Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Nail and tooth.

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BANG! BANG! BANG! goes the hammer. POP! POP! POP! goes the rivet gun. RING! RING! RING! goes the phone. It’s our neighbors, the antique dealer. He’s telling me to shut the hell up. “Turn it down, the radio!” he shouts over the phone, and I smile quietly to myself.

Why am I amused by this? Hey… when you call a dump like this “home”, you must find amusement wherever it may be lurking. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we are always looking for new distractions. Is that because Big Green is not what you would call a “performing” band? Perhaps, perhaps. Fewer reasons to venture out of the mill, particularly now that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes our grocery runs for us. “You trust him with money?” I imagine you’re thinking right now. My imaginary answer would be, “No; we program him to work as a day laborer before he goes to the store. That’s how we roll.”

Well, goddamn-a, why do we need a robot’s money… when a Google search on “Big Green International House” turns up more than five million sites? No man can say. Perhaps it is that vow of poverty. Not that any of us took such a vow, but perhaps someone else took one for us. In any case, we have to keep busy somehow, right? And aside from Googling our own names (and album titles) there must be something productive we can do.

So hell, I’m building a new Big Green web site. It will be big… and green. Perhaps shiny, perhaps not. I’m not super crazy about shiny, to tell the honest truth – it makes things look too much like what’s looking at them. Anyway, that’s what all the hammering is about – that’s the sound of Web development up here in the sticks. That’s what it sounds like when someone is building a Web site you can really sink your teeth into. A site that is chewy, not cakey… just the way you like it.

As you might expect, we’re doing this – as we do our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – on a shoestring. A little infusion of venture capital wouldn’t go amiss right now, truth be told. Get Bain on the phone. No answer? Hmmmm…. must have closed up shop. Start picking numbers randomly out of the phone book. (I’m addressing Marvin, you people – don’t try this at home.) Someone out there must be looking to drop some cash on an ill-considered venture.

Uh-oh. The phone. It’s my neighbor again. Or it’s Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm. Either way, I’m fucked.

Usual Rubbish

Grappling with hooks.

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Hmmm. I like that one you had the other night. How did it go? Strum through that number once again, will you? There’s a good chap.

Ensconced once again within the crumbling walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, I can report that we of Big Green are back to doing what we do best: inventing snacks out of items collected from the goodwill box. If it weren’t for all this music stuff we might be good at it by now. Oh, the burden of servings such a demanding muse! Nothing is good enough, nothing! We work our fingers to the bone – nay, to the marrow – hammering out songs in the clammy basement of this condemned factory, then tossing them skyward… only to see them knocked back in anger. “Send me hooks!” demands the disembodied voice. “We are not amused!”

It appears that somewhere in the metaphysical accounting department some faceless paper-pusher assigned us a pop music muse. Let’s get one thing clear – we do not make pop music. We make crackle music – there’s a difference. It’s a whole ‘nother Rice Krispie. We don’t write choruses like, Keep the ball rollin, keep the ball rollin…! or We could have had it all-uh-hall…! Nah, nah, nah – our choruses go like this:

I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!
I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!

… or …

Lincoln! It shouldn’t happen to our quality Lincoln!

No wonder that muse hates our guts (or at least our hooks). Though I think all of us agree – this is the kind of criticism we have received in the past from our various labels. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm (now Hegephonic); Loathsome Prick; all of them had their concerns with the material. They also had some concerns about our various retainers – Mitch Macaphee, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and our official spokesvegetable the mansized tuber (now tweeting at http://www.twitter.com/mansizedtuber ). Before putting any resources behind a terrestrial tour of any kind, they would insist that we cut them loose, shave off our long yokel beards, and start playing banjo versions of the Monkees’ greatest hits. For my money, I prefer to confine our performances to deep space… for the nonce, at least.

Well, is that the time? Got to get back to work on that album. Oh, yes… there will be another…. all in due time.

Usual Rubbish

What’s new.

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Well, it’s finally coming down. The snow that is. And the lamp post. Yes, you heard me right – the lamp post came down … and Jim Bob is responsible.

