Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Maybe the best year there ever was

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2000 Years to Christmas

Well, we don’ have any flour. The mice ate it. And no baking pans of any kind. I’ve got a rusty skillet and enough batter mix for one pancake. Will that do? Oh, I see … Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Hey, you can’t please everybody. (And frankly, there’s no point in trying. ) The fact is, we are ill-equipped to celebrate anything here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as we don’t have the usual set of domestic crockery, pots and pans, etc. that you expect to find in these parts. Then there’s that no-baking clause in our lease. (Yes, lease. The one some panhandler drew up for us on toilet paper.)

Here’s the rub, though – we kind of have something to celebrate. It’s our thirty-fifth anniversary as a named band. And if that isn’t worth frying up a flapjack, what the hell is?

Deep roots. Broken branches.

Of course, we didn’t spring out of the ground back in the summer of 1986. Far from it! We fell from the sky, my friends. Fortunately, there were a lot of trampolines in the 80s, so it was a soft landing. And yes, we were young. Too small even to carry our enormous guitars.

No roadies, of course. So like ants, we would carry our gear in and out of clubs, trying to conceal our tiny-ness. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) couldn’t help because at that time he was about the size of a clock radio. (A clock radio is, well … a clock with a radio built into it, and you can ..,. uh … ask your mother.) Our arms were broken with all of that lugging, which made it that much harder to play. But we persisted!

There .... See how short we were back then?

Punk party in the park!

I’ve told the story many, many times about how we named the band. Gather round, kiddies …. we’ll give it to you one more time. One time in the white bread suburban town we grew up in, Matt and my sister saw a poster for a punk party in the town park. As that seemed like the most unlikely thing in the world, they went to have a look-see.

Well, when they got to the park, there was not a punk to be seen. Just a bunch of trees organized into what was known in the punk scene at that time as a “forest”. When Matt and my sister returned, he was asked, “what were those punks at the park like?” Matt replied, “Well, they had big green hair and bark suits.”

We then wanted Big Green Hair and Bark Suits as our band name, of course, but on the suggestion of Big Green co-founder Ned Danison, we shortened it to Big Green.

That was thirty-five years ago. Get a strong enough telescope and you can see it for yourself – just point the scope at where the earth was on this day in 1986 and, well ….. you will see … something.

Usual Rubbish

When all your sharps sound flat.

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2000 Years to Christmas

This is not the instrument I play. Mine is over there. You know, the one in the big wooden case that has to be pushed around on dollies. No, not THAT kind of dolly … the kind that’s flat and has WHEELS, damn it. Don’t you know ANYTHING?

Oh, goodness – my apologies. I had assumed that no one was reading this. I’m afraid you’ve caught us at kind of a difficult moment. You see, an alert listener – I believe someone in rural Idaho – suggested that we sound like people who play their instruments blindfolded. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so I got the guys together and we donned our cartoon-like blindfolds, then started playing the first instrument we came upon.

Needless to say, this exercise was about as unenlightening as any we’ve attempted previously in our residency at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. But we try to be responsive to the demands of our audience. That is our lot as performers, is it not? (Some would say not.)

There’s a difference, man

Nevertheless, I would have to say that I did, in fact, learn something from this experience. For one thing, not all instruments are built the same. You tend to get kind of parochial when you play the same axe over and over, right? Well, hell – put a blindfold on and play the next axe you come across. You’ll discover that there are some remarkable differences between, say, a tuba and a mandolin.

To be fair, there is one thing those instruments have in common: I can’t play either one of them. Not that I haven’t tried to play unfamiliar instruments. Long time Big Green listeners will know that I played banjo on a couple of tracks, including “Falling Behind” on Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our ex-governor (cousin) Rick Perry tribute album. You can also hear me playing banjo on “Box of Crackers”, a recording we’ve played on THIS IS BIG GREEN (see our August 2019 episode).

What the hell’s the point of music, anyway?

Now, I’m not saying, on the basis of these crude recordings, that I can actually play the banjo. Far from it! But – and this is important – I can play it about as well as I play the bassoon. Which is to say, not really at all. You see, the bassoon is among the most difficult of the wind instruments to master. I was just explaining this to Prince Leopold the other day. It has a double reed and is the size of a bedpost. In fact, it looks like what you get when a bedpost fucks a clarinet (or vice versa).

Which naturally begs the question – what is the point of music, anyway? Like I do with most esoteric questions, I fed that one into Marvin (my personal robot assistant), whose patented eludian-Q9 melotronic brainalizer can work out any puzzle. (Except Rubic’s Cube. He’s still working on that one.)

