Tag Archives: Mitch Macaphee

Foot stomping.

September 11, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

Start with a one, and a two, and a three, and a … ouch! Damn it, man … I can’t do this in slippers. I need my stomping shoes!

Oh, hi. Yeah, it’s us again, making music again, or dying in the attempt. One thing you can say about this crazy rock music kick, if it ever catches on, is that it’s all about the rhythm section. It’s pretty simple once you get started. And after you learn how to spell “rhythm”, you’ve taken the first step to glory. Then all you need is a sense of timing and some good stomping shoes … and a decent drummer. And of course a bass player. Yes, yes … and rhythm guitar. Oh, yeah … piano. How could I forget that one? Well … maybe it isn’t all that simple after all. But it is contagious, my friends. Mucho contagious.

Listen to me rambling like an idiot. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, or just bad air. Maybe some of that west coast forest fire ash is making its way back east. Whatever. Our project this week is an attempt to find the rhythmic core of every song we do. First, we get someone to strum the chords on a guitar. That might be Marvin (my personal robot assistant), except that he can’t even hold a guitar unless it’s in a zero gravity environment, like the deck of the Jupiter Two. So maybe anti-Lincoln …. or my brother Matt, who can actually play a guitar. (No, that’s too easy.) Then we pull out the rhythm arranger. Now I know you’re probably picturing a computer workstation of some kind with a pad controller midi-ed into it. Well, dream on, my friends. Our rhythm arranger is a bunch of pots and pans arrayed in a circle, and the rest of us beating on them with wooden spoons. (It’s just about getting the flavor, right? Then we bring in the drummer.)

Is this a fools errand? More than likely. But what other kind of errand are we likely to run … I mean, aside from sending Mitch Macaphee, the world’s third greatest mad scientist, down to the corner store to buy some batteries? You musicians out there know how this works. You just try a bunch of different things, different combinations of instruments and patterns, until something starts to gel. You don’t know how it happens, but it always does. Of course, you have to stir the mix properly, and make certain the water is hot enough, then refrigerate three hours before serving. But enough about Mr. Wiggle. I’m sure you’re just dying to know more about our creative process. Well, I’ll tell you, my friend …. so are we. That’s why we’re sitting around our makeshift living room in an abandoned hammer mill, banging on pots and pans. It’s a conjuring trick.

Next week: how to make Jello. Again.

Usual Rubbish

Safe and sorry.

August 28, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

You look like a freaking bank robber. Don’t you have anything else you can use? Try turning it inside out. Yeah, that’s it. Huh. Looks worse. Never mind, man …. it’s pointless.

Oh, hi. Just running though our safety protocols here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, our long-time squat house. You never know when disaster may strike. Well …. that is, you never know in advance. I mean, you know when it strikes because it hits you right in the face. Anyway, the point is, we’re finally living up to the Boy Scouts of America creed: Be prepared! Your scout leader may be an abusive POS, so by all means … be prepared! (True fact: When I was a kid, I used to mix up the Boy Scouts with the Boys Clubs of America. But that was mostly because of television advertising – I never came within ten feet of either organization.)

Right, so we are taking precautions in the Hammer Mill. The executive committee of the Big Green collective (i.e. myself, Matt, and anti-Lincoln) decided on a mandatory mask policy. This didn’t go over well with the posse, particularly (and this seems a little surprising to outsiders) anti-Lincoln himself, who vowed to fight the decree to his last breath. After we supplied him with some Kentucky bourbon, he tied a bandana around his head and tried to get it over his ample nose, but no luck. He looked like a cartoon bandito from a corn chip commercial, and of course, we laughed, even though it’s a very serious situation …. very serious indeed, young man!

