It’s going to take how long? Are you serious? What the hell, Urich – can’t this tub move any faster than that? We’re only talking about 17 light years.

Oh, man… if only there were a “first class” in intergalactic space! Everything… and I mean everything is coach. Urich, our somewhat fanatical pilot (I think he may be the only surviving German kamikaze, but that’s just a guess), tells me that we’ve got quite a ways yet to go bobbing along here in the trackless void. We’re all resorting to the stuff we do when there’s nothing to do. Matt catalogues his bird species. John flies virtual airplanes across the Pacific. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) plays with his diode collection (the Frenchman thing wore off after a few days, thank goddess). The Lincolns argue about the war with Mexico. I could go on, but … you get the idea. And what do I do? Well, not much… I strum my broken down Hagstrom III guitar and reach into the mailbag for whatever might be interesting.

Let’s see what we got here… This one’s from some guy who calls himself “Muchuu”, over in jolly old England, who was commenting on our new single, High Horse:

Not my cup of Texan tea

Lyrics – Blimey! Not a fan. Is this in the wrong category?

Arrangement – simple and effective. But predicatble, no?

Sounds like – not sure. Rather not know :-)…No, don’t know really. Some parts Ween I guess…

Not a fan, unfortunately. Sorry!

Gotcha, “Muchuu”. Yep, “simple and effective” is what we were going for there. Though I wouldn’t go filling your cup with “Texan Tea” – we put that stuff in our tractor engines (yee-haw). Hopefully we can count you amongst our fans one day (you could be the second!), but until then, Muchuu-s gracias, senor!

Here’s one from some dude named “Benadian”… same topic…

It’s fun. Who do you sound like? Any kind of country music I suppose, I’m not as well-versed in that field. Now that the synth solo has come in, and considering your genre, I would say you sound like Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats album. But that was way more original! This just sounds like any old band that decided to make a joke country song.Lyrics… just sound like any old country lyrics. I dunno what else to say. Good you proved you can do it though!

Well, what the hell, man… that’s the second Ween reference I’ve heard in, I don’t know, five minutes? But I guess you’re right, “Benadian” … we sure proved we can write a goofy country song. Never thought I’d see the day!

Okay, time to do something else. What’s the man-sized tuber been up to during this long, boring voyage? Well, he’s been trying his hand at video editing. In fact, he put together a little video for High Horse and posted it on YouTube… which you can view at the Tuber’s YouTube page – www.youtube.com/mansizedtuber – or on the high horse page: www.big-green.net/highhorse . Check it out … then send us some mail. As you can see, we’ve got a lot of time on our hands!

Greetings from the soundstage of terusdanorf girundolph huzzah. Can you hear me out there? Are you sure? Testing, testing…

Oh, the trials and tribulations of interstellar tours! And who knows them better than Big Green, right? We know them all, like the backs of our hands. (Hmmmm…. never noticed that mole before. Better get that looked at. And when did I bark that knuckle?) We’ve grappled with irate, drunken crowds, ill-tempered club owners with six (or even seven) heads, venues that had no air or gravity (had to write those into our contracts – live and learn!), Frankenstein-like bouncers, galaxy collisions in the middle of the second set – we’ve been there, damnit. And if you include sFshzenKlyrn‘s experiences, we’re talking about every bad gig back to the big bang (which, I believe, was the name of the Rolling Stones’ 1971 tour, wasn’t it?) or even further. The big crunch, even. One of those. Anyway… what was I saying?

Oh, yeah. Difficult interstellar gigs. That’s how it went off on Proxima Centauri. They didn’t get our new song “High Horse” at all – again, a question of cultural references. And since we were on their equivalent of network television – a live performance show they call terusdanorf girundolph huzzah, it was a bit embarrassing to say the least. You see, they are more into our darker numbers. I think that’s because their companion star is so dim. (27 hours of night to every five hours of daylight. W.T.F., right?) So they reacted pretty well to stuff like Vital Signs and so on. Trouble is, when they DON’T like something you play, they start throwing stuff. Kind of a tradition on Proxima. (In fact, it’s a tradition on Earth as well, as it happens. Down there, the more they like you, the bigger the projectiles…. or so I’m told.) That gets to be a problem, frankly.

Well, yeah… so they chucked handfuls of finkonium (a mildly radioactive isotope native to Proxima) at us during High Horse. (Fans of neither country nor irony, they.) Then our mics crapped out in the middle of the set, and they started hurling that finkonium again – this time in big chunks. One of them hit Marvin (my personal robot assistant) upside the head as he attempted to scope out the problem with the mics. Apparently the radioactive properties in the finkonium interacted with those inside Marvin’s brass cranium in such a way as to turn him temporarily into a Frenchman. It’s kind of like foreign accent syndrome – you know, when you get into a fender bender and suddenly you’re talking like Victor Borge. That’s what happened with Marvin, except it’s the full monty – Francophone speech, stereotypical getup… you can even hear faint accordion music in the background when he enters a room. Most peculiar.

Not to worry. Mitch Macaphee, Marvin’s erstwhile inventor, tells me this should not last. Besides, anti-Lincoln finds it vaguely entertaining for some reason. (I think it’s because posi-Lincoln hates it.) Those two!