Tag Archives: CD

Usual Rubbish

Burning Verses.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Got the toaster plugged in? No, not THAT toaster. I mean the kind that pops up CDRs. Yes, it needs juice – what the hell century are you living in? Jesus Christ on toast. No, that WASN’T my breakfast order!

There are times, my friends, when it feels like I speak an entirely different language from my flopmates. And this is one of those times. Now that the nice weather has returned to upstate New York, you might think that we would venture forth from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house, and enjoy the five minutes of sunshine we get each year, whether we need it or not. Well, you would be wrong to think that. God, no – Big Green is still cooped up inside this dump, trying to decide how to slice and dice the mountain of makeshift recordings we’ve done over the past five years under the rubric of Ned Trek. Now, is that any way to spend your summer? (All five minutes of it?)

What’s the urgency? Well, I can’t answer that, except that there appears to be some line of code in Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s programming that requires him to do an exhaustive inventory of our work product every seven months. That’s all well and good, except that we are – as you likely know – the most disorganized band in the history of music, so our efforts to accommodate this half-crazed automaton fall more than a little bit short. Story of our lives, right, people? We just write ’em, play ’em, and record ’em. What happens after that is not our department. So as a consequence, we’ve got songs lying around the mill, knee-deep in parts, jumbled together in a hap-hazard fashion – an auditor’s nightmare, to put it succinctly. Every seven months, it makes smoke come out of Marvin’s brass head. (Note to audience: that’s NOT supposed to happen. Marvin is battery operated – no emissions, period.)

Slave driver!

Take Ned Trek (please!). We had something like 40 episodes of the show, posted as a feature on our long-running podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, with a “rebroadcast” on a separate feed as simply Ned Trek. Something like half of these shows were musicals, which means that they included five or more original songs – sometimes as many as 8 in a single episode. After five years of production, more or less, we have about 100 Ned Trek songs in total. Marvin wants us to funnel them all into disc-length (80 minute) albums, like we did with Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (another product of THIS IS BIG GREEN technology). That sets us up for a conundrum – do we (a) put all of the songs onto multiple discs, or (b) cherry pick the ones we like best (or hate least) and consolidate them on maybe two discs? Just a preliminary sort brings us to five or six discs total – that’s just nuts. Even Marvin can’t count THAT high.

Well, whatever we decide to do, the next thing we’ll need to do is try to find people who still listen to CDs. (We save that hardest shit for last.)

Usual Rubbish

Twelfth Month.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Did you hear that just then? That faint sound of bells ringing in the distance? That can only mean one thing …. the elementary school up the road is having a fire drill again. Third one this week.

Oh … and of course, it’s December again, the month of joy and celebration. Which means, in this year of our lord 2020 (which happens to be the year of YOUR lord 2020 as well), we are fast approaching the first anniversary of the twentieth anniversary of the release of our first LP, 2000 Years To Christmas, a space odyssey … I mean, an album by Big Green. Now when I say “LP”, I mean “CD”, actually, because we never pressed vinyl on any of our records. That’s for the heavy wallet brigade, my friends, though we have considered converting Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of record-cutting machine. (For the record, he’s not keen on the idea.)

Yeah, so here we are, a year later, still flogging the thing. And why not, right? Our first album is 21 years old. It can buy a drink in New York, maybe two. (If it can find an open bar, of course.) But even more significant is the fact that the album is themed to the season. It is, after all, a Christmas album in a way – not a collection of traditional carols and popular songs, but an alt-rock album written on the theme of Christmas. That’s why December is such a special month around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-home. Of course, there’s also the arrival of heavy snow, which typically comes through sections of the roof that are no longer quite as roofy as they used to be. That makes December extra special, too.

Aw, come on, Marvin!

