Another week, another war… or at least the threat of same. Any week that starts with a nuclear explosion tends to focus the mind a bit, even if it isn’t a very sharp focus in the case of many of those reacting to the recent actions of North Korea. It’s as though we are born anew every six months or so, our past wiped clean, our journey set to begin again. Here we have the grim dividends of a craven policy towards northeast Asia that has become particularly nasty over the past 10 to 15 years (and especially so in the last eight). As it happens, we inched very close to a disastrous war back in 1994, then concluded a framework agreement with Pyongyang that would have provided them with a uranium reactor and ended their international isolation. Due to the vagaries of the Clinton administration and the maniac Gingrich Congress, neither of those provisions was honored. It was then left to the Bush II administration to do its usual job of pouring gasoline on a smoldering problem, placing North Korea squarely within the “Axis of Evil” and setting UN Ambassador John Bolton and others to further antagonize them.

The result is quite apparent. The North Koreans did what numerous other nations have done through the decades when faced with what might reasonably be considered an existential threat: they built a deterrent. Having witnessed Washington’s willingness to invade and destroy nations that clearly do not possess nuclear weapons, Pyongyang apparently opted for what seemed the less risky course. (One can imagine the same kind of thinking taking place in Iran.) It bears remembering, also, that North Korea knows something about the horrors of war. We bombed the place to smithereens during the Korean War, destroying virtually every standing structure in the North – campaigns that resulted in the death of perhaps 2.5 to 3 million people north of the 38th parallel. Regardless of who is to blame for igniting that conflict, it was certainly they who bore the brunt of the destruction. Their culture is largely built around that experience, and it is not surprising that they should engage in what appears to be some defensive saber-rattling.

Sure… that was then and this is now, right? Well, not everyone forgets the past as quickly and efficiently as we do. North Korea is a repressive place run very much like a prison, but its central obsession is national survival. With the change of leadership in the United States, I’m sure Pyongyang is testing Obama’s rhetoric of reconciliation. Seems to me like they’re skeptical that anything fundamental has changed, and frankly, so am I. Consider for a moment the world order we’re living under. Washington and the great powers live under one set of rules with respect to weapons of mass destruction, while developing nations must abide by another. The fact is, the non-proliferation regime requires the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear powers to move decisively towards disarmament, just as it seeks to prevent smaller players from joining the nuclear club. We conveniently ignore the former while waxing righteous about the latter, and while our hypocrisy may not be featured on the Nightly News, it is pretty obvious to the relatively powerless nations of the world.

So, as you hear many voices – the execrable Newt Gingrich among them – calling for military action against North Korea, just remember: a massive war on the Korean peninsula causing hundreds of thousands of deaths is precisely what we want to avoid. So… starting one is hardly a solution.

luv u,

jp

Okay, how about peanut butter cups? Yes? Good, good. And Fruit Loops? No? That’s weird… because we still have Puffa Puffa Rice…

Oh, hi there, you intrepid Web surfers and lovers of cheap music. Just caught me and my fellow Big Green principals in the midst of an exhaustive inventory of … well, just about everything you can name, friends. (That’s another thing to check…. friends…. ) It’s something in the way of a damage assessment. One of our less congenial cohorts (no, not Mitch Macaphee), as some of you may recall, leapt through a warp in the space-time continuum that conveniently presented itself outside the second floor washroom (just across from the north staircase – you can’t miss it). Yes, Anti-Lincoln, that scourge of all that is good and nice, antithetical to all that is Lincoln – he threw himself bodily into a worm-hole that sent him spinning back more than a century to… well, to the time of Lincoln. And hell, he being him, he couldn’t resist making a few changes while he was back there.

So… we’re trying to figure out exactly how he’s changed everything we know and love (and despise). That’s proving rather difficult, since we’re relying on the memory banks of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rather than trusting our own fallible memories. And on the basis of our work thus far, it seems quite a bit is different. The South, for instance, is its own country. The North, frustrated by losing the south, invaded and occupied Canada. (Critics say it was to steal their maple syrup. Spoiler alert: Cars now run on maple syrup.) People appear to be driving on the left and taking lots of chances. Silly Putty was never invented, nor the Slinky, but the accordion is still a very popular instrument. (Or maybe that’s different… hmmm….) And instead of just talking to the people around them, everyone appears to be communicating with distant people via these tiny little communication devices – phones, I guess you would call them – that look like Star Trek communicators. (Okay… that might be the same as before. Now I’m not sure.)

