Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Hello, Captain Neutron – we are receiving you

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Get Music Here

Sure, there’s probably a reasonable explanation behind it. Why wouldn’t there be? Lord knows, everything we know is firmly rooted in reality. Except, of course, for our upstairs neighbors. And Mitch Macaphee. Yes, yes … and Anti Lincoln, too, but only when he’s drunk. Which is most of the time.

Just spending a little time as a Big Green family, sitting around the hammer mill, reading the headlines to one another. Now, as you know, we can’t afford a subscription to the real newspaper. That’s way beyond our humble means! Luckily, there are the internets. All you need to do is borrow a little wi-fi, do a search or two, and voila! Instant news. Not terrestrial news, you understand – that would cost money. No, we read news from outer space. It’s fresh, it’s interesting, and there’s always a head-scratcher or two in there.

From a land beyond time

Here’s something, Bob! (Your name is Bob, right? I always assumed that was the case.) A strange radio-emitting neutron star has been discovered in a stellar graveyard. Now, I know what you’re going to say. We shouldn’t be so morbid, reading about stellar graveyards. Why not focus more on what’s happening in stellar nurseries? Hey, you know, we find news wherever we can. If it leads us into stellar graveyards, so be it. Don’t be so judgmental, Bob!

Still, you have to admit that it’s interesting. I mean, what are the chances that another race from a land beyond time would have stumbled on the same invention that Marconi did? Even more intriguing, they appear to be trying to communicate with us, via radio. It seems to me that we should be able to decipher their language relatively easily. Why? If they’re on the surface of a neutron star, whatever they’re saying must be the deep-space equivalent of GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! We just work backwards from there.

I think it's trying to tell us something, Lincoln.

Strange magnetism

At the same time, scientists are detecting a new type of magnetic wave emitting from the earth’s chewy center. Is this a coincidence? I think not! The coincidence of these two stories on the same week is certainly no coincidence. (Wait, what?) I think it’s only right that we speculate on why this is happening at this particular juncture. To my tiny mind, there is only one possibility …. mother earth is responding to the neutron radio waves with magnetic fields. It’s like neutron man is calling collect, and she’s accepting the charges. Like any good mother would.

Skeptical? Well, there’s really only one way to test this theory. We need to break out Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device. The thing’s been in mothballs since we used it to bail Anti-Lincoln out with those crypto-kidnappers last year. But dramatic rescues are only one of the device’s practical uses. It can core a apple, make mounds of julienne fries, raise pole cats, and interpret interstellar communications, particularly those emanating from invisible flying predators.

Point it to the sky, Mack!

Damn, I wish we were more resourceful. If we had half the moxie of those forties guys that used to sing backup in our Ned Trek songs, we would have solved this mystery by now. As it is, it’s taking most of the week just to drag the Orgone Generating Device up from the cellar. And then Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has first dibs on it. (He’s making julienne fries.)

Usual Rubbish

Open the Door, Richard – It’s Mitch!

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Get Music Here

I’ve seen that one before. That can be anything, for crying out loud. Just because a rock looks like bigfoot, doesn’t mean that there’s an actual bigfoot. And when you add Mars into the equation, all bets are off. Just call me when you find your missing clue.

Oh … hi, there. We’re just flipping through a few photographs. Typical suburban activity on a Thursday afternoon, am I right? Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that the residents of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill are as prone to random conspiracy theories as the general population. That said, conspiracy theories do have some purchase around the premises – even the ones that are easily debunked.

Vacation photos from the red planet

Take these rover images from Mars (please!). Everyone thinks they see something recognizable in the background. One object looks like a lawn ornament of some kind. Another looks like a still from that bigfoot video from way back. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is convinced that some Mars rock is his long-lost cousin Franklin. Never mind that he doesn’t have any cousins, Franklin looks nothing like that freaking space rock.

When I heard all this crap, I was about to launch into a diatribe about perception and how culturally situated all of these supposed sightings are. Easy mistake to make, right? If you’ve seen a lot of lawn ornaments in your time, then a rock that looks like a lawn ornament is going to ring a bell. Not sure how that explains the bigfoot sightings, unless some of my cohorts have been spending time amongst the local Susquatch population. (Not that such a thing exists …. or DOES it?)

