Tag Archives: spring

Usual Rubbish

Here comes the sun.

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My Martin D-1 needs strings again. So what’s new? I always let stringed instruments go to seed – it’s how I roll. That’s why true guitarists hate me. (Dude, you KNOW it’s true.)

I just don’t play the fucker enough, that’s my problem. But then I guess you could say my problem is that I don’t do ANYTHING enough, so it’s just part of a larger problem. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has volunteered to act as my guitar technician. Only trouble is, his inventor – the mad scientist Mitch Macaphee – gave him prehensile claws for hands, so it’s kind of a challenge to restring a guitar in his little tin world. Kind of outside his wheel house. (That’s not a metaphor. He actually does have a wheel house.)

It’s when the sun starts shining and the leaves unfurl in this part of the country that the mind turns more to making music. Maybe that’s someone else’s music, sure, but music nevertheless. You can hear it wafting out of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on a night like this … me framming on my broken down guitar, Matt hammering on an anvil, Marvin jumping up and down like a chimp, slapping his bongos. I won’t even get into what Anti-Lincoln does to make noise. Let’s say it doesn’t involve the harpsichord, which I think may have been his primary instrument at one time. (We don’t have a harpsichord … hell, not even a harp.)

Bzzt ... Let me tune guitarTrouble is, we spend so much time on THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, that practically everything else suffers. The garden has fallen to shit. (Granted, we did plant in the dead of winter. We may be “Big Green” but none of us has enough of a green thumb to grow a freaking rock garden.) Our songwriting is becoming even more bizarre by the day. And what the hell – the harder we work, the longer it takes for us to finish a freaking episode. It’s like we’re running backwards on a train heading in the opposite direction, following a track shaped like a mobius strip. Wrapped in an enigma.

Complain, complain, complain. That’s what blogging is all about, right? Shut up and play your broken guitar!

Usual Rubbish

Open season.

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Whoa, was that a week from hell or wasn’t it?  Spring is here, after all, and the planet’s wrecked. Time to cultivate another one. Any preferences? Neptune, perhaps? Or…. maybe we can just open the mail bag.

Here’s one from a local:

Dear Big Green,

I think I saw one of your number tagged in a photo on Facebook, dressed up in a ludicrous leprechaun get-up. What’s up with that? Are you going to start playing traditional Irish music now? Should I look for you on Thistle and Shamrock any time soon?

Best,

Rich Taggert
Toad in the Hole, NY

Well, Rich…. that does seem to be my name, so perhaps it’s me. I may be a secret leprechaun, or perhaps I fell asleep at a St. Patrick’s Day bash and simply don’t remember what happened next. (Distinct possibility.) Then again, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) may have put me in the ludicrous outfit while I was sleeping and then invited local children in to have their photo taken with the funny, funny elf. I’m guessing here.

The closest we’ve come to Irish music is a Christmas number Matt wrote some years back called “McBridy”, which later segues into a country song called “Evening Crab Nebula”. Written around the times of the troubles in Northern Ireland – now thankfully past – the McBridy lyric went something like this:

Well, hiddly- hi, in the Christian World, it’s eye for eye
And hiddly-hi, we’ll get another try
It’s the same dear thing McBridy sang
before he caught up with the plan
that threw him on his back one Christmas ‘morn

McBridy, McBridy! You lived in a wholly Christian world
But still you blow your brother away
McBridy, McBridy! You lived in a holy Christian world
But died another link in the chain.

And no, not Thistle and Shamrock… but possibly Pagan FM, if you listen regularly.

Next missive…

Dear Big Green,

I don’t exist, and you can’t make me.

Yours truly,
Chester Ether

Thanks for writing, Chester. A lot of our listeners are in much the same condition. It’s a sign of these difficult times, as I’m sure you – a non-existent person – can truly appreciate.

Now back to work, damn it.

Usual Rubbish

Cold porridge.

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No, we’re not having porridge this evening, cold or otherwise. That was Marvin (my personal robot) typing the title for me as he does most weeks. Explains a lot.

What’s happening around this place? Usual kind of stuff. We’re preparing for the warm weather, which typically comes around this time in the northern hemisphere (for those of you browsing in from Madagascar). That’s kind of an involved process. We have to put out the fire we started in the basement last November. No, we don’t have a furnace – that’s for bourgeois rock bands and… what do they call them? …. symphony orchestras. Hell, no – no furnace for Big Green. We just bust up a bunch of old furniture, baskets, hammer stocks (of which there are many lying around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill), and other combustibles, chuck ’em down the basement stairs, light ’em up, and keep it going until March.

Okay, so… first step, put out the fire. Second, open a few windows. I don’t know how many of you out there live in abandoned factories. (I’m guessing it’s less than a thousand on any given day.) For those of you who have permanent residences in actual houses or other appropriate human habitation, it’s probably hard to picture just what we have to go through to get some fresh air into this bloody great brick barn. All of the window hardware is rusted, all of the casings are cracked and paint-sealed. I think the only actual paint left is the stuff holding the windows closed.

Sure… I’m certain someone out there has already asked themselves (or their robot friend) “Why don’t they just break the windows?” Or perhaps you’re asking, “Does the moon weigh the same when it’s in crescent phase as it does when it’s full?” Or maybe you ponder other imponderables, such as the tides (they come in, they go out, never a miscommunication) or the weekend lineup on MSNBC. Well, there are answers to all of these questions…. but if I were to simply GIVE them away, you would think me an easy mark, wouldn’t you? No, no… everything has a price, my friend. Just let me know how much you want, and I’ll send it in the morning post.

Hmmm…. well, I’ve wandered a bit. Back to producing. Where’s that electric banjo?