I think the thing that is really disappointing about all this is the total lack of Ramen noodles in this new, Anti-Lincoln contrived reality. Not sure yet how that came to be, but something Anti-Lincoln did back in the 1860s started a chain of events that made the invention of packaged Ramen noodles impossible. In our almost completely cashless state (something that has, sadly, survived intact), we, like many others, depended on the low-cost nutrition afforded by these little bits of cardboard. Now we are reduced to…. well…. little bits of cardboard. (Cardboard does exist. Halle-freaking-luia.) I know what you’re thinking: that one of us is going to be tempted to do something rash and irresponsible, like jump into the time warp and apprehend Anti-Lincoln before he causes all this havoc. Well, have no fear…. none of us is insane enough to attempt such a bonehead play. No, sir. That’s why they invented the man-sized tuber.

Okay, tubey…. try to remember. Once you’re back there, don’t talk to anyone but Anti-Lincoln. Got that? Tubey? Right…. he’s non-verbal. Mitch – write the instructions on his husk, there’s a good chap.

Woke up this morning, my head was so bad. Worst hangover I ever had. What happened to me last….. Whoa, hold on there. Must have been singing in my sleep. My apologies.

Yeah, I was dreaming about some of the god-awful cover bands I’ve played in over the years. (Well I remember back in ’93… tar-nation, that was a time!) It’s like paying penance for a heinously miss-spent youth… Condemned forever to roam the catacombs of memory, warbling disposable rock-n-roll warhorses to myself. W.T.F. – I don’t think I ever even SANG “Double shot of my baby’s love” or whatever it’s called! I must be reliving the lives of other ex-lounge lizards. Uhhlllll…. That’s a grisly thought. Anyway, welcome back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, where the roofs are sagging, the floors are heaving, and the space in-between is getting narrower and narrower all the time. (The man-sized tuber has scrounged up a 4X8 post from somewhere and propped it up next to his terrarium, just in case. Forward-thinking, I thought.) We make the best of things (and, occasionally, the worst of things) over here.

Don’t know if you remember, but last week I reported on Anti-Lincoln’s recent disappearance into what seemed to be a hole into another dimension. (How do I know it was Anti- and not Posi-Lincoln? The spiraling shape in the interdimensional wormhole was rotating in a counter-clockwise direction.) Before you ask, the answer is no – no, none of us jumped in there after him. Quite frankly, Anti-Lincoln has a tendency to get on everyone’s nerves. Matt just threw a sandwich at him last week in frustration. (This may not seem all that serious, but let me tell you… it was one mean sandwich.) Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) doesn’t care for the man (or anti-man), and he never had the property of dislike programmed into him. Posi-Lincoln – the actual 16th president of the United States, plucked from the past by virtue of Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating machine (read all about it in our archives) – seems totally unconcerned over the disappearance of his evil doppelganger, even though this could lead to trouble for the great emancipator.

How? Glad you asked, actually. Well, think about it, now. What if, by pure chance, Anti-Lincoln lands in Washington D.C. in, say, 1863, and is mistaken for the genuine article. Why… the outcome of the Civil War might well be altered. The South might actually succeed in its secessionary ambitions and become a North American apartheid South Africa, while the North might morph into a somewhat crispier version of Canada – Canadian bacon, if you will. Where would we be then, eh? I’ll tell you where…. right here in the Cheney Hammer Mill, that’s where. As I said, this would be bad news for Lincoln, since his reputation might be negatively affected…. but for the rest of us, well, it could be very much the same deal. Just weirder, if that can be imagined. So before you say it, yes, I should have stopped that fuzz-faced goon from leaping through the time warp towards eons and eras unknown. But I failed. I FAILED.

Whoof. Glad I got that out of my system. Now we can proceed with our day, right? Hey…. where is everyone? And what happened to my map of the United States? It seems much shorter now….

So, as I was saying…. What was I saying again? Can’t keep track, frankly. Give me a moment to page back through my previous utterances. Ah, yes. A day in the life.

5:30 p.m. Sifting through the mountain of complaints I’ve received after posting the last blog. Seems like people don’t like hearing blow-by-blow descriptions of how we spend our time. Strange… because even though it seems that way, I remain convinced that they do care. Maybe it’s the Zenite snuff sFshzenKlyrn plied me with earlier, I don’t know.