Macaphee’s razor

Then there’s that shot that looks like a doorway on the surface of Mars. Immediately, people started speculating about what or who might live in there. Others suggested that it may be a Martian domicile that was recently abandoned, but I think that’s ludicrous. If something lived there and then decided to go on vacation to, say, Saturn – which is very lovely this time of year – mail would be stacked by the door at least a foot high. (That’s what’s called applying the scientific method.)

That rock looks a hell of a lot like Mitch.

It takes a scientist to bring speculation to a halt. The closest thing we have to that is Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, recently back from his conference in Buenos Aires. Turns out Mitch has a completely logical explanation for the phenomenon of the mysterious doorway on Mars. We showed him the picture, and he turned red as a beet. Apparently, that is the back door to his Martian redoubt – a spare lab on the red planet for when he really doesn’t want to be disturbed. Now that NASA knows where it is, of course, there goes the privacy.

Suggestion box

Right, so now Mitch needs a new redoubt. It needs to be 100% NASA-proof, so nothing on the inner planets. Maybe Uranus or Neptune. If you have any suggestions, please share them. You don’t want to be around Mitch when he’s out of sorts.

Usual Rubbish

Imitation is the sincerest form of larceny

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Get Music Here

First, you solder the lead onto the post. Then you fire up the tube pre-amp. Once that’s glowing nicely, you crank up your guitar to 11 and turn the big, fat, plastic knob on the console until your ears pop. And that’s why they call it pop music.

Yes, hello, there, and welcome to another post. I am your postmaster general, Big Green Joe, stranded here in the decaying abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York. We’re here just trying to make a little music the old-fashioned way. What do I mean by old fashioned? I mean in the way of the old masters. And no, I don’t mean Da Vinci or Rembrandt. I mean the bands of the 1960s, when all recording was linear and destructive.

More money, more excuses

I don’t want to suggest that money doesn’t help a recording project succeed. The thing is, when you’re broke and living in an abandoned mill, you typically can’t afford much in the way of gear. So if we’re planning on doing another album, we need to improvise. Sure, we could just record it on a computer, like most kids do these days. But where’s the challenge in that? What good is getting a good sound when all you did was activate a plug-in? I want REAL tubes, damn it, and all the noise you can muster.

Old gear may be, well … old, but that doesn’t mean it’s not expensive. Indeed, some of that stuff is in high demand. Well … we can’t afford any of that shit. Fortunately, there’s a lot of old electrical gear lying around the hammer mill that hasn’t been used in decades. We’re talking toggle switches, radial knobs, terminals, chassis, and the like. Most of it was related to the assembly line for the hammers, of course. But if you patch stuff together, who’s to say what you might end up with. A machine that might (dare I say it?) control the world? BWA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!

Lessons learned in short order

Hey, wasn't there a dumpster out here somewhere?

Okay, so that’s how we were thinking on Tuesday. By Thursday, we thought better of it. That was mainly because we ran out of fingers to singe. Damn it, Mitch Macaphee (our mad science advisor) always made this stuff look so easy, but it turns out that there’s a trick to this invention routine. When he built Marvin (my personal robot assistant), for instance, he just used whatever was handy at the time. Where is he when you need him? At a conference, of course, in freaking Buenos Aires.

What were we able to build with all that junk? A pile of slightly more consolidated junk, that’s what. I’m not exactly the Liberty Valance of soldering guns, after all. The fact is, I never quite got the hang of it, despite my father’s best efforts at teaching my sorry ass. Suffice to say that the “machine” we built will not capture audio in any form. And the only audio it will ever emit will be the deathly moan that it will emit when the garbage collectors haul it away. (Strange hobby, garbage collecting. Can’t imagine why those folks ever took it up.)

Next stop: Debtsville

Leave us face it – the only way we’re going to make another album is by speculating, particularly if we hope to imitate the old masters. Yes, that leaves us open to investment scams and Ponzi schemes. But it’s that or start renting out the mill to vacationers, like Dr. Smith did with the Jupiter 2 when he renamed it “Happy Acres.” What could possibly go wrong?

Usual Rubbish

And having writ, the hand moves to Jersey

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Get Music Here

Yes, that’s a whole different approach. I never thought of doing it that way. Yes, very innovative – thank you for the suggestion. Of course I’ll give you credit. I’ll write it in the sky if you insist. You insist? Hoo boy.

Lesson number one for you young songwriters out there: never take advice on your craft from a robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been putting his two cents in a lot lately, and frankly, it’s worth every penny. We’ve been trying to pull together some new songs for our next project (another word for “album”), and he’s suggesting to me that I should start every song on kazoo.

