When I was a kid, my parents took me on a trip across this great country of ours. We took in all the national parks, all the dude ranches, all the hamburger joints, all the breakfast cereals, and it was great. The best way I can share it with you is by singing this song. I want you to all sing along with me. “There’s a yellow rose in Texas … that I am BOUND TO SEE….!!!”
Whoa, hey… didn’t know anyone was reading this here blog. I was just practicing in my spare time. What am I practicing? Thought you might ask. Just in case I find myself running for president in sixty or seventy years, I thought I might need a little background on how to warm up a crowd at a retirement center. Now I know just how to do it, sort of. Anywho… we’ve all got to keep ourselves occupied, what with Big Green up on blocks like a 1976 Chevy Monza that needs a ring job. We’ve been blowing oil for about 5,000 miles now, folks. Time for a tune up. [METAPHOR OVER.]
Right, so … what are we doing? Recording, that’s what. I’ll tell you, this podcast of ours ( THIS IS BIG GREEN ) has gotten us back into the studio on a regular basis, and not just to drink beverages. We’re just putting finishing touches on two more Rick Perry songs, to be premiered on the February podcast under 
the moniker of Rick Perry and the Recognizable Hicks. (They are to us what the Dukes of the Stratosphere were to XTC … only with 80% more hick.) Think of it as a thematic strain, like Christmas has been with Matt for umpteen years or more – once you start, they just keep coming.
The podcast versions are like first drafts, mostly, though our Rick Perry songs are as close to finished as anything is likely to get here in the Cheney Hammer Mill. The rest of it is pretty bare bones – Marvin (my personal assistant) playing drums, some twangy guitars, a stray sousaphone. At some point we’ll collect all of these numbers into an album and call it SONGS FROM HELL or RARE FOOT DISEASE or something more appropriate, less offensive, etc.
Anyway, stay tuned. More stuff to come, in one form or another. (Okay… I promise not to sing “Yellow Rose” again. Now will you listen?)
Why am I amused by this? Hey… when you call a dump like this “home”, you must find amusement wherever it may be lurking. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we are always looking for new distractions. Is that because Big Green is not what you would call a “performing” band? Perhaps, perhaps. Fewer reasons to venture out of the mill, particularly now that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes our grocery runs for us. “You trust him with money?” I imagine you’re thinking right now. My imaginary answer would be, “No; we program him to work as a day laborer before he goes to the store. That’s how we roll.”
So hell, I’m building a new Big Green web site. It will be big… and green. Perhaps shiny, perhaps not. I’m not super crazy about shiny, to tell the honest truth – it makes things look too much like what’s looking at them. Anyway, that’s what all the hammering is about – that’s the sound of Web development up here in the sticks. That’s what it sounds like when someone is building a Web site you can really sink your teeth into. A site that is chewy, not cakey… just the way you like it.
Ensconced once again within the crumbling walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, I can report that we of Big Green are back to doing what we do best: inventing snacks out of items collected from the goodwill box. If it weren’t for all this music stuff we might be good at it by now. Oh, the burden of servings such a demanding muse! Nothing is good enough, nothing! We work our fingers to the bone – nay, to the marrow – hammering out songs in the clammy basement of this condemned factory, then tossing them skyward… only to see them knocked back in anger. “Send me hooks!” demands the disembodied voice. “We are not amused!”
Lincoln! It shouldn’t happen to our quality Lincoln!
Okay, truth is… I don’t know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it’s July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn’t know we had people driving us around? Well, that’s because we haven’t up until now. We’ve just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It’s like priming the pump, man.
I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain, what with this being the season of kindness and gratitude. (Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sees it more as the season of mindlessness and attitude, but that’s how he rolls.) We’re still recording, still flailing away at the canon, committing item after item from the seemingly bottomless vat of unrecorded material to virtual tape. You can hear the results of these sessions on our podcast, 
This is not good, folks. Marvin is doing the renegade robot from Mars bit again. It must be an errant line of code somewhere in his reams of programming. Every once in a while he gets ornery… I mean SUPER ornery. Starts breaking things, running things over, insulting people (including anti-Lincoln, who’s sensitive, you know) and otherwise causing mayhem. I suppose I should count myself lucky that we’re not on some interstellar tour with this happening. Living with a mechanical nutjob is one thing; sharing a cramped spacecraft with one is quite another. I don’t have to tell you that…. HEY! PUT THAT DOWN! THAT’S THE ONLY ONE OF THOSE WE’VE GOT LEFT, YOU DOLT!
Oh, yes… the blog. As you can see, I’m at loose ends here. Just killing a little time between sessions. Matt put down a vocal the other day. (I wish he’d stop putting me down, man. I’m trying my BEST!) Next it’s my turn, but first Marvin (my personal robot assistant) needs to go in there and clean up the tracks a bit, do a little of his magic. (What kind of magic? Can’t say. It’s magic, damnit!) So while I’m just sitting here, I’m filling out crosswords, completing puzzlers, and… well… opening our overinflated mailbag. Some of these things have been sitting in there for six months or better. (I think I spy a christmas present…. from 1970…)
Okay, m’Lord, you see… “George” is a fictional character – a mad scientist, like Mitch Macaphee (who is, sadly, real). Not everyone in our songs is for real, okay? Sometimes we make up unlikely personages, like “Jane” or “Abraham Lincoln”, and sometimes we borrow them from other authors, like “Tarzan” and “Edward Teller”. And regarding the reclamation of Pangea, no worries… that will take some time, he-he-he…. sometime indeed…
No, it’s not my brain. It’s my list of songs. Sixty five songs and counting. Shoo-wee, right? That’s enough songs to fuel the enormous asbestos-clad boiler of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for a hundred years. (Well, that may be a slight exaggeration.) What was it I heard Lincoln (or anti-Lincoln) saying the other day? Oh, yeah. “A chicken’ll make you a meal… or it’ll lay enough eggs for a thousand breakfasts. A lamb – that’s about two weeks worth of mutton. Or you can have warm wool coats from now until doomsday…” That Lincoln- just brimming with frontier wisdom. (Actually, I think he borrowed that from Royal Dano in one of his more nefarious incarnations on The Big Valley, Lincoln’s favorite T.V. drama.)
Sure, there’s that. Then there are the songs that are complete and yet still in the can, never released commercially. Mostly these are recordings that have no proper album to call home. They are made in the usual Big Green way – lay out a polymer disc, slather it full of mastic, add music and apply pressure… much pressure. Then toss. Well… we tossed them a little too far, perhaps, and no one has had the energy to go and pick them up. Those will likely see the light of day at some point, though I don’t know exactly when. (Let me consult with my fellow nut cases and get back to you.)
Oh well. While we’re trying to figure out what’s going on there… What’s been happening here at the mill? Usual stuff. Keeping the roof on, as they say, and the fridge stocked with lunchables. (Or, at least, snackables.) You have to be versatile to please the mix of tastes we have around this joint. Take Lincoln (please). Now, he’s a fan of chicken fricassee. Of course, being a vegetarian, I won’t have anything to do with the stuff, but that doesn’t stop him. He keeps putting it on the shoplifting… I mean, the shopping list. And I keep coming back with tofu. (He’s no happier now than he was in 1863.)
too heavy, we try making an alloy by blending it with some more light-hearted material. Failing that, we scrap the sucker. Perhaps the constituent parts will come in handy (they sometimes go into making a first-rate pedal bike).