Good evening, Aldebaran! How is everybody out there? Thanks for coming out tonight! We love you, man… we love you!

Hi, folks. Thought I’d offer you a transcript of our last performance in the Aldebaran system, on the big planet Mjumbo. Try to picture this in your head. (Are you trying? Good.) Imagine an enormous stadium – bigger than the astrodome, built along the rim of an enormous impact crater thousands of years old. Thousands of shapeless blobs of protoplasm in the seats, all holding lit matches. (This, we later learned, is something they do all the time on this planet – it burns off the bad air.) Now picture, if you will, the usual Big Green line-up of miscreants on the stage, plinking on keys, plucking at strings, banging on skins, and hollering into microphones. (Also adding mood, in a way that only the man-sized tuber can.) And swinging from the scaffolding, warning people about the “brown acid”? Marvin (my personal robot assistant). While in his magnetic lock pedestal during the trip over, he had occasion to watch Woodstock: The Movie.

So what’s next – a cameo by Wavy Gravy? Not on this tour. No, sir… this was more like one of those primitive mid-sixties shows. Our speaker stacks are relatively primitive, our amps antiquated, my piano in excess of a dozen years old (i.e. relatively new). Don’t have to tell you that there was a bit of a buzz in the air that night, and I don’t mean the buzz of excitement. I’m talking bad patch cables, mostly. Still, it was fun for some of us, and the many thousands of blobs of extraterrestrial goo were nodding their pseudopods in time with “Enter the Mind” (a cut off of our new album, International House). Quite an amazing site to behold, actually. Stunning, I’d say. Or perhaps the word is, well… nauseating. Though our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee, has been capturing images of this phenomenon, hoping to use it in one of his new graphic user interfaces.

Well, that was then, this is now. And right now, we’re cruising away from Aldebaran at 30% of light speed in our modified Soyuz spacecraft. Destination? Well, that’s a bit up in the air. Our corporate uber-label, Loathsome Prick Records, originally wanted to send us out to Orion’s belt to do a string of gigs. Then sometime last week they changed their minds and decided that we should head over to the Pleiades cluster (the seven sisters). Of course, our initial reaction was, “What, all seven?” There was some grumbling over the phone, some muffled oaths, some veiled threats, and ultimately we agreed just to do three of the seven. Once in transit to that cluster, however, we received word from the overlords at LP that they wanted us to divert back to Orion again. Apparently there’s a bidding war going on for our presence. (Can you say “payola”?)

I can certainly say payola. I just can’t pay payola. So I guess that means we go where they tell us to, even if that turns out to be somewhere where the sun don’t shine. And as you know, the sun don’t shine in space… except near the sun.

Man, it’s hot on Aldebaran. (How hot is it, Joe?) Well… it’s hot enough to make the man-sized tuber sprout new branches. (W.t.f., Joe… that’s hot and a half!) Damn right.

Hi, there. Got a little sick of the monologue, so I thought I’d throw a call and response deal in the old blog. (Got to keep entertained somehow.) Big Green here, and I’m here to tell you that everything you learned about red giant stars is wrong. Sure, I know – they always told you that red giants are big, fat, overly cooled-down stars, right? Not so hot as those blue dwarfs, right? Well… looks like they was wrong, as they say in the old neighborhood (when somebody was wrong, that is). It’s hot as all get-out up here. It’s so freaking hot, Mitch Macaphee had to invent a sno-cone machine out of available materials… materials that included Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I regret to say. (Sorry, Marvin. I owe you one, man. Actually… I owe you a dozen, if memory serves.)

I don’t mind telling you, it took us ages to get here. That second-hand Soyuz we’re flying is nothing to write Moscow about. It’s cramped, leaky, and can’t get out of its own way, what with that four-cylinder ion drive Mitch cobbed together and wired up to Marvin’s internal power source (again, Marvin…. sorry… sorry…). Fact of the matter is, we had to fly through a hastily-contrived space/time warp in order to get there in less than a century or two. Luckily, our perennial sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn has one or two tricks up his sleeve with respect to the space/time continuum. In as much as he is an etheric being of no fixed temporal location (or hairstyle), he can play with time like it’s a wad of Silly Putty, stretching it, flattening it, pressing it onto the Sunday comics and making Dagwood Bumsted look like he weighs 3,000 pounds. (Lots of laughs.) So, luckily for us, sFshzenKlyrn has served as our interstellar fixer, once again. (Helps to have friends in high places. Very high places.)

