Tag Archives: Anti-Lincoln

Usual Rubbish

String theory.

2000 Years to Christmas

Hmmm, yeah. We’re getting close to the expiration date on THAT little scam. Hard to sustain that 20th anniversary narrative for more than a year, right? And hell, we missed the International House tenth anniversary. And people are beginning to figure out that our Volcano Man recording is not the famous one from the comedy movie. What’s the next grift, Lincoln? And how do we keep it secret? Thank god almighty Marvin isn’t typing this conversation into the blog … right …. Marvin …. ?

Oh, damn! Uh …. we were just working on the … um … lines for a play we’re writing about corrupt musicians. Fictional corrupt musicians. Pretty convincing, huh? Sure, like most writers, we draw on life experience. I mean, your first play is bound to be a veiled autobiography, right? It’s hard to imagine a band getting by on grift alone. It’s simply not remunerative enough, for one thing. Then before you know it you’re squatting in abandoned buildings, like maybe an old mill somewhere in upstate New York. Fighting the cockroaches for crumbs. One of these days we’re going to win one of those fights, after which we will all dine sumptuously. Or at least anti-Lincoln will – his favorite snack is stray crumbs, which, if you think about it, is the antimatter equivalent of chicken fricassee, the posi-matter Lincoln’s favorite snack. It all adds up, doesn’t it?

Okay, well … you’ve got us dead to rights. Whatever we may be as musicians and songwriters, we are utter failures at making money in any legitimate way. The closest thing we’ve come to steady day-labor was probably that two or three weeks when we rented the man-sized tuber out as an ornamental plant for a local bank lobby. (We convinced them he was a ficus. They may know all about money over there, but they’re no ornamental plant experts.) Then there was that brief period when we lent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to the Police Department as a traffic direction automaton, though that was only useful when the town had blackouts. (Marvin’s inventor Mitch Macaphee went so far as to contrive a couple of power failures just to increase demand on his robot creation.)

Nice work, tubey ... I mean, ficus!

These revenue streams have dried up, unfortunately. Man-sized tuber and Marvin are practically in open revolt. Who can blame them, right? It’s not like we take it upon ourselves to rent our aging bodies out as manikins, substandard as they might be. We can scrape just about enough money together each month to buy guitar strings. God help us if we ever need bass or piano strings! Once in a while we get a residuals check from interstellar MP3 sales, but it’s not enough to keep the lights on. What’s the solution? Another …. interstellar …. tour? No, that would be madness! After that last disaster a couple of years ago? Forget it! I’m not piling into another one of those slapped together space barges so that I can be piloted by a madman to some remote asteroid venue where there’s nothing to breathe but radioactive methane. That’s final.

Okay, Marvin – stop typing. Now …. when do we ship out for Aldebaran?

Usual Rubbish

Foot stomping.

2000 Years to Christmas

Start with a one, and a two, and a three, and a … ouch! Damn it, man … I can’t do this in slippers. I need my stomping shoes!

Oh, hi. Yeah, it’s us again, making music again, or dying in the attempt. One thing you can say about this crazy rock music kick, if it ever catches on, is that it’s all about the rhythm section. It’s pretty simple once you get started. And after you learn how to spell “rhythm”, you’ve taken the first step to glory. Then all you need is a sense of timing and some good stomping shoes … and a decent drummer. And of course a bass player. Yes, yes … and rhythm guitar. Oh, yeah … piano. How could I forget that one? Well … maybe it isn’t all that simple after all. But it is contagious, my friends. Mucho contagious.

Listen to me rambling like an idiot. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, or just bad air. Maybe some of that west coast forest fire ash is making its way back east. Whatever. Our project this week is an attempt to find the rhythmic core of every song we do. First, we get someone to strum the chords on a guitar. That might be Marvin (my personal robot assistant), except that he can’t even hold a guitar unless it’s in a zero gravity environment, like the deck of the Jupiter Two. So maybe anti-Lincoln …. or my brother Matt, who can actually play a guitar. (No, that’s too easy.) Then we pull out the rhythm arranger. Now I know you’re probably picturing a computer workstation of some kind with a pad controller midi-ed into it. Well, dream on, my friends. Our rhythm arranger is a bunch of pots and pans arrayed in a circle, and the rest of us beating on them with wooden spoons. (It’s just about getting the flavor, right? Then we bring in the drummer.)

Strum that thing, Marvin.

Is this a fools errand? More than likely. But what other kind of errand are we likely to run … I mean, aside from sending Mitch Macaphee, the world’s third greatest mad scientist, down to the corner store to buy some batteries? You musicians out there know how this works. You just try a bunch of different things, different combinations of instruments and patterns, until something starts to gel. You don’t know how it happens, but it always does. Of course, you have to stir the mix properly, and make certain the water is hot enough, then refrigerate three hours before serving. But enough about Mr. Wiggle. I’m sure you’re just dying to know more about our creative process. Well, I’ll tell you, my friend …. so are we. That’s why we’re sitting around our makeshift living room in an abandoned hammer mill, banging on pots and pans. It’s a conjuring trick.

Next week: how to make Jello. Again.

Usual Rubbish

Hangups.

2000 Years to Christmas

Never mind, Lincoln, I’ll get it. Hello? Yes, this is the Cheney Hammer Mill. Who is this? Hello? HELLO? IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Actually, that’s probably not true. I just like to get the pot boiling a little bit before I start typing in earnest. Yes, like so many of you, we at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill get an unending stream of fundraising and advertising scam calls, each and every day. I’ll tell you, it’s hard to get about the work of an unemployed pop band if you’re getting interrupted every twenty-five minutes by a furiously ringing telephone. There are things that Big Green must not do to remain Big Green – these telemarketers are trying to take that away from us, and I won’t have it, do you understand?

I know what some of you are thinking right now. “Joe,” you’re thinking (and by the way, thank you for calling me by my given name) “Why don’t you just get an answering machine?” Good question, nameless interloper. The fact is, we already have an answering machine …. it’s called Marvin (my personal robot assistant). We just place the handset on his left shoulder and punch a few buttons, and our callers will be greeted by a tinny, stilted voice that sounds like an audio ransom note – words cut from different magazine articles and pasted together. Marvin then records their comments and plays them back to us while standing on one wheel. Sure, he squeaks and rusts more than your typical telephone answering machine, but hell … he’s here and willing to do the work, right?

Wrong number again? What a bunch of freaks.

Okay, so … now you’re thinking, “But, wait a minute, Joe. How come you guys have so much time on your hands that you can spend a pile of it worrying about stupid shit like this?” That’s an even better question, which is a short hand way of saying that I have no idea. The simple fact is, we can’t play in public spaces, we don’t have broadband so we can’t play remotely, and we’re in the midst of our Summer music production doldrums, which is to say that none of us feels like doing anything other than sleeping through September. But then every time I try to get a few extra winks, that phone starts ringing again. So, it turns out that your implied statement above is absolutely correct – we have done fuck-all this summer, and we’re getting antsy.

Somewhere, a phone was ringing. Sounds like a bad novel from the 70s.