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A Summer Place (No, Not the Damn Song!)

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Shit boy howdy, it’s hot. Hot as blue blazes. Let’s see – what other cliches can I use to describe the searing effects of a dying planet? HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

Yes, friends, your Big Green friends are in a summer place. No, we’re not on vacation, sailing a yacht around the boiling Caribbean. Far from it! It’s fair to say that we are on a kind of summer hiatus, though for me that has meant working on our new album DAY and NIGHT. (Not EVERY day and EVERY night, you understand, and of course, not ALL day or ALL night.) Just chipping away at the monument, here and there.

When will it be finished? Whoa, man …. not so fast. We’ve got about 40 tracks started. That’s a lot of squeaking and whistling, to say nothing of the tap dancing. I’m not whining, you understand. And as Orson Welles once said, “we will serve no whine … before its time.” In other words … I don’t know, sometime in the Fall, maybe?

As for summer activities, I’m sure you know that it’s not the same as it used to be back when we were just young critters, walking around a random barnyard, making stupid faces, and lampooning more famous musicians (which is a category that includes basically every other musician ever). Matt’s refinishing floors, I think, in addition to watching falcons and feeding beavers. Me? I’m negotiating with squirrels. And I’m getting my ass handed to me.

Anyway, stay tuned … we’ll be posting again soon. Enjoy your summer!

Usual Rubbish

Daddy took the t-bird away (Damn him!)

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yes, yes …. I know it’s warm out. It’s hot as all hell in here, for crying out loud. Go ahead and open a few windows in the foundry room. You’ll need a ladder and a hook. And if anything catches fire, best call the hook and ladder.

Well, it’s predictable that as soon as the warm weather settles in, members of the Big Green entourage start getting restless. These long winters in an abandoned hammer mill can really take it out of you. But I have to say, summers are no better. It gets hot enough in here to melt all those discarded hammer heads. (I see claw-head hammers bubbling.) Who can blame the crew for wanting a little fresh air, right?

Of course, some of their notions about recreational activities are a little, let’s say, non-standard and unrealistic. Just to be clear, we don’t have an entertainment budget. We also don’t have a transportation budget. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we don’t have any kind of budget, period. We scratch and scrape for every morsel, but because we are a collectivist institution, we all share the workload. This morning I was on scratch duty. Tomorrow it will be scraping.

Surf’s Up On The Erie!

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spent too much of the winter months watching beach movies. He’s got it into his little brass noggin that he wants to go water skiing on the New York State Barge Canal, which runs right by our mill. I keep telling him the damn thing isn’t deep enough or … well … watery enough to water ski on, but he’s insisting.

He thinks if he gets enough speed, he’ll be able to do some jumps even, but dude, there isn’t enough speed in the world for you to manage that.

Looks a little too placid to me, man.

But You’re Not Ben, Abe

For his own part, Anti-Lincoln has decided to fly a kite in the middle of Little Falls, on the busiest street in this tiny city. He obviously thinks his status as an antimatter former president is going to keep him from having his ass hauled to jail like the other miscreants. I’m not so sure.

I reminded him that it was Ben Franklin, not Abe Lincoln, that was the historical American personage who flew kites in the cartoon shows of my youth. (That was how he invented electricity.) His rejoinder? “What part of anti-Lincoln do you not understand?” Fair cop.

Mitch Macaphee, on the other hand, considers true recreation to be curling up with a bottle of Thunderbird. Until daddy takes it away, of course.

Usual Rubbish

Summer doldrums.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Hey …. turn the light off. It’s the middle of the freaking night, man. What? The sun? You mean the sun that the Earth orbits? What’s the sun doing out in the middle of the …. oh. Right. I need one of those twenty-four hour clocks.

Yeah, that’s right folks – I overslept again. I blame the season. Now, that comment would make even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) laugh up his brass sleeve, because I basically blame the season for everything. No work? Goddamn northern winters! No groceries? Stupid spring cleaning! I knew those cereal boxes would come in handy one day. No gravity? Dumbass autumn! That’s when Mitch Macaphee starts sharpening his antigravity skills in anticipation of the big mad science annual meeting in Berlin on October 17.

Here in upstate New York, it’s getting so that we only have two seasons anyway: coldish and hot. That means fewer scapegoats for our manifold failings. In any case, I blame my sleepiness on the doldrums of late summer, when that sun is beating down on the leaky roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, turning the third story of this heap into something like a brick oven. I always get snoozy in this weather. And the fact is, there isn’t a lot going on musically these days. COVID-19 has shut down all the clubs. Musicians are performing on Zoom and Google Hangouts, hoping for a mercy tip. It’s just a weird damn time to be alive.

