edges as it came to a clumsy stop.

Cheese and crackers!

Naturally, we broke out our foul weather gear, which looks pretty much like our fair weather gear, except that we keep it in a different cardboard box. I do have one Gorton’s Fisherman style hat that allows me to cross the courtyard on occasion and pound on the hammer mill door in hopes that our nasty neighbors will grow a compassion bone and decide to let us back in.  No luck yet, but what the hell. I’ll tell you, this puts a real damper on rehearsals. There aren’t a lot of genuinely waterproof instruments in the kind of music we play, so our songs start to sound a bit waterlogged by the end of the first half-hour.

I don’t know … how long does it take a sousaphone to rust? Depends on the brand, I’m guessing. Got an umbrella …. anyone?