So, yeah, we’re protecting ourselves from COVID-19, like everybody else. We’ve got group members with pre-existing conditions … like Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who tarnishes easily. But there are other dangers as well. No, I’m not talking about the landlords, though I do have my eye on them. There’s also fire. That’s right, fire. Here we were, considering a move up the Mohawk River to the abandoned Charlestown Mall, and just this past week, it burned to a cinder, sending toxic smoke into neighboring communities from Utica to Westmoreland to five other places you’ve probably never heard of. “Don the masks,” Mitch said, forgetting that there’s no one here named Don. “Marvin, the masks!” I corrected him, and Marvin started handing them out to all and sundry.

We’ll let you know when it’s safe to breathe easy. That’s right, Central New York …. you’ve got a friend.

Usual Rubbish

Summer doldrums.

August 21, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

Hey …. turn the light off. It’s the middle of the freaking night, man. What? The sun? You mean the sun that the Earth orbits? What’s the sun doing out in the middle of the …. oh. Right. I need one of those twenty-four hour clocks.

Yeah, that’s right folks – I overslept again. I blame the season. Now, that comment would make even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) laugh up his brass sleeve, because I basically blame the season for everything. No work? Goddamn northern winters! No groceries? Stupid spring cleaning! I knew those cereal boxes would come in handy one day. No gravity? Dumbass autumn! That’s when Mitch Macaphee starts sharpening his antigravity skills in anticipation of the big mad science annual meeting in Berlin on October 17.

Here in upstate New York, it’s getting so that we only have two seasons anyway: coldish and hot. That means fewer scapegoats for our manifold failings. In any case, I blame my sleepiness on the doldrums of late summer, when that sun is beating down on the leaky roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, turning the third story of this heap into something like a brick oven. I always get snoozy in this weather. And the fact is, there isn’t a lot going on musically these days. COVID-19 has shut down all the clubs. Musicians are performing on Zoom and Google Hangouts, hoping for a mercy tip. It’s just a weird damn time to be alive.

I was saying to Matt the other day (he couldn’t hear me, of course, because he was out passing sweet potatoes to beavers) that these days are a lot like back in the day when we first started out. There were about five places to play around where we lived, and they were all dives. He was too young to get into a bar, but we got in anyway and jammed in front of rows of punters drinking their faces off and hollering for that Dave Mason song … you know, the one that goes blah blah blah and we just disagree! Nine times out of ten we’d get stiffed at the end of the night and have to burn the effing place down …. and then there would be even fewer places to play. I’m telling you, people, violence doesn’t pay! (Unless you’re paid to do it, of course.)

What’s my point? Good question. I think it’s that, well … don’t expect us to do much until it gets colder. Then expect to hear some complaining about how freaking cold it is in here.

Usual Rubbish

Tin pan valley.

August 14, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

This piano needs tuning. What? Yes, yes … I know it’s missing fourteen keys and there are rodents living in it, but nevertheless, the fact remains that IT STILL NEEDS TUNING. What kind of a place is this, anyway?

Oh, right … THAT kind of a place. I sometimes forget where I’m squatting. Abandoned hammer mills are notorious for having poorly maintained upright pianos. Even the ones that are fortunate enough to get converted to consignment stores or mini-malls are plagued with out-of-tune spinets and uprights. I think it’s the moisture, the rising damp, as it were. In any case, the instrument sitting in what used to be the machine shop here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill has seen better days … and not recently. I do have an old tuning hammer and have tried to wrack it up to somewhere close to concert C, but my reward has been paltry – mostly indents in my forehead from snapping piano strings. Ouch.

Why, you may ask, in this age of electronics do I need to be banging away at an old upright? Good question, nameless interlocutor! There are in fact several reasons:

Reason One: We neglected to pay our power bill. Turns out National Grid doesn’t have a great sense of humor about these things. They pulled the plug on us almost immediately. For a while we had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) chugging along on a treadmill tied to a generator, but, of course, he runs on electricity and, as such, could only generate enough electricity to walk on the treadmill. Sure, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, could come up with some kind of perpetual energy source, but he’s away at one of his innumerable conferences. (They’re planning something, those mad scientists. I just know it.)