Zzzz.

I was saying to Matt the other day (he couldn’t hear me, of course, because he was out passing sweet potatoes to beavers) that these days are a lot like back in the day when we first started out. There were about five places to play around where we lived, and they were all dives. He was too young to get into a bar, but we got in anyway and jammed in front of rows of punters drinking their faces off and hollering for that Dave Mason song … you know, the one that goes blah blah blah and we just disagree! Nine times out of ten we’d get stiffed at the end of the night and have to burn the effing place down …. and then there would be even fewer places to play. I’m telling you, people, violence doesn’t pay! (Unless you’re paid to do it, of course.)

What’s my point? Good question. I think it’s that, well … don’t expect us to do much until it gets colder. Then expect to hear some complaining about how freaking cold it is in here.

Usual Rubbish

Summer projects.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Gardening? God, no. I don’t know the first thing about it. And no, I’m not going to build you another gazebo. The first one burned down, fell over, and was washed into the sewer. Not doing that again, dude.

Yeah, I know – it’s not quite summer yet. Still, we’re trying to get our summer projects all lined up … mostly because there’s very little else to do around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, particularly during this COVID-19 isolation time. Nothing happening, so we make lists of things that might happen. That makes sense, right? Anyway, I don’t think I have to tell you what Matt’s summer project is. Here’s a hint: it starts with an F and ends with an “alcon”. It flies around and lives on the side of tall buildings. It … oh, damn it, see for yourself! (Utica Falcon Project site) THAT’S my brother’s summer, people, and good on him.

The rest of us, well … mostly at loose ends. Antimatter Lincoln is dreaming of his revenge, though the dream is a bit murky, as I still don’t know who he wants revenge against. (He just says he swore he’d “keel” him, whatever that means. Some nautical reference, perhaps.) Mitch Macaphee plans to spend the summer packing up all of his experiments on Proxima B, now that it’s been discovered by non-evil Earth scientists. He was hoping to keep this big, rocky Earth-like planet under wraps, I think. Seriously, the dude would steal the Moon if he thought he could get away with it. (Actually, he claims to steal it every month, bit by bit, until it’s completely gone. Cute trick.)

Is this Proxima b or Proxima c? I always get them mixed up.

What about Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Funny you should ask. You see, Marvin is an automaton, a service cyborg. He has no agency, you see. You simply program Marvin to do a certain thing, and off he goes. Sometimes, yes, he gets it wrong. (Actually, the “sometimes” is more indicative of how often he gets things right, but that’s another story.) If we programmed him to ride in circles all summer, that’s what he would do … though he wouldn’t be at all pleased. And me? I’m trying to resist gravity, but not so hard as to fly off into space. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’m also recording some older songs that never got onto any of our projects. We’ll see how it goes at the end of the summer – if they don’t suck, I’ll post them. If they suck …. yeah, I’ll probably post them anyway. You guys know me better than I know myself.

So, recording, archiving, bird-watching, revenge … we’ve got it all here at the hammer mill. This is going to be some summer.

Usual Rubbish

Project zero.

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Someone’s knocking at the front gate – I can hear them. Anti Lincoln, can you see who it is? No, of course you can’t see them from down here in the basement. I meant go up stairs and take a look. Jesus …. how did you EVER serve as president? (Actually, I think I may now know the answer.)

Well, I spent this week counting the number of balls I’ve dropped since the start of the summer. And I don’t mean ping pong balls. No, I’m talking about projects started and never finished, plans laid but not implemented, sandwiches assembled but not eaten, sentences commenced but never …. what was I saying? Oh yeah. I never finish anything, and this summer is no exception, folks.

First there was the archive project. I will admit, I did get further on this one than any of the others. I’ve resurrected about 200 songs, by my rough count, all recorded in the eighties and early to mid nineties. I have the files … I haven’t done anything with them, but I HAVE them. And possession is nine tenths of the law. It’s also about ten tenths of this project. No, I haven’t abandoned it, but I did need a break from archive land, just as Matt has needed some extra time to go chasing falcons around (see the Utica Peregrine Falcon project site at http://www.big-green.net/falcon).

Think you can shake a tambourine?Then there’s the interstellar tour idea we were kicking around. What happened to that? Well, apparently someone kicked it into next week, figuratively speaking. I’m not ruling it out, but no one aside from Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his inventor, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has any inclination towards doing the fucker. And frankly, neither one of them can play an instrument (though Mitch can use instruments in his work … and Marvin sometimes makes a noise like a fire whistle). That’s not the kind of band I can bring to Neptune! Those crystalline ice creatures would laugh us out of orbit, and THEN where would we be.