It’s all about process. Sometimes.

Now, everyone has his/her process. We’ve discussed ours on this very blog. Some songwriters have a favorite instrument, some a favorite room. Some like to start with the music, then the lyric, others the opposite, and some a random mix. Marvin obviously prefers the kazoo. I think it’s fair to say that my brother Matt did at one point in his career. The thing is, Marvin doesn’t need a kazoo to make a kazoo-like sound. He’s got a sound generator that can imitate everything from a Blue Whale to a mosquito. (You should hear his 1993 Buick Regal. It’s spot on!)

My process? Well, mostly it’s not doing anything. But when I do write songs, I typically start with a blank piece of paper. The paper stays blank for a few weeks, until I awake from a nightmare at 2 a.m. and start scribbling randomly. The next morning, I will puzzle over the illegible nonsense I scrawled out the night before, then ball up the paper and chuck it in the trash. That’s usually when I pick up a guitar. Don’t try this at home!

Those instruments!

Some of you might think that it’s better to write songs on an instrument you know. I am living proof that that’s not necessary. The fact is, I don’t know any instruments all that well. Sure, I’m on a first-name basis with a guitar or two, and my piano is a childhood friend, but that doesn’t count for much. Like many songwriters, I reach for the closest instrument in the room and start noodling. (Pro tip: If I stumble on something good, it usually means it’s been used before.)

Worried about plagiarism? Remember what Woody Guthrie said:

“I never waste my high priced time by asking or even wondering in the least whether I’ve heard my tune in whole or in part before. There are ten million ways of changing any tune around to make it sound like my own.“

Yeah, I’ll take some of that. You might also want to remember what Tom Lehrer said:

Plagiarize
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
Remember why the good lord made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize

I can't play this bloody thing!

A case of projection

Is this a roundabout way of saying that we have an album project in the works? Well, dear reader, that would be telling! After all, we have about a hundred Ned Trek songs in the can, waiting to be released in some form, including about seven or eight that have never seen the light of day. And then there’s all that new material from Matt (a.k.a. the songwriting machine of Central New York).

Damn it, man … we have so many irons in the fire, there’s nothing left to do the ironing with. Now we have to throw all those wrinkled clothes in the fire with ’em.

Usual Rubbish

Eric the Half a Song. Sing it with me!

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Get Music Here

Should we do another Big Green album? I don’t know … why not? Have you got any songs? Oh, good. I’ve got some, too. How many do you have? Sixty? That’s pretty good. I’ve got half. No, not half of sixty …. half of one. Song.

Well, one of us came prepared. In the past, that was what made the difference – that one person who was ready for anything. Every great band has someone who’s ready to lead, even when the going gets tough. Even shit-bum bands like us have their point person. You know – that guy who gets you up in the morning for rehearsal on a Saturday after a three-day bender. Yeah, we got rid of that jerk-ass. Who needs him?

Holding up standards

Now, I know Big Green has what may be termed a reputation. Some say we hold ourselves to a very low standard of behavior. Others say that we’re a bunch of lazy vagabonds whose only virtue is that of anonymity and ignominious failure. To this last criticism I can only say, that is not one virtue … it is clearly two. Before you condemn, my friend, learn to count. It is not hard, and it will pay you dividends long into the future.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that we don’t do stuff right. It’s hard to maintain a standard when you even maintain your abandoned hammer mill. If our standard as a band is to put out an album every five, ten, sometimes thirteen years, we should be able to meet it. That at least gives us a little time to compose, to rehearse, to record, to take five years off for an extended nature walk, and so on. But even this is becoming too high a bar to clear.

Birdman strikes again

We have about as many strikes against us as any band ever thought of having. For one thing, we’re old. I’m pushing a thousand, I’m pretty sure. We also have broken down equipment and a total lack of recording skills beyond just the basics. (“Record” button is red. Got it!) And our personnel is constantly changing. Sometimes antimatter Lincoln has to sit in on guitar, and we occasionally rope Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into banging on those drums.

How many songs you got, Joe? Hey, back off, man.

The one strike we don’t have against us is material. Got lots of tunes, thanks to my illustrious brother Matt, a.k.a. bird man, a.k.a. the songwriting machine of the great north country. Since the last recordings we did for Ned Trek (mostly Matt’s songs) three years ago, he has written by his own count about fifty or sixty more. I think that might be enough for an album. The man is prolific. I’m pretty sure he wrote three or four songs in the time it took me to type that.

