Well, we managed to pull the Bill O’Reilly sound-alike tirade off the audio. But the logo… oh, the logo…

Glad you could make it back. (Back where?) Still hanging in there at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, just me and the fellows. And robots. And root vegetables. And mad scientists. And wayward planets. Shall I go on? Perhaps not. Anyway, when last you checked in, we were hammering out the details of our record release. Not such a difficult task, you may have supposed, inasmuch as we live in a hammer mill. Sadly, this was not the case. Our label’s law firm – Hegemonic Legal Services and Worm Farm, Inc. – is pretty well checked out on entertainment law, being as they are a subsidiary of our old corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm (or “Hegephonic” as they came to be known). They know the ropes. And they know how to use them.

What went wrong? Couple of things. First of all, our legal representation was handled by two artificially recovered denizens of the 19th Century, an oversized sweet potato, and a sentient planetoid. Lincoln, Anti-Lincoln, Tuber, and Zamboola (no, I won’t play their stupid jingle!) is really just a gaggle of hangers-on who banded together at the last minute to fill the massive void left in the courtroom by our absence of competent counsel. To give you some idea of what I mean, I’ll reproduce below an excerpt of the transcripts of the proceeding:

Judge: Are there any other points of consideration?

Hegemonic Counsel: Just one, your honor. Exhibit Q.

Judge: Which is…?

Hegemonic Counsel: A signed confession from the respondent.

Anti-Lincoln: Objection!

Judge: What is your objection, counselor?

Anti-Lincoln: Missouri cannot remain half slave, half free!

Zamboola: I second that, your honor.

…And it pretty much went downhill from there. Only positive thing I can say is that, while we may have lost the right to keep Loathsome Prick’s logo off of our new CD, Missouri was a free state when we walked out of that courtroom. ‘Tis an ill wind indeed…

So, on with the program. We may raise the point that some of our testimony was coerced (Hegemonic still does business the old-fashioned way… the “Jakarta” method, you might say…) One way or the other, we’ve got some packing to do. That trip to Aldebaran is getting closer by the day… and I haven’t even ordered the liquid oxygen yet.

Where do we sign again? Here? Right…. Now, we’re done. We’re not done? Freaking hell! You’ve already got our signatures sixty-seven times. Just copy the fuckers.

Everything by the book, that’s how these legal types are. Anyway… greetings and welcome to Big Green-land. We’re finalizing the terms of our forthcoming CD release (actually, it’s our second-coming release… we’ve got two more to go before we get to our fourth) entitled International House, and it’s important to get all the details straight. Except when it comes to really shmeensy details of the sort lawyers love to dive into. (They’re like hippos who joined a flee circus and are trying to dive into the little swimming pool.) Appendix this and codicil that; refer to paragraph 97, section vii; subsection 7a; insofar as the party of the second part shall render unto the party of the first part said sums as designated in paragraph 43…. Damn! I’ll tell you, it’s all we musicians can do to keep up with the obsessions of the corporate paymasters who rule our asses. (Power to the people! Strike! Strike! Strike!)

Whoops… slipped into a Marxian trance for a moment. (Workers control the means of production…. ahem!) Okay, now I don’t think I’m a particularly unreasonable person. Certainly Marvin (my personal robot assistant) doesn’t think so, either. And I know that brother Matt is far less unreasonable than I am. John? He’s a saint among men. And yet we all seem to recognize that our label, Loathsome Prick Records, is being more than a little true to their name when it comes to getting credit on the album. They’re insisting on prominent acknowledgment, even though this is essentially a self-paid manufacturing job. (We’re mortgaging the most valuable thing we have…. Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating machine. Don’t tell Trevor James!) Now how asinine is that? And I’m not talking about a subtle plug – they want an entire panel of the CD cover…and an audio plug at the opening of the album! Here’s the copy they’ve proposed:

Big Green’s “International House” is brought to you by Loathsome Prick Records, the awesomest label in the world. Without us, these losers would suck in obscurity. Take it away! Fucking thing sucks!

I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as mildly insulting. And they want it read by some guy they know who sounds like Bill O’Reilly freaking out on Inside Edition. (It may even be O’Reilly, I don’t know…. they’ve got some connections.) Now, this wouldn’t be a problem… if we had a competent lawyer. Now when I say “competent”, I mean someone who understands the law in the 21st Century. With our limited budget, we’ve been relying on legal counsel from the law firm Lincoln, Anti-Lincoln, Zamboola, and Tuber. (I’ll spare you their T.V. jingle.) As you may have surmised, the only two “lawyers” here are honest Abe and his doppelganger (who, actually, never passed the bar… in fact, he’s never passed a bar in my experience without stopping for at least a couple of drinks). And their expertise is mostly in the context of 19th Century railway law. As for the other partners, well…. the less said the better.

So that’s where we stand… legal blackmail from our rapacious corporate label. Just one more way THE MAN keeps us down. Workers of the world UNITE! (Damn – there I go again. Pipe down, comrade!)

What do you suggest we do, Gertrude? What’s done is done, right? What? No, no… that’s not an option. Besides… he’s too old to be any good in a stew. Bound to be stringy as hell.

Oh, hi, friends (or as John McCain might say, “my friends”). Sorry… I was just on the phone with someone at our label, that vice president of marketing and coercion person. She’s all bent out of shape. So are we all, frankly. Yes, that’s a metaphor. Though in the case of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), being bent out of shape is a serious matter and one that has been plaguing him since his invention by Mitch Macaphee some few years ago. (Marvin is bent just slightly out of shape, as perhaps you can tell from his photos.) I have to say, I don’t like it when people yell at me over the phone. I kind of worry they’ll hurt their throats and have to talk like Miles Davis for the rest of their natural lives. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that….)

Okay… so what was all the yelling and shouting and rending of garments about? Well… it seems out very own man-sized tuber has been a little bit indiscreet. Okay… I’ll be honest… extremely indiscreet. Where do I begin? Well… it seems at some point he got ahold of one of those vacation guides touting the great north country. So he decided one night to wheel off with some fellow tubers and go on a little trip up along the Moose River. (You know…. Moose River! Wider than the Nile! I’ll cross you single file some daaaaay!!!) Not a big deal, right? Shouldn’t be a problem for any normal root vegetable. I mean, you’d think he could keep a lid on his little bender… but no. The very next morning, laying across my breakfast table (right on top of my day-old toast), was a big freaking headline about none other than the tuber himself.

Okay, that was bad enough – to have his name plastered across my morning paper. But the fact that he managed to get his name plastered across Gertrude Al-Kabar’s morning paper was just about intolerable. (Sure, she gets the same paper I do… but what are the chances both would have the same front page?) Now the label is all pissed off. They’re nervous about terrestrial record sales, of course. I keep telling them that any publicity is good publicity, but these fuckers are old school. They can smell a scandal fifty miles away, especially when it involves five-foot-tall root animate vegetables on motorized carts. That freaking tuber has put us in Coventry once again. (Where is Coventry? Right where we are, that’s where.)

So… it looks like our promotional tour will definitely begin in outer space. Aldebaran here we come. Thanks a load, tubey! You and your white water rafting adventure holiday!!