Yeah, we been workin’ on a song list, goin’ down, down, down, workin’ on a song list – whoop! – writin’ the set down.

Nah, Big Green’s not doing oldies – no sweat, man. Been there, done that. Besides, if you try to pull that off in the Crab Nebula, they’ll cook you for dinner. Literally. (Ask sFshzenKlyrn, he’ll tell you. That is one brutal venue, even for an etheric, transcendental creature with no fixed hairstyle.) Just making a point there, my friends. We’ve been slaving over this song list for the last week, in case you’re interested in what we’ve been up to (and haven’t been checking the mansizedtuber’s twitter feed). You may think that’s about the easiest job in the world, but I warn you…. I WARN YOU…. it’s not anything like easy. In fact, it’s a lot harder than … well, than that easy stuff. And there’s a whole bunch of reasons why…. not least of which is the stark reality that we have to hole up in the Cheney Hammer Mill together with no distractions, no outside influences, no take-out or dial-a-pizza… just the band and our various minions. Insufferable is the word. In. Sufferable.

All right, so that’s not a very good reason. Here’s another one: we’ve got about a million songs. No, I mean it. Christmas songs alone, there are about four albums worth… not including any of the songs on 2000 Years To Christmas. So that means we have to yank out all of our demos, all of our notes, all of our old song lists, and pore through the lot, writing down the ones we want to do, crossing out the ones we don’t. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has his personal favorites, and his understanding of music is limited to a few lines from the 1956 World Book Encyclopedia, which his inventor Mitch Macaphee inserted into his memory banks as test data.  (Hey… he’s going to be traveling with us to the great beyond, so why not allow him a few requests, right? I said, am I right? Hel-looooo?)

All right, well… you can see how this process might lead to chaos. In fact, it already has. No one seems able to agree on what songs we should work on. What are the chances that we would each end up with a different set of 25 songs? I swear, this place is more dysfunctional than the New York State Senate. In fact, in the midst of our desperation, we’ve asked Mitch Macaphee for his assistance. (Sometimes a mad scientist can see his way out of a conundrum much more easily than, say, an unemployed musician or an oversized root vegetable.)  It took Mitch about three hours to come up with a solution of sorts. He walked in from his lab with a small, oblong metal box which he called the “Tune-o-matic.” He pressed a red button on the right side of the machine, and a slip of paper emerged from a small slot on the opposite side. The paper has some writing on it that appeared to be in Vietnamese. Mitch took one look at that and stormed out of the room with the tune-o-matic under one arm. There has since been some banging and swearing from behind the closed door of his lab… I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this wondrous device presently.

For the nonce, however, we have decided to take matters back into our own hands. Matt has been writing the names of all of our songs on one wall of the rec room. John dug up a box of darts. (If you’ve got a better method, let me know. )

Stage props? Never really thought much of them, frankly. What the hell are we, summer stock? We’re a bleedin’ band, man! Oh, all right, all right. But just the enormous styrofoam sphinx. No pyramid. I SAID, NO PYRAMID!

Oh, sorry, my friend. Hope that wasn’t too loud. I was just trying to get my point across to Anti-Lincoln… the idea that Big Green is not a flash band with a truckload of stage props, seven costume changes, makeup, extras, pyrotechnics, fog machines, etc. Never part of that movement, frankly. No, no…. our roots go back to a simpler time, when the earth was new and the sky was darkened by flocks of cawing pterodactyls. Not that roots have a lot to do with it. Actually, our musical influences are the more pared-down groups of the 60’s and early 70’s, and plain-clothes alternative types from much later.  Anti-Lincoln doesn’t think that’s visually interesting enough. He would sooner we change our names to, I don’t know, “Great Speckled Bird” or “Pilot and the Now Tones”, then don sequined capes and climb like apes on multicolored scaffolding while jumbotrons play a DVD of some Bergman movie.  I, for one, think that would be a bit much. And you?