Okay, truth is… I don’t know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it’s July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn’t know we had people driving us around? Well, that’s because we haven’t up until now. We’ve just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It’s like priming the pump, man.

Why this sudden obsession? Well, as you know, we of Big Green weren’t exactly born with the word “success” tattooed on our butts. (Mine has something else entirely tattooed onto it. I’m giving you twelve guesses what that might be.)  We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel for lo these past three decades, playing in dives, recording in the basement on superannuated technology, scratching for every inch, inching for every scratch…. you get the picture. (Actually, you get the sound file. We don’t do pictures.) What have we got to show for it? A second-hand robot chauffeur, that’s what. And one that can’t avoid major obstacles.

I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain, what with this being the season of kindness and gratitude. (Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sees it more as the season of mindlessness and attitude, but that’s how he rolls.) We’re still recording, still flailing away at the canon, committing item after item from the seemingly bottomless vat of unrecorded material to virtual tape. You can hear the results of these sessions on our podcast, This Is Big Green, where we post first drafts of songs we will eventually release as our next album(s).

So sure, we live in a drafty mill, no fuel for the fire, no food in the fridge, no miracle grow for the mansized tuber (not that he needs it).  But we’ve got something more valuable than any of that: a gift coupon to Tony’s pizza, good for another three days. To the limo… and damn the lamp posts!

Usual Rubbish

Homearriving.

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Yeah, there’s some in here, too. Yep, all over the floor. Jesus Christ on a bike. Where are all the freaking buckets? Why don’t squatters have landlords … with buckets?

Oh, hi… Yes, Big Green has made its triumphant return to Earth from its somewhat less-than-triumphant [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, pulling our rental spacecraft into a low, low … very low parking orbit (approximately 100 feet above the Earth’s surface) over the Cheney Hammer Mill, our abandoned mill of a home in upstate New York. And, as will happen when one leaves one’s home for a stretch of weeks, some maintenance issues have emerged to greet us, providing us with distraction even before we’ve had the chance to remove our tour galoshes. They say all roofs leak, but I doubt they all leak this badly. My converted hammer assembly room suite looks like a freaking swimming pool. I think I see fish.

Right, well… that’s the kind of problem you expect. What I didn’t expect was to have to deal with obstinate bandmates after our return as well as throughout the tour. I’m thinking specifically of … wait for it! … Marvin (my personal robot assistant). You may have thought I was going to say the mansized tuber, but really… he’s no trouble, hanging out in his specially climate-controlled terrarium, working his smartphone with both roots, tweeting pictures of himself in a methane sauna on Neptune. (Very therapeutic for cruciferous beings.) No, no… Marvin gets the prize this week. He has refused to leave the circa 2001: A Space Odyssey rent-a-vessel we took on this latest tear through the solar system. He has developed what Mitch Macaphee (our mad science advisor) calls “Hal 9000 Syndrome”. It’s a bit like Stockholm syndrome, except, well, a lot less congenial.

Okay, so Marvin is refusing to open the pod bay doors. This is not a tragedy. We’ve got too much on the agenda to care, frankly, so he can float up there, 100 feet above our heads, and play Captain Bligh to his brass heart’s content. Matt and I have a Christmas podcast to produce, and time is running thin… I mean, short. (Premise is running thin.) Lord knows we want to have an action packed episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN posted before the fat elf flies – an episode full of new recordings, old yuletide favorites, an outtake from our “classic” (i.e. elderly) album 2000 Years To Christmas, and just the sort of incoherent ramblings you expect from us.

No, no…. you don’t have to thank us. Just send buckets. Lots of buckets.

Usual Rubbish

Back to ground.

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Okay, then. Is that a wrap? What? It’s already the holiday season? What happened to freaking October? Okay, then… so it’s a Christmas wrap. Satisfied?

