Well, it’s finally coming down. The snow that is. And the lamp post. Yes, you heard me right – the lamp post came down … and Jim Bob is responsible.
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.
Why this sudden obsession? Well, as you know, we of Big Green weren’t exactly born with the word “success” tattooed on our butts. (Mine has something else entirely tattooed onto it. I’m giving you twelve guesses what that might be.) We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel for lo these past three decades, playing in dives, recording in the basement on superannuated technology, scratching for every inch, inching for every scratch…. you get the picture. (Actually, you get the sound file. We don’t do pictures.) What have we got to show for it? A second-hand robot chauffeur, that’s what. And one that can’t avoid major obstacles.
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 Big Green, where we post first drafts of songs we will eventually release as our next album(s).
So sure, we live in a drafty mill, no fuel for the fire, no food in the fridge, no miracle grow for the mansized tuber (not that he needs it). But we’ve got something more valuable than any of that: a gift coupon to Tony’s pizza, good for another three days. To the limo… and damn the lamp posts!
Oh, hiya. Geezus, you’d think being idle and ensconced in an abandoned hammer mill would offer endless opportunities to rehearse, jam, arrange, etc. Seems like every time we try to do it, something comes up. For instance, this week I’ve got custody of the mansized tuber. (Matt had him last week. Hey – that’s the terms of the adoption agreement, what do you want from me?) I guess I never realized what a handful he can be. He’s at a difficult age for tubers; you know, that time when they either become a full-fledged plant or get mashed up into some kind of traditional dish. I have to think that, for tubey, it’s going to be the former outcome, but he doesn’t seem convinced. Now he jumps at every noise. And as you might expect, rehearsal generates a lot of noises.
Oh, hello. Didn’t notice you peering through that LCD screen. As you can see, we’re working on a set list for our first engagement on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. No, that’s not a place keeper – that’s the name Tiny Montgomery suggested last week, and none of us has come up with anything better (let alone tried to, you know, insert the name). It’s always kind of a back and forth on the set lists – that’s only natural when you have hundreds of songs. Yes, literally hundreds… all wrapped up in a little box. We take turns, reaching a hand into the box. I’ll read one song title and Matt will knock it down. Then he grabs one and reads it. I’ll say he’s an asshole. Then he throws the box at me. And I’ll yell, “MOM! HE’S DOIN’ IT AGAIN!” And then we’re BOTH in trouble.
Well, summer is upon us, friends. No, not summer by the calendar, but rather summer by the sweat of the brow. Or so it goes in the northern climes of the northern hemisphere, on that land mass known as “North America”, just below the mighty lake Ontario, maker of much snow in the darker months – a kind of ice goddess, if you will. (Hell, even if you won’t.) It doesn’t take much to raise the temperature in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – all that brick, you know, baking in the direct sunlight, no trees to protect us. It’s like spending a night in the box. Sure wish you stop trying to help me, Captain.
Just keeping it real here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as you might expect. During these hard times, it’s the same story everywhere, right? Making the ends meet in the middle. We’ve got the ends, but frankly… no middle. And if the ends justify the means, which they almost NEVER do, well then… um…. okay, I lost my train of thought. But no matter. We are doing what we do, and being what we be. That’s what Big Green is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her. RISK… RISK IS OUR BUSINESS. (Oh, Jesus… now I’m quoting Star Trek lines. Someone call the doctor! And make sure he IS a doctor, and not a mechanic. D’oh!)
very afraid of robots.] Actually, Marvin has decided to hang up the bomb-sniffing robot gig, which is just as well. I think he’s focusing more on show business now. I saw him trying a “Renegade Robot from Mars” outfit on the other day. (Circus is in town, I hear.)
Have to resort to non-banjo alternatives, I guess. That’s the way things go here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. You got complaints? Stand in line for the pluck string instrument. You may call it annoying mountain music. We call it aural psychotherapy. (Of course, when Marvin’s doing it, I don’t know quite what to call it. ) Be that as it may, you need some kind of relief in these troubled times, when money is as rare as …. well … rare earths. We’ve got lots of common earths. My point is… we’re freaking broke again. Join the select club of 90% of Americans, eh? Busted!
turnip truck. (Not to mention the offense that enterprise gave to our companion, the man-sized tuber.)