Okay, so archives all but abandoned, check. Tour forgotten, check. What’s left? Project zero? Let’s get to work then. But first … answer the freaking door!

Usual Rubbish

Summer’s end.

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Here comes the sun … and there it goes, right over the back of the mill. Must be autumn. This place is like freaking Stonehenge – you can set your watch to the movement of the shadows.

Well, the season passing doesn’t mean much around here. I’ll be honest: we of Big Green never went in for summer activities in a big way, so the warm months are just about keeping out of the sun and wearing open newspapers on your head like a tent. Unless you’re Matt, of course, who wears a hat and spends half of his life out amongst the wild critters, rain or shine, snow or hail, you name it. The rest of us? We all busy ourselves with indoor activities, like bending pretzels and juggling priceless objets d’art. (That last one we don’t do a real lot. Like, well … never.)

It’s hard to keep track of what our entourage is doing in any given season. Some are more active than others. Anti-Lincoln, for instance, had and idea for a discount retail business. He was going to plant it right next door to Dollar General and call the store Quarter Colonel. His business plan was to undercut the competition – everything in Dollar General is a buck; everything in Quarter Colonel would be a quarter. The cash registers were ringing in his Four score and seven blue light specials agohead like the bells of St. Mary. I know Lincoln had a reputation, perhaps apocryphal, of being a humble, frugal man of simple tastes, so true to form, his anti-matter self is the exact opposite. He’s going to OWN north central Little Falls, NY …. OWN IT!

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been busy these waning weeks of summer. He’s mostly been checking his way through my to-do list. Hey … don’t look at me like that. What would YOU do if YOU had a personal robot assistant? At least I’m not sending him out to some local small business to earn money for my ass. Though he was working for a time at a five and dime. (His boss was Mr. Magee). I don’t think I have to tell you how that turned out.

So, bring on the fall, people. We’ve got a pack of songs ready to record. Let’s track this mother! Ya-ho, ta-ho.

Usual Rubbish

Boat trip!

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Got everything packed? Good, good. Don’t forget the picnic (pronounced pick-a-nick) basket. Then there’s the water supply, or at least that machine Mitch invented that makes water from thin air using something that looks like a spark plug. (I think the Robinsons used it on Lost In Space, right alongside the clothes washer that folded garments and wrapped them in plastic.)

Well, it’s been a long summer, and we have done absolutely NOTHING that can be considered recreational. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rolled over to the hardware store once or twice to pick up some machine oil and batteries. Yes, the mansized tuber struck up a friendship with some ornamental plant outside the 7-11. Yes, Mitch Macaphee went to half a dozen mad science conferences, one held in an abandoned cement plant on the north end of town. (I told him to have it here, that one abandoned mill is just as good as another, but he wasn’t having any of that.) Still, none of this can be considered recreational in a summery kind of way. (You could say that none of them amounts to summery execution, but I really wouldn’t say that if I were you.)

So, what was it going to be? Road trip? Nah. Did that last summer. Sickening, frankly. How about a boat trip? We have the Erie Canal running practically right alongside our abandoned hammer mill. All we need is a cheap gondola and a couple of oars, then it’s off to wherever that canal goes. East or west, I reckon. Just like Life on the Mississippi, except less crackery. And no Mississippi. No?

That looks like fun, kidsYou see, THIS is why we never go on vacation. We can never freaking decide what we want to do or where we want to go. The only time we travel is when we’re on interstellar tour (or when we time travel, which is disorienting, frankly, and I have discouraged Mitch from dragging us along through the time/space portal he keeps in his office). It’s like we’re just visitors on this, our home planet. Though come to think of it, the weather has been ungodly hot just lately. And Louisiana is under water. And California is on fire. Maybe this ISN’T our home planet. It does seem kind of inhospitable. Hmmm…

Okay, well … boat trip it is. Pull the gondola up to the jetty … whatever any of those words mean.

 

Usual Rubbish

Summer reverie.

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Say, do you remember when we took that bicycle trip up the side of Mt. McKinley?  Nope, neither do I. Well, now I’m guessing it never happened. Another false flag operation in brainville.

Oh, hello, reader. I’m afraid you’ve caught me in the midst of an early summer reverie. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I’m going to spend the entire season looking backward, but I will admit that I put my tee-shirt on backwards this morning. Harbinger of things to come? Of course not. Nevertheless, when you’ve got an abandoned hammer mill full of accumulated junk from more than a decade of habitation, every day is a bit like an archival bin dive.

