Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Tour log 10.11

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Good evening, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to read this blog entry from top to bottom without falling over backwards. This blog will self-destruct in ten seconds. Good luck, Jim!

Don’t mind that first paragraph. I sometimes rent my blog space out to sixties television shows. Has something to do with the space-time vortex through which we ordinarily travel when on these interstellar tours. Don’t ask me to explain – I’m not an actual scientist. And unlike some of my blog renters, I don’t even play one on television.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of how Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 is going so far, ripped straight from the pages of my log book.  

10.08.2011 – Negotiated our way through the asteroid belt. We needed to lighten our load somewhat, so we tossed a few things overboard, like Marvin (my personal assistant)’s Lowery organ he borrowed from our one-time promoter and second keyboard player, Tiny Montgomery. Mitch also chucked all of the foodstuffs. He hates foodstuffs. Food, he likes, but foodstuffs… not so much. Anyway… we started the search for the Olive Garden in orbit around Jupiter.  Tough sledding.

10.09.2011 – Actually started a gig on time – first instance of this since, oh, 1992. A couple of weeks. We played the big red spot on Jupiter. Weather was awful (seems like it’s always stormy when we play there), but the Jovian audience is the greatest audience in the world… if “the world” can be thought of to include Jupiter itself. Paid in Belgian waffles. Hard times have hit up here as well, it seems.

10.11.2011 – Woke up around 18:00. Missed yesterday entirely. Our hyperdrive engine soiled the bed, so to speak, so we’re creeping along at about 25 miles an hour, headed for Titan. Should be a Titanic gig if we ever get there. For now, I look out the porthole and see space turtles passing us. Note to self: when ship lands on Earth, fire Mitch.

10.12.2011 – Jammed with sFshzenKlyrn on Titan. He’s big into Lenny Breau, now. Watches him on YouTube, which apparently is available on the planet Zenon. You heard it here first. Glad to see no waffles in the pay packet this time. No nothing, actually – I guess the Titanians have discovered currency trading… and subsequently discovered they were no good at it.  Traded all their currency for Legos. Legos valueless in the outer planets (unlike back home).

More later. Isn’t it always the case?

Usual Rubbish

Long view.

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Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Vector diagrams to light board. Finger fins to the driver behind. Quarter to three in the afternoon. What am I saying?

Doesn’t matter, really. We’re getting close to the departure date on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, our hotly-anticipated romp through the musical hinterlands of outer space, with planned stops in the Jovian system (Jupiter for you space travel novices), Betelgeuse, Kaztropharius 137b, Sirius, and the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, home base of our sometime-guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn.  Yes, I know – last time we stopped there we took a few lumps, but they’ve since healed up, and hey – never let it be said that we let experience stand in the way of a good lapse in judgment. Still got it, baby.

Anyhow, we’re just running through our confusing array of pre-launch checklists. Can’t be too careful these days, particularly when your vehicle has such a spotted past as the one we’ve rented for the occasion. Some of these lists are so damn mundane, though, it hardly seems justified…. but protocol is protocol. Here’s a for instance: (1) spacecraft fuel, check! (2) spacecraft, check!  (3) passengers and crew, check! (4) desire to depart for interstellar destinations, check! Who the f**k came up with that? My guess is that it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), due to the rote existential nature of his selections. But I digress.

Another thing that doesn’t much matter: we haven’t really worked out a set list yet. Or any of the songs that would populate a set list. That would involve rehearsal, you see, and as a very wise horn player once told me, rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow. Normally I don’t take such vouchsafes as gospel, but THIS time…. well, I daren’t disregard such an obviously valuable insight. Anyway, Matt and I have been recording some numbers for the podcast (This Is Big Green), so we will probably remember those songs at the very least. That’s about… oh…. half a set. Then there are the songs we make up on the spot. And of course, the mansized tuber plays a little accordion. (Don’t ask how little. Just… don’t.)

Okay, so yeah…. we’ve got a lot of getting together to do before our departure next week. But no fear- Big Green is up to this challenge. In fact, we’ve got a check list for this very situation. Left it around here…. somewhere…

Usual Rubbish

Tune it.