Well, by the time we got on stage on Aldebaran, we were all so dehydrated that we probably looked like the California Raisins up there… or those Fruit of the Loom guys doing the Coldplay knock-off. Matt launched into the first song off of our new album, International House – a little number called “Welcome To It.” I admit, the band sounded a bit raspy at first. No question but that the enormous bucket of Gatorade was a welcome site when Anti-Lincoln came peddling up with it near the end of the first set. Always thinking ahead, that anti-Lincoln (though he is such a contrary creature, when he thinks ahead he’s actually remembering). We plowed on through the set and a half of material on the new album, then took a well-deserved rest… on the tailgate of a vehicle owned by one of our Aldebaran patrons. Some kind of jitney, I believe. (Though an oddly misshapen blob of protoplasm, I think he’s in the motor coach trade. Who would have thunk it?)

Anyways… we got through our first performance, with only a minor rescue needed. Mitch has our Soyuz in parking orbit around the crust of rock our corporate label, Loathsome Prick, chose for our first venue. In fact, I’d better fly…. I think the meter’s running out in about five minutes.

Half a league, half a league, half a league on. Man, this sucker is going slower than I would have expected. You call that an ion drive? I call it junk. Do you hear me? JUNK!

Oh, hi. Didn’t know anybody was within shouting distance. Don’t pay too much attention to what I just said – again, I like to keep the crew on their toes, if you know what I mean. Mitch Macaphee does much better mad science when you light a fire under him (I mean this literally – he responds to fire with greater productivity). So if you have any questions about our progress, I have answers… depending upon specifically which questions you are asking. Since you’re not saying anything, I will guess that they are as follows:

Q: Are you making progress towards your goal, Aldebaran?

A: First of all, don’t call me Aldebaran… at least not while there are other people in the room. The answer, quite simply, is yes. However, I’d prefer if you not ask me how much progress we have made in the time elapsed since my last posting.

Q: How much progress have you made?

A: DAMN! I was afraid you’d ask me that. Well, the fact is, we’ve been chugging along at a very tepid speed. Our second (or third) hand Soyuz space craft was built in a different century, you see. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the last century (not the next) that I’m referring to. So, yeah… you’ve seen those ultra-fast cigarette boats zipping along? Picture this thing as a bunch of old telephone poles lashed together into a raft.

Q: You’ve said a lot of things here. How can I be sure you are who you say you are?

A: STOP IT! Not sure why I said that. (I’m not quite myself today.) I have consulted my legal advisor (the man-sized tuber) and he has suggested that I should avoid answering that question.

I hate to raise this issue when there are others present, but Mitch has suggested that we utilize some of the technology he built into Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who apparently has an ion-pulse generator locked away in his bread basket somewhere. Mitch says that if we could run a line from that sucker, we’d have all the power we need. Not sure how Marvin will feel about this, but….

Whoops. He heard me. Oh, Maaaaarrrvinnnn…… Got a little job for you.

I don’t know. What does that look like to you, Mitch? I think it’s a fizgig, but I can’t be sure. A space sextant? Nah, no way. Never a sextant.

Oh, hi, folks. Big Green, here. Yup… we’re on our way, once again, to sunny Aldebaran. (Since Aldebaran is, in fact, a sun, it’s always sunny there.) Turned out old Dimitri had a few units within our price range. Of course, Mitch has never driven a Soyuz (they’re all standard transmission, you see), but our own Johnny White has volunteered to sit in on the flight controls. Got a pretty good deal on this old clunker, I must admit. I think it may have been part of the Apollo Soyuz mission, but I’m not certain. (At least parts of it might have been part of that mission…. hopefully the good parts.) But it’s sealed, it holds an atmosphere, it’s space-worthy… it’s sold! Though I think Marvin (my personal robot assistant) may be becoming unduly attached to the navigational computer. (Unseemly.)