Some people think the hardest part of making an album is thinking of the name. Common misconception. The hardest part for us is deciding which of Matt’s 47 songs we should leave off the album. And THEN having to name it.

Holding up my end

But what the hell am I doing, standing here and yakking? I should be writing songs, damn it. If I start now, I might have thirty or forty in the hopper by … I don’t know … the year 2525. Hey … that’s an idea for a song! In the year 2525 …

Usual Rubbish

Jamming along with the little screen box

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Get Music Here

Well now, I can’t hear you. Can you hear me? Say again. Once more. Nope, no … bad luck. Plunk your guitar a couple of times. I said … oh, damn it, just pick up your phone and call me. Cheese and crackers!

Now, I know there are a lot of musicians out there who are more conversant with technology than we are here in Big Green. True, we were relatively early adopters of the internets and mp3 music files. But frankly we’ve been standing still since, oh, I don’t know … the early 2000s or so. And while our friends in other bands have been connecting from across the continent using all manner of web-based gizmo, we’ve been sitting in adjacent rooms with two paper cups and a string.

Well, my friends, that’s about to change. I don’t know whether the change will be better or worse, but whatever happens, no more cups, no more strings.

Serious upgrade … seriously

Now, before you use a new technology to perform or record, you want to make sure it works, right? Sure you do. Think of all the times we ran off half cocked with some new piece of gear, only to learn much later how foolish we had been. You know how it is. The gizmo arrives in a big cardboard box hauled in by the UPS guy. You pull the box open, plug it in, and watch the pretty lights flash on and off. All is well until you try to insert some sounds into it. That’s when the wheels come off. (Did I mention there were wheels?)

I’m thinking of back when we bought that Roland VS-2480 deck with the landau roof and a belt in the back. We plugged a bunch of wires into it and spun it around a couple of times, but it was no good. The batter had only barely begun to set, and the top didn’t look nearly brown enough. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) had already whipped up the icing, and here we were, cake still in the oven, not even close to …. Oh, wait. I’ve mixed up that Roland deck with our new convection oven. My apologies.

Dude, I can't hear anything.

Matt on the horn (or Matt-o-horn)

Anyhow, we decided that in this time of social distancing it would be a good idea to try out one of these remote jamming platforms. Matt and I installed JamKazam on our computer things, hooked up some mics, and went to town. (I mean, we literally went to town to pick up some stuff.) He was in one building, I in another, and yet somehow we magically linked up so that we could hear each other swearing at our crappy internet connections.

It wasn’t all bad. Matt taught me a couple of his new songs, which I promptly forgot. We couldn’t record anything, because we’re using the free account, but when we stop being cheapskates at some point, we might just be able to do that as well. Live performances? Perhaps. Stranger things have happened, certainly. Oh the possibilities.

There’s a place …

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Something like: “Why the hell don’t we just play in the same room?” Good question, disembodied or even non-existent reader. You know what Alexander Graham Bell said: Never do something simple when you can invent something complicated. (Okay, he never said anything remotely like that. I’m just trying to add a little gravitas here – let it pass, let it pass!)

Usual Rubbish

We’re number none with a rocket!

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Get Music Here

It’s the damnedest thing, man. I can’t explain it. I mean, there must be a lot of that stuff floating around out there. Who would have thought the internet was that big? After all, the whole effing thing fits inside my smartphone. I’ll have to remember to ask Antman about that phenomenon – he might have some insights.

Yeah, here we are again, folks. Where is that? Well, we’re sitting around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home, trying to figure out how our recorded music has ended up in so many weird places. (1,880 results? That’s nuts.) After all, we are not exactly experts at distribution and marketing – far from it. In fact, I suspect you would be hard pressed to find a band that’s less commercially successful than us. (WE’RE NUMBER NONE!)

Scattered like snowflakes

Thing is, we sent out a boatload of copies of 2000 Years To Christmas back in 1999/2000 when we first released it. Like any band in those days, we sent them to college radio stations, publications, reviewers, relatives, tax collectors (in lieu of payment), civil engineers (for landfill), and so on. Next thing you know, they’re showing up in remainder bins, CD listings, and random shops from here to Madagascar. (That’s 8,698 miles, by the way.)

Okay, that would be weird enough in itself. What’s even weirder is that we get mixed up with other bands named Big Green. The shuffle up our albums with ones made by these doppelgangers, and it seriously muddies the waters. Frankly, I feel a little guilty about it. We’re bringing their overall popularity down by yards every time our work is associated with them. I’m looking at you, other Big Green.

