Tag Archives: This Is Big Green

Usual Rubbish

Sing it loud.

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Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare … disgusting. Oh, well.

Yep, we’ve got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally – he wouldn’t stop blinking. I think it’s all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end.

Right, well…. we’re not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green. No, we are practical mofo’s, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo’s you read about in the Sunday paper.  Fact is, we’re recording an album and we need to freaking hear the bastard – we all admit that. To deny it would be just plain silly.

What’s the album about? Glad you asked. Give a listen to the last episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, wherein I believe we give a rough explanation of the project. I believe we do – don’t quote me on that. It’s probably somewhere between our seventeen apologies for the previous month’s episode and our airing of cousin Rick Perry’s latest song, “Come Back Mean”, which features the immortal lyric:

Kick me a dog
Go scour the neighborhood
Bring me the best kickin’ dog you can find
Go get me Planned Parenthood

Old Rick is singing from the heart right there. (Though it does sound eerily reminiscent of another organ slightly to the south.)

Yes, so… we’re taking all of cousin Rick’s songs, polishing them up a little bit, and placing them on a long playing record (a.k.a. a bunch of MP3s) where they can be downloaded by the likes of you. What you’re hearing on the podcast are “first drafts” – rough mixes of basic tracks. What you will hear on the final album (working title: “Cowboy Scat”) will be finished pieces (of something), which in many cases may sound…. substantially like the podcast versions …. but (and this is important) not necessarily!

Okay, well… I’ve wandered a bit. Nothing new there. Ooops. And there goes the light switch. Technology!

Usual Rubbish

Rooms to let.

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Right up those stairs … watch your step, now … is the master bedroom. The one with the stagnant puddles in the middle of the floor. That’s where that drip in the living room is coming from. We’re conserving water, you see. “Big Green” has to stand for something.

Oh, hello blog post readers from around the world (and Italy, too). This may not be the best time to drop by. I’m taking a potential renter on the grand tour of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our palatial squat here in upstate New York. Times being what they are (and gigs being pretty thin on the ground just lately), we have been forced to consider the possibility of taking on tenants. Yes, I advertised in the local Pennysaver. (Someone said I should move up to the Nickelsaver, but I’m not made of money, frankly.) Gotten quite a few calls, at least by Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s count. He’s answering the phone, which is helpful… but I’m a little tired of the voicemail routine every time I ask him something.

I know what you’re going to say … but that’s okay, go ahead and say it anyway. You know – the trope about how we’re squatters, we don’t own the property, we have no right to rent it out to others. Sure, sure – that’s easy for non-squatters to say. The way I see it, once you’ve been somewhere for a dozen years, you’ve earned the right to, I don’t know, monetize your investment of time and sweat. We’ve put a lot of time into this place, to be sure. Not so much sweat, actually – it’s falling down around our ears. But time, for sure.

That’s not all we’re monetizing around this place. We’re also renting out pages on our new Web site, http://www.big-green.net. We’re offering the services of Lincoln and Anti-Lincoln as legal advisors. (Not lawyers, mind you. They’re no longer members of the bar association, unless you count the local tavern circuit.) We’re renting out the mansized tuber as a pleasure vehicle – very popular with the kiddies. And we’ve opened our basement studio up to karaoke singers. Should generate some interesting content for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, at the very least.

Oops, got to go. Matt’s hitting a rack tom with a stick and playing a kazoo like a duck call. And there’s no live mic nearby.

Usual Rubbish

Trifecta.

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Can’t hear you. Can you turn it up? I don’t know… to eleven, or maybe thirteen. Still nothing. Play harder, faster…. oh, wait. Didn’t plug your cord into the console. Sorry. Sorrrreeeee…

Oh, hi. Hey … don’t let anybody tell you (in case anybody ever tries) that producing yourself is easy. It’s not, man, and I’ll tell you why. You are the engineer. And the guitar tech. And the arranger. You get the drinks. And the snacks. It’s bloody maddening – I even have to oil Marvin (my personal robot assistant) when he starts to squeak over there on the percussion riser. Anyway… we’re elbow deep in production on our next album. Yes, it’s a themed piece … almost a rock opera, except with a lot less coherence. It grapples with monumental themes … if you understand monumental to mean, simply, mental.