Reason Two: We’re freaking broke, so it’s time to make some money at this asinine undertaking. I’ve dusted off my thirty year old edition of the Songwriter’s Market and I’m going to sit here at this piano and write pop songs for the biggies. Lots of ways you can go with this songwriting game, Mack. First … change your name to Mack. Then choose a genre. You might go with love songs, or maybe religious numbers. Hell, you can start with one and then use the same tunes for the other – just change “baby, baby, baby” to “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” or vice versa, and you’re all set. Before you know it, you’ll be looking at the birth of a regular tin pan alley in the Mohawk Valley.

Reason Three: Bored out of my gourd! This is the most boring summer ever. In these COVID-plagued days, what else is there to do but pound on distressed pianos and croon about better times? (Seriously, if you can think of shit to do around here, let us know.)

Usual Rubbish

Broken windows.

July 31, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

That putty’s too dry. You can’t do anything with it now. What’d you do, leave it out in the sun? Well, that’s your problem right there. Sun, hot. Sun HOT.

Oh, hi. Just another summer’s day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, Big Green’s longtime adopted home (squat house). Truth be known, we don’t always squat here – sometimes we stand bolt upright. I know that breaks with protocol for squat houses, but hell … we’ve got a lot of head room in this mill. Those old nineteenth century hammer-meisters must have been pretty tall; either that or they all worked on horseback. (I seem to remember one promoter we had once who wanted us to play our music on horseback. He also wanted me to change my name to Tex Piadro. Don’t remember why we let him go, but …. we let him go.)

Well, as anyone who has ever lived in an old apartment building knows, when it comes to structural flaws or things that leak, you’re basically on your own. If you’re a legit renter, you can call your landlord, and s/he will send a) a friend who owes some money, b) a brother in law who purports to be a handyman, or c) his or her own ass with a monkey wrench and a prayer. Our situation is different, of course – being squatters, we have no one to complain to when the place is falling apart around us. But the upside of that is, no useless hacks hammering away at some home maintenance problem they haven’t got a clue about addressing. As squatters, we become the useless hacks. That’s called self-reliance, kids. Look it up.

They obviously need some work. (The windows, that is.)

There’s a lot wrong with this hammer mill. Not for nothing did they abandon it. You would have thought they’d convert it into some kind of multi-vendor consignment mall or indoor craft fair, like they typically do with old mills up here, but frankly the place is just in too rough a shape. (I think it’s more of a rough hexagon than anything else.) We’re trying to do something about the leaky windows, as that’s the most annoying problem right now. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been called into service as a wind-break and rain shield. Basically, we told him to hold up a stretched out garbage bag in front of the window and … well, just keep holding it.

Then Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, started getting busy with the window putty. Don’t know where he found the stuff, but I for one have never seen putty that glows in the dark before. When I asked Mitch about that, he just gave a dry little cackle and kept working. Fair enough.

Usual Rubbish

Names and faces.

July 10, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

What the hell. Was it THAT long ago? No way! Effing 1986 was … uh … oh, right. I’m leaving out a few decades. Fuck, we’re old. Where’s my porridge?

Nothing like a little trip down memory lane to lift your spirits, right? Just be sure not to take a right at the light – that road goes straight to crazy town. Spent the morning listening to recordings from our first year as a band, 1986. Actually, not the WHOLE morning, as there are only a handful of recordings. We did everything on a shoestring back then, and you don’t have to be a recording technology specialist to know that shoestrings are a very low-fidelity substitute for magnetic tape. Fact is, Big Green co-founder Ned Danison had the use of his brother’s recording studio, and we piled in there one weekend and plowed through a four-song demo that got us, well …. exactly nowhere, but it’s a nice conversation piece. (See? I’m talking about it even now, thirty three years later.)