Now, I don’t want you to think that we’re just huddled here in our drafty mill, sifting over the artifacts of a career that’s long since gone sour. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re not huddled at all – not in this era of social distancing. Nay, we’re standing a respectable distance apart from one another as we sift. In the hammer mill, that amounts to 17 and a half feet. (We’ve got extra floor space, so it only makes sense to err on the side of distance.) We’re working on some remixes this winter, trying to refurbish some songs that we recorded in a hurry over the past few years. And I think Anti-Lincoln is working on a new shepherd’s pie recipe, though I’m not sure where he got it from. Never heard of a pie made of digestive biscuits and peanut butter. (By pure coincidence, that’s what was lying around the kitchen this week.)

Anywho, have a great December. This year is almost over, people. Damn.

Usual Rubbish

Old Stock.

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2000 Years to Christmas

You’ve forgotten it again? Damn it, man! I hope you realize what this means. No, I mean, I really hope so … because I haven’t any idea what this means. Not a rhetorical question at all.

Oh, hey, everybody. I may be the only upstate New Yorker who says “hey” when he means “hi”. Or possibly not. In any case, hope all is well with you out there, beyond the walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. The colder months are coming on up here in the great north country, and we’re still looking for things to burn for warmth. We ran out of old hammer handles years ago. Then went the stair railings. Next, we pulled up the Rochester floors in the old executive offices, just above the shop, and tossed them into the fireplace. Fuel got kind of scarce after that – I personally think it was a mistake to burn the fireplace mantel in the fireplace. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Last week we were giving capitalism just one more try. Well, it didn’t work out, my friends. In a world that demands success, all we can offer is failure. But we’re offering it on splendid terms – no money down. In fact, buy now and you pay nothing for six full weeks! Oops. Forgot myself. Yeah, we don’t have a lot of new products to offer the world, just some old stock in the form of about 800 copies of our first album, 250 copies of our second album, and maybe 20 copies of our third. (It’s like we learned something as we went along.) I’m sitting on them now as I write this, and let me tell you … they make lousy furniture.

Chuck another log in there. Or something.

Hey … we’ll get through. We always do. Last year, when things got tight, we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to find a day job. He didn’t have a lot of experience, but he has that kind of honest, open face that people tend to trust, and somebody offered him an entry level position at a hot dog stand. Location? Wherever he pushed it. Three steps down from a food truck – maybe four – but food service none the less. I suppose if we find ourselves in a bind again this year, I can toss a chef’s hat on his brass noggin and see if he can’t get a job as a line cook in some space-themed eatery that doesn’t exist. (This IS upstate New York, for crying out loud.)

What’s that, Marvin? No. No, we can’t burn our CDs. The reason is simple – they’re more toxic when they’re on fire than when they’re being played on your stereo. Now, where’s that chef’s hat?

Usual Rubbish

One score years ago.

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Well, it’s, I don’t know, the album’s China anniversary. That makes it sound like we’re traveling to Beijing. Not that I wouldn’t, if luncheon is provided … but I must be fed, or I remain at home.

Yes, who can believe it, folks … it’s been 20 years since the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, or at least I think it is. Totally makes sense, in a way. After all, twenty years ago was the year two thousand, so that’s when we would have done it, pursuant to our obsession with accuracy. Hah! As if! We dropped the album at some weird ass time to accommodate the disc production schedule. They were taking their time about whittling those CDs. I know it’s painstaking work, but really …. six weeks? Outrageous.

Well, our Indonesian sweat shop finally churned out the product, weeks after Christmas. Picture rows and rows of workers, chipping away at blocks of plastic, knocking off everything that doesn’t look like a CD, then hand-painting each one with a degree of consistency no man would think possible. Work like that takes time. That’s why we don’t release a lot of albums here in Big Green land. There simply aren’t enough man-hours in the day to produce albums the old-fashioned way …  the way we did it back in 1999.

Damn. Sure doesn't look twenty.

That’s actually when this blog started, as some of you may recall. I began doing posts so that people who went to the URL on our album would find something when they got there. We also posted the album on mp3.com, which was a thing back then. There was a whole separate digital release on that platform, simultaneous with the release we did through The Orchard, which included all of the popular ecommerce sites at that time. Needless to say, it was a million seller. (I have a million in my cellar … ba-dum crash!) 2000 Years To Christmas remains the only album we ever made that actually got reviewed. We’re working hard to stay at that impressive level of obscurity. (Hey … it doesn’t happen all by itself.)

