I don’t know. Why don’t we just toss it out into the street and see if anyone happens upon it? Wait … that was our original marketing strategy? Did it work? Huh. I thought not. Oh, well … maybe twice is the charm.
Oh, hi, silent majority of Americans who read this blog on a regular basis. I didn’t recognize you at first with that mask on. You just caught us in the middle of a marketing strategy session – we’re trying to shift more physical and digital copies of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, a full twenty years after its release. (I’m sure you’ve noticed the banner. Yeah, that was us that put that there.) We’ve got discs stacked in the basement of the hammer mill, discs serving as ashtrays and drink coasters, discs nailed to the walls of the bathroom in a psychedelic mirror-room kind of effect – freaky! We’ve handed them out, tossed them out, used them as Frisbees, table hockey pucks, sacred amulets, etc. Everything but sold them. Yes, as capitalists, we’re abject failures. We’re the worst robber barons ever!
Well, it’s time to embrace our failure and make it our own. Now that it’s aged a solid two decades and made its way into countless music services, we’ve finally gotten around to posting 2000 Years To Christmas on YouTube. I’ve handed the task off to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and he has assured me that he will upload the songs in a timely fashion. Of course, his wifi connection is a little wonky, and we can’t afford decent internet around this joint, so we have to rely on him rolling on his gimbals past the public library so that he can tap into their free wifi long enough to send another music video skyward. That necessarily involves circling the library a few times, maybe five, maybe seven for the longer songs. Eventually, the librarian comes running out of the building, swinging a yardstick at Marvin and telling him to get the hell out. I’ve programmed Marvin to comply, so he does so … then comes back later. (I programmed that into him, too.)
Is this a reasonable strategy for a band in this era of COVID lockdown? Hell, I don’t know. Are there any reasonable strategies? We’re just pushing shit out there, hoping someone hears it and gets some enjoyment out of it. Or not. Either way, putting an album on YouTube is the functional equivalent of dropping it in the middle of the street and hoping someone happens upon it. So you could say we’ve been consistent from the get-go with this album.
I know some of my colleagues disagree with this approach. “Get a manager”, they holler, “like that blonde guy on the Partridge Family!” “I think he’s dead,” I’ll respond, but they are undeterred. “Did you try to call him,” they say. “Did you send him a postcard? His name is Reuben Kincaid!” Hoo man. I guess I’ll have to write that postcard if I ever want to get anti-matter Lincoln off my back. I just wish to hell someone would tear him away from his classic TV channel.
Right, so … Mitch spent a few weeks YouTubing, and the next thing we knew he was tinkering with our aging refrigerator. The following day, Matt opened the fridge door and the little light went on. Hey … he’s finally making himself useful, we all thought. But then the thing started talking to me. One afternoon I reached in for a cold drink and I heard a mechanical voice say, “Are you going to have another one of those?” Then it locked the door on me. That was bad enough, but just this past week we started getting random shipments from the neighborhood grocer – eggs, milk, cottage cheese, lettuce. I thought it was Anti Lincoln planning one of his famous cotillions, but no … Mitch had hooked the fridge up to the internet, and the bloody thing has been shopping online and spending a freaking fortune.
One of my obsessions of late has been rebuilding our YouTube site. That’s my hobby, if you will, until Matt returns from Peregrine Falcon watch. (To catch up with him, see his 
Oh, hi. Welcome to the land of the great ideas. I’m Joe Perry (not of Aerosmith) of Big Green, and well … I am responsible for many of the “great” ideas. Why “great” in quotes? Those are litotes, and I use those when I’m being painfully ironic. Which is to say … our great ideas are not great at all. In fact, most of our ideas are just plain STUPID. But hey, if we let THAT stop us, we probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the afternoon. (Did I say afternoon? I meant … uh … morning.)
Well, as you can see, we have had a house invasion. The perpetrator? None other than our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee. When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft started orbiting his adopted home world of Ceres, he became extremely agitated. Smoke began to pour out of his ears and mouth, like VOL, from Star Trek. He simply could not live with the idea of being spied upon by the space agency. What if they stole his ideas? he thought…. then his plan to (dare I say it?) RULE THE WORLD would be scuttled. Shot down by a measly little, tin-pot space robot. THAT MAKES ME SO MAD …. !
I’m sorry you had to hear that (or read the transcript of it, rather). Yes, tempers are running a little thin around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill these days. Some see it as a variation on seasonal affective disorder – you know, it starts getting warm, we can’t afford air conditioning, and this clammy mill gets kind of toasty. But it goes deeper than that, I’m afraid. An erosion of trust, you might say. It’s the kind of thing that tends to happen with Big Green between interstellar tours. In fact, that’s what keeps driving us into space. I think that’s what, anyway.