Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Hey, dis guy ain’t got all his buttons, mack

September 16, 2022 Joseph

What’s in that box? I’ll tell you what’s in that box. There’s nothing in the damn box, man. But that box over there, the one with the torn flaps, that’s got some gig posters in it. From 1987. A little late on those.

Hey, there, Big Green fans! Just catching us in the middle of Spring cleaning. Now, I know what you’re going to say. “Joe”, you’ll say, “this isn’t Spring, it’s late summer, nigh unto fall, you idiot.” And then you’ll flip me off and storm out of the room in search of cleverer bands. But before you’re out of earshot, I’ll just remind you that we’re late with everything we do. We don’t eat breakfast til lunch time, no lunch til dinner time, and so on. The more you know!

Damaged collateral

Back to cleaning. Man, you wouldn’t believe how many recondite corners there are in this stupid barn of a hammer mill. Somehow that moving company we hired to carry our stuff from our lean-to in Sri Lanka to here managed to squirrel something away in every alcove. It’s almost like they DIDN’T want us to find anything. But here we are, after only about twenty years, digging it all up and sifting through it like panhandlers. Who says we’re slow on the draw?

Anyhow, you wouldn’t believe the shit we’re finding! Old gig calendars. Stacks of flyers for college bulletin boards and the like. Every guitar string Matt ever broke and then some. Various decorative items and abandoned set lists. (No, we’re not hoarders … we just, you know … keep stuff.) In other words, a bunch of useless junk. Would you believe it? Perhaps you would. In which case, my earlier declaration would be inaccurate. It’s hard to know who you can trust nowadays.

Pin it on, the jam

In many ways, our junk production outstripped our music production from the very beginning. Those were the days before the internets, my friends. Televisions were mostly analog. Phones were something attached to the wall or plugged into an outlet. People read odd, inky things called “newspapers”. Personal robot assistants were made of pots and pans and leftover appliance parts. (Okay, THAT part hasn’t changed so much.) When you had to get the word out on something in those days, you had to do it old school.

Oddly enough, even during a time when we couldn’t hang on to a drummer for more than a few weeks, we had a machine that made campaign buttons. Sure, there was no way we could hold down a gig, but we were always able to distribute pin-on buttons with our logo on them. Talk about the cart before the horse! No surprise, then, that in the midst of our Fall cleaning, we came across a cache of Big Green buttons. I’m guessing we spent a couple of days stamping those suckers out on that button press back in ’87. (No wonder our drummers all walked.)

Get yours today

Hey, there’s a limited supply of these items in the known universe. But if you so, so love Big Green, and you wish you could shake the claw of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), