Can you just hold the camera still, man? I look like I’m playing on the Titanic …. or maybe the Lusitania. One of those big boats that went down, but not before a lot of rocking. And speaking of rocking …. HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!
Oh, hi, out there in cyber land. It’s your old friends Big Green, here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (No connection to the former Vice President or the current congress member from Wyoming.) Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about how hard this pandemic has been on musicians and other performers, with the possible exception of mimes. (Wherever they gig, they’re safe from COVID if they stay behind that glass wall.) Well, it’s certainly been hard on us.
Hard times in the city
How hard, you ask? Thank you for asking! Well, our finances were in the sewer before the pandemic hit. And of course, most of our gigs are played on other planets in other solar systems, but once those space aliens heard about COVID, none of them would grant us space visas. That means no space gigs, no space tour, and no space gold. Bing, bang, bong. (No accident that that story ends with a bong.)
What about conventional work, you say. Don’t be ridiculous! The only work you can get around here is baking bread or carrying boxes for slave wages so low that people do better by staying home and collecting unemployment. So that’s what we’re doing, minus the collecting unemployment part. But as always, we need a revenue stream – one that will run straight through this mill. (I’d settle for a revenue creek.)
So, we’re doing what a lot of bands do nowadays – cyber busking. We’re breaking out the guitar and playing random songs into the void of the internet, in hopes that some ether-like value will come floating back to us like bread upon the waters. Well I know that SOUNDS like a good idea, but it turns out to be more complicated than anyone might have imagined.
Feeling the earth move
For one thing, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t hold a web cam still to save his batteries. All of our performances look like a cheap summer stock production of The Last Days of Pompeii, the musical, special effects provided by a DUMB ASS AUTOMATON! Of course, we can’t afford a steadycam … so it’s the shaky cam for us.
Another thing we can’t afford: lawsuits! We made the questionable choice of playing some covers. First came the copyright strikes. Then came the cops and lawyers. I’ve asked our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to come up with some … um … scientific remedy to this problem, but it turns out HE’S afraid of the law, too. So … looks like it’s back to original material for us. Or just very poorly rendered versions of pop songs.
that sounds odd coming out of a confirmed collectivist, just bear in mind – Marvin doesn’t have any material or animal wants or needs. He runs off of a little breeder reactor in his chest cavity. I think it looks like a cake frosting pipe with some arteries painted on the outside – it bobs up and down and makes a noise that recalls to mind a beating heart. (Oh no, wait … that’s an episode of Lost in Space.)