Okay, so how, you may ask, can we possibly use a 70s-80s vintage vehicle to travel light-years through interstellar space in anything less than millions of years? Good question. Real good question. (I’m thinking.) Quite simple, actually – our resident mad scientist Mitch Macaphee has been hard at work modifying the used Soyuz (or “Soyuzed”, if you will), hopping it up like he did with his ’57 Chevy Bel Aire back in the day. You should have seen old Mitch – he was throwing headers and chrome exhaust on the old Russian capsule like a madman, cranking up its horsepower to the point where it could make such a titanic journey in such a brief period of time. (I speak figuratively, of course. The “headers” are actually ion reactors and the “chrome exhaust” kinetic force generators. Those are, in fact, what Mitch added to his Bel Aire, as well.) Not sure if it’s going to be enough, but I guess we’ll know when we get there (or not).

Who’s doing the navigating? Well, I’m not real good at finding my way from place to place in the universe, I’ll be the first to admit. And we have others in our ship’s complement that are even less talented in this area than I. Still, I think between all of us we can probably find a red giant star that is relatively close to our own solar system. In fact, it should be pretty hard to miss. It’s not like we’re looking for dark matter, or some remote galactic body, like that foreboding place where sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, comes from. (Zenon…. not a real good place if you like breathing oxygen.) I’ve always been a big fan of just pointing the ship at a random object and firing up the engines, but Mitch tells me that’s not the best method. It’s kind of like shooting skeet (not that I’ve ever done that, but…. it’s kind of like it) or like commanding a missile defense battery. Except that this might actually work. (Maybe.)

As I said, we’ll know when we get there. Though at this rate, we’ll probably need Mitch’s time distortion device to catch up with our scheduled performances. (Our contractual pot of coffee is probably cold as a stone by now.)

Is this the emergency alert button? No? Okay – the red one. Gotcha. Now… which one is the emergency telephone? No, I’m not an idiot! It’s goddamn dark in here!

Well, we’re off. Off the bottom of the elevator shaft, at least. Whoever thought a space elevator to Aldebaran was a good idea? Oh, yes… Mitch Macaphee. Our mad science advisor. Creator of Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Winner of the coveted Igor prize for depraved experimentation. Yes… that Mitch Macaphee…. he is the guy who thought of this seriously under-engineered contraption. Hey, we fucked up – we trusted him. Not one of us (with the exception of Matt) has any familiarity at all with the concepts of mad science. If we’d done our homework in Mrs. Buehler’s class, we might have known better. But no, not us… we just read our comic books (most entertaining!) and traded our lunch money for second-hand smokes (cough!). In the meantime, geeky kids like Mitch were collecting the knowledge that would make them all-powerful later in life… if occasionally inept.

How did it all happen? Well… I’m gon’ tell yuh. We packed all of our gear into the space elevator. It was a tight fit, to be sure. Anti Lincoln insisted on bringing at least a representative sample from his anvil collection. Then of course there was the man-sized tuber’s terrarium – as necessary a piece of equipment for him as a breathing apparatus or twin-cylinder beer hat might be for us. (Don’t let anyone tell you not to breathe or drink in space.) I won’t even talk about how much kit old Mitch Macaphee hauls along with him. He needs a fully equipped electro-atomization laboratory everywhere he goes, including the goddamned bathroom. (I reached for a bar of soap the other day and ended up with a handful of plutonium dust. Fortunately, Mitch assures me it’s harmless.) I could go on, but…

…I will! Now Marvin needs to walk on stilts everywhere because of a bet he made with Big Zamboola. (He lost, apparently.) So he practically fills the room vertically every time he staggers in, and Zamboola fills it horizontally. Anyway… the bloody space elevator got so jam-packed with personal effects that the laser-beam cable it rides on actually started to fray. We couldn’t reach escape velocity because of the drag, and now we’re bobbing in orbit like an enormous yo-yo. (Look, ma… Earth’s walking the dog!) This doesn’t leave us with a lot of good options. I mean, we can’t carry news of our new album, International House, to Aldebaran in a bucket! So we’re left with a choice between:

1. Bobbing pointlessly in space for the rest of eternity;

2. Climbing back down to Earth on a fire rope; or

3. Finding a used space craft… fast!

Fortunately for us, there appears to be one or two used capsule options up here. I can see one through the porthole right now – “Dimitri’s Pre-Owned Soyuz”. Sounds like the place for a deal.