6:47 p.m. A noise begins drifting up from the basement. At first I think it may be some kind of diseased creature, wandered in through the sewer lines in search of sweet revenge. As I move closer to the stairwell, however, I realize it’s just my comrades tuning up for another rehearsal. Why don’t they ever tell me about these rehearsals? (Perhaps they announce them at the band meetings that… I never… attend…. oh, yeah.)

7:01 p.m. Rehearsal’s over. Man, that was taxing! Almost as much so as that new tax on beer and wine. Oh my God – those madmen in Albany…. what are they doing to us?!? How am I EVER going to come up with another 1-1/2 cents to spend on a six pack? It’s MADNESS!!!

9:50 p.m. There’s a hole in the living room wall. Not an ordinary hole, mind you – a hole into another dimension. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) ran across it while he was doing the tidying up. (He doubles as one of those robotic vacuum cleaners – pretty versatile.) Don’t know how it got there, but my guess is that this is the result of some experiment Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has been working on. Lot of racket, noxious fumes, and heavy vibrations coming from his makeshift lab, just lately. Must have landed himself a grant somewhere.

10:15 p.m. This just in – Anti-Lincoln has wandered into the trans-dimensional wormhole in the living room. God, I hate when he does that!

That’s one Lincoln out the door. Good thing we’ve got a spare.

Bit rushed at the moment. Be with you in just a tick. One, mississippi. Two, mississippi. Okay… two ticks.

Yeah, I know – we’re all busy, right? Well, until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes. (Or a few yards, even.) Big Green may seem like a bunch of slackers, but let me tell you… we’re…. anything… snxxxxx….. Oh, sorry. Drifted off there. Walking a mile in my shoes can get to be a tiring business. Here’s what we’re up against on a typical day:

6:00 a.m. – Snoring loudly. Man-sized tuber sends his daily complaint email to the codes department; still no response after five years, but… he’s a plant, okay? Takes a little learning to get an idea into his fibrous head. But I digress.

8:15 a.m. – Band meeting. Only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) shows up. Which is fitting, because he schedules the meetings unbeknown to the rest of us. As we sleep in our various sections of the mill, Marvin sits at an empty wooden table in the old forge room, making whirring and clicking sounds for about 45 minutes before moving along to his next scheduled duty.

10:45 a.m. – Up and at ’em, as they used to say. At least where I’m concerned. Matt’s been out feeding the birds, beavers, and other assorted creatures since about 5:00 a.m. (Did I leave that out?) John is out feeding the squirrels. I’m feeding myself at the breakfast table, sitting across from a very grizzly looking Mitch Macaphee (resident mad scientist). Another experiment gone wrong, by the look of him.

12:17 p.m. – A quick run around the park. Exercise? Heaven forefend! No sir, it’s me running away from that guy who’s been trying to serve us with an eviction notice for the last five years. This happens almost anytime I nip out to the store for Necco Wafers or the like. ‘Round the part we go, several times, until he tires. Now, this wouldn’t happen if they’d merely accept alternative currency in payment…. like, I don’t know…. Necco Wafers, perhaps? Would such a humble offering once again save the Cheney Hammer Mill from the wrecking ball? Can’t say. Out of breath.

3:45 p.m. – Cantaloupes! Hundreds of them left on our doorstep by parties unknown. We were just about to go into our makeshift studio and work on some makeshift songs, and now this! We decide to task the Lincolns (posi- and antimatter) with disposing of them properly. I’m hoping this won’t result in bushel-loads of melon balls. Hate them things.

5:08 p.m. – Writing the ludicrous blog entry for the week. Not sure who reads this shit, but whoever it is… god bless ’em, anyway. Pressing publish…. NOW. Freak-tastic!

Add a little cilantro. Mmmm…. probably not THAT much. Jesus christmas, Mitch – you’re kind of extravagant with the spicing, aren’t you. Now, don’t get offended, I…. uh, Mitch….?

There he goes again. That’s the second time he’s walked out on me in the course of preparing this meal. Sensitive scientists! Anyway, welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where spirits are always elevated, music is ubiquitous, and science is a child’s plaything. A lot of experimentation goes on here. We’ve seen it all, frankly, from selective negation of gravity to new formulae for cornmeal popovers. (Actually, the two things kind of go together.) What does it all have in common? None of the results are published, that’s what. What happens at the mill stays at the mill, my friends. Just ask Mitch Macaphee, the mad (and extremely thin-skinned, apparently) scientist who advises us on all matters relating to bubbling beakers of goo, primitive electrodes, and massive pressure gauges. Fortunately he has not invented any new robots – Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is quite sufficient automatronic company for any rock band.

