Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Joe to band: More album, less concept

2000 Years to Christmas

No, that’s a terrible idea. What the hell! Sometimes I wonder about your synaptic circuits, dude. I’m starting to think your think-o-lator needs urgent service. What else have you got? I got nothing.

Oh, hey, out there in cyber land. Just another day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York. And by “another day,” I mean another contentious debate over the best way forward for your friends in Big Green. As you know, rock bands spend a lot of their time working out their artistic direction over the course of ten, sometimes twenty years. Hell, if you don’t do THAT, you might end up drifting … or playing the same stuff over and over again …. which is, uh, kind of what …. we …. do ….

An extraordinary meeting

Well, we’re trying to get away from that sort of thing. That’s why we’ve convened a special meeting of the Big Green creative steering committee, which is comprised of the band members, of course, plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber. We used to include Anti-Lincoln in these meetings, but he kept talking about the war and, well, that gets old pretty fast.

Still, even without “A-Link”, as we call him, in attendance, we some time end up treading the same territory. For instance, we were on the topic of concept albums. I asked the group to suggest some possible concepts for upcoming Big Green collections. Most of the man-sized tuber’s suggestions were plant-based, but then Marvin piped up with the suggestion that we do an album themed around the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. I’m telling you, it’s A-Link all over again!

Can we leave Prince Leopold out of this, Marvin?

Why all Marvin’s ideas are bad ones

Okay, putting Lincoln aside for a moment, there are about a hundred reasons why doing a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War is a bad idea. First of all, I’m convinced that a not-insignificant portion of our fan-base is still sensitive about the accession of Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the Spanish throne. And while I don’t want to seem like a panderer, in these hard economic times, we shouldn’t go out of our way to alienate anyone unnecessarily.

This tends to be the problem with many if not all of Marvin’s ideas. There’s always a poison pill hidden in there somewhere. Honestly, a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War would inevitably dredge up unpleasant memories of the birth of France’s Third Republic, and THEN where would we be? That’s why all of Marvin’s ideas are bad!

The totally excellent solution

How about this? No more concept albums. From now on, Big Green albums will just be a collection of randomly generated songs with no relationship to one another or to some unifying idea. Thoughts? Any hands? (Or branches, tubey?)

Usual Rubbish

Our influencer needs some pruning.

2000 Years to Christmas

Jesus Christmas, is THAT what he’s been doing? Oh, yeah … sorry. I forgot that his pronouns are it, its, and … uh …. it. I mean, ITS pronouns, not his. Sorry, sorry. But …. is that what it’s been doing? Whoa.

Oh, hiya. Glad to see some visitors from the sane side of reality. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat palace, it’s crazytown USA. Chock full of nuts, you might say. In here, we just page through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or the DSM-5, as they call it) and take turns embodying each entry to its fullest. It’s almost like the authors have been hiding in the walls, watching us through two-way mirrors. (Is that paranoia … ?)

Sure, that’s problematic. But we’ve got other things to occupy our thoughts. Like, for instance, what the hell is that mansized tuber up to now? For years it’s been like … well, like a potted plant, taking up space in the courtyard, hoping for rain. Now, suddenly, tubey (friends call him tubey) has reemerged from seclusion, firing up its social media accounts and firing off posts like a mighty oak dropping acorns. It is a site to behold.

Branching out

Lord knows that tubey has been in one or two scrapes, as any reader of this blog will surely know. But nothing like what it’s likely to run into on social media. For instance, tubey just restarted his Facebook page after a long absence, and already some loser has asked it to admin their page. Imagine the gall! (Some podcast named Strange Sound …. what the hell is that?)

I think he's right, tubey. You have to turn it on first.

Now, typically when you haven’t done a thing in a while, you get less practiced at that thing. That’s just common sense, right? Tubey, however, doesn’t subscribe to the notion of competence, let alone common sense. That’s why he’s strongly considering opening a TikTok account. Or maybe Instagram.

Master of none

There’s such a thing as spreading yourself too thin. And when you are a root vegetable, such a thing can be fatal. Fortunately for tubey, it has us to advise it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is also happy to pitch in with his suggestions, though they’re a little hard to parse. Marvin has never mastered English … or any other language, come to think of it. Which leaves us to interpreting random squeaks. Don’t try this at home!

Let’s face it – none of us is an expert on social media. Maybe tubey will be the first in Big Green land to make it work. Or maybe he’s just nuts like the rest of us.

Usual Rubbish

Taking the rap for unlicensed cyber busking

2000 Years to Christmas

Can you just hold the camera still, man? I look like I’m playing on the Titanic …. or maybe the Lusitania. One of those big boats that went down, but not before a lot of rocking. And speaking of rocking …. HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!

Oh, hi, out there in cyber land. It’s your old friends Big Green, here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (No connection to the former Vice President or the current congress member from Wyoming.) Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about how hard this pandemic has been on musicians and other performers, with the possible exception of mimes. (Wherever they gig, they’re safe from COVID if they stay behind that glass wall.) Well, it’s certainly been hard on us.

Hard times in the city

How hard, you ask? Thank you for asking! Well, our finances were in the sewer before the pandemic hit. And of course, most of our gigs are played on other planets in other solar systems, but once those space aliens heard about COVID, none of them would grant us space visas. That means no space gigs, no space tour, and no space gold. Bing, bang, bong. (No accident that that story ends with a bong.)

What about conventional work, you say. Don’t be ridiculous! The only work you can get around here is baking bread or carrying boxes for slave wages so low that people do better by staying home and collecting unemployment. So that’s what we’re doing, minus the collecting unemployment part. But as always, we need a revenue stream – one that will run straight through this mill. (I’d settle for a revenue creek.)

Yeah. Kinda shakey.

So, we’re doing what a lot of bands do nowadays – cyber busking. We’re breaking out the guitar and playing random songs into the void of the internet, in hopes that some ether-like value will come floating back to us like bread upon the waters. Well I know that SOUNDS like a good idea, but it turns out to be more complicated than anyone might have imagined.

Feeling the earth move

For one thing, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t hold a web cam still to save his batteries. All of our performances look like a cheap summer stock production of The Last Days of Pompeii, the musical, special effects provided by a DUMB ASS AUTOMATON! Of course, we can’t afford a steadycam … so it’s the shaky cam for us.

Another thing we can’t afford: lawsuits! We made the questionable choice of playing some covers. First came the copyright strikes. Then came the cops and lawyers. I’ve asked our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to come up with some … um … scientific remedy to this problem, but it turns out HE’S afraid of the law, too. So … looks like it’s back to original material for us. Or just very poorly rendered versions of pop songs.