Bit more to the left, Zamby. Bit more. Bit more. Nope, nope, that’s it. I said that’s it. Whoa, damn it! Whoa, you mother fucker, whoa!
Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there. Big Zamboola (or “Zamby”, as I’ve been calling him lately) was just helping me with at little household chore, to wit, moving the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill a few paces to the left. Yes, I did say household chore — Zamboola holds the house and I tell him where to plunk it. (Insert derisive laughter here.) Why move the august mill from one place to another very similar place? Well, it’s complicated, as you might expect. It’s a topic that twists and snakes around back on itself, ties itself in knots, squealing all the way, like most everything in the life of Big Green. Not sure you want to get into it on such a lovely day as this. Weather sucks where you are? Well, then — let’s have at it… or as my illustrious brother used to say, pass the fucking potatoes.
You know how most musical recordings employ a range of sound effects, some of which, say, mimic an echo or the reverberation of a primitive cave? Haven’t noticed? Oh, yes — it’s a fact. You may be surprised to learn that most of that stuff is done by sophisticated machines, powered by — are you sitting down? — a little thing 
called “computer technology”. Don’t think it will catch on, frankly, though Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is all over that shit like a cheap robot. I digress… one major drawback of this amazing aural effects technology is that it costs money, and as you know, money does not grow on trees around here. No, they don’t call us “Big Green” for the contents of our wallets, my friends. Anyway, we have long since resigned ourselves to using the old ways of recording — time-honored techniques for adding verve and dimension to our records. (For definitions of “verve” and “dimension”, check your local library or record shop.)
It may interest you to know, for instance, that the cavernous reverb on Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” was achieved by planting a speaker at one end of a Manhattan elevator shaft and a microphone at the other, so the story goes. And nearly every recording fanatic has seen photos of the big reverb chambers at Abbey Road studios. Well, okay… so what do 
you suppose we use to get the same effect, eh? Got a great big brick building here. Got one next door. What the fuck — Johnny White said, “Why the hell don’t we just bounce the sound around between ’em?” and I had no good answer for him. So we set it up, but I’ll be god-damned, the echo was just too damn short. What to do? “Well, that’s easy,” said Mitch Macaphee, “make the space between the buildings bigger… only not too much bigger.” Then what we needed was a sky hook with a whole lot of heft — that’s Big Zamboola all over. Only trouble is, his sense of direction is not all that it should be.
Yeah, well — nothing’s as easy as it seems. We may just have a little extra reverb on this record. Listen for it, friends. Maybe we’ll just call it “Generation Reverb”. I’m open to suggestions. Whoops… excuse me. Drop it, Zamby! Drop it now!
Hasta la vista, whatever that means. Let’s see you daaaaance, sucka! No? Okay, how about, put your hands together! All the girls. Now all the guys. Now just the left side of the room. Now the right! Okay, now just the one-armed Methodists with gingivitis. Great, great….
What was the outcome of Mitch’s grand experiment, you ask? The experiment that deprived us of essential personnel during one of the most critical points in the production of our new album? The experiment that necessitated gross extensions of our own menial responsibilities in and around the mill? That experiment??? Well, let me tell you. It was a success… a screaming success… if the intention was to make it rain incessantly for the past week and a half. I’m not at all sure that was the mission when the Zamboola-powered balloon left the ground, but it morphed into that somewhere just above the troposphere. And Marvin, good soldier that he is, refused to leave until the mission was accomplished. No cutting and running for him, my friend. (Also, he had no idea how to land that sucker, so that contributed to his stick-to-it-iveness. )
So now the rain is pouring in, filling up every crack and cranny in this creaky old mill, turning the streets into rivers and the rivers into moving lakes. Yesterday our replica J-2 spacecraft just floated away, its makeshift mast still crammed through the glass globe on the top of its hull. The basement is flooded, and the man-sized tuber has begun to resemble something recently yanked out of a mangrove swamp. (He’s growing knees, like a cypress tree. Very odd.) Trevor James Constable has secured some sort of floatation device for his patented orgone generating machine — god forbid that should ever get waterlogged. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Time itself might become unglued. We could find ourselves running backwards through days, months, years, even decades before that contraption dries out. Want to shed years off your face, figure, physique, etc.? Pray for rain. Beat the drum like war. ‘Nuff said.
Greetings, web crawlers of all descriptions. I’m afraid you’ve caught me once again in the midst of a work-related crisis — trying to adapt to new, cheap equipment here in the bowels of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill where we maintain our makeshift production studio. This time it’s headphones (I keep breaking the bloody things — damnable nuisance!); before that it was mic stands. We had those old, chrome piping jobs and the twisty friction-grip thingy wore out on them (and I apologize for using technical jargon on you). Ever try to sing into a moving microphone? Not recommended. In any case, we found it necessary to visit our local music recycling yard to see if we could find some adequate replacements. Never been to one? Beats the hell out of internet shopping, I can tell you. 
like much to you, but trust me — the incessant running back and forth between the “live” room and the control room can get pretty maddening. Then there are all of the Marvin-esque chores I’ve had to commandeer, like sweeping the beds and making the floors (not sure I’ve got that quite right yet), manning the night watch, bribing the local tax collector (for the privilege of paying our taxes — another story entirely), pretzel-bending, and the like. And now this… this is the final indignity. Marvin has always been our runner, our go-fer, our step-and-fetch-it, our get-it-the-fuck-over-here-or-die, etc. And frankly, I’m not the right person to take over that job. I’ve never been any good at telling myself what to do. (Where to go, yeah, but not what to do.)
has successfully completed his experiment in turning waffles to platinum. That’s right, friends — solid platinum, the metal that used to send Dr. Smith into great greed-soaked reveries. Mitch is truly the master of alchemy. Funny thing is, the device he created that does this miraculous transformation looks like, well, a toaster. You just put the waffles down, wait about a minute, and up pops the precious metal. Fact is, I mistook it for a real toaster a couple of days ago and nearly put my teeth out on a solid bar of platinum. (Platinum’s actually pretty good with a helping of blueberry syrup and a couple of strips of fried cadmium on the side. Mmmmmmm-boy!)