Oh, hi. Yeah, I know. After ten weeks on the road, tempers wear a little thin. What, you got a PROBLEM with that? (Sorry. I’ll start again.) Post Thanksgiving slump. This shipboard life is not for me; nor, apparently, is it for anyone else on board. Speaking of bored … this business of bobbing around the solar system is bloody tiresome. I don’t know how sFshzenKlyrn stands it, year after year, millennium after millennium. It’s just as well that he’s a transcendental etheric life form that ignores all boundaries between space, time, and whatever. (Especially the whatever. The man simply cannot take anything seriously.)

And then there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s bouncing around this tin can like… like a robot in a tin can. Of course, he always gets antsy this time of year, when the big robotics convention is taking place back on Earth. He is constantly checking the Web for updates, seeing if any big strides have been made. Always has to be in the vanguard, our Marvin. Get used to it, man – one day, time leaves all of us behind. It’s freaking inevitable. In fact, it’s the great hairy screaming inevitable that is our universe. Who cares if some table-top tractor can solve equations faster than you do? You still can…. well…. lift very heavy things…

And then there’s the marigolds, the marigolds. What? Sorry… there  are no marigolds. Oxygen is running a little thin in this rattletrap we call a spacecraft. We’re somewhere between Jupiter and five miles away from Jupiter, running low on fuel, supplies, and what-not. Ever run out of what-not on an interstellar voyage? You do NOT want to know how awful that can be.

So anyway… it’s back to Earth for us, or the Earth that will be left when we return – an Earth wracked by climate change, war, illness, poverty, and rapacious corporate greed. Home sweet freaking home, just in time to do our annual Christmas Special podcast. Stay tuned!

Usual Rubbish

Seasoning.

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Season’s greetings to you all. And we of Big Green say hello as well, whatever the so-called “season” may have to say. (Who ever heard of a talking season?)

Just writing whilest we’re having a little Thanksgiving layover on Titan, moon of Saturn, mother of all Tofurky. (Yes, this is where it comes from.) Taking a little break from the feasting, conversing, and pontificating (Anti-Lincoln is back on his Mexican-American War soapbox again), so this is a good time to open the mail, it seems. Most of our inquiries appear to be about our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, so let’s start with this:

Dear Big Green:

On your podcast, I heard you read a bogus letter asking why so many of your songs are about war. You, of course, never answered the question to anyone’s satisfaction. I now challenge you to do this thing. What is with the war kick?

Sincerely,

Gen. Douglas MacArthur (deceased)

Well, General – thanks for listening to our podcast, first of all. Why do we write about war? I don’t know. Why do we write about Christmas? Sure, we’re not soldiers, but then we’re not practicing Christians, so neither makes sense. I guess you could say we’re just ranging around for material, grabbing anything that doesn’t run away screaming. (And some things that do.) Sometimes we ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to name themes for us using his autonomic radomizer. We’re that desperate, dude.

Here’s another:

Dear Big Green:

I’ve listened to your previously unreleased songs. They sound, well, half-baked. Is that intentional, or are you just too damn lazy to finish them?

Best,

Phil Specter (deceased)

Hey, Phil – it’s a fair question. Yeah, the previously unreleased songs on the podcast are, in fact, literally half-baked. They are first drafts, if you will (or even if you won’t), of recordings for our next collection of material. We’re planning to track the better ones and release them under separate cover. These initial recordings are basically Matt and I playing the songs like we do as a two-man band, with a basic rhythm track, guitar, keys, vocals. That’s it. No wall of sound yet. We’re working on the sheet rock right now, man. Patience!

Whoa, is that the time? Back to the Tofurky fest for me. Cheers.

Usual Rubbish

Over the river (of nitrogen)

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A little colder than I expected for this time of year. Minus 254 degrees Kelvin. Crikey – better put on another pair of socks.

Yes, friends – Big Green is spending another traditional family holiday a long, long way from home. It’s Thanksgiving on Neptune, and I have to say, this holiday doesn’t mean much to folks up here. The casinos are filled with punters, and I don’t think they’re shipping them in from Saturn. It’s just another day to these creatures. And as we enter the final (turkey) leg of our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, we have another succession of bizarre events to greet us. Here is the week that was:

11.14.2011 – Took up residence in the Neptune Hyatt resort. A bit seedy if you ask me. I think they stole the name, actually – everything’s bootlegged up here. Even our albums. Hell, we’re giving them away on Neptune and they still bootleg them. I think it’s for the sheer joy of doing it. There is, I imagine, a certain satisfaction in sticking it to the man. My only question is… when did we become “the man”?