What’s happened over the last week or so? Oh, you know… the usual stuff for a virtual rock band. Practice. Recording. Personal appearances. Listening for that fateful knock on the door from the codes department. (Shhhhh…. Don’t tell them we’re here!) Scraping up loose change wherever we can find it. How is the vacationland scheme going? Ah, we let that one drop. Pretty typical for us, really. Get an idea first, then think about it and realize how stupid it is. (Story of our lives.) The only one of us that was truly into doing it was the man-sized tuber. He had polished up all of his customer service skills and was ready to man that front desk. It took a while to break it to him, frankly. I certainly didn’t have the heart for it, and we didn’t want to delegate it to someone outside of the band proper (particularly since that might end up being anti-Lincoln, who would take delight in tubey’s misery). In the end, it was Matt who handed him the clue. (Scribbled on the back of an empty book of matches, as it happened.)

Putting that unpleasantness aside, we’ve been toiling away at our next album (or “collection”, as Mitch insists on calling it). Breaking new ground here for old Big Green. I, for one, recorded my first banjo part ever. (Luckily, John lent me his banjo… though I had to blacken in a few teeth before hitting the record button.) Matt tried his hand at mandolin and washboard, and we both tracked a jug-band accompaniment. What’s the song? Let’s just say it’s a little number about some friends of ours. No, it won’t be stuffed with inside jokes… just a little topical humor (i.e. only to be taken externally). There are a few others in the works, and we’re following the usual production schedule, so don’t pop the earbuds in just yet (unless you’ve got other things to listen to). In the meantime, we’ve been trying our hand at developing recipes for something we plan on calling the “Big Green Cookbook”. Hence the extra cilantro. (An atypical ingredient for blueberry muffins, I will admit.) Another little money-making scheme that’s sure to….

What’s that? Someone has already done a Big Green Cookbook? Who the hell is Jackie Newgent and why haven’t I ever seen her at any band meetings? (Perhaps because I don’t attend them…?)

You hear that sound? A little subtle, eh? Well, it’s cotton on cotton. That’s me turning my pockets inside out and shrugging my shoulders. Bottom scraped, my friends.

What happened with Big Green‘s massive coin salvage program? Well, all of the jars and old sofas have given up their treasure, and the booty is already spent. That’s right – we pulled together about $47, all of which went to the electric company. (No, I don’t mean the children’s television program from the 1970’s… I mean the fuckers who keep the lights on.) Then there was that fiver that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) found lying around the forge room. I don’t want you to think we’re turning on each other in our hour of need, but I will admit that there was a minor tussle over that bill. Mostly it was Marvin (who was too clueless to let it go) and anti-Lincoln (who was determined to get an absinthe over at the local watering hole), but before long we were all involved, flailing away like drunks, growling like mad dogs over a stolen soup bone. A pitiable sight, to be sure.

Yes indeed. Anti-Lincoln got his absinthe, for all the good it did him. (He’s mad already, I tell you…. MAD.) Once we all regained feelings in our extremities, we tried to take collective stock of our position. Not a very promising one. Matt asked Mitch Macaphee if he could invent some money – that drew a snarky look, and we all went silent. Most of our ideas had gone flat. The portraits with Lincoln didn’t pan out. People refused to believe he actually was Lincoln. I think it was because we had one Lincoln on both ends of town. (We nuked our own credibility on that one, I’m afraid.) There was a suggestion – I think it may have come from me – that we put the man-sized tuber up for sale, but that didn’t fly either. (The bottom fell out of the tuber market months ago.) It seemed as though the only thing left was to start searching for honest remunerative employment. Odd jobs, perhaps. Like bending pretzels and raising alligators. (Apologies to Mad comics.)

Then it struck us. Why don’t we try that thing that Dr. Smith did on Lost In Space when the Robinson’s went away and left him in charge of the Jupiter 2? (Need help on that? Oh, all right…) We can rent the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill out as a luxury resort hotel! Apart from the luxury, we have everything we need. I could print tickets. Matt could borrow some floral umbrellas from the local sporting goods store. John could stop by the lumber yard and pick up some groceries. We could rename the mill something like “Falcon’s Harbor” or “Happy Acres”, even though there’s no harbor and there are no acres. (It’s what’s called the “Pelican Cove” principle, after a planned community by that name that had neither pelicans nor a cove.) We could start selling reservations on the internets – just post a message on any old site and patrons will flock toward us like lemmings. It’s just that easy.