It’s been busy ’round these parts, I don’t mind saying. Busier than we’re used to, quite frankly. Recording, of course. Then there’s our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. The frenetic pace of once a month is enough to exhaust anyone not used to exertion. Oh, and also … we released a new video of one of the many songs recorded by “cousin” Rick Perry – a little number named “Devil Romney” that was featured on the podcast a couple of episodes ago. That was exhausting. Matt did all the work, of course… but it was plain exhausting just watching him. And then that upload to YouTube really took it out of me.

We are, of course, still making plans for our upcoming trip to the moon as an advance team for the Gingrich campaign. I know what you’re going to say – he dropped out …. of the presidential race. Yes, we know that. But he’s still going to be the nominee. He said so himself, you know. I can only imagine this means he is going to be installed as King of the Moon any day now. I have, in fact, written a celebratory march to commemorate his coronation – a somewhat stilted jubilee for our bloated monarch. If I can find where I left my energy and motivation, I may just have it ready for the next podcast episode.

Until then, please help yourself to the slabs of content we’ve been flinging out in every direction like frisbees. I’ll be in the cellar, making widgets.

 

Usual Rubbish

What the frank.

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Frank, dropped it again. Gosh darn the blankety-heck. What the bacon-and-eggs is the matter with this motor-trucking washing machine? Cheese and crackers!

Oh, yeah… it’s that time of the week again. Time for all of you out there in cyberspace to peek inside the mad vortex of Big Green’s life here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Sorry about all of that salty language a moment ago. Our clothes washing device (enormously handy invention) is no longer operating properly, causing frustration, even something akin to anger and resentment. Strange, we humans. I do hope my outburst didn’t cause you any consternation. If needed, counseling is available on Big Green’s counseling page.

Okay, so… as you can see, I have been remanded to sensitivity training. I’m having to edit my language (What the frank! Who in hades do these rubber chuckers think they are?) and regularly evince concern over the effect my words and actions may be having on those who experience them. You see, ever since Matt and I started our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN (the April episode has just been posted, btw ), we’ve had to be a bit more mindful of the things that fall randomly out of our mouths when a microphone is placed in front of us. I, for one, have said some hurtful things … things I have had cause to regret. Oh, yes … words that hurt.

What precisely? Well…. listen to the March podcast and you’ll get an idea. For instance, typically we pay our respects to fallen celebrities. Last month it was Davy Jones of the Monkees and Andrew Breitbart of the Interwebs. As Matt pointed out on the air, I was a little less than sufficiently solemn about our remembrance. (I believe I went so far as to suggest Davy may have been taken by primate poachers, which was wrong … just wrong.) This month’s episode is no improvement, and I’m sure I’ll be apologizing when May rolls around. Thank god this isn’t a weekly show! I’ve already said things I regret since posting it. There isn’t enough sensitivity training in the universe for the likes of me.

Fortunately, we have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to monitor our transgressions. It takes a robot, they say. Or a village. Same deal.

Usual Rubbish

Anudder home.

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Where did I put my html tags? I thought I packed them with my socks, but they don’t appear to be in there. WFT, man…. getting a new home is always such a pain.

No, friends. We have not abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That would be something you might expect from the department of redundancy department (of redundancy). We have, however, abandoned our old web site and moved into a new one, designed by, I don’t know, professional web designers… as opposed to my sorry ass, who threw together our last site with Front Page and some tweezers … not to mention some cracked old photo manipulation software. Yeah, that’s right. Do I have to draw you a picture? (Actually… that would have been better than what came out of that software.)

