Tag Archives: albums

Old Stock.

2000 Years to Christmas

You’ve forgotten it again? Damn it, man! I hope you realize what this means. No, I mean, I really hope so … because I haven’t any idea what this means. Not a rhetorical question at all.

Oh, hey, everybody. I may be the only upstate New Yorker who says “hey” when he means “hi”. Or possibly not. In any case, hope all is well with you out there, beyond the walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. The colder months are coming on up here in the great north country, and we’re still looking for things to burn for warmth. We ran out of old hammer handles years ago. Then went the stair railings. Next, we pulled up the Rochester floors in the old executive offices, just above the shop, and tossed them into the fireplace. Fuel got kind of scarce after that – I personally think it was a mistake to burn the fireplace mantel in the fireplace. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Last week we were giving capitalism just one more try. Well, it didn’t work out, my friends. In a world that demands success, all we can offer is failure. But we’re offering it on splendid terms – no money down. In fact, buy now and you pay nothing for six full weeks! Oops. Forgot myself. Yeah, we don’t have a lot of new products to offer the world, just some old stock in the form of about 800 copies of our first album, 250 copies of our second album, and maybe 20 copies of our third. (It’s like we learned something as we went along.) I’m sitting on them now as I write this, and let me tell you … they make lousy furniture.

Chuck another log in there. Or something.

Hey … we’ll get through. We always do. Last year, when things got tight, we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to find a day job. He didn’t have a lot of experience, but he has that kind of honest, open face that people tend to trust, and somebody offered him an entry level position at a hot dog stand. Location? Wherever he pushed it. Three steps down from a food truck – maybe four – but food service none the less. I suppose if we find ourselves in a bind again this year, I can toss a chef’s hat on his brass noggin and see if he can’t get a job as a line cook in some space-themed eatery that doesn’t exist. (This IS upstate New York, for crying out loud.)

What’s that, Marvin? No. No, we can’t burn our CDs. The reason is simple – they’re more toxic when they’re on fire than when they’re being played on your stereo. Now, where’s that chef’s hat?

Time off.

2000 Years to Christmas

Hey … did I mention we had a special going? I did? Okay. Well … I won’t mention it again. Just pretend I didn’t say anything. Right, then …. night night.

Oh, hi. Just got off the phone with our manager. Yes, that’s right. It may surprise some of you to know that Big Green has management. Sure, it doesn’t look like we do from the outside. This band has always had a certain quality of randomness to it …. or perhaps an uncertain quality of randomness. Now, I’m not suggesting that that’s some kind of clever management ploy meant to drive buzz and idle speculation about the band …. what will they do next? Nah. It’s more that we simply have the worst management in the history of the music business, hands down.

Now, I don’t mean to sound overly critical. It’s just that we haven’t had a gig in the United States – yay, on the planet Earth, even – in more than 25 years. Our records go nowhere, unless it’s by accident (like our song Volcano Man, which is benefiting from a prolonged case of mistaken identity.). No hits. Not even any misses. Our three albums have performed as what used to be called “drugs on the market”, wanting for promotional investment in addition to being, well, strange. This is the kind of management that can be really discouraging, you know? Then there was the time he told us to wear matching orange Chuck Taylor high tops. God, those things looked stupid … especially on Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who doesn’t even have feet.

Big Green has always had this kind of problem with management, labels (like Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc.), hangers-on, that sort of thing. Back when we were kids, we had management for a brief time that booked us around the Albany, NY area. Our equipment was trash. I had a broken down Fender Rhodes piano, our PA was from hell – mixed components patched together in a haphazard fashion; a 100-watt QSC amp powering two Cerwin Vega cabinets … and belching smoke while it did it. We also had two Shure tower speakers, which were hands down the worst PA invention since the megaphone Rudy Vallee used to sing through. One time they booked us and another band to play alternate sets, except they had an actual PA system, pumping out a wall of sound while we were soldering patch cords on stage. It was like Loverboy vs. junior high electronics shop class.

So, yeah …. in retrospect, I guess our current management isn’t that bad. I’d rather take all this forced time off than play dozens more of those really lame gigs we used to play, back in the day.