Or maybe not. But it beats working. Got better ideas? Send ’em here.

No coins? Hmmm… check my other pants. I was sure I had some silver in there. Valuable, precious silver. No? Oh well. There’s always the jar on my nightstand. What do you mean you knocked it over?!

Yes, yes, my friends – it’s just as it sounds. Broke again, fighting the mice for scraps of cheese. Matt just had a smack-down with a praying mantis that was making off with a fragment of stale halvah. (Did Matt prevail? Let us pray.) I’ve asked Big Green’s mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to put his considerable skills to good effect and invent us some money (or maybe a pizza), but he can’t be bothered with such trifles…. not when he’s preoccupied with his unified field theory. (Not going so well, I perceive.) And now we’re rifling through drawers (not with real rifles, you understand), rummaging through garments, and shaking the hell out of every cup and jar in the joint looking for loose change with which to keep our lights on for another week. What? What do you mean you hocked the lights? You moron!

Sorry for the unpleasantness… I hope you didn’t find it too unpleasant. Sometimes it’s hard to impress upon Marvin (my personal robot assistant) just how much of a problem lack of money can be for us humans. Marvin, of course, has no need of crass commodities such as food, water, heat, clothing, etc. I’m certain he thinks we’re just obsessive and addicted to our well-entrenched consumer behaviors. Of course, he’s partly true – our fondness for Zenite snuff has proven a little difficult to shake. (I blame sFshzenKlyrn, who is always arriving from the Small Magellanic Cloud with a fresh poke.) But that exception aside, we’re really just talking about basic necessities here. Marvin – whose batteries are self-regenerating, drawing energy from gravity and the relative proximity of matzoh bakeries – fails to grasp our predicament. I swear, I thought I heard him grumbling as he fished around in the bottom of a storage crate, looking for stray quarters. (Sometimes the metallic squeaks his joints make sound like a gruff voice saying, “loser, loser“. Or maybe it’s me.)

The Lincolns have been of some assistance in this regard. As you know, their shared visage appears on certain denominations of U.S. currency. Now, we have quite enough of the coin that bears their likeness – virtually worthless, as you know. But the bill still has some value, and the fact that we have not one but two Great Emancipators in our entourage means that both can be put into service attracting $5 bills. Actually, John had the best idea – set up booths on opposite sides of town offering patrons the opportunity to have their portrait taken with Honest (or Dishonest, depending on which one you get) Abe for… well, for $5. So in a way, it’s like trading one portrait of Lincoln for another, but hey… it’s the best idea we’ve got, okay? And aside from the occasional meltdown by Anti-Lincoln (who rails against the very notion of being put to work like a beast of burden), it might actually help us make back all that credit default swap cash Loathsome Prick Records lost on our behalf.

Wasn’t that thoughtful of them? Anyway, back to the scavenger hunt. Seems like I kept a shitload of dimes around here somewhere.

Casting Pod. Yours truly (Joe) appears on the next (I believe) installment of the Bloodthirsty Vegetarians podcast, now in its fifth mad year. Check it out at http://www.bloodyveg.com/ and let me know if I sound stupid (’cause I’m hoping so).

Okay, it goes like this. Boom…. crack…. boom-boom crack…. Boom…. crack…. boom-boom… crack… crack! Got that? What…. you need to hear it again? What the hell am I, a beat box?

Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be band leaders! Not that this band has any leaders, per se – we kind of pass the talking stick around, and who ever happens to be holding it has the floor. (In truth, we don’t really have a stick here in Big Green. We just take turns in non-stick holding ways.) However you cut it, it’s hard to make music in this abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill environment, particularly with patience running thin in the midst of such a serious economic downturn. Oh yes, my friends – it affects us, as well. Big Green is not immune, no sir. We put our pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. Except the man-sized tuber, who doesn’t have legs. Or Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who doesn’t wear pants. (He’s made of metal, you see.) Or sFshzenKlyrn, who is a transcendental being of no fixed mass, location, or temporal displacement, and therefore does not need pants, not in the least. So that thing I said earlier about pants… well… just forget it.

Anyway… we recently discovered, to our great dismay, that the corporate label that claims our allegiance at present has fallen upon some hard financial times. Yes, Loathsome Prick, who currently handles our intergalactic CD sales, ran into a little trouble with a small business unit they established some years back down here on terra firma. It’s called LP Financial Products and it specializes in something called, um…. let’s see…. credit…. credit default swaps. Yeah, that’s it. Whatever the hell they are. Anyhow, they ended up owing a whole lot of cash to somebody, and I’m not quite sure how or why. Interesting side note: I went over to their office the other day and saw our A&R rep leaving by the freight elevator with a large suitcase. Must have been in a hurry – he apparently closed the suitcase on some $100 bills he was packing. (Damned untidy, I thought. Curious thing.)

