Tag Archives: CD

Usual Rubbish

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?

Usual Rubbish

One score years ago.

Well, it’s, I don’t know, the album’s China anniversary. That makes it sound like we’re traveling to Beijing. Not that I wouldn’t, if luncheon is provided … but I must be fed, or I remain at home.

Yes, who can believe it, folks … it’s been 20 years since the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, or at least I think it is. Totally makes sense, in a way. After all, twenty years ago was the year two thousand, so that’s when we would have done it, pursuant to our obsession with accuracy. Hah! As if! We dropped the album at some weird ass time to accommodate the disc production schedule. They were taking their time about whittling those CDs. I know it’s painstaking work, but really …. six weeks? Outrageous.

Well, our Indonesian sweat shop finally churned out the product, weeks after Christmas. Picture rows and rows of workers, chipping away at blocks of plastic, knocking off everything that doesn’t look like a CD, then hand-painting each one with a degree of consistency no man would think possible. Work like that takes time. That’s why we don’t release a lot of albums here in Big Green land. There simply aren’t enough man-hours in the day to produce albums the old-fashioned way …  the way we did it back in 1999.

Damn. Sure doesn't look twenty.

That’s actually when this blog started, as some of you may recall. I began doing posts so that people who went to the URL on our album would find something when they got there. We also posted the album on mp3.com, which was a thing back then. There was a whole separate digital release on that platform, simultaneous with the release we did through The Orchard, which included all of the popular ecommerce sites at that time. Needless to say, it was a million seller. (I have a million in my cellar … ba-dum crash!) 2000 Years To Christmas remains the only album we ever made that actually got reviewed. We’re working hard to stay at that impressive level of obscurity. (Hey … it doesn’t happen all by itself.)

So … happy birthday, 2KY2C! You’re almost old enough to drink in New York State.

Usual Rubbish

Problem child.

Okay, blow out the candles. Try harder. Nope, nothing. Try again. What the hell … you’d think at your age you would have this worked out by now. Silly kid.

Right, so before you call child protective services, let me reassure you that we, of Big Green, are all biologically childless. The line stops here! And it’s just as well. No, sir … I was just in the midst of celebrating the nineteenth birthday of our first commercial release (a.k.a. album), 2000 Years to Christmas, which was released …. I don’t know … sometime after Christmas in 1999. Nice timing, right? Typical.  Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and I’m glad to say it’s pretty small in the rear view mirror at this point.

So, 2000 Years To Christmas was our biggest seller. That’s not saying much. Of course, it was released relatively early in the era of online retail, and over the course of the succeeding decades it has wormed its way into any number of places online. A simple Google search on the title will show you what I mean. (Take a look at the image tab on that search if you want a cheap laugh.) It kind of has a life of is own, which is strange because we gave it life almost twenty years ago. It’s in those rebellious years, when your child tries to distance her/himself from you as much as possible. 2000 Year To Christmas never goes shopping with us anymore, and when it’s out with its friends and sees us on the street, it looks away.

They grow up so fast.We’re actually planning kind of a special party for its twentieth next year. Don’t tell it we said so – we’d like it to be a surprise. I was thinking maybe a nice new CD player, or one of those disc stands that holds maybe 200 albums. Hell, we could fill four of those with unsold copies of that thing. (Psst … don’t tell 2000 Years To Christmas that we said that, either.) In fact, forget we even had this conversation. Who are you again?

Right, well … maybe I’m being a little cautious. Nineteen is such an awkward age, and 2000 Years To Christmas still doesn’t know what it wants to do with its life.  Maybe trade school will be the thing. Maybe, I don’t know … maybe next year.