Hmmmm, that’s weird. Is that really us? Are you sure? Sounds a bit more like Captured By Robots. Of course, we might have recorded during that period when we were captured by robots. Could explain a lot.
Yeah, here we are, folks. Big Green has survived yet another national election here in the United States. You’d hardly know it was happening up here in the sheltering hollow of the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York. Just pull down the shades, pull up the drawbridge, stick a cork in the chimney, and poke your fingers in your ears. That’s how we deal with lots of stuff here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – bill collectors, building inspectors, the people who actually own this property, the local constabulary … just pretend you’re not here. Couldn’t be simpler. (Though more than once, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has given away the game by detonating one of his experimental substances just as the coppers are walking away.)
Holing up in the mill gives us a little extra time to roll back through some old tape. (We’ve got wire recordings as well, but nothing to play them on … so we leave them in the wire-house.) Listening to all of this shit is like looking at a chart representing the “ascent” of man. There’s some folk sounding music that could be the chimp at the start of the line. Our primitive rock combos are like Australopithecus, the earliest “certain hominid” in our long line of musical train wrecks. (Though the first band we tried to do was more like Oreopithecus, largely because we subsisted mainly on a diet of Oreos that whole time.) Our Big Green demos from the 1980s are something like Peking Man, in that we include a raft of covers as well as originals, some of which begin to border on Neanderthal territory.
Where this tortured analogy breaks down is my contention that our current state of development is certainly no farther along than Cro Magnon. That’s not a musical comment exactly – it’s just that the traditional depiction of Cro Magnon in ascent of man illustrations looks just like a modern white dude, except with long locks, more facial hair and a spear over his shoulder. (It might just as easily have been a guitar.) Now I don’t know about you, but that dude looks a hell of a lot more like us than the Modern Man guy at the front of the line, who looks like somebody’s 1950s dad, stepping into the shower. (Though I will say that he looks like the only one of those primates that might have his own personal robot assistant.) When I listen to Ned Trek songs, I can totally picture Cro Magnon belting them out, particularly the Nixon numbers.
One day we will do an anthology like collection, I suspect. We’ll need another step or two in evolution to manage it, but be patient.
So, if I’m treating every songwriting project like the evolutionary ascent of man, that amounts to a lot of banjo-plucking primates. And that’s where many of my songs start out. I’ll find a chair somewhere in this big old barn of a place, throw my cheap-seat Martin D-1 across my leg and start playing the five chords I know best. If I stumble upon some progression or melody worth repeating, I can’t rely on memory alone. Fortunately, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has an audio recording module, and if I can get him to stand still long enough, I can capture whatever the hell it is I’m working on and play it back later. If it happens in the middle of the night, the playback sounds like …. you guessed it …. banjo-plucking primates.
Oh, hi. We’re just thumbing through a book on the ascent of man. If I were to pick one that looks most like me, it would clearly be Australopithecus, from maybe 3.5 million years ago. Old school, if there ever was one, and yet a mere wink of the eye in evolutionary terms. So I’m a throwback, for chrissake. Curvature of the spine. Small brain case. Predisposition for randomness. (Good thing old Australo had thumbs, or I couldn’t thumb through this thing.)