(Note: No images or political rant today. Tending to a sick friend. jp)

First floor: oxygen, nitrogen, argon and neon. Second floor: carbon dioxide and water vapor. Third floor: ions and free radicals. Fourth floor: absolutely freaking nothing.

Okay, well… that’s what we can expect to hear as we ascend in our space elevator to what promises to be a very eventful launch tour for our new album, International House, now available from HammerMade music (our own bogus imprint). Why such an unconventional method of travel? Don’t ask me… it’s Mitch Macaphee’s call, and he’s not talking to the press. You’re not the press? Well, then I can speak for Mitch. He’s…. a…. mad… man. Got that? MADMAN! We’ve been doing these interstellar tours for nigh onto ten years, and every time we go it’s in some kind of space vessel. This time, it’s a freaking elevator…. just because the guy reads about it in Popular Mechanics. (Did I say “Popular” Mechanics? I meant Unpopular Mechanics … that’s the mad scientist version. Miss a month, miss a lot.)

Okay, so we’re all supposed to pile into this space elevator thing and hit the up button. Personally, I’m skeptical. Sure, it’s cushy and all that – crushed velvet upholstery, brass fixtures, a veritable gilded carriage of the stars. But it’s not exactly… well… roomy. It’s an elevator, for chrissake! This trip could take weeks, perhaps months if we break the light-speed barrier (lord knows doing so could mean the passage of aeons whilest aging only an instant in the time of man… think of it…. ) Am I expected to share a relatively combined cabin with my execrable band mates, as well as Marvin (my personal robot assistant), both Lincolns, the man-sized tuber, an increasingly irritable Mitch Macaphee, and Big Zamboola, who’s been getting bigger by the day? (I blame pizza…. though that’s a bit like blaming the victim.) This is insufferable.

To compound matters, Mitch’s diabolical new “temporal depression” device could make the trip seem a whole lot longer. After all, it was through the use of this brave new technology that the last week was stretched into several months of actual time as perceived by us. Who would have thunk that some gizmo that looks for all intents and purposes like an espresso machine could actually stretch time/space like silly putty? Mitch is very fond of his invention, and he has every intention of carrying it along with him on the space elevator. No doubt every time he’s a little behind in his chores, he’ll flick the switch and turn an hour into a day… or two… or three. Mother of pearl! This tour will never end! Who was the idiot that asked Mitch to come up with a time expansion machine?

Oh, yeah. Guess it was me. Well… I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it. See you on Aldebaran!

Strangest thing. For a moment there, it seemed like time was slowing down, maybe even stopping. And my watch… it’s running … backwards.

Oh, hello, blog-o-files (or, more properly, big-green-blog-o-files). What’s happening in your corner of the world? I can tell you, fairly briefly, what’s happening over in our patch. Pande-freaking-monium, that’s what. The reason is fairly simple. We’ve got a new album on the verge of release – a little collection named International House, available on or about September 30 – and the assembly line is moving as fast as any sane person might imagine possible. That sucker is on fire, man… cranking out discs like greased lightening. I’ve never seen the man-sized tuber’s root tendrils move that quickly. And Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is putting his robotic arm in a sling, handpainting all those awesome disc covers. (Each one meticulously lettered with a nylon-bristle paint brush. Painstaking!) Will they be dry by the time the 30th rolls around? No man can say.

I’ve talked to Mitch Macaphee about this temporal problem we have – you know, too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it in. Mitch was in a helpful mood, so he retired to his laboratory. What happened then? Weeeelllll… the room started shakin’, the walls started hummin’, and the door started shoutin’ mah name! No, not really… that’s just a little blues number I’ve been working on (they love that stuff on Aldebaran). Actually, there was a humming sound… kind of a low pitched rumble, actually, and the storm windows were rattling a bit. God only knows what kinds of contraptions Mitch keeps in that laboratory of his. Crates keep arriving in the courtyard, mostly by air-drop. (We’ve got enough discarded parachutes to start a silk recycling center.) Do we find that disconcerting? Sure, sure… but that’s just one of the things you need to take into account if you want to have a real madman problem-solver around the mill. Everything’s got its price, you know.