Does that sound like a summer project to you? Well, it does to me … sort of. I told you about the demo video from 1993 that I’ve been resuscitating these last couple of weeks. Last weekend I remastered the audio and I’ll do some editing over the next few days. My summer report will be about resurrecting our YouTube channel, which is, essentially, my personal YouTube channel rather than an official Big Green video hub. Right now it kind of resembles the Cheney Hammer Mill – a big pile of unrelated videos about music, politics, linguistics, philosophy of mind …. whatever the hell I spend my free time watching and (mostly) listening to. Hey … my phone is my entertainment center, okay? That’s how you know I’m American. (Want a candy bar? Cigarettes? There’s a bodego across the street.)

This could take a while.Just the other day (don’t ask me which day) I stumbled upon some old promo shots of Matt and me back in our Big Green duo days, in the late 80s. (I can tell when it was because I was wearing a sports jacket with the arms rolled up. Hey … it was comfortable, like the fuzzy slippers.) I think it was right after Ned Danison left the group and I moved back to the Utica area. In a couple of shots we were consciously trying to lampoon a Rolling Stone magazine spread about U2’s current album at the time, Joshua Tree. (They had a shot of U2’s drummer looking admiringly at Bono from about five paces away. I think there was a cactus in the photo somewhere.)

What’s next … the handlebars of my first tricycle? Never fear … we will get back to making new things rather than digging up old ones. Just give us a little interval. Ah yes.

Usual Rubbish

August down.

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Hey, let's go to outer spaceMan, it’s so hot in here. Marvin, can you turn up the air conditioning? Oh, right … our air conditioning is a broken skylight. Sigh. Okay … break another skylight, then. Use my forty-foot pole … the one I use to keep my distance from things (and people) I don’t like.

Yes, friends … it is the end of summer, past the dog days. August is coughing up blood, writhing in the blistering sun. (Look on the bright side, brother.) Not much going on around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as you might have suspected. I laid down a piano part on perhaps one of the most ludicrous recordings I’ve ever played on. I saw some bluejays in the courtyard. What else happened? Not mucho.

Whoever said being a musician is tantamount to perpetual unemployment was on to something. (Hey … I think that was me.) You can see why we often opt for these less-than-optimal interstellar tours, in lieu of the more profitable terrestrial variety. Pretty simple, really … crappy work is better than no work at all. We are always open to seeking a new audience, even if that means holding our breath for weeks at a time. (There must be a better way to travel through space. Where’s Gene Roddenberry when you need him?)

Once we get finished with the current set of recordings, Big Green will likely take a romp around the known solar system; maybe a 2-week Autumn tour to promote … I don’t know, whatever we have to toss out there. Trouble is, on most alien worlds, the music fans have six or seven arm-like appendages, so you have to have a lot of product to keep them satisfied. Hell, they can absorb our entire canon and still have several arms free. We’ve got to get busy!

My hope is that, this time, wherever it is we’re traveling to, we have the assistance of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser. His absence was sorely felt on our last, disastrous foray into the galactic hinterlands. Which proves that having a crazy driver is better than no driver at all. (At least out where there’s very little to crash into.)

Usual Rubbish

Dawg days.

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Things are heating up around here. Not surprising. I left the mansized tuber in charge of the thermostats. Bugger was born in a greenhouse, what the hell was I thinking?

Well, summer is upon us, friends. No, not summer by the calendar, but rather summer by the sweat of the brow. Or so it goes in the northern climes of the northern hemisphere, on that land mass known as “North America”, just below the mighty lake Ontario, maker of much snow in the darker months – a kind of ice goddess, if you will. (Hell, even if you won’t.) It doesn’t take much to raise the temperature in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – all that brick, you know, baking in the direct sunlight, no trees to protect us. It’s like spending a night in the box. Sure wish you stop trying to help me, Captain.

Okay, so… what’s my summer project going to be? Could be any of a number of things. As Big Green has no interstellar tour booked, I may play a few gigs with my old cover band, Putting On The Ritz (a.k.a. the only group with an audience that can put up with me for more than five gigs in a row). Well, that’s one thing. Another is to get a podcast going – a project Matt and I had started, then forgotten about, maybe six months ago. Could try that again. Then there’s all those recordings lying around either half-finished or just gathering dust. Summer might be a good time to sort through all that stuff.

Then there’s recording, of course. We could try that, for a change. Let’s not get crazy.

Matt’s been working on his Facebook posts from Spring Farm Cares – video postings and blog entries. Check it out. I’ve been liking it o-plenty. Now that’s a summer project, friends. Would that I could be that ambitious. About the best I can do is sit around strumming Ian Anderson songs on Matt’s battered 1978 Aspen six-string acoustic. Hey – set up a Web cam and there’s your podcast, buck. 

Hmmm. How many more problems can I solve sitting on my ass? Not sure. It’s TOR:CON 4 over here at the hammer mill. Batten down the hatches!