That was a hot summer, too. Or maybe it was all of those wine coolers. Either way, we were going through what another guitar player friend of ours termed “the Brr-roke Period”, fighting the mice for scraps, sharing smokes, sleeping on people’s floors. (At one point it got so bad we were forced to sleep on somebody’s walls.) Of course, being white people, we were never REALLY REALLY poor, just poor as seen on T.V., like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck carving that bean into paper thin slices, so thin you could see through it, and squeezing the slices between similarly translucent slices of bread. I suppose in that metaphor, I played Donald, quacking madly in frustration at our made-for-television penury. Poor suburban waif! No bean for his sandwich!

Yeah, well … we didn’t have an entourage of helpers back then. No Mitch Macaphee to help with mad science solutions. No Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to tie our shoes and balance our checkbooks. No checkbooks (because, wait for it …. we were broke). We didn’t even have a drummer, for crying out loud, or at least none that would stick with us long enough to play a gig. So that summer of 1986 (or was it the fall? No matter.) when we got the use of John Danison’s 8-track garage studio, we recorded three tracks with a session drummer we knew from around Albany, NY at that time, a guy by the name of Pete Young. Two of the tracks were cover songs from our stage set at that time – “She Caught The Katy”, by Taj Mahal, which we played on THIS IS BIG GREEN back in 2012, and Little Richard’s “Slipping and Sliding”. We also did one of Ned’s songs, entitled “A Name And A Face”, which kind of amusingly chronicles a one-night stand of the drunken eighties variety – an alt-rock walk of shame, if you will.

That was our demo. It went nowhere. Pete left the group before he even joined. Ned left the group the next year. And here you have us – the remainders of a random idea for a group, 34 years ago, chronicled in that hastily produced demo …. which I will post one of these days. Stay tuned!

Postscript

One of these days came sooner than I thought. Here is that four-song cassette demo we recorded back in 1986, over in Ballston Spa, NY.

1986 Big Green Demo

Usual Rubbish

Walled-off salad.

June 12, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

I don’t have any walnuts. Apples? Nope, none of them either. Celery? Who the hell eats CELERY? Aside from anti-Lincoln, that is. (He’ll eat anything except chicken fricassee, the real Lincoln’s favorite dish.)

Yeah, well … it was bound to happen. This sequester, social distancing business is getting pretty old. I know what you’re going to say (just call me Kreskin) – But you guys are always cooped up in that abandoned hammer mill! you’ll say, what the hell’s the difference? Such an insolent question! Actually … yeah, you have a point, but watching all these crazy people get even crazier because of home confinement is prompting us to get kind of sick of it too, if only for appearances sake. I mean, I don’t want to be that guy … you know, the one that isn’t climbing up the walls, even though he hasn’t been able to go golfing since last November. Of course, I’m genuinely not that guy, but you see where I’m going with this, right? No? Fuck. I was hoping you could tell me.

Anyway, that’s me. What about my fellow hammer mill-dwellers? Well, they are going stir crazy. Nothing to do with the quarantine. It think they’re just sick of my stir fry. You see, I’ve somehow ended up as the mill cook by default. The job originally fell to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), as that seemed well within the scope of his job description. (“Other duties as assigned,” it says in big red letters.) Anyway, when he set a tossed salad on fire last week, he was out, and because he reports to me, they handed me the apron. I let a few days pass to see if they’d forget about it, but they didn’t, and well …. they were getting kind of hungry, so I put the kettle on. I’ve had worse assignments. Like selling insulated windows over the phone. Sheesh, what a gig!

Ever try to make something out of nothing? Well, if you haven’t, come on down the Cheney Hammer Mill kitchen. We’ve got some ginger root that’s been lying around the pantry for about five years. There’s a half jar of mustard. Two digestive biscuits. Half a pint of club soda. Oh … our neighbors sent over some carrots. Um … that’s about it. I’m making a casserole. By that, I mean … I’m throwing a bunch of random stuff in a pot and putting it on the fire. I might stir it a couple of times, but again … they didn’t like last night’s stir fry, and I’m getting a little sensitive about the criticism. Mitch Macaphee had the gall to put a review of my cooking up on Yelp. Ripped me a new one, the bastard. Hell, he‘s the mad scientist …. why doesn’t he just invent a decent dinner? TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET, YOU SHIFTLESS MOTHERS!

