My pappy always told me that, before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. (Actually, scratch that – I’m thinking of someone else‘s pappy.) Anyway, whoever the source might be, it strikes me as a valid point. That’s why whenever I hear someone criticizing Neil Armstrong for flubbing his first words as he stepped off the lunar module, my first impulse is to say, “Hey … did YOU walk a mile on the moon? Huh? Did ya?”
The thing is, now we’re being told that Armstrong didn’t necessarily botch his little lunar speech – we just heard it wrong. In other words, he’s not the eff-up … we are for not keeping up with his speedy elocution style. Though, in fairness, the poor quality of interplanetary radio communications in 1969 should take some of the blame. I mean, listen to the dude – it sounds like he’s talking through a freaking kazoo.
As it happens, Big Green has weighed in on this contentious issue. Allow me to explain.
Art Imitates Life (Warts and All)
Some of you (and you know who you are) may be familiar with a song we did twelve years ago by the name of One Small Step. It’s a jumping little record I want my jockey to play! (No, wait – that’s Roll Over Beethoven.) Anyhow, as you can see from the video, we grapple with the vexing question of what Armstrong said as he stepped onto the moon. And by “grapple”, I mean bat it around like chimps in a bouncy house.
The chorus gets right to the point:
One small step for one bald man
Giant gaffe for all time
We did it!
Now let’s go do the other thing
for Jack-O!
Clearly, we settled on a point of view. But was it the right one? And what’s with the backing vocals? I mean, who sings “mooooon!” and “thing! thing! thing!” as a refrain? But I digress.
The Other Thing
Of course, amateur historians will tell you that the “other things” JFK was referring to in his Rice University address in 1962 had nothing to do with the moon. God, no – they were (1) climbing the highest mountain, (2) flying across the Atlantic (even if you’re a Hitler-admiring freak), and (3) some football game.
Now, it took three days to get to the moon (one-way, non-smoking, off-peak pricing). Climbing Everest took an afternoon, from a running start. True story! How long does a college football game take? Don’t ask me … just wake me up when it’s over. THE POINT IS: going to the moon took longer, so Neil and company deserve extra credit, overtime pay, and so on. That was what we were getting at. Somewhat.
And In Other News …
Work continues on Big Green’s next album. As I reported previously, we’ve got about 23 or 24 songs under construction. Right now we’re patching some rough spots, adding backing vocals, dropping in some additional parts (mostly keys). We should be in the mix phase by sometime this summer, so my wild prediction of a Fall release is still possible. (Or the whole thing might blow sky high. Who can say?)
Look for updates in the coming weeks. Or months. Try tomorrow.
Since I’ve been in an archiving mood pretty much all summer, I will likely start posting selections from International House (our 2008 album) in the coming weeks and share them here, forthwith, etc. Not new material, of course …. just a cheap-ass retrospective on where we’ve been. Something for you to chew on while we work out where the hell we’re going. I don’t know, maybe another interstellar tour, or maybe we’ll go all in on another album, or maybe just watch Marvin try to do cheap circus tricks. So long as he doesn’t dress up like a rodeo clown and start juggling bowling pins. That’s a bridge too far.
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.
Well here we are, on the first leg (or arm, perhaps) of Big Green’s much anticipated (by us) [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 – an aimless romp through the chewy center of the galaxy and from one end of our voluminous songbook to the other. Oh yes, we’re going from A to Z on this one. That was something we settled on in the rehearsal cellar, mainly because we couldn’t decide what the hell to play. So Matt pulls out this massive loose-leaf tome of songs from hell, arranged alphabetically, and we started paging through. From All Saints Come to You’re Dripping… it’s a veritable cornucopian magnum opus of Big Green numbers from back in the day. Our set lists are the stuff of nightmares, frankly. (And who’s this Frank Lee you keep speaking of?)
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!
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.)
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.
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!”
Oh, hiya. Geezus, you’d think being idle and ensconced in an abandoned hammer mill would offer endless opportunities to rehearse, jam, arrange, etc. Seems like every time we try to do it, something comes up. For instance, this week I’ve got custody of the mansized tuber. (Matt had him last week. Hey – that’s the terms of the adoption agreement, what do you want from me?) I guess I never realized what a handful he can be. He’s at a difficult age for tubers; you know, that time when they either become a full-fledged plant or get mashed up into some kind of traditional dish. I have to think that, for tubey, it’s going to be the former outcome, but he doesn’t seem convinced. Now he jumps at every noise. And as you might expect, rehearsal generates a lot of noises.