Is that where the part comes in? Doesn’t seem right, but … okay. Just can’t trust my ears. Not after Cowboy Scat, our last million seller. (We’ve got a million in our cellar.)
Hello, Big Greeniacs. We’re hip-deep in mixing, as you might have guessed. This batch of songs, composed and recorded for the next episode of Ned Trek, is proving to be both challenging and time-consuming. What the hell, we’ve been working on these songs since January, and now it’s … what … May? Really? I should get out more. Anyway … we’ve been at it a long time. This better be good.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – we have recorded enough songs since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick to make three new albums, with some left over for party favors. After we’ve finished these six or seven songs, I’m sure we’ll be nudging 70 recordings over five years. We don’t have much trouble coming up with new material. Monetizing it? That’s another issue.
Let’s face it … we’re crappy capitalists. (Or crapitalists, if you will.) Matt has no interest in money or notoriety. As for me, well, I couldn’t sell songs to my mother … and I did ask nicely. In a world that measures quality in terms of the price the product commands, we strain to reach the lowest rung. Our production quality is commensurate with the resources available to us. (i.e., we’re not recording at Big Blue North, even though it’s right up the freaking street.) We are evolving in that respect, but like Issa’s snail, slowly … slowly.
Hell, we can’t even afford proper production assistants. When Big Green needs craft services, we’re reduced to asking Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to carry in a pitcher of tap water and some paper cups. When we try to market or even give away our discs, we either toss them into the street in front of the mill or hang them on the branches of the mansized tuber. (That’s why the neighbors have taken to calling him “the record plant.”)
Okay, well, I have some mixing to do. We’re having biscuits tonight. After that, I’ll do more mixing … of cement for the front walkway. There’s something I’m leaving out, but I’m sure it will come to me.
It had occurred to a few of us that we should take the opportunity of this asteroid fly-by to gather some important data on this mysterious visitor from deep space – data that could provide answers to vital questions like, “what color is it?” and “is there a Starbucks there yet?” How would we go about this? Well, we have Marvin (my personal robot assistant). And we have Mitch Macaphee’s model volcano. If we put one in to the other at the right moment, there’s a moderate chance that item A (Marvin) could reach escape velocity and, maybe, navigate his way to the asteroid. And when I say “moderate”, I mean a degree of probability that is, perhaps, calculable if and only if we were willing to make the effort to calculate it. And, well … we’re not. So, Marvin? GET IN THAT VOLCANO!
Van Gogh painting. Mitch got a little overwrought when he saw them. He claims that they were photos he took on our last interstellar tour. He started pacing up and down the corridor, grousing about how NASA is always using his material without compensation or attribution. Then he disappeared into his laboratory.
First off, the basic premise of the Lost In Space reboot is, if anything, weaker than the original. They land on the planet Colorado, it appears. Mind you, they have reconfigured some of the plot devices used in the original, so the alien world has an eccentric elliptical orbit that brings it waaaaay too close to a black hole (in the original, it was the planet’s sun) causing everything to burn to a crisp. They aren’t clear on what the annual cycle is, but I assume it’s short since they seem to be heading for the hot spot of the orbit. So … they’re saying that everything on the planet dies and is reborn, but we’re seeing massive, mature stands of forest, complex animal life, including apex predators … what the hell? A random scientist on the show tells us the trees have only one ring. They’re eighty feet tall! Ridiculous.
Of course, why should we limit ourselves to the most obvious options? Hell, you could do anything in this barn. Just hang a sign over the front door that reads “Lost in Space Land” and you’ve got a theme park fit for the Robinson Family. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) could take tickets at the door, and Anti-Lincoln could pose as Professor John Robinson, so long as people aren’t expecting the stubble-bearded military dude in the current reboot. So what if John looks like Lincoln? He was modeled on Kennedy … isn’t that close enough?
Oh, damn … that’s right. Mitch is off to Sao Paolo to attend the bi-annual convention of the International Society for the Purveyors of Mad Science (or ISPMS). I believe they’re giving him some sort of badge this year. (Not sure what it’s for, but it suspiciously glows in the dark.) In any case, we can’t rely on Mitch to keep the capitalist wolf pack at bay here at our besieged hammer mill squat house. We could have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) go out there and try to reason with the developers, but that would just make them laugh and point. We could coax Anti-Lincoln (perhaps with the promise of bourbon) to give one of his famous presidential addresses from the mill’s parapet, but again … pointing and laughing would ensue. (He’s not good.)
Why the sudden lurch towards random entrepreneurship? Well, we’ve been under a bit of pressure as of late. With the economy picking up a bit, suddenly the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill has become a bit more attractive as a commercial location. Local developers are thinking about gutting it and setting up one of those Mill Malls that pop up around here. (Actually, they can spare themselves the bother of that first step – this place was gutted long ago.) So, yeah, we’re looking for ways to go legit on this property, maybe even start …. gulp … paying property taxes …. or even utilities ….. ooooohhhhhh….
All I can tell you, honestly, is that this project has consumed Mitch and our courtyard at the same time. He’s spent the last week building a big howitzer-like monstrosity with a barrel that’s got to be 80 feet long and a control panel with gauges, levers, flashing lights, electrical arcs, and steam whistles. (I think those are just for laughs, frankly.) Mitch refers to the device as his Positron Howitzer, though what that means I cannot tell you. But from what I’ve seen he can zero in on that sputtering space station and plant some kind of projectile in its side in a way that has the potential to ruin its whole day.
Okay, so we live in this crumbling hammer mill, see? And it’s mostly made out of bricks and mortar, see? In fact its hey-day was in the 1930s and 40s, when people ended most of their sentences with “see”, see? Nyah. Well, it needs some patching done here and there, and well … I was last pick, just like with the basketball teams in gym class. So it was off to the brickyard to get some of their wares, then back here to start patching, only to return to the brickyard because I forgot to buy cement, then got all the way back before realizing that the bags of concrete I bought were dry powder, not some kind of play-dough like substance. THAT’s when I started thinking about digging those ditches.
Put The Phone Down – Matt and I sit down for our usual rangy discussion of whatever floats into either of our tiny brains. This month’s random topics include a recap of the Ned Trek episode you just heard; a brief riff on a local meat market and its longstanding sausage-based slogan; Matt’s recollection of a backstage fight between actors playing Buffalo Bill and Jesus Christ in a locally-produced musical back in 1978 or so; Our thoughts on the unusual, perhaps singular, playing style of our late friend and one-time guitarist Tim Walsh; Some news of beavers and sweet potatoes …. and so on.