Ahh, I feel much better now. Soup’s on!

Usual Rubbish

Summer projects.

June 5, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

Gardening? God, no. I don’t know the first thing about it. And no, I’m not going to build you another gazebo. The first one burned down, fell over, and was washed into the sewer. Not doing that again, dude.

Yeah, I know – it’s not quite summer yet. Still, we’re trying to get our summer projects all lined up … mostly because there’s very little else to do around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, particularly during this COVID-19 isolation time. Nothing happening, so we make lists of things that might happen. That makes sense, right? Anyway, I don’t think I have to tell you what Matt’s summer project is. Here’s a hint: it starts with an F and ends with an “alcon”. It flies around and lives on the side of tall buildings. It … oh, damn it, see for yourself! (Utica Falcon Project site) THAT’S my brother’s summer, people, and good on him.

The rest of us, well … mostly at loose ends. Antimatter Lincoln is dreaming of his revenge, though the dream is a bit murky, as I still don’t know who he wants revenge against. (He just says he swore he’d “keel” him, whatever that means. Some nautical reference, perhaps.) Mitch Macaphee plans to spend the summer packing up all of his experiments on Proxima B, now that it’s been discovered by non-evil Earth scientists. He was hoping to keep this big, rocky Earth-like planet under wraps, I think. Seriously, the dude would steal the Moon if he thought he could get away with it. (Actually, he claims to steal it every month, bit by bit, until it’s completely gone. Cute trick.)

Is this Proxima b or Proxima c? I always get them mixed up.

What about Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Funny you should ask. You see, Marvin is an automaton, a service cyborg. He has no agency, you see. You simply program Marvin to do a certain thing, and off he goes. Sometimes, yes, he gets it wrong. (Actually, the “sometimes” is more indicative of how often he gets things right, but that’s another story.) If we programmed him to ride in circles all summer, that’s what he would do … though he wouldn’t be at all pleased. And me? I’m trying to resist gravity, but not so hard as to fly off into space. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’m also recording some older songs that never got onto any of our projects. We’ll see how it goes at the end of the summer – if they don’t suck, I’ll post them. If they suck …. yeah, I’ll probably post them anyway. You guys know me better than I know myself.

So, recording, archiving, bird-watching, revenge … we’ve got it all here at the hammer mill. This is going to be some summer.

Usual Rubbish

About the ‘cano.

May 29, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

There’s always the chance it could be legitimate. Why not? Must we always be so damn cynical? What happened to those happy-headed funsters we used to be back in 1978? Wait … we were never happy-headed funsters? Well … at least that explains what happened to them.

Once again, you catch us in the midst of a philosophical debate, an exquisitely complex conundrum that has confronted us in our COVIDian solitude. Well, perhaps I’m being too generous. Let’s just say we’re having a little difference of opinion. Nothing too weighty, you understand – after all, these are austere times, and we’re trying to be economical with our emotions (as we have little else to be economical with). Why don’t I describe the debate we’re having here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, and you can decide whether it rises to the level of a philosophical discussion? That I shall do.

As you know, when it comes to the matter of commercial success, Big Green is a smoking failure. We are so obscure, you’d think we spent the last thirty years trying to be unsuccessful (which, I suppose you could argue, we did). Nevertheless, we have resorted to various forms of representation. The first was Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, the Indonesian corporate label that nearly clapped us in irons and threw us in a dungeon somewhere in Jakarta. Then we mutinied and set up our own label, Hammermade … but of course, that’s just a name, so we’ve had to work with actual distribution companies to get our albums out where people can find them (or not find them, as the case may be). That means we use the same digital distribution networks that most acts use, though i suspect those with decent representation and name recognition realize a better return on their streaming plays, downloads, etc., than we do. Fuckers!