It is winter in the northeast, after all. (This just in.) And Big Green, being made up of at least 40% sentient life forms, 35% mammalians, tends to be a tad sensitive to the extreme cold. We experience this on our space voyages, of course. Deadly cold in outer space! Just go there and see for yourself. (Bring a jacket… and some oxygen.) It’s a real problem for our friends and spokesvegetable, the mansized tuber, whose sap has a decidedly higher freezing point than our own human blood. That means he needs to stay close to the fire… but not TOO close. It’s a delicate balance for tubey, let me tell you.
How am I wasting my time? Well… usually it’s my job to waste OTHER people’s time. But this week, bored, I opted to do a little video New Year’s greeting for all you folks out there. Just a brief tour of the Cheney Hammer Mill basement, a little look inside our “creative process” – what it looks like when we’re making the sausage we call “music” – and so on. I have posted same for your edification on our YouTube site and other internet haunts bearing our likenesses. Marvin was of some help, though…. his attention was divided, as per usual.
Oh, hi, friends of Big Green. Glad this is getting out to you. WiFi is a little unreliable out here in the midst of the Kuiper Belt… all these particles and planetoids cause a boatload of interference, as you might well imagine. Yes, we did manage to navigate our way through the black hole that had parked itself next to that annoying Goldilocks Planet our label talked us into playing. (We now know why the Gliesians call the black hole “Papa Bear”). The advice we’d been given took us right into the old vortex. Turns out it’s just a transdimensional expressway back to the Kuiper Belt. Bit of good luck, that.
There are three things you need to know about this Kuiper Belt place. The first is that it’s bloody cold. I think you might have guessed. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has tanked out his battery half a dozen times since we got here. The second is that this place is like the solar system’s lost and found. Apparently everything that gets lost on Earth (and everywhere else in Sol’s neighborhood) ends up here. For instance, there are literally billions of odd socks floating around and between the asteroids. Explains a lot. That stuff they call “dark matter”? Socks. Just socks. I think it’s just centrifugal force, spinning everything out to the rim. Now you know.
Well, we’ve attempted to do everything that needed to be done in preparation for our trip to the stars – readying Big Green for our upcoming interstellar tour ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE. We’ve dotted every “t” and crossed every “i” (or every eye, perhaps). So many details to be considered. Much of it, on this type of outing, is best left to the scientists. Questions like, “There’s no air in space. How do we breathe?” Not sure we’ve got that little detail worked out yet, but sometimes you can’t solve every problem prior to lift off. Sure, I’d like everything to be perfect and set out in a straight line. But that’s not always possible, my friends. Sometimes, good enough has to be good enough. Good enough?
ITEM: Sandwiches. Space is a very inhospitable environment, full of hostile creatures, obstinate club owners (same thing), and the total lack of sandwiches. That’s right – Space is chock full of no sandwiches whatsoever, so you better just pack yourself some… and pronto. 
Sensitive artists, these rock musicians. Well, let me qualify that. I’m actually referring to the individuals, human and non-human, who hang around with rock musicians. I’m talking about your man-sized tuber, your Marvin (my personal robot assistant), your Mitch Macaphee, your Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, etc. We of Big Green proper (brother Matt, brother-in-law John, and I) have asked these hangers-on for suggestions on where we should take the next interstellar tour. Of course, this is a bit like placing 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters and hoping for Hamlet to pop out of one of the carriages. Still, you do get lucky from time to time, and just today – I swear – one of them made a suggestion that made sense. Actual sense, in a wholly non-ironic way.
I’m sure you think we should find better things to do with our time than idly ponder the finer points of our tour itinerary when, in fact, it is totally out of our hands… and into the calloused paws of our promoter, Admiral Gonutz (ret.). Well, if you want to know the sad truth…. we don’t. This is the stuff that music biz is made of, friends. A little bit of playing and a whole lot of waiting around to play, as Keith Richards put it many long years ago. I personally prefer John Lennon’s response when someone asked him how he liked France, and he said something like, it was a car and a plane and a car and a room and a car and a plane. With us, it’s more like a skateboard and a rocket and an airless void and a volcano and an ocean and a steamboat and an ambulance and a mental ward.