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Turn the first little knob on the top. Yes, that one. Turn it. A little more. More. Right, now back it off a little. Good… now the next one – turn it clockwise. I said CLOCKWISE! What do you mean you’re from the land down under? What’s THAT got to do with ANYTHING?

Ho, man. Just getting ready for BIG GREEN’S [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011, and as you can see, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be the guitar tech again this time out. Thought it might be wise to go over the basics, just one more time, before we really need his help. No, he can’t tune a six-string guitar all by himself. He needs someone to hold the fat end while he turns the tuners – but that’s not the main drawback. You see, Marvin is made of bits left over from other experiments, in essence, including machine parts from Mitch Macaphee’s shop – air powered tools, drills, vise-grips, sanders, and the like. Sometimes when you ask him to do an open tuning on the Martin, he turns that tuner like he’s taking an air wrench to a lug nut… then it’s SNAP!  He also gets very confused on Matt’s Ovation 12-string, which Matt has set up like a six-string. (Too many machines.)

Would that that were our most serious problem on this tour. Not a bit of it. I told you, I seem to recall, about the dark vessel Mitch appears to have hired for our transport. It resembles that ship that took that fateful journey to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, that wouldn’t make me particularly nervous… except that Jupiter is on our itinerary. Seems like too much of a coincidence. No one else seems uncomfortable, but… well… I am. Open the pod door, Marvin. I said OPEN THE POD DOOR, MARVIN!

Guess I should start being nicer to the boy. At least pre-emptively. You never know what kind of situation you might find yourself in. I can imagine a scenario wherein we might find ourselves trapped in a reality that resembles what people in 1967 thought 1999 would look like.  That would not be good. But anyway….

We have a tour to plan. Bookings to book. Shoes to pack. Songs to rehearse. And guitars to tune. MARVIN!! (Please…) 

Usual Rubbish

Yours truly.

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Our rocket test failed. Only two weeks to launch date and the thing can’t get off the ground. Some kind of rust blight has destroyed our food supply. And the gravity in the Hammer Mill (at least around Mitch’s lab) is intermittent and untrustworthy. Sounds like a good time to open the old mail bag!

Here’s one from fairly close by – a little town called Philadelphia.

Dear Big Green:

Your music is full of obscure references to old television shows. Why don’t you work more historical subject matter into your songs? That might attract a higher quality listener (like me).

Respectfully yours,

Horton Pompideau (signed in what appears to be grape juice)

Well, Horton. I’m glad you asked that question. In fact, if I were to make up a phony listener question, it would likely be something very much like that. (Fortunately, my strong ethical sensibilities keep me from stooping that low.) Actually, we do reference historical events, such as in the song Quality Lincoln, which was featured on the first episode of our new podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.  The thing is – and this is important – that song is as much about television as all the other ones. It’s like history thrown into the blender of television and turned up to “frappe” speed with the lid left off. So big chunks of history are flying out of the thing, and what you’re left with is a musical slurry of factoids, mostly unrelated to one another. That’s the creative process, man. Live with it.

Here’s another one:

Dear Big Green:

Final notice. Remit outstanding balance of $47.85 by close of business 12 September 2011. Non-compliance may result in criminal or civil penalty.

Warmly,

Ivan Pitcairn, Collections Officer
Hegemonic Energy Consortium and Worm Farm.

Oh, hey Ivan – long time no hear from. Didn’t I tell you the check is in the mail? If you have a problem with that, take it up with the postal service.  I only write the checks, not deliver them.

Okay, we’ve got time for one more. This looks like another local query… very local…

Dear Joe:

Get your butt back in the studio. And stop making up those ludicrous letters. We’ve got work to do, you fricking idiot!

Gratefully yours,

Matt Perry

Hey… it’s a little hard to argue with this writer. I have been slacking. Back to my padded (or at least sound retardant) cell, then.

Usual Rubbish

Close quarters.

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Here. Squeeze your head into this helmet, see if it fits. What? No, I’ve never seen the movie Scarface. Not all the way through, anyway. Why?