Anywho… out with the old, in with the new. We’ve been using WordPress for Hammermill Days (and, earlier, Notes from Sri Lanka) for over five years, and so we thought, hey, why not build the whole freaking site using the same software? It actually works, you can edit it from anywhere using a Web browser…. How easy is that? Too easy! That’s what Mitch Macaphee says. Being a mad scientist, he thinks things should be hard … at least as hard as building Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was. Sure, he built Marvin out of spare parts and bric-a-brac he had lying about his lab, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Building a sentient being never is, my friends.

Now, the cynical and suspicious-minded amongst you (and you all know who you are) will imagine that this web site face lift is all about our supreme ambition to become special assistants to inevitable president-elect and future king of the moon Newt Gingrich; that we somehow abandoned and discarded our illin’, aging old web site for a shiny, sexy younger one, like … well, like … something some politician did once. That is a dirty lie. Fact is, we have already been invited by Newt Gingrich – future president and current Lincoln in his own mind – to advise him on interplanetary relations including, most specifically, his plans for our nearest neighbor in space. In point of fact, we will be a bit like the late Richard Holbrook, who was given the Af-Pak portfolio. (We will be in charge of the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, so it might be called the LunaMaSa portfolio, in media culture shorthand-speak.)

So anyway… welcome to Big Green’s new home on the Web. Take a look around. Kick the tires. Leave comments. Move in to one of the pages and order expensive dinners. Glad to have yuh.  

 

Usual Rubbish

Poditis.

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Hey, turn off the water when you’re done in there, okay? Hello? Mitch, is that you? Matt? Lincoln? Where the hell is everybody?

Oh, right…. they’ve gone to a clambake. Or so they said, anyway. I think they just want to get the hell out of this drafty old Hammer Mill, and who can blame them? Not I, my friends. Still … someone has to mind the store. Perhaps you suppose that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) could handle such a simple task as guarding the mill, but no… much too complicated for his tiny mind. No, it takes real intellect, acumen, and chutzpah to keep this abandoned mill running up to par. And it there’s one man under this roof who can…. hey … did I leave the front door open? MARVIN?!

Okay, well… we all need help, right? That’s what bands are all about. Otherwise hapless musicians, huddling together to ward off the elements, keeping the home fires burning. Personally, I think they’re all irked at me for being such a jerk during our last podcast. (Matt was being a jerk, too, but he’s probably joining them in their shunning of me just to be ironic. Freaking hipsters!) The reason I think that is, well, we did act like jerks. That’s what people expect, okay? Here’s some of what they’re probably complaining about in the March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN:

Derisive Tributes – As we often do when a prominent primate passes away, we paid tribute to Davy Jones of the Monkees and Andrew Breitbart of the Internets and, well, we were perhaps a little less than sufficiently pious. As Matt said, I went so far as to turn it into a “big joke”. Like making repeated mention of rejected would-be Monkees Charles Manson and Steven Stills. Stop using words that hurt! Listen for yourself, reader, and judge.

Questionable Remembrances – At least one anecdote was shared – I won’t say by whom (Matt) – about someone being arrested at a Jethro Tull concert in 1979. That could have been anybody, right? But then we had to go and talk about Matt’s dentist and how she shares a name with an infamous character from classic Star Trek. That got us into quoting lines from the show and, well…. all the evil that proceeds from that.

Looney Music – The Cousin Rick Perry songs, all first drafts, were a little weirder than usual this time around, with a kind of seventies lounge pop number, a shanty like diddy, and robot rock about Romney and Santorum. Add that to some pretty awful banjo and kazoo improvisation, and you’ve got yourself a podcast.

So…. as I said, friends, listen and judge. Personally, I think my Mill-mates all have poditis. That’s probably because they had to listen to the freaking thing while we were recording it and about five times thereafter. Who can blame them?

Usual Rubbish

Lunar new year.

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Hey, what the…? Did I sign off on that? Are you sure? Well, I guess you would know better than I. Wouldn’t you? RRRrrrrr….