In any case, every week or so we get stats from our distributor, and our numbers are usually somewhere halfway down the toilet (except for around the holidays, when Pagan Christmas takes off like a rocket, thanks to our pagan listeners). Then last week, we saw higher than usual numbers on the track Volcano Man, from our second album, International House. My initial reaction was the same as my reaction to everything else: “What the hell?” Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was immediately of the opinion that the song had finally found its mythical audience – that elusive unicorn of a loyal listener cohort that has been the stuff of speculation since we first donned our Big Green hair-hats and bark suits. (Marvin’s little video screen flashed the word “eureka”.)

Hey … you expect robot assistants to be a little over-enthusiastic, right? But then Anti-Lincoln and Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, jumped in on Marvin’s side, so Matt and I had to disabuse them of their delusional optimism. Turns out there’s a rational explanation for everything – there’s a new song/video called Volcano Man that’s from an upcoming Will Ferrell movie entitled Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. People were obviously looking for that Volcano Man and not our Volcano Man, which is quite different, though similarly ridiculous. Marvin’s not convinced – he thinks it’s all a coincidence. Anti-Lincoln is leaning more towards a conspiracy theory, which is totally like him. Not sure about Mitch – he’s moved on to another project.

Where was I going with this? No place special. Always wanted to go there.

Usual Rubbish

Make good.

May 22, 2020 Joe Leave a comment

Well, we don’t have any more guitar strings. Used the last set in early April. And those used ones on the bureau are from 1997, so they may be a little dull. How about some electrical wire? I’ve got some decent coax in the cupboard.

Oh, hello. Welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, adopted home of Big Green and burgeoning center of innovation. And by innovation, I mean making do with what you have at hand. Which, I know, is not the same thing, but hey …. “innovation” sounds more, uh … innovative. In any case, provisions are running a little low around here, there being a Great Depression under way. I suppose you could argue that we’ve been experiencing a kind of Great Depression for a good many years, just within the rubric of our commercially failed alt-pop group project. That said, the tumbleweeds are blowing down the dusty street in front of the hammer mill. In the distance, you can hear a banjo playing. Somewhere a dog was barking.

Okay, so … we’re out of milk. That’s one thing. Fortunately, we don’t drink milk, so the fact that we haven’t had any for six or seven years hasn’t significantly impacted our quality of life. Pork chops, same deal. (Actually, Mitch Macaphee claims to have invented some kind of faux pork substance, but I can’t vouch for its authenticity.) The real pinch, though, comes from lack of instrument accessories and supplies. We were discussing guitar strings earlier. That’s not the only thing that’s missing around this dump. Patch cords. Stomp boxes. Tubes. Other tubes. Speaker cables. Batteries. And keys, damn it … replacement keys for my dumb-ass Roland A90EX, which has missing teeth right in the freaking middle of the board.

We were thinking about starting a GoFundMe, but given our reputation, we just assumed it would have quickly transitioned to a GoFuckYourself. Besides, passing the hat has never been a big winner for us. I remember back in our busking days, sitting around random street corners with an open guitar case set on the sidewalk, waiting for coins. Mind you, we weren’t playing any music. Fact was, we were even poorer then, so we didn’t have guitars, just guitar cases. So we would sit there and wait for people to drop some cash in the hole. In a way, we’re sitting there still. (Sometimes I get on Google Street View and wander through our old neighborhood in downtown Albany, NY just to make certain we’re not still there. That would be freaky, but not beyond the realm of possibility.)

Oh well. Little we can do for the time being, except strum rusty guitar strings, plunk on broken keys, and watch inspirational corporate TV ads that start with reverb-y piano notes and solemn voices.

Postscript

Official site of the band Big Green