Putting a stake in the ground

Clearly, we need to make a choice. We can either stand around and do nothing, or take matters into our own hands. Actually, come to think of it, there is a third option: have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) deal with it. I’m looking around and seeing a lot of shaking heads. Not a good idea? Right. Looks like we’re back to doing nothing. Or the other thing. (You see, THIS is why we’re NUMBER NONE.)

Okay, so we’ve been putting music out there pretty consistently for the last twenty years. A couple of years ago, we affiliated with a dude on Discogs to offer the CD of 2000 Years to Christmas. That said, others have been running rings around us. Like this dude on Ebay who’s selling a Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick disc as a British import for $30! Man god damn, if he can get that price for them, I’d be glad to identify as British.

Flogging it to death

All right, so look – we’re working on new material. Thing is, we’ve got old material to shift. So if you’ve got someone with a birthday coming up, or just know someone who loves phenomenally unpopular music, this is the place to go. You heard it here first.

Usual Rubbish

Want to hear a song? That makes four of us.

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2000 Years to Christmas

What man can stand the stress of being torn asunder then thrust back together? Who amongst us can quarter him/herself like a piece of fruit for the sake of a single song? What fool would throw his lot in with a madman who finds joy only in the fulfillment of his twisted vision? This guy, folks. This guy right here.

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten the itch to perform. What can you expect after years of being cooped up in this abandoned hammer mill, miles from civilization? Not a living hell, I will admit, but clearly a living heck. It’s been years since we struck out on tour. (I blame all that striking out.) But we live in an age of miracles, my friends. Musicians now perform from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the advent of the internet machine.

Labor action at the abandoned mill

Trouble is, when I raised the question of Big Green virtual performances, the response was less than encouraging. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was game. Antimatter Lincoln offered to play gut bucket (though frankly very few of our songs call for that rustic instrument). The mansized tuber volunteered a few of his smaller shoots to the enterprise. As for the actual band members, well …. not so much.

Can’t blame them, really. This is the busy time of year. Matt is taken up with his Peregrine Falcon project. (He’s gone big this time around, watching them from the deck of the star ship U.S.S. Enterprise.) John is doing his thing (if he didn’t have that, he’d have to get another thing). So that leaves me in kind of a spot. I mean, I can’t play four parts at once …. or CAN I?

Hell, this band looks damned familiar.

Crypto cloning to the rescue

It seems that our mad science advisor has been working on a little experiment of late. I thought I heard some strange noises coming from the north end of the mill. (That was just before it exploded, too. Coincidence, that.) Anyway, Mitch developed something he calls “crypto cloning.” The “crypto” piece is strictly about marketing – Mitch is keen to monetize this new technology.

Here’s how it works: A subject steps into the cloning device, and s/he is cloned four ways. That’s a big step up from making two of the same thing, Mitch tells me. (Twice as good.) The thing is, the cloning only lasts a couple of hours. At that point, your quadruplegangers hustle back into the protoplasmic host from which they sprang. It’s a kind of reverse-amoeba effect, if you know what I mean.

The quadruplegangers ride again

Before you ask, yes, I did let him test it on me. But only just long enough for the four of me to record one of Matt’s songs – a classic number called Going To Andromeda. Check it out on our YouTube channel or our new Instagram account. (Note: one of my clones came out with a mustache. Strange mutation.)

Usual Rubbish

Putting the pieces back together

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, I checked that drawer. And the one below it. Jesus, I checked all of them, okay? It’s simply not there. And no, the lizard people didn’t steal it during the night. We would have heard them, Abe, and incidentally …. THERE ARE NO LIZARD PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET.

Hoo, man. You have to talk until you’re green in the face before people get the idea around here. Especially with someone like anti-matter Lincoln, who believes every conspiracy theory he hears on YouTube or Instagram or whatever the fuck. I mean, the guy’s positronic doppelganger was assassinated, so he sees plots everywhere. I suppose it’s hard to trust in times like these … especially when you’re Lincoln.

As anniversaries go …

Well, it should surprise no one that Big Green has reached its coral anniversary. That’s right – the traditional gift on your thirty-fifth is not the Electric Light Orchestra box set, it’s some ossified sea exoskeletons. Hope you enjoy! No question but that 35 years is a long effing time to be together, whatever the hell you’re doing or even trying to do. No wonder people are throwing sea-floor rocks at each other.

