Tag Archives: Tiny Montgomery

Usual Rubbish

Planageddon.

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I’m not sure about that, Matt. I don’t know if I want to play that song. How about “Dinos”? No? Are you sure? Okay… you suggest one. “World of Satisfaction”? Naaaah.

Oh, hello. Didn’t notice you peering through that LCD screen. As you can see, we’re working on a set list for our first engagement on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. No, that’s not a place keeper – that’s the name Tiny Montgomery suggested last week, and none of us has come up with anything better (let alone tried to, you know, insert the name). It’s always kind of a back and forth on the set lists – that’s only natural when you have hundreds of songs. Yes, literally hundreds… all wrapped up in a little box. We take turns, reaching a hand into the box. I’ll read one song title and Matt will knock it down. Then he grabs one and reads it. I’ll say he’s an asshole. Then he throws the box at me. And I’ll yell, “MOM! HE’S DOIN’ IT AGAIN!” And then we’re BOTH in trouble.

Okay, so that’s freaking childish, I know. But not to worry – we always come up with set lists in the end. Then we freaking ignore then, nine times out of ten. No, we’re not affecting an artistic temperament. It’s just that, frankly, it gets kind of dark on the stages we play on, and those lists are just plain hard to read. So we start calling tunes. If we call the same tune twice in a single night, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) issues a loud beeping sound. Chances are we will remember what that’s supposed to mean and withdraw the selection. Hey…. everybody has their process. Ours is surely no less sound than the one used by, say, My Morning Jacket.  (I can’t say, because I don’t know what they do. I’m just picking examples at random – don’t listen to me.)

I’m just noticing how often I use the epithet “freaking”. You all know what I mean. In any case, preparing for an arduous interstellar tour is no picnic, as many of you know. There are songs to rehearse, air tanks to compress, space suits to air out, missiles to hire, maps to download – no end to the punch list. (It’s actually more like a punch and kick list.) Not getting a lot of help, either. Both Lincolns are dead to the world after a night of carousing. The mansized tuber is out in the garden, communing with his little herb-garden cousins. Mitch Macaphee has taken the next two weeks off to attend a mad science conference in Brazil. I feel like the prisoner of freaking Zenda. (There’s that epithet again!)

Not to worry. We’ve been down this bumpy road before, and it’s always come out…. well … bumpy. So be it.

Usual Rubbish

Frightinary.

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Are you sure this is the right document? Say again. Can’t make you out, Tiny – speak louder. Then move closer to the telephone poll, that might help. Tiny? Arrrggh. Bad luck.

We’ve just lost Tiny Montgomery again. His carrier just dropped the call. By “carrier,” I mean the phone line tap he rigged up outside of his six-room lean-to in Madagascar. (That’s how he makes all of his calls, apparently.) Tiny’s been helping us pull together our next interstellar tour. He sent through the itinerary by primitive fax, and man… it’s scary as hell. Perhaps it’s a communications issue. You know – hard to get ahold of the better venues, especially when you’re using the modern equivalent of soupcans and string to make your calls. I get that. Tiny has his issues, and we have ours… and mothers, this itinerary is one of ’em.

Matt and some of the other members of our crew have suggested there are more nefarious factors at work in this whole thing. Tiny, some of you will remember, played Lowery organ on our 2001 interstellar tour (see the tour log) and actually did some booking on our 2003 tour. He may be sore that we haven’t kept in touch with him over all these eight odd years (and they have been odd years). Or maybe the way we treated him back in the day. What man can say? Personally, I just think it’s the result of the garden variety entropy that affects all of us eventually. Everyone as time went on got a little bit older and a little bit slower. And now that I’ve quoted Revolution #9, I can see the ice cream man cruising by. Happens nearly every time. There’s a reason for everything.  

Anyway, the itinerary. It mostly concentrates on dry alien moons. There’s the famous “whistling” moon in orbit around Aldebaran 4. (Heard of it? There are so many holes in it, it whistles as it orbits. True story.) Then there’s that craggy little satellite circling Mars – Deimos. Not much to speak of – a slab of stone. That’s the gig. Set up, fram to the nothingness, pack up, fly off. What the hell is the point, mo-fo’s? Then there’s an abandoned neutron star. That sounds like one for the books.

