Tag Archives: Anti-Lincoln

Usual Rubbish

Flutter and wow.

Are two wells better than one? Depends on how thirsty you are. Oh … you’re talking about CASSETTE recorders. Right, well … I have no position on that. No, wait … play one tape at a time, that’s my position. The Joe has spoken!

Caught me in the middle of a little philosophical discussion with one of Big Green’s longest standing advisors, Antimatter Lincoln (or Anti-Lincoln, for short). Why he’s been standing so long, I don’t know. I think it’s because when he was a kid he saw the audio animatronic Lincoln try to sit down and fall on his robot ass. (The other presidents assembled on stage nodded approvingly as the techs carried Abe away.) In any case, we’re hashing over the fine points of obsolete technologies, particularly in the audio sphere. (Hey … there’s a band name for you. Audiosphere. No? Okay, then.)

My little summertime project is well underway. As I mentioned some time back, I have set myself to building a digital archive of most if not all of our recordings of original songs dating back to the days of the dinosaurs. (Or the days of Dinah Shore … whichever comes first.) Anyhow, I am pulling old recordings from our pile of audio cassettes, and it’s kind of strange. They range in audio quality from something approaching early wire recordings to cheap basement demos, with a few standouts that have some production values. Taken as a whole, it’s a musical taxonomy of the thing called Big Green, which was born the day Matt recorded “Sweet Treason” back in 1984 and has slouched sightlessly toward the horizon ever since.

I THINK it goes a little something like this ...There were songs before Big Green, of course, and I’ve been digging through those as well. Matt started recording pretty much as soon as he could tell one end of a guitar from the other. Both he and I were always fascinated by tape recorders and other gear. We had a shrimpy little portable monaural reel-to-reel machine when we were kids, about the size of a steno pad, which we would use to record hastily contrived audio plays, jokes, and other bullshit. Matt recorded his first songs on an old SONY stereo reel-to-reel that kind of half worked. I remember working out a method for overdubbing, using a digital delay – you could arm one of the two channels for recording, run the playback of the other channel through the delay, and it would line up pretty closely. Then came the four-track cassette portastudio.

What will the final product of this be? Hell knows. I picture this big online jukebox where you can play any Big Green song you like. It’s got flashing lights and an ashtray. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Usual Rubbish

Thumbs sideways.

Hello, this is central control. Central control to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Do you copy, Marvin? Of course not. Who on Earth would copy Marvin?

Well, I seem to have the mill to myself today. The place is as quiet as a grave, albeit a very drafty one. Dank, too … or maybe the word is acrid. Musty … that’s what I’m looking for. Anyway, everyone seems to have taken the week off. I hear it’s spring break week for the kiddies at all the local schools, so maybe my various associates all have secret lives involving school age children and tickets to Disney World. Can’t say for certain – Anti Lincoln has been looking a little extra suburban just lately.

For my own part, I have filled my time with something very unproductive – watching TV. I binge watched all ten episodes of the new Lost In Space reboot, and I think I’m ready for some kind of high tech media purge. Since I have no self-control and even less in the way of formal responsibilities, I will take this opportunity to render a brief review for your edification. Ahem … it doesn’t entirely blow, but there are aspects of it that do. Fun to watch, but it has some issues that are not unlike the original, super-campy TV show. Let me ‘splain. First I’ll put my T.V. critic hat on. You know, the one that makes you mean and nasty.

Was it THAT bad, really?First off, the basic premise of the Lost In Space reboot is, if anything, weaker than the original. They land on the planet Colorado, it appears. Mind you, they have reconfigured some of the plot devices used in the original, so the alien world has an eccentric elliptical orbit that brings it waaaaay too close to a black hole (in the original, it was the planet’s sun) causing everything to burn to a crisp. They aren’t clear on what the annual cycle is, but I assume it’s short since they seem to be heading for the hot spot of the orbit. So … they’re saying that everything on the planet dies and is reborn, but we’re seeing massive, mature stands of forest, complex animal life, including apex predators … what the hell? A random scientist on the show tells us the trees have only one ring. They’re eighty feet tall! Ridiculous.

Then there’s that robot. For chrissake, they could have just rented Marvin from me for a few weeks. We could have used the revenue, frankly. And instead of re-orchestrating the original third-season heavy-on-the-french-horns theme song, we would have been glad to provide them with suitable space music. Not a problem, producers … all you got to do is call.

Bottom line: it’s kind of meh, but watchable. Well, is that the time? Thanks for taking that detour with me. Tune in next week – I’ll be reviewing Father Ted.

Usual Rubbish

Theme park.

That’s it, Lincoln. I’m tired of your get-rich-quick schemes. They always end up with trouble. Like that “Civil War” idea you had once. How did THAT turn out?

Damn, I’ll tell you … sometimes I feel like a walking suggestion box. Every time I turn a corner in this cavernous abandoned hammer mill, someone starts pitching ideas to me about what we can do to generate income, filthy lucre, serious bank. Capitalists! All they ever think about is their money. What about MY money? When the hell is someone going to build an economic theory around THAT? If I hear one more hare-brained scheme about starting a theme park based on the history of hammer manufacturing in North America, I’m going to move to another kind of abandoned mill entirely.

That said, this place really would lend itself to being a kind of theme park. They could do a kind of Gaslight Village or something equally fourth-rate – the vintage is about right, construction wise. Or it could be a life-scale model of an early 20th Century factory town, with plastic manikins and some kind of conveyor belt ride that drops you into a vat of molten nickel. (And it would only cost a nickel!) They could have a whole separate section in the courtyard called “Strike Land” where you can walk in circles holding signs that say, “Day’s Work For A Day’s Pay” and “Enough is Enough”. Then half-trained actors dressed as Pinkertons file in and beat the crap out of you. Hey … it’s educational!

Well, maybe NOT like gaslight village.Of course, why should we limit ourselves to the most obvious options? Hell, you could do anything in this barn. Just hang a sign over the front door that reads “Lost in Space Land” and you’ve got a theme park fit for the Robinson Family. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) could take tickets at the door, and Anti-Lincoln could pose as Professor John Robinson, so long as people aren’t expecting the stubble-bearded military dude in the current reboot. So what if John looks like Lincoln? He was modeled on Kennedy … isn’t that close enough?

There I go. Will you just look at me? I’m doing the very thing I admonished my colleagues not to do. I guess now THEY’LL have to find another kind of mill.