Well, his lights flashed, his antennae twirled, he made whirring sounds, and then spit out a little piece of paper which read: “It is pointless.” There you have it, people! Stop wasting your lives! Put the damn bassoons away!

Usual Rubbish

Social media killed the radio star.

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2000 Years to Christmas

I spy with my little eye … a chair! Right, that’s the one. Now your turn. Well now … you can’t say chair, because I just did and there’s only one in the room. Pick something else, damn it!

Sheesh – that’s the trouble with playing parlor games here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. For one thing, there’s no parlor. Even worse, it seems no one in our entourage has ever played a game before. Not even Parcheesi! We are creatures of the road, my friends, driven by eternal wanderlust. Except, of course, for most of the last twenty-five years, during which we’ve been nailed in one spot.

Sure, I know – if we’ve got all this time on our hands, why the hell aren’t we recording? Why aren’t we putting out new episodes of THIS IS BIG GREEN or NED TREK? Well, that’s a good question. I would add that to our list of Freakishly Unanswerable Questions, but then that dude would call me a “dink” again, and then I couldn’t show my face in my fifth grade classroom should 1970 ever return.

Turn it down, the radio

They say video killed the radio star. Well, we never were radio stars, but we got killed none the less – not by video, though. No, sir – social media killed us. It wore us down to a nub. Just look at what it did to Marvin (my personal robot assistant)! His hands are mere claws. And the mansized tuber – he is now a helpless Facebook addict, scrolling and scrolling his life away. Pathetic!

Not like that, you idiot! Use the hockey stick.

As official spokesperson for Big Green, I do spend a little time on Facebook, Twitter, and … uh …. some other stuff. But I’m not living on that shit. And frankly, it’s the podcasts that took it out of us. At its peak, THIS IS BIG GREEN was posting 12 shows a year, half of them musicals, which meant five, six, sometimes eight new songs recorded and finished in time to post, along with an hour-long episode of Ned Trek. Holy mother – I get tired just THINKING about it.

Hammock time, geezers

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we’re retiring. For one thing, we can’t afford to. For another thing, we’ve barely even started. We’re like the Elias Sandoval of indie music. “We could have made this planet into a garden!” (It’s from classic Star Trek. Ask your mother. Or better yet, you’re moron father.)

Will we do more episodes of TIBG? Probably, but we are definitely on hiatus. Those buzzards circling over the mill, they’re just waiting on a friend. Then it’s off to the rookery. As for us, we should probably switch to backgammon. I think even Marvin could figure THAT out.

Usual Rubbish

Taking the words WAY too literally.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Jesus, man … another song about geoscience? Just wait until Mitch gets his hands on that. What’s the topic this time – gravitation? I guess he’s already fucked with that sufficiently. Still, I worry.

Yeah, that’s right. No one wants to see your friends in Big Green just moping around the abandoned hammer mill like a bunch of sad sacks, bickering with one another. So we make an extra effort to smile when we get visitors. And if we’re not in the mood, we get Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to do it for us. No, he doesn’t have anything like what you might call a mouth, but he’s got some grill work to show, and that will do in a pinch.

What’s the beef? Nothing serious. Just interrogating my illustrious brother Matt about the subject matter of his recent songwriting. Some of you may recall that his lyrics have spawned some trouble in the past. No, they’re not controversial or obscene in any way, but they do give Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, some bad ideas. And he tends to take our song lyrics very literally.

The Question of George

A couple of years ago it was Matt’s song “Why Not Call It George?”, the lyric for which has always sounded to me, in part, like a bulleted list of mad-man items:

Gravity can: (a) make your mind flow out from your tongue; (b) take your eyes downtown to see the nuns all bunched up on the tiles; (c) pull your lips back from your smile

(Hear it yourself: Check out our live version of the song on our YouTube channel.)

Parts of that song made Mitch think he could (dare I say it?) rule … the world! Or at least reverse continental drift and reclaim Pangaea. I got nervous when he started spending months at a time in the lab … and the ground started shaking. Not. good.

This doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Eruption Imminent!

Then there was “Volcano Man”, a track from our 2nd album, International House. Mitch started obsessing over that one as well. You know how grade school kids sometimes build those baking soda volcanoes for school projects? Well, that’s a miniature version of what we had to deal with around this dump. Of course, Mitch had to open a vent straight down to the Earth’s molten caramel center, just so that the ‘cano was authentic. He was doing it with an upside-down rocket, Crack In The World style. What a mess!