Mother of pearl. I’m surrounded by moaners. Nobody wants to wear a freaking space helmet, not even Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s afraid of getting “helmet hair” of all things. (His so-called “hair” is made of leftover brass fittings from what appeared to be a Victorian era lawn mower.) I keep telling these people – if we’re going to pile into that substandard missile Mitch Macaphee found for us and fly to distant solar systems, we will need at least minimal protective gear, to include a) a helmet, b) a bag of oxygen, c) some portable food, preferably sandwiches, d) THERE IS NO “D”, e) boots, non hobnail variety, and f) a bunch of other stuff that you might need for space travel on the cheap. (Look it up on the Web.)

Would that that were the worst of our problems. Fact is, Mitch’s missile is a real piece of crap, not worthy of sending a payload of trailmix into space, let alone flesh-and-blood musicians such as ourselves. I have put out some inquiries about alternative transportation. Nothing yet, I’m afraid. Beginning to think we should abandon the idea of private transportation and just sign aboard one of those interstellar budget tours. You know – you take a jitney to the moon, wait there for about six days until the big Trailways spacebus shows up. You squeeze in next to a spotty couple from Boca Raton while a morbidly obese business man in a rumpled tan business suit coughs his lungs out in the seat behind you.

Yeah. Been there, done that, haven’t you? Well… haven’t we all? Anyway, I’m a little tired, frankly. Matt and I have been working at a furious pace ever since we started that pod cast. A session a week – nearly an hour and a half of music making! Yes, I know that sounds impossibly ambitious, but… we’re motivated. We’ve started about half a dozen recordings. Our plan is to do a rough initial draft of each song, play that on the podcast, then finish tracking the song and release it later as a finished number. We’re starting with Quality Lincoln, which will be featured on the next episode, due out…. in a matter of days…. right?

Right. Yeah, I’m tired. Sandman’s beating me to death. What did I ever do to him, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Cheap ride.

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Well, I guess THAT didn’t work. Spectacular failure, old man. What’s next on the agenda? Setting toast on fire? Turning gold into lead? Some other feat of science?

Oh, hello. If you detect some sarcasm in my voice, it’s no accident. I’m merely ripping on Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, whose latest experiment/get weird quick scheme was an abysmal failure. Sometimes I think old Mitch is losing his touch. Sometimes I think we of Big Green should be looking around for another mad science advisor. Not to replace Mitch, you understand, but rather to keep him company in his dotage. Maybe that would give him someone to talk to about how his time travel experiment was about as amazing as someone hiding in a closet for half an hour. No, Mitch – I’m not kidding… it was just that bad. I’ve seen grade school magic tricks that put that to shame, man.

All right, maybe I’m being a bit too hard on the guy. Frankly, I’m a little miffed at him over another matter entirely. (I think the psychologists call that “transfer” … or perhaps “coconut”… one of those two.) As you know, we’ve been searching the local bulletin boards, want ads, and health food store countertop flyers for some kind of conveyance that will reliably carry us from planet to planet on Big Green’s upcoming [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Naturally we asked Mitch to keep his good eye – the one that doesn’t see evil things – open for anything vaguely appropriate to the task. Would that I had bitten back those words!

I am reminded of the old saw (hack saw?), “be careful what you ask for.” Nothing truer could be said of Mitch’s spacecraft search. He was gone for a couple of days this week and came back with a largish missile in tow. (No, it wasn’t a “tow missile”, dammit.) Mitch pulls up and says, in effect, “Here’s your ride.” And I’m looking at this thing, my mouth agape. Matt’s mouth was agape as well, as was John’s. (Lincoln’s was not agape, but it was open slightly.) I mean, that missile was battered, leaking, beat to hell. I think he bought it off of Col. Gaddafi, or perhaps from rogue elements of his famous “kung fu” brigade.  It looks like a freaking SCUD that someone never bothered to drain the fuel out of. And … worse yet … we’re supposed to fly to Andromeda in that bloody thing?

No way in hell, man. No way am I getting in that lousy hunk of junk. And when I say, no way, I mean only under certain limited circumstances. (Let the record show that I’m beckoning to my counsel.)

Usual Rubbish

Pre-launch blues.

