Hmmmm. Play that one back again. Yep, yep. Yep. Uh…. nope. Can’t hear it. Try it again. Try tweaking up the fenstenmacher towards the end, there. Okay, okay…
Oh, hi. (No, not Ojai, California. “Oh…. hi….”) Forgive me for not responding to your presence sooner. I was deep in post-production land, here in the bowels of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill wherein we have made our home (albeit somewhat tentatively). Yes, we are putting those last few finishing touches on Big Green’s long-awaited sophomore album – truly a labor of love, my friends. (Yes, love… and great hatred. We’ve been toiling on this sucker for almost five years, and I for one can hardly wait to set it loose into the wild.) A subtle and arcane process it is, for sure. What… you’ve never looked in on a Big Green post production session? My god, man… look in, then, look in. Let me be your guide, your interpreter, your local connection, your book-keeper, your rent-a-juggler, your basketball inflator, your….
Okay, I’ve wandered a bit. Sorry. Grueling work, this post production business, especially when you have to do it 
in a drafty old mill like this, flanked by a needy man-sized tuber, a couple of cranky Lincolns, a wayward planetoid without a solar system, and a lunatic robot. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) still has his issues, but we’ve pretty much decided to give him his space. (No more banjos in the blender, though. It makes the smoothies taste weird.) After all, this old barn of a place is plenty big enough for a person (or a robot) to go as mad as he/she likes, just so long as he/she doesn’t hurt anybody, or him/herself. Got that, kids? And remember – be free. Okay, everybody got a paddle ball? Good. Start paddling on three… one … two … THREE! Good, Jimmy! That’s the ticket. VERY good!
Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yeah. There’s another distraction, kind of related to the Marvin crazy-man thing. As you may remember from a couple of weeks ago (go back and check, I don’t know for sure), Marvin took it into his little 
tin head to sign over our squatting rights (such as they are) to the kind and generous folks at our current corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records. As Matt was quick to point out (with a flaming poker, no less), this transaction may tend to give our paymasters a little more leverage over us than some might consider either fair or appropriate. Not that they would necessarily press their advantage, but… necessity has very little to do with it. And just yesterday, in the middle of a mastering session, the playback was drowned out by the sound of a band saw. No, it wasn’t a last-minute avant garde solo thrown into the middle of Do It (Every Time). It was a bunch of workmen hired by Loathsome Prick to rip a new entrance in the courtyard wall. Which just happens to be one of the walls enclosing our makeshift studio. Which just happens to be where I’m standing right now.
So, I don’t know…. what would YOU do if your record label sawed a great big hole in YOUR mastering session? Would you stomp around and curse their bones? Would you pick up a paddle ball? Drop us a line and let us know. (And if any of you know what a Fenstenmacher is, add that to your little message.)
of the sun that is an exact mirror image of the Earth, except that everyone eats corn on the cob up-and-down instead of side-to-side (apologies to Father Sarducci). On one side, a field of mostly white guys has narrowed to a woman and a brother; on the other, a 71-year-old “maverick” is winning out against religious and social conservatives. It took eight years of Dubya/Cheney to make this field look good to two historically cautious institutional parties. The Democrats haven’t even half-seriously advanced an African-American or female candidate for national office since 1984-88 – now it’s as if they figure, what the hell? And not choosing someone broadly approved by the Christian right is a very different kettle of fish for the G.O.P. Amazing. And yet, from a policy standpoint, we’re not looking at any radical departures here. The general election will be a clash of two orthodoxies – a choice between basically what we have now and a slightly more managed version of empire, with the winner building his/her administration from that same pool of a few hundred players they always draw on.
Then there’s Huckabee, Steven Colbert’s friend and invention (perhaps the candidate’s best attribute, aside from a television-friendly persona). Now he’s probably the friendliest guy who ever threatened to force millions of women to carry their pregnancies to term against their will. But hell, I’m sure if you met enough members of them, you’d find at least one Taliban who seemed likeable. I think the thing that gets me the most about Huck is not so much that he, for instance, doesn’t believe in evolution, but that he tends to adopt hare-brained policy positions like the national sales tax (known by its proponents as the “Fair Tax”). Aside from being massively regressive and favorable to the very wealthy, the “Fair Tax” promoters actually mask its true impact by claiming it’s a 23% tax (!!) when it’s actually more like a 30% tax (!!!!). (They do that by including the tax amount in the total – so for every dollar you spend, you add 30 cents… but that 30 cents is just 23% of the total $1.30 you just spent. Pretty tricky, huh?) But Huck has adopted it, so that must mean God wills it to be. Maybe they should just call it the “Jesus Tax”.
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. Om naman shavaya. Ooooommmm…. OooooHooommmm… ahem! ahem! gack!
Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has persisted in the bizarre practices I described in last week’s entry (if you missed it, scroll down and you’ll see why I’m so discomfited). And as if that isn’t bad enough, he’s added a few more strange things to his repertory – stuff like, well, bouncing around on his head while reciting the acknowledgments page in his owner’s manual. Like putting a tambourine in the blender and drawing question marks on the outside with axle grease from the local garage. I could go on, but I’ll spare you. (You might start meditating, as well… and we can’t have that.) 
Buenos Aires to come out here and straighten his creation out. This is not good. We’re in the closing phase – yes, friends, the closing phase – of production on our new album. Just today, Matt and I were editing a piece of some ambient sound we recorded on Cancri 55 into one of the songs on the new album – a little number called “Volcano Man”. (There’s this strange interlude about halfway through – you’ll hear it.) Yes, we’re sprinting to the finish line like overheated sloths… but this mad Marvin business is seriously getting in our way. No, seriously…. if he doesn’t get a grip, we may have to pull his power supply. Yes. Oh, yes.