Anyhow, I’ve tried to encourage Matt to write songs about less volatile things. You know, like …. butterflies, or cobblestones, or vegetable stew. Maybe you’ve got some suggestions that don’t suck (like these do).

Usual Rubbish

Daddy took the t-bird away (Damn him!)

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yes, yes …. I know it’s warm out. It’s hot as all hell in here, for crying out loud. Go ahead and open a few windows in the foundry room. You’ll need a ladder and a hook. And if anything catches fire, best call the hook and ladder.

Well, it’s predictable that as soon as the warm weather settles in, members of the Big Green entourage start getting restless. These long winters in an abandoned hammer mill can really take it out of you. But I have to say, summers are no better. It gets hot enough in here to melt all those discarded hammer heads. (I see claw-head hammers bubbling.) Who can blame the crew for wanting a little fresh air, right?

Of course, some of their notions about recreational activities are a little, let’s say, non-standard and unrealistic. Just to be clear, we don’t have an entertainment budget. We also don’t have a transportation budget. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we don’t have any kind of budget, period. We scratch and scrape for every morsel, but because we are a collectivist institution, we all share the workload. This morning I was on scratch duty. Tomorrow it will be scraping.

Surf’s Up On The Erie!

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spent too much of the winter months watching beach movies. He’s got it into his little brass noggin that he wants to go water skiing on the New York State Barge Canal, which runs right by our mill. I keep telling him the damn thing isn’t deep enough or … well … watery enough to water ski on, but he’s insisting.

He thinks if he gets enough speed, he’ll be able to do some jumps even, but dude, there isn’t enough speed in the world for you to manage that.

Looks a little too placid to me, man.

But You’re Not Ben, Abe

For his own part, Anti-Lincoln has decided to fly a kite in the middle of Little Falls, on the busiest street in this tiny city. He obviously thinks his status as an antimatter former president is going to keep him from having his ass hauled to jail like the other miscreants. I’m not so sure.

I reminded him that it was Ben Franklin, not Abe Lincoln, that was the historical American personage who flew kites in the cartoon shows of my youth. (That was how he invented electricity.) His rejoinder? “What part of anti-Lincoln do you not understand?” Fair cop.

Mitch Macaphee, on the other hand, considers true recreation to be curling up with a bottle of Thunderbird. Until daddy takes it away, of course.

Usual Rubbish

Climbing the ladder up into the basement

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2000 Years to Christmas

Nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen, Tubey. Nobody knows but Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen …..

Oh, hey, there. Just singing a mournful little tune to the mansized tuber, now reachable on Facebook. Lord knows, we don’t like to complain here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – the fact is, we LOVE to complain, particularly anti-matter Lincoln (or A-Link as his friends now call him), who’s been complaining about the war since …. well, since the war. (He’s not specific about which war, but I think it was one of the badder ones.)

Hey, look … everybody has their bumps coming up the ladder. As the saying goes, be nice to everyone you meet on the way up the ladder, because they’ll be the same people you meet on your way down. What is the relevance of that statement? I have no idea. We’ve never been anywhere near that damn ladder. Couldn’t say if it’s wood or aluminum. That’s the kind of complaining I’m talking about.

Changing Pre-History

Now, I know we’ve spun a few tales about our origin story, but like any band, we needed to have an interesting back story, and I’m not saying it’s not true, but …. we may have embellished one or two details here and there. That’s as far as I’ll go, but bear this in mind – the Freakishly Unanswerable Questions are as true as the day is long. And the day is long, my friends.

Well, anyway … that’s the band’s story. Our individual stories are a bit more complicated. Take mine (please!). Back when we were concerned with making something like a living, we all had side gigs to support our Big Green habit. Mine were mostly playing in other bands, as I had no other skills and no inclination to develop any more.

The Bad Side Of Massachusetts

Here’s an anecdote. One band I played in with one of the co-founders of Big Green, Ned Danison, was an almost total waste of time. I remember a gig we had in Western Mass, an awful town whose name I won’t mention (North Adams) where we played a hotel gig, five nights a week for a couple of weeks at a time. The place has probably improved since four decades ago, I imagine, but back then …. hoo boy. The lodgings were adequate, but the money was crap, the music was awful, and the place was full of crazy people.