11.15.2011 – Hit the stage at 0400 hours Neptune time. Gravity was a little uneven this afternoon. Little known fact about the Neptunians – they’ve discovered the secret to gravitational force. Their scientists have been messing with it for years now, and I have to say that the results appear mixed at best. As far as anyone can tell, they’ve only managed to make gravity more like the weather. So our feet left the stage as we ran through “Just Five Seconds” and “I Hate Your Face”, but it wasn’t from exhilaration. Damned scientists!

11.17.2011 – With the holiday season approaching, it seems like a good time to get some shopping done out here in the outer solar system, where most of the big outlet stores are located these days. (Ever wonder what happened to STARS? You guessed it.) So we took the day off, rummaging through bins, riding escalators, hiring forklifts to check out what that big box on the top shelf might contain, etc.  Marvin (my personal robot assistant) set his sensors to savings.  Just like the old days, Steve. (Steve? I must be running low on oxygen.)

Took a little time out to post Episode 4 of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, featuring rambling conversation with Matt Perry, another song from cousin Rick, an explanation of Grandfather’s War, a “first draft” new recording of I Hate Your Face with accompanying commentary, and other unexplainable phenomena.  Let us know what you think. We’ll be finishing our shopping.

Usual Rubbish

Tour log: five-oh

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Merry Christmas, Children? Not sure I remember the parts. Besides, that’s … well … challenging. Anything easier for the season? Jit-Jaguar? That’s a Christmas song? Oh, right.

Hey, sorry. Just working out the set list for our next string of performances. We’re not one of those groups that just gets up on stage in front of 20,000 people (or 20,000 amorphous blobs of protoplasm) and wings it, playing whatever comes into our heads. No, sir … we plan out every inch of our stage show, from the song list to the dance steps to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) juggling torches. (Yes, that’s right, Marvin – it’s torches this time! Deal with it!)

Right, well … okay, we don’t have dance steps per se. Nor set lists. But we do work up a vague idea of what we’re going to play over the course of the next week. That’s called planning, my friends. How does it work out in the specific context of Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011? Here’s how…

11.8.2011 – Cranking out Jit-Jaguar in front of 20,000 Neptunians. They like the part about the tin pot politician apologizing to “Mr. Jesus” for calling out for robotic revenge on the town that rejected him. (Oh, yes… it’s titanic theme night here on Neptune.) It’s a bit of schtick, but we always bring Marvin out for this number, just so that the audience has a robot to look at while we sing of, well, robots. Never mind the cognitive dissonance of employing a peaceful robot to evoke the image of a warlike one. We give the people what they want – end of story.

11.10.2011 – Busted! Pulled over by the interplanetary highway patrol for doing 1/2C in a 1/4C zone. Anti-Lincoln was driving. Yeah, that was kind of a mistake, come to think of it. Mitch Macaphee was on break at the time, and Anti- was handy. (I call him “Auntie” sometimes because he just hates that.) The patrol hung an appearance ticket on us. We’ll probably just send the check along with our guilty plea … if the Post Office still delivers to Titan. (Cutbacks, you know. Now they send all of Pluto’s mail to Saturn for processing.)

11.11.2011 – My, but that’s a lot of elevens. And look… it’s 11:11 a.m. Time to play Wrap Up World War I.

Next stop: mystery planet opposite the sun from Earth. You know… where everything’s a mirror image of Earth, except that people eat corn on the cob on the vertical. (We learned of this from Saint Guido Sarducci.)

Usual Rubbish

Tour log: quatro livre. (Say what?)

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Here’s the fourth installment of our vaunted tour diary. Anybody got a pen? How about a knife? I can just whittle the words. A pen knife? Even better!