So … happy birthday, 2KY2C! You’re almost old enough to drink in New York State.

Usual Rubbish

Problem child.

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Okay, blow out the candles. Try harder. Nope, nothing. Try again. What the hell … you’d think at your age you would have this worked out by now. Silly kid.

Right, so before you call child protective services, let me reassure you that we, of Big Green, are all biologically childless. The line stops here! And it’s just as well. No, sir … I was just in the midst of celebrating the nineteenth birthday of our first commercial release (a.k.a. album), 2000 Years to Christmas, which was released …. I don’t know … sometime after Christmas in 1999. Nice timing, right? Typical.  Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and I’m glad to say it’s pretty small in the rear view mirror at this point.

So, 2000 Years To Christmas was our biggest seller. That’s not saying much. Of course, it was released relatively early in the era of online retail, and over the course of the succeeding decades it has wormed its way into any number of places online. A simple Google search on the title will show you what I mean. (Take a look at the image tab on that search if you want a cheap laugh.) It kind of has a life of is own, which is strange because we gave it life almost twenty years ago. It’s in those rebellious years, when your child tries to distance her/himself from you as much as possible. 2000 Year To Christmas never goes shopping with us anymore, and when it’s out with its friends and sees us on the street, it looks away.

They grow up so fast.We’re actually planning kind of a special party for its twentieth next year. Don’t tell it we said so – we’d like it to be a surprise. I was thinking maybe a nice new CD player, or one of those disc stands that holds maybe 200 albums. Hell, we could fill four of those with unsold copies of that thing. (Psst … don’t tell 2000 Years To Christmas that we said that, either.) In fact, forget we even had this conversation. Who are you again?

Right, well … maybe I’m being a little cautious. Nineteen is such an awkward age, and 2000 Years To Christmas still doesn’t know what it wants to do with its life.  Maybe trade school will be the thing. Maybe, I don’t know … maybe next year.

Usual Rubbish

Was that a… truck?

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Did you hear beeping?Wait, I heard something. That beeping noise. Did you hear it? Go out and take a look, will you? I’ll just sit here and finish this cardboard sandwich. What? That’s the microwave beeping? Turn it off, then. There’s a good chap.

Oh, yes … hello. Just getting a little impatient here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful (now roasting) upstate New York. It’s been so damn hot we can’t even manage to borrow enough electricity to run our fans, and now the refrigerator has gone south (looking for warmer climes, perhaps) and all of our provisions have gone sour. (Except for the lemons, which have turned strangely sweet in their spoilage.) Nothing to eat but cardboard. Here’s the good news: there’s not a lot of that, either.

I just sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to greet the delivery van that will be dropping off the initial pressing of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, Big Green’s ludicrous new album, hot off the digital presses. Its release date is July 31, but we are expecting advance copies any moment now. Though this is the fourth time in the last hour I’ve sent Marvin out to the brickyard, searching in vain for the UPS truck or the FEDEX van or some over-the-road tractor trailer. He’s about ready to revolt – in fact, I think he’s considering joining that terrifying band Captured By Robots again. I still have nightmares. (Not about that, obviously …. mostly other stuff.)

Hey, I’m looking out the window and I see the ass-end of a semi. Marvin is out there, making some unintelligible hand signals (or claw signals, I should say). They appear to be interpreting his gestures as encouragement to continue backing into our courtyard. This is getting exciting! Yes, they’re moving closer, turning the cab. I can see the side of the trailer now. Big letters that spell, “Mayflower Moving”. Hmmmm… I didn’t know they delivered packages.

Okay, I have to look into this further. Far from delivering anything, they appear to be taking things out of the Mill, like …. LIKE MY ARMY SURPLUS DESK AND CHAIR! LIKE MY DISCARDED MATTRESS! This is shaping up to be one hell of a week.