Did anything happen of interest? No. Ned and I worked on some songs that never saw the light of day. Was it a stepping stone to greater things? No. It was just another crappy gig. Not the first, and certainly not the last.

Don’t Listen To Me!

This is my way of saying, don’t follow my example. Don’t listen to anything that I say! If you’re reading this now, STOP WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Or start a band. Up to you, really. Don’t let me influence you.

Usual Rubbish

Joe to band: More album, less concept

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2000 Years to Christmas

No, that’s a terrible idea. What the hell! Sometimes I wonder about your synaptic circuits, dude. I’m starting to think your think-o-lator needs urgent service. What else have you got? I got nothing.

Oh, hey, out there in cyber land. Just another day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York. And by “another day,” I mean another contentious debate over the best way forward for your friends in Big Green. As you know, rock bands spend a lot of their time working out their artistic direction over the course of ten, sometimes twenty years. Hell, if you don’t do THAT, you might end up drifting … or playing the same stuff over and over again …. which is, uh, kind of what …. we …. do ….

An extraordinary meeting

Well, we’re trying to get away from that sort of thing. That’s why we’ve convened a special meeting of the Big Green creative steering committee, which is comprised of the band members, of course, plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber. We used to include Anti-Lincoln in these meetings, but he kept talking about the war and, well, that gets old pretty fast.

Still, even without “A-Link”, as we call him, in attendance, we some time end up treading the same territory. For instance, we were on the topic of concept albums. I asked the group to suggest some possible concepts for upcoming Big Green collections. Most of the man-sized tuber’s suggestions were plant-based, but then Marvin piped up with the suggestion that we do an album themed around the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. I’m telling you, it’s A-Link all over again!

Can we leave Prince Leopold out of this, Marvin?

Why all Marvin’s ideas are bad ones

Okay, putting Lincoln aside for a moment, there are about a hundred reasons why doing a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War is a bad idea. First of all, I’m convinced that a not-insignificant portion of our fan-base is still sensitive about the accession of Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the Spanish throne. And while I don’t want to seem like a panderer, in these hard economic times, we shouldn’t go out of our way to alienate anyone unnecessarily.

This tends to be the problem with many if not all of Marvin’s ideas. There’s always a poison pill hidden in there somewhere. Honestly, a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War would inevitably dredge up unpleasant memories of the birth of France’s Third Republic, and THEN where would we be? That’s why all of Marvin’s ideas are bad!

The totally excellent solution

How about this? No more concept albums. From now on, Big Green albums will just be a collection of randomly generated songs with no relationship to one another or to some unifying idea. Thoughts? Any hands? (Or branches, tubey?)

Usual Rubbish

Our influencer needs some pruning.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Jesus Christmas, is THAT what he’s been doing? Oh, yeah … sorry. I forgot that his pronouns are it, its, and … uh …. it. I mean, ITS pronouns, not his. Sorry, sorry. But …. is that what it’s been doing? Whoa.

Oh, hiya. Glad to see some visitors from the sane side of reality. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat palace, it’s crazytown USA. Chock full of nuts, you might say. In here, we just page through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or the DSM-5, as they call it) and take turns embodying each entry to its fullest. It’s almost like the authors have been hiding in the walls, watching us through two-way mirrors. (Is that paranoia … ?)

Sure, that’s problematic. But we’ve got other things to occupy our thoughts. Like, for instance, what the hell is that mansized tuber up to now? For years it’s been like … well, like a potted plant, taking up space in the courtyard, hoping for rain. Now, suddenly, tubey (friends call him tubey) has reemerged from seclusion, firing up its social media accounts and firing off posts like a mighty oak dropping acorns. It is a site to behold.

Branching out

Lord knows that tubey has been in one or two scrapes, as any reader of this blog will surely know. But nothing like what it’s likely to run into on social media. For instance, tubey just restarted his Facebook page after a long absence, and already some loser has asked it to admin their page. Imagine the gall! (Some podcast named Strange Sound …. what the hell is that?)

I think he's right, tubey. You have to turn it on first.

Now, typically when you haven’t done a thing in a while, you get less practiced at that thing. That’s just common sense, right? Tubey, however, doesn’t subscribe to the notion of competence, let alone common sense. That’s why he’s strongly considering opening a TikTok account. Or maybe Instagram.

Master of none

There’s such a thing as spreading yourself too thin. And when you are a root vegetable, such a thing can be fatal. Fortunately for tubey, it has us to advise it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is also happy to pitch in with his suggestions, though they’re a little hard to parse. Marvin has never mastered English … or any other language, come to think of it. Which leaves us to interpreting random squeaks. Don’t try this at home!