So anyway… Mitch patched some kind of gizmo together, and the next thing I know we’ve got nothing but time. That interstellar promotional tour we booked for International House? It’s not just around the corner any more, at least in our little slice of reality. Mitch explained it to me. He’s created a machine capable of squeezing five, ten, sometimes twenty minutes out of every standard minute. When he cranks it up, the clock slows down, then starts running backwards. Cars in the street kick into reverse. Cakes fall instead of rise. (Actually, that happens to me without the machine.) And my hair starts growing back into my head. Freaky! Still, despite the strangeness, it has afforded us a little more time to take pains over our tour preparations. Don’t want to skimp on the pre-launch checklist (even if we are going up in a glorified interstellar freight elevator).

Well, better get back to it. Got to make sure tubey doesn’t start slacking again. He’s supposed to be answering the AIM, but he keeps forgetting to turn the stupid thing on. (Losing track of time, perhaps.)

Hey, Lincoln… you seen my water jug? Didn’t think so. How about anti-Lincoln? Drank it? What the hell… how thirsty is that guy, anyway?

Hiya, folks. Big Green here. Just working our way through tour preparations; pulling together all our gear and provisions, packing them onto the space elevator, and writing our wills (not a lot of confidence in the space elevator, frankly). Have we started the countdown yet? Nah. Getting close, though. I’m guessing we’ll probably hit the starry trail around September 30 or so, just as we’re scheduled to release our new album, International House – 16 tracks of pure Big Green pleasure, just in case you’re interested. Anyways… our CD release party will be held in the star system of Aldebaran. Not that we want to diss our terrestrial listeners – we just got to go where the money is, friends. And that money…. is in outer space. (At least that’s what our corporate uber-label Loathsome Prick has assured us.) You heard it here first.

As I imagine you’ve guessed by now, it’s going to take a while for us to load the ship. So while Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber toil away, I’ll tell you just what goes into releasing a new Big Green album. First, there’s that bit about making the music. I’ve talked about this before. Oh, it’s a painstaking process of cultivation and assembly. You start with good topsoil – rich Mississippi delta loam is the best. Turn it over a few times to get some air in there, then start planting random musical notes. If the weather is with you and you have a reliable robot (or root vegetable) to do the tilling and the watering, you will yield probably twice as much raw music as you plant. Then you start picking and sorting, then assembling them into DNA-like strings… and eventually whole songs.

The manufacturing process is a bit more complicated. I suppose you think we go to a CD replication house for that, eh? Not a bit of it… not when we’ve got all this factory space and lots of empty hands (not to mention root tendrils). Really, the hardest part is getting the songs into those discs. We get Marvin to get a big crock on the boil. We cook the songs down to a thick paste-like consistency (takes about five hours). Marvin and the man-sized tuber then apply the paste to the bottom of each disc with a wooden spatula, like frosting Christmas cookies. The coated discs are then placed face down on an anvil made of pure anti-proton material (absolutely pure!), and Big Zamboola sits on them one at a time, fusing the music right into the disc. Works like glass mastering, only cheaper. (We just have to keep feeding them pizzas. They’re like interns, you know.) The album art is then handpainted on by anti-Lincoln. (He’s better at it than his posi-doppelganger.)

Okay, well… now you know. Go and tell the world how Big Green makes their albums and, lord knows, maybe in a century or two, everybody will be doing it that way.

He’s about to pull the lever. He’s pulling it. Grit your teeth! Oooohh, no. He’s done it. Hmmm… I don’t feel any different. Do you?

Hi, folks. Back at the Hammer Mill again for some more off-season fun, eh? I’ll tell you, never a dull moment around these parts. You’d think we’d have enough to do, preparing for our trip out to Aldebaran to debut the songs on our soon-to-be-released new album, International House. W.t.f., there’s a ship to pack, instruments to lug about, Lincoln clones to verbally abuse… We’ve got to train a man-sized tuber in space-bound emergency procedures (his performance rating was very poor on our last outing). Matt and John are busily typing up lyric sheets to hand out as party favors at our first pre-concert reception. (I keep telling them… you don’t have to type them all. Just use a photocopy machine.) That’s what we call the personal touch around here. Customer service, that’s what Big Green is all about. Have a seat. Anything I can get for you? Drink, perhaps? Something a little stronger?