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Gonna’ pump some liquid oxygen… and twirl my sextant dial. I said I’m gonna’ pump some liquid oxygen… and twirl my sextant dial. And when I lift you off that launch pad… baby you know you’ll ride in style. Oh, yeah!

Yeah, sounds like we need a little more chunkiness in the rhythm section. What? Oh… we have visitors. Hello, blogsters. It’s your old pal Bozo. Nothing like a little blues to take your mind of your troubles, eh? And a little country western to put it back on ’em. (Keep talkin’ like that, and more than a few Texans’ll want to treat me kinda ugly.)  Yeah, we’re just working our way down to our departure time. What will our interstellar conveyance be? Glad you asked. It’s about time someone asked. No one around the Hammer Mill has bothered inquiring. A strange disinterest has taken hold of Big Green and its entourage, apparently. It entered the room like a miasma, pulled up a chair and made itself at home.

Honestly, I don’t know how we’ll be hopping from planet to planet, star system to star system, on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Mitch Macaphee was going to arrange a short term lease arrangement of some kind. He knows a guy who knows a guy, apparently. I think the delay comes out of the fact that the guy the guy he knows knows is, in fact, him. (Is there an echo in here? Wouldn’t be surprised.) So what the hell, maybe we don’t have reliable private transportation from Betelgeuse to Kaztropharius 137b. We can always take a commercial flight. There’s always priceline or expedia or whatever the fuck.

I think the reason why Mitch dropped the ball on this is that he’s been obsessed with his latest dabbling into time travel techniques. He’s got this new one – check this out. It’s a means by which people in the past can tunnel into the future and wait until we normal, moment by moment time travelers catch up with them. Mitch made a device about the size of an iPod that anchors you in time, so that as everyone else moves forward with the passing moments, you stay in one moment. (So it it’s 4:37p.m. on Tuesday when you hit the button, for you it will remain that time while time ticks on for everybody around you.) Then you hit another switch, and the thing launches you through a wormhole into the not-so-distant future – like an hour from now – where you sit frozen in a single moment and wait for “real time” to catch up with you. Then like a mail bag being snagged by a passing train, you start moving with normal time once it arrives.

Anyhow, you can see why he gets distracted. He’s sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on a test run. We should get to his moment…. any moment now.

Usual Rubbish

Take twelve.

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You hear that? That part there… yep. The honking trombone. Who was puffing on that sucker? Lincoln, was that you? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Mitch? Anybody going to own up to that heinous honking?

Oh, hi. You’re getting us in the middle of a band meeting, as you can see. (Murray, present. Bret, present…) Kind of an ugly look at how the sausage of Big Green’s music is cranked out. Okay, so our production values are not the best, and our process is flawed. So we hear stuff in our recordings we didn’t even know was there when we were tracking them. That’s part of the Big Green method, man. It’s a bit like found sound; it’s basically lost sound. Somebody misplaces a trombone part somewhere in the known universe (or perhaps in any one of an infinite number of possible universes), and it turns up embedded in one of our tunes like a foreign correspondent on a battlefield assignment.

I guess in that respect we owe a great deal more to our old friend Trevor James Constable than we ever actually gave him credit for. He was famous for that orgone generating device he used to park in our basement (or courtyard, depending on the weather conditions). Far from a generator, that thing was more like a collector of energy, like a commercial fishing net or a big radar dish. (Yes, folks… it’s simile week at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill.) Well, when we record, the simple act of our making a record creates a virtual “collector” of random sounds loosed upon the universe by substandard musicians everywhere. Those bits of music congeal with the tracks we perform on to produce the zig-zag rococco rock arrangements Ann Powers spoke of so eloquently in her review of 2000 Years To Christmas. And hey-presto: another obscure Big Green song.

Well, that’s the creative process. For a somewhat more mentally challenged process, see Big Green’s newly launched podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, now available on iTunes. Yes, this is the stuff, folks – stories ripped straight from the front pages. (Front pages of last week’s news, actually.) The inside poop on all that is Big Green. Plus never before (and never again) heard tracks from the archives, and some new, lightly pan-fried material, unreleased and unashamed. The maiden voyage features a tour through the Hammer Mill basement, a segment called “Ask Marvin”, a remote from Matt on Betelgeuse (or what he thinks is Betelgeuse), and more.