Face it, we’ve got bad quality control here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Was a time that not a single hammer went out of here with unsightly flashing or a splinter out of place in their ironwood handles. Not so with Big Green, it pains me to say. We are not perfect – ADMIT IT TO YOURSELF. It’s just because we’ve got irons in so many fires. Too many spoons in the stew. Eleven toes on each foot. I don’t know – you pick the metaphor. I’ve got work to do.

Nah, see… Marvin (my personal robot assistant) posted our March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, before I had had a chance to listen to it. We could be saying ANYTHING, for chrissake. If we had reputations or integrity, we could lose either (or both). There are some advantages to general slovenliness and moral degeneration, but I’ve only just thought of one of them, so…. there can’t be too many. Anyway, it’s out there, warts and all – another wide ranging discussion between Matt and I, discussing everything from the death of Davy Jones and Andrew Breitbart, to Star Trek mythology, to things too obscure to describe in print. Freakish, that’s all I can say. Plus three more songs from Rick Perry – a 70s-pop lament tentatively called “Rick: The Searchable Name”; a doggerel called “Really Rick Perry”, and a primitive rock number entitled, simply, “Santorum”.

Okay, well … that’s done. Now, to our new commission – that of spearheading the efforts of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in his efforts to conquer and rule the moon. He got our names from George W. Bush, no doubt. We have been in the dubya rolodex ever since he went on tour with us back in 2000, which led to our taking on an advisory position in the early (pre-9/11) Bush White House. (We were in charge of his Space Commission, based on our long history in…. well…. space.) Hey… nothing succeeds like success. Except perhaps failure, in our case. Anywho, the first thing Newt has asked us to do – aside from grease the diplomatic wheels with any people found on the moon – is to write a national anthem for our nearest neighbor in space. One that duly celebrates his initiative, his genius, and (he also says) his modesty.

So, well…. Matt and I have to get to work on this. Perhaps John can work up some pedal steel parts. We’ve got stuff to do, Marvin – don’t bother me with trifles! (Unless they’re the tasty dessert kind.)

Usual Rubbish

Fruit cup.

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These are indeed auspicious days to be Big Green. What the hell am I talking about? I was hoping you would know, good browser.

Yes, just hanging about at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, assembling the next podcast of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Uh-huh, that’s right – we personally assemble each episode by hand. (And no, that’s not the royal “we” – I in fact have a mouse in my pocket.) It’s painstaking work. Ironing out the dross, cutting the vulgarities, tuning up the music, tweaking the costumes (oh yes … we wear costumes on our audio podcast). It is details like these that make for great podcasts. Ours is not one, but … we use the same means that the greats use, with less than great results. I’m being honest, okay. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? (You do? My apologies.)

Okay, so that takes some time. What do we do with the other 23.5 hours in the day? Well…. we’ve actually got a project ahead of us. Yes, another project. It’s not one of those diorama things you used to build for show and tell – you know, a box depicting the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, with a starfish thrown in for good measure. Then if you do particularly well on your in-class presentation, you get a little reward – perhaps a star sticker, or an extra fruit cup at lunch time. That’s all good, until you run into that bruiser out on the playground, whose dad left town with some floozie from the Shriners circus last year, and who’s been going around with a chip on his shoulder ever since, and who apparently owns all the playground equipment because if you even go NEAR the see-saw he’ll break you in half, and …

Right… well, I strayed a bit. The project. Remember, way back in the year 2000, when we briefly hooked up with Dubya Bush while he was out on the campaign trail, sharing our interstellar tour bus with the soon-to-be president of these here United States? Well, it helps to know people – that’s all I can say. One introduction leads to another. Because of our experience with extraterrestrial constituencies, the Gingrich campaign has tapped us to be its liaison to the moon people. This could be huge, friends – one of us (Matt, perhaps) could be named ambassador to the moon if the Newt-like object is elected president this fall. How awesome would that be?