I’m writing back to Tiny as we speak. Writing as you blog? That’s called multi tasking, with the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Demanding some clarification, hopefully by phone.

Usual Rubbish

Long view.

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Is that all he’s got? No, wait… there’s another page coming through. Slowly. Somebody got another quarter for the payphone? I don’t want to …. oh, man goddamn!

Oh, hi. Yeah, just grappling with our communications issues, once again. Everything in Big Green’s world is held together with duct tape and baling wire… but then you knew that. What you didn’t know is that we’ve got a mom and pop drugstore up the street from us that has what may be the world’s last coin operated pay phone. That’s right… and it’s bloody handy, now that Verizon has pulled the plug on us. (Damnable message unit charges!) So, yeah… we can call mom, talk to our label, harass our booking agent, order strings, all with a pocket full of change. It’s like freaking magic. Who needs the twenty first century? We’re harnessing the technology of yesteryear. (Or yestercentury.)

Well, as you may remember, our sometimes agent Tiny Montgomery has been trying to fax us from his six-room lean-to in northern Madagascar. We have no fax, ma’am … we are fax-free. But what we do have is a resident mad scientist (Mitch Macaphee) and a rolling pile of spare parts known as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Mitch was able to fashion a primitive fax machine and dial-up modem out of Marvin’s printer module, an operation that, while painless, seems to have left a bit of a deficit in the automaton’s left flank. No matter – with the money we glean from this upcoming tour, we will gladly spring for some new robot stuffing.

That is, if we ever get this tour off the ground. Not going to happen without someone willing to do the hard work of booking the dates, threatening the club owners, and bribing the officials. (Did I say that? Well, someone sure as hell did.) So here I stand, pumping quarters into the maw of an abandoned payphone, its receiver parked on the modem of Mitch’s primitive fax machine. Trouble is, every time more than three inches of page peaks out from the printer, our time runs out and we have to find more change. My guess is that we would probably get Tiny’s tour proposal faster if he folded it into a paper airplane and sailed it across the African mainland towards the Atlantic. But I exaggerate.

I don’t know – I may be the only one of our number who’s truly anxious to get back on the road. Everyone else seems content to hang out in this drugstore, watching bicarbonate of soda fizz. But even that has to get old… eventually.

Usual Rubbish

Prospect park.

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We went up to Griffith Park … with a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red … and smashed in on a rock, and wept … while the old couple looked on into the dark…

Oh, hi. Just trying to recall some ancient lyrics from The Band, off the Cahoots album. Not their best work, but still worthy of a listen. I don’t know what brought that to mind aside from this nagging desire to, I don’t know, go out into the park across from my house and take a few swigs of red eye. Why? Just because it’s time for something completely different. Though something completely different might be standing out there with a tray full of cocktail sized vegetable samosas and a big vat of apricot chutney. Hang the whiskey. (Never sat very well with me anyway. That’s more a drummer kind of thing. Fits very nicely just under the drum throne.)

Summer at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill sets the mind a-wandering, I must admit. Much like winter does. Fall and spring too, for that matter. Everything about this place makes you think of moving on. That’s why it’s freaking abandoned! Even the HAMMERS couldn’t stand it here any more. (In fact, a lot of the bricks seem to be trying to make a break for it as well, dropping off into the river, crumbling their way into the next world.) I don’t want to make it sound like I speak for everyone in the Big Green entourage when I muse about drinking in the park – not a bit of it. We’ve all got our separate dreams and ambitions. That’s what keeps us feisty and restive. Though not Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s only feisty and restive when so programmed.

Fortunately for the wanderlust in all of us, there are offers on the table. Trouble is, the table is not in the mill… it’s someplace quite far from here. Madagascar, I believe. At least that’s what our sometimes agent (and one-time keyboard player), Tiny Montgomery, tells me. He has promised Matt, John and I a hugely remunerative tour and has written up all the paperwork in his six-room lean-to in northern Madagascar (near Mahajanga) but cannot fax it to us because he doesn’t have a fax machine and we don’t have a fax machine and…. Well, as you can see, it’s complicated.

Tiny may fax the thing anyway. Marvin (bless his heart) has offered to stick his finger in a wall socket and see if the fax will come out of his butt. If it comes through, come get me. I’ll be in the park.