Yeah, it’s hard to keep everyone happy around here, particularly now that we’re in the planning stages of our next interplanetary tour, tentatively titled: “Destination Space: Big Green’s Galactic Tour 2009″. What’s the itinerary? Glad you asked. Nothing is written in stone, as you might well imagine. All we’ve got around the mill is pencils and pens, no chisels. What we’ve got written on paper, however,  is perhaps worthy of mention. Can’t really share all the details, but what I can tell you is that, if you happen to be in the neighborhood of the planet Neptune sometime in mid-July, you may get the opportunity to see us bomb-out at yet another airless alien pub.  We’re determined to book better venues this time out, but if things go the way they usually go (and, well… they usually do), we’ll probably play those other places as well.  Part of the deal, friends.    

Now, to be fair to Anti-Lincoln, he’s not the only one who wants to add some kind of visual element to our performances. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) even went so far as to do a sketch of a Big Green stage set – one that has an enormous planet hanging down in the middle (either that or a cantaloupe, I’m not sure which).  I think he envisions some expanded performing role for himself and for the man-sized tuber. They used to be satisfied with grabbing a tuba or a banjo or a second-hand guitar and framming away on one side of the stage… now it has to be something more dramatic. I think for the tuber it’s all about that heady experience he had during his trip back to the 1860s. Or maybe it’s just aphids.  (He’s been looking a bit badgered lately.)

Well, stage set or now, we’ll need to work up some kind of show. Hey, Matt – got any more songs about Lincoln? How about Kublai Khan? Yes? Exxxxcellent.

Lights are off again. I thought I just bribed that guy last week. Didn’t I? What…. it was the wrong guy? His pushcart was decorated with a cardboard sign that had “electric company” written on it in crayon. Seemed legitimate to me.

It seems I’m too trusting. We all are here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green’s crap shack of distinction. Oh, we’ve had a lot of crap shacks through the years, from a tumbled-down house on Irving Avenue in Castleton-On-Hudson to the slightly less beat up place next door to it…. (and one or two others, if memory serves). Then of course there was the lean-to in Sri Lanka. (What happened to that? It leaned fro.) Anyway, next to all those joints, this abandoned hammer mill is the next best thing to being someplace decent. And yet, here we are… lights off, phone disconnected, water intermittent, gravity reversed (Mitch Macaphee’s been at it again)… It all comes down to one thing: frankincense. No, wait. It’s another word…. Money. Yeah, that’s it. Bleedin’ money.  

Now, Mitch… there’s a guy with frankincense… or, rather, Franken-sense (i.e. the sense of Dr. Frankenstein). He’s always inventing some kind of half human, have robot hybrid. That’s why he’s the only one with any cash around here. For chrissake, the government has dropped more than one grant on him for developing “hybrids”. The fools think Mitch is building cars; instead, he’s formulating a cyborg army in his spare time. I should have him pay the electric bill – he’s the bastard that’s using it all. One might suppose that Marvin (my personal robot assistant), built some years back by Mitch, was some kind of prototype, but not a bit of it. Marvin is pure robot; no organic components whatsoever. He’s clean, man. Ergo, he has no role in the coming reign of the cyborgs. (Not to worry, friends. This is just one of Mitch’s pipe dreams. All mad scientists must have them.)

Yeah, I’m putting Mitch on the hook for pizza tonight. The rest of us are completely tapped out. Typical. That’s what we get for, well…. lack of ambition, let’s call it. Though, to be fair, not all of us are lazy mo-fos. Take the man-sized tuber, for instance. Now, he’s willing to do anything the situation calls for, including standing out in the street and selling #3 pencils. Particularly when we specifically ask him to do this kind of thing… which, of course, we did, just as soon as he wheeled himself out of the time warp and back into the 21st century. And yes, I did say #3 pencils (we sold out of the #2’s last week). Truth be told, his take has been somewhat disappointing thus far. Perhaps he needs bigger pencils. Marvin! See if we’ve got any of the big number threes! 

I know, I know – we’ll only get so far abusing the help. Time to start planning an escape from this crap shack. Can you say, interstellar tour 2009?