Tough commute? No worries. With gas at $2.50 a gallon, it won’t matter a bit.

Usual Rubbish

Hold it.

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There’s a valuable resource for you. And right here under our noses. We’re rich, I tell you, rich. It’s like finding a whole bag full of doubloons. Or perhaps triploons.

What am I talking about? What indeed. I’ll tell you, friend(s), we’ve been squatting in this abandoned hammer mill for more than ten years. You know what squatting that long does to your quadriceps? Seriously, we’ve been occupying the Cheney Hammer Mill before the Occupy movement ever put on its first pair of short pants. Not for any principle, you understand, other than that of having a roof over our heads. A penniless band, Big Green was in those days. Ah, but no more. Fortune has smiled upon us, once again.

So often these things happen by accident. Someone tinkering with something, blowing some time, and next thing you know, whoosh! Well, that’s what happens when you live with a mad scientist, anyway. For weeks, Mitch Macaphee has been tinkering with that orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind some years back. He hooked it into one of his little ion generators and – as I said earlier – WHOOSH! Fortunate that no one was standing in front of the machine’s array at that moment. The thing was pointing down at the floor of the forge room and, well, suddenly there was a clean, round hole in the fire-brick floor.

Now, I tend toward curiosity, I must admit. But I, like you, have seen Crack In The Earth, so there was no way I was going down that hole. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) wasn’t having any of it either. (I’ve been volunteering him for way too many duties just lately.) I tried to get the mansized tuber to check it out, but no luck. Fortunately, there was no need to send anyone down there. They just started popping out of the hole. What did? Boxes. Boxes of goods from China. Valuable goods, just popping out of the hole. We’re rich, I tell you, RICH. Forget everything you know about value-chain management and global enterprise logistics. We’ve got a hole to where stuff is made. People drop the stuff in on the other end, and it comes out here. End of story.

Okay, so… we’re working on the sales component right now. Stay tuned. And while you’re tuned, check out the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, the February edition. Two new songs by Rick Perry. Another extra by us. Corporate underwriting spots tried and botched. Something for everybody. Yeeha.

Usual Rubbish

Last ditch.

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This isn’t a pillow, man. This is a freaking anvil. You got this from the forge room, didn’t you? What do you think I am, some kind of machine?

Yeah, I know – I should expect this sort of thing, living in an abandoned hammer mill. Remnants from the forge room, repurposed for bedding materials. Such are the times we live in. Big Green, like many indie bands, lives pretty close to the margin, my friends. We don’t have the resources for all of those extras bands like The Decemberists and Black Flag can afford. God, no… we just make do with what we’ve got. In these hard times, our fans expect this much at least: that we should be every bit as miserable as they are. And friends, we don’t disappoint.

That said, I do wish Marvin (my personal robot assistant) would use a little sense in straightening up my living space. Admittedly, his mind has been elsewhere. I think our new marketing advisor, Noname – a minion from our corporate label Loathsome Prick Records – has been reprogramming him when no one’s looking. Beyond her ken? I don’t think so. Marvin’s not that complicated. He’s running a 486 processor, for chrissake. If he went to Harvard for seven years, he might end up with as much brains as your $10 wristwatch. Even an art history major like Noname can reprogram his ass, no problem.

Right, so… first she got Marvin all ironic. Now she’s working on getting us to do, well, more interesting things. Stuff that will make the news, you know? Like, I don’t know – setting the mill on fire, or drinking to excess and lying in a ditch in the middle of town, or hijacking a weather balloon and dropping tins of condemned sardines on the Washington monument, or…. well, you get the idea. You can see the headlines now: Big Green Makes Last Ditch Effort For Big Time. Or perhaps BAND BETS FARM ON MAJOR MELTDOWN. Or perhaps not. Sometimes I wonder if Noname is really that well checked out on this stuff.

Hey, we just do what we’re told, right? When was that ever the case?