Where have all the good tours gone? This one has gone a bit flat, though I will say that we did manage to get the rent-a-ship rolling again, thanks to sFshzenKlyrn. I know what you’re thinking – he probably used some kind of trans-temporal presto-digitation to conjure us up a new ion drive servo chip. No such thing. He just waited until Marvin (my personal robot) was in sleep mode and plucked the chip out of his sorry hide. (Marvin lists a bit now. Not that that’s a bad thing… I have him doing our set lists. Boom-crash.)

Here’s the lowdown on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011:

10.31.2011 – Hallowe’en on Betelgeuse. Surprisingly, this is kind of a big deal up here. Not that they do the costumes or the trick or treat. In fact, it’s kind of an interstellar anti-gravity day – the Betelgeusians (unlike humanity) have mastered the science of gravity. They’ve got this big-ass switch, the size of Texas, and every October 31st (our time) they flip it and then their iridescent pseudopods leave the ground. Talk about fun. (That’s right – just talk about it.)

11.01.2011 – We start the month on the right pseudopod. Hit the stage around 10 p.m. local, played for almost three hours. Matt tried open tunings on his kazoo during “Just Five Seconds”. (We’re way ahead up here.) I’d never seen sFshzenKlyrn play his telecaster with a violin bow before, and  during our last set Anti-Lincoln seemed to have gotten his hands on a dulcimer somewhere. Leave Earth a four-piece, return home an orchestra. That’s the magic of space travel.

11.03.2011 – We are the 99 and 44/100 percent! New slogan for Ivory soap – what do you think? No, actually… it’s the current chant down here on Neptune. We’ve joined in the “Occupy Neptune” project for the few days that we’re here. Had a few celebrity drop-ins already this week. Tomorrow’s a general strike. Of course, there are only about five people on the whole planet, but frankly…. that makes organizing a snap. Don’t even need freaking Twitter.

Well, so anyway… keep the faith down there in Oakland, New York, Boston, and everywhere else. We’ll hold down the fort up here on Neptune. In fact, we’ve got the outer planets covered – no worries.

Usual Rubbish

Tour log (third story).

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What is all the ruckus about? I told you we were bringing equipment with us. And no, we don’t need unicycles. We can get around on our own two feet, thank you very much.

That’s the problem with interstellar tours, my friends. A billion opportunities for misunderstandings. No shortage of those, particularly when you’re traveling with the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), as we appear to be out here on Big Green’s vaunted [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011. Anyway, here’s how it went down this week:

10.25.2011 – Our first full night on Kaztropharius 137b. If anything, it’s quiet – too quiet. Keep forgetting that there’s no atmosphere here, ergo, no sound. (Or is it “air-go; no sound”? You decide.)  We strummed our way silently through about a dozen tunes. The denizens of this strange little rock appeared partial to “My Bed”, one of Matt’s dream-sequence numbers. They pick up vibrations from our instruments via the floor of the venue. (They all appear to be equipped with stethoscopes. Looks kind of odd from on stage.) sFshzenKlyrn ripped the song a third corn chute, as the Simpsons once put it. Another triumph.

10.28.2011 – Pulling away after three successful gigs on Kaztropharius. By successful, I mean survivable… but only just barely. Anti-Lincoln decided to take a stroll down by the river district, apparently. Well, he got kind of drunk and one thing led to another. I’m not precisely sure how he acquired the riding saddle, but however it happened, he seems to have won first prize. We are now band non grata on Kaztropharius 137b. Nice work, anti-Lincoln! Who’s going to eat our discs now, pray tell?

10.29.2011 – Well, now he’s done it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has trashed the hyperdrive. He has this self-preservation circuit that compels him to replace any defective parts with whatever’s available. He needed a certain kind of chip for one of his motor circuits, and… well… he found one in our rent-a-ship’s hyper drive. So now we’re chugging along at the interstellar equivalent of 25 miles an hour, garbage scows passing us like we’re standing still. Got a string of gigs waiting for us, and at this rate, we’ll get to the first of them sometime in early 3109011 A.D. My guess is that they’ll pull out on us. What’s yours?

Oh well. Do me a favor, eh? Email me a diagram for a q47 space modulator chip.  Just google it. Thanks a million.