Here’s the rub – I’m told that most of what we’ve earned through intergalactic CD sales (an emerging market, to be sure) was invested for us by Loathsome Prick in what they called a “growth fund”. Fortunately, financial products division of LP guaranteed those investments with these here credit default swap thingies. Unfortunately, when those investments went bad (I believe they sunk most of it into a doomed asteroid – seemed like a good bet at the time) and LP Financial Products was asked to pay up, they… well… defaulted. Now they’ve applied for an AIG style government bailout. My guess is that, with a name like Loathsome Prick, they should have no worries. In the meantime, our reps have apparently decided to go on a hastily planned vacation to …. well, they didn’t say where, exactly. All I know is that they must have been running a little late. (Never seen a car take a turn on one wheel before….)

Anywho, our personal financial advisor – Geet O’Reilly – now tells us that they’re having some financial trouble. And that all of our earnings from the last three tours are down the toilet. Easy come… easy go, right?

More where that came from – For those of you who enjoyed our listener-penned reviews last week, you can read more at our little outpost on garageband.com – Our page is at http://www.garageband.com/artist/big_green/songs. Check it out. Some are even kind of… I don’t know… positive.

Turn it down a little more. Little more. Okay. Good. Can’t hear that at all. Yeah, that’s right – nothing. Much better. And… hey! Don’t throw things at me!

Sensitive artists, these cohorts of ours. Take Marvin (my personal robot assistant)…. please. He’s been playing the pipe organ on our latest recordings, and, well… a little goes a long way, let’s put it that way. Ouch! Stop chucking stuff, man! Very sensitive. We’ve been asking him to go a little easy on the organ, and he treats that like an insult. (It does sound vaguely obscene, come to think of it.) So it looks like our patented arranging method of starting with every imaginable instrument and subtracting them one by one… that’s not working so good. Thus far, we’ve only managed to eject the glockenspiel, the tin drum, the specially-tuned half-sticks of dynamite, the kazoo, and hell, we’ve got a long, long way to go before we get down to what’s typically needed for a Big Green album. Even sFshzenKlyrn is losing patience with these sessions, and he has a life-span (or half-life) of 57 million Earth years.

We’ll get it done, never fear. In the mean time, how are our current releases doing? Well, let’s check in on a few listener responses to our last single, “High Horse“. Here’s one from a guy who calls himself “UncleOutrage”:

I Hate To Be The Villian, But…..

I can’t quite tell if this song is supposed to be funny or not, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t like it in either case. Honestly much of it has to do with the genre, I’m really not a fan of honky-tonk country music in the least. But even as song writing goes, this was VERY repetitive and I might go as far to say annoying. I’m REALLY sorry, I hate to be negative as far as judging someone else’s work, but I just have to be honest. There was nothing I liked in this track at all.

 

Well, “Uncle” – glad you enjoyed that. If you want to hear it again (and again and again), just drop by our Web site at www.big-green.net/highhorse. There’s even a ludicrous video. Go wild, son!

Here’s a Garageband review from someone who calls him/herself “SkelingtonBoot”:

ugh

I’m sorry this is just not for me. I don’t think this is indie rock, this is one of those red warning label genres like Country Rock or Comedy. Singer has a sturdy voice and given a willing spirit I reckon he could get you singing along to your granny’s armpits and the melody – very country – is very compelling in a very cheesy way. The lyrics are … ? I can’t talk about the lyrics. Overall the song sounds very proficiently performed and I do believe that humour belongs in music … but, that’s not a carte blanche!

 

Gosh, “Skelington”, not sure where to begin! Thanks for the kudos on the “willing spirit”, though you should know we eliminated all the “granny’s armpit” sounds kind of early on in the production process. We’ll definitely take your “humour… not a carte blanche” comment to heart, though. From now on, we’ll start editing ourselves more judiciously. We’re going to get all serious, now. Totally. No, seriously.

Well, that’s probably enough fun for this week, kids. We’ve got to interrupt the man-sized tuber’s monologue before people start getting too happy in the studio. Music is a serious business, you know. No time for all this hee-hee and yuk-yuk.