So, what does the coral anniversary mean? That your marriage is hung up on the reef? Could explain a lot about Big Green, am I right? We haven’t put out an album since 2013’s Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Not that anyone is counting (aside from me), but that’s the second longest time we’ve gone between albums. Of course, the irony is that we’ve actually already recorded several albums worth of material yet to be released.

The reason for the ceasin’

So, what is our excuse for this behavior? I’m going to go with laziness. We’re a bunch of useless layabouts, no good to anyone. Ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – he does most of the heavy lifting around here. The only break he gets from heavy lifting is when he’s doing all of the light lifting. Some might think this arrangement leaves us with more time to create content, but we seldom take the opportunity to do so.

Turns out you're right. We're just a bunch of lazy mothers.

I suppose it’s fair to point out that this isn’t the first fallow period we’ve gone through as a group. Even at our inception, when most bands are hopping around like jackrabbits, looking for the next venue, we were kind of … um …. meh. We did rehearsals. We recorded. We wrote. But gigs? Not so many that first year. In fact, I was playing in other bands just to keep the lights on.

Up from the archives

Speaking of other bands, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I found an old tape of a gig Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and I played back in 1987, when we were just getting the band started. The video is grainy and the sound is pretty bad, but I digitized it anyway and started throwing it up on YouTube. The gig was in support of the release of our friend Dale Haskell’s album Factory Village, and it was captured on video by another friend, crack photographer Leif Zurmuhlen.

Check out the playlist if you want to see Ned and me framming away on stage at Albany’s famed QE2 club. And while you’re there on YouTube, try to avoid those rabbit holes anti-Lincoln is always falling into.

Usual Rubbish

Putting the strings on your banjo

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2000 Years to Christmas

See, here’s the thing – I don’t even use a pick. I just slam the damn thing with my thumb. Yes, it’s primitive. Yes, it’s painful. But it gets the job done, sort of. So turn up the heat on that cookpot, dude. We’ve got some strings to boil!

Hiya, folks. Yeah, you guessed it – we’re boiling old strings, home style, so that we can reuse them. I snapped the top string on my Martin, framming away on some random cover song, and well … someone stole my pin money. You know … the pin money I use to buy strings. Why, you may ask, wouldn’t I just use string money? Simple – because I need that money for cooking oil. Do I have to explain EVERYTHING, for crying out loud?

The mechanical guitar tech

I would be the first person to admit that we are not a stage-ready band. It’s been a long while since we played anywhere, and we’re rusty as an old hinge. And as any working musician knows, you need to have your systems in place if you expect to sustain yourselves through a long-ish tour. I mean, it’s not like the old days, when we just packed up the broken down van and drove off … until it broke down. Then when we fixed it in the middle of the road, we got arrested, and …. well … it’s not like that now.

We always flew pretty low to the ground, frankly. Lord knows we would do things differently today. For one thing, I would press gang Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to be not only our roadie foreman, but my own personal guitar tech. That fucker can spin his wrists like a power drill, so it’s easy for him to do a quick string change. Mitch Macaphee even built a strobe tuner into his audio circuit. He’s like a freaking Swiss army knife (except no plastic toothpick).

Ain't you got that thing all strung up yet? Geeez ...

Line, please!

Then there’s the lyrics. It’s enough to test anyone’s memory. We could tape them to our mic stands, but that looks so damn lame. Matt could carry them around on his phone, but if he’s scrolling that infernal contraption with two hands, how’s he going to play his bass? And on top of that, he’s got about two million songs, so the lyrics would stack up to the ceiling, several times.

I guess we could get Marvin to feed us lyrics as we play, like a automatronic music stand. Too many jobs for our little brass friend? Nonsense! Why, I’ve seen him do a dozen things at the same time, though admittedly it was really just the same thing done a dozen times real fast. But sure, he could change my strings and hold up lyrics at the same time. It would hardly even begin to get in the way of his other duties.

Bootleggers and scalpers abound

I took a cursory look around the Internets this week and I ran across something I don’t see every day. It was some dude selling our third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, on Ebay. Now that was strange enough, as we only pressed about three or four dozen discs at the time. What was even more astonishing was that I saw it on offer by someone else on Ebay who was selling it as a UK import! And the price point, people, the price point: $30!

Naturally, I wrote the dude and told him, hey … if he sells it for $30, we’ve got more where that came from. Place your bets, people, place your bets!