Man, with a spiel like that, they’re going to love us on Aldebaran… if we ever make it there alive. Unfortunately, this may not happen. In fact, you may be vaporized by the time you read this. I imagine you’ve heard about the impending “Big Bang” experiment utilizing the Large Hadron Collider on the border of Switzerland and France. (Yes, that big bang experiment.) Well, it’s going forward despite doubts that it may in fact spawn tiny, powerful black holes that will swallow the earth and pulverize all we know into a massively dense ribbon of compressed matter. That sort of thing can, well, ruin your whole day. And though the experiment’s detractors have been roundly criticized, you have to wonder a bit whether or not there’s something to these fears of imminent destruction. Hey… I live under the same roof as a mad scientist. Imminent destruction is a fact of life around these parts, friends.

Anyway, here’s the problem. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), etc., had at one point harbored ambitions to be a part of this Big Bang experiment, but was spurned by its organizers. He has since held a bit of a grudge. This might not have been a problem, except that now that he has finished work on our space elevator (built from spare submarine parts), Mitch has got a lot of time on his hands. And let’s face it, the Large Hadron Collider has been very much in the news just lately. I mean, every time the guy watches the evening news, smoke starts coming out of his ears. So for a couple of days, he holed himself up in his lab, hammering away at something, ultimately to reveal a diabolical-looking device which he claims has the power to inhibit the Collider experiment, even though it is halfway around the world from here. How it is supposed to do this, I don’t know…. but before I could ask him, he pulled the lever.

Don’t know if it’s nervousness or what, but it feels like the ground is shaking. Crikey – we’d better get that new album out fast.

What’s this one for? Cabin pressure? Kool. And this one? Get out! What the fuck, this thing is like something out of… I don’t know… fantastic voyage or something.

Oh, hiya. Hope all is well out there in monitor land. Things are going okay over at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, more or less. We’re getting our ducks in a row, for sure. (It’s hard to get ducks in a row, actually… kind of like herding cats.) Tubey seems all psyched up for his new customer service job. (He’s never without that headset. Haven’t the heart to tell him it isn’t plugged into anything.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been doing a prolonged inventory of our supplies, starting with anvils, atlases, and a few other things that start with “a”. (Last I looked, he was counting paper clips… could mean good progress, unless he’s inventorying them under “clips, paper”). So hell, everybody’s got something to do.

Mitch Macaphee (the temperamental mad scientist) has plugged together an elaborate-looking contraption that he claims is the most sophisticated space elevator yet devised by the mind of man. We were just having a look around inside, and I must say… it’s sweet. Very sweet by our standards, certainly. Usually we’re pock-pock-pocking around the galaxy in some rent-a-wreck or a distressed piece of interstellar transportation history borrowed from a cheap sci-fi television show. This sucker is different. All that plush furniture, a working refrigerator, gauges and levers galore…. I half expected Captain Nemo himself to come striding in disapprovingly. (John could play the Kirk Douglas part… I’ll take Peter Lorre.) In fact, at one point, I turned to Mitch and asked him if perhaps he thought we were playing our first promotional gig in Atlantis.

Okay, do me a favor – remind me never to joke around with a mad scientist. He got a little hot under the collar and repaired to his study, where he spent the rest of the evening fiddling with something that looked a hell of a lot like a Rigelian Death Ray Generator. (Not that I’m an expert in these things…. it was Matt who pointed out the similarity.) Mitch is a little sensitive, no doubt about it, so we took it upon ourselves to order take out from his favorite restaurant, the Bavarian Castle (big fan of…. uhhhhlll… sauerbraten….). That did lift his mood a bit, though I think I may have hit a particularly sore spot. Turns out that the space elevator he devised was built from remnants of an undersea vessel of some kind. Where did the parts come from, specifically? He wouldn’t say. And with his twitchy hands on that death ray, I wouldn’t ask him. (They were someone else’s, now they’re ours. End of story.)

Well, however we get there, Aldebaran has no idea what’s in store for it. Spoiler alert: a diving bell full of freaks, and a boatload of new songs from planet weird.