Let’s face it – none of us is an expert on social media. Maybe tubey will be the first in Big Green land to make it work. Or maybe he’s just nuts like the rest of us.

Usual Rubbish

Taking the rap for unlicensed cyber busking

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2000 Years to Christmas

Can you just hold the camera still, man? I look like I’m playing on the Titanic …. or maybe the Lusitania. One of those big boats that went down, but not before a lot of rocking. And speaking of rocking …. HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!

Oh, hi, out there in cyber land. It’s your old friends Big Green, here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (No connection to the former Vice President or the current congress member from Wyoming.) Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about how hard this pandemic has been on musicians and other performers, with the possible exception of mimes. (Wherever they gig, they’re safe from COVID if they stay behind that glass wall.) Well, it’s certainly been hard on us.

Hard times in the city

How hard, you ask? Thank you for asking! Well, our finances were in the sewer before the pandemic hit. And of course, most of our gigs are played on other planets in other solar systems, but once those space aliens heard about COVID, none of them would grant us space visas. That means no space gigs, no space tour, and no space gold. Bing, bang, bong. (No accident that that story ends with a bong.)

What about conventional work, you say. Don’t be ridiculous! The only work you can get around here is baking bread or carrying boxes for slave wages so low that people do better by staying home and collecting unemployment. So that’s what we’re doing, minus the collecting unemployment part. But as always, we need a revenue stream – one that will run straight through this mill. (I’d settle for a revenue creek.)

Yeah. Kinda shakey.

So, we’re doing what a lot of bands do nowadays – cyber busking. We’re breaking out the guitar and playing random songs into the void of the internet, in hopes that some ether-like value will come floating back to us like bread upon the waters. Well I know that SOUNDS like a good idea, but it turns out to be more complicated than anyone might have imagined.

Feeling the earth move

For one thing, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t hold a web cam still to save his batteries. All of our performances look like a cheap summer stock production of The Last Days of Pompeii, the musical, special effects provided by a DUMB ASS AUTOMATON! Of course, we can’t afford a steadycam … so it’s the shaky cam for us.

Another thing we can’t afford: lawsuits! We made the questionable choice of playing some covers. First came the copyright strikes. Then came the cops and lawyers. I’ve asked our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to come up with some … um … scientific remedy to this problem, but it turns out HE’S afraid of the law, too. So … looks like it’s back to original material for us. Or just very poorly rendered versions of pop songs.

Usual Rubbish

Home for the Hella Days.

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2000 Years to Christmas

There it is again. See it? That white stuff, floating down from the sky to vex us. Why, Lord, why? I only just pulled the tarp off the hole in the roof last Saturday, and now this! MITCH!!

Sorry, folks. Didn’t mean to melt down all over the blog post. It’s this damnable weather that’s got me riled up. Freaking snow, coming down through the sky-wide gap in the roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. As it that isn’t bad enough, Anti-Lincoln is in the forge room making snowmen …. like a child! So un-presidential. (Which, I suppose, is to be expected.)

Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Of course, not everyone can do anything about it, and what makes this April snow particularly frustrating is the knowledge that we have here amongst us someone who actually can control the weather. I’m referring, of course, to our esteemed mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee, who has toyed with atmospheric disturbances as a pass time, but seems completely unwilling to use his knowledge for the good of his comrades. You’re no freaking use, Mitch – face it!

Well, I suppose if it’s going to be winter again, maybe we should put together another Christmas album. God knows we have enough numbers. Anyone who has listened to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, over the past ten years knows that we’ve recorded at least an album worth of ridiculous Christmas songs over that time. Why not package them up, tie them in a bow, and toss them out to the masses? Why the hell not? Happy Hella Days!

Ah, Christmas. Just like I remember it.

As Dylan said, I’ve got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane. None of them are any good, but better to have bad ideas than no ideas at all, right? Or …. maybe not. In any case, I know I’m probably over-reacting to the weather. I’m not sure the world is ready for another Big Green Christmas album. (In fact, I’m not sure Big Green is ready.)

So, maybe put a hold on the Christmas project, and pull the tarp back over what used to be a roof. Then close the freaking windows and stoke up the boiler. I’ll ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to put some more coal on the fire. In fact, you go out right now and buy a new coal scuttle. Yes, you do that before you dot another i, Marvin robot!

Damned hella days!