Okay, so anyway – what is this, take twelve? STOP THAT HONKING!

Usual Rubbish

Pod dunk.

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Other alternatives, anyone? What would you do, Mitch? Well…. what the hell else is there to do? When faced with adversity, start a podcast.

Yeah, you heard me right. In the midst of preparing for Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 and of being ejected from our home of nearly ten years (the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill), we’ve elected to launch a podcast. I know this sounds crazy, but … hear me out. The world is full of blowhards and know-nothings. Fact is, a lot of blowhards are know-nothings. So the harder we blow, the less we know – follow me? And if we don’t know we have problems, like impending eviction, for instance, well that’s almost like not having any problems at all. An elegant solution, and it costs next to nothing… or at least a good deal less than our legal counsel was planning on charging us. (Anti-Lincoln has some rapacious per diem rates, I’m here to tell you. Just watch your ass.)

Why do we spend so much energy on pointless pursuits such as this? Because they are there, that’s why. Would Sir Edmond Hillary climb that enormous hill-ary if it hadn’t been there? Certainly not. We create the podcast … and the other thing … not because they are easy, but because they are hard. What do I mean – not sure. But it may make its way into my first inaugural, or into Anti-Lincoln’s third inaugural (once removed). He’s always looking for new material. Not sure why he’s looking here, but… I digress.

Fact is, no, the podcast is not all we’ve been up to. Fact is, we’re recording songs again, filling the hours between forays into the outer reaches of the galaxy in search of lucrative performance opportunities. We’re patching together new takes of older songs in the Big Green catalog – songs from beyond time, as it were. Lots of ’em. My method is simple. I have Matt pull out his various guitars and play them into a microphone. I press one button when he starts and another when he’s finished. That’s what we call “collaboration”. Try it sometime, Monty.

All right, actually, I am doing parts as well, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is putting down some scratch rhythm tracks. (They sound very scratchy, actually. I think he needs a little oil.) Still, while we’re doing that, go and check out our podcast. Be sure to block your eyes – it’s an audio podcast.

Usual Rubbish

Out of mind.

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Okay, so let me get this straight. We go to court and plead our case. The judge motions to the guy in the hood, and they take us away in chains. Got it. Any other options?

Oh, hi. Yeah, we’re working with our legal advisor – a mouthpiece named Anti-Lincoln, esq. And as you can see, he’s helping us out with our recent eviction notice. Not the first time, you understand, that we’ve been asked to vacate the premises. More than once the folks down at city hall have reminded us that this building is SUPPOSED to be vacant. Seems a waste to us, but what do we know? The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill is abandoned for a reason, even if we don’t know what that reason is. Freaks! They didn’t even sweeten the deal with a grace period; just “Out, already!”

I know what you’re probably saying right now. You’re saying, “That Big Green,” says you, “they are totally out of their tiny minds.” And that’s where you make the big mistake: referring to our tiny minds as more than one thing. In actuality, together our brains make up one mind. That’s why we know what the other person is going to do wrong before he goes and does it wrong. We are the collective mind of Big Green. Or at least that’s what I tell the tax assessor when she comes a-knocking. Try it sometime – it totally freaks them out.

Trouble is, we are also a collective wallet. And if I were to choose with whom to share a wallet, it would not be this troop of losers and miscreants. God knows, every time I get my hands on some legal tender it evaporates into thin air, snatched up by the claw of a Marvin (my personal robot assistant) or the twig of a man-sized tuber or the spotted hand of a man named Lincoln. It’s a kleptocracy here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, or at least effectively so. No one subscribes to the notion of private property. I’m surrounded by collectivists! What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine – that’s their motto. And me, a mere anarcho-syndicalist. What defense hath the likes of I?

Okay, well…. I’ve run off at the mouth a bit, not even getting around to mention Big Green’s upcoming [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Some publicist I turned out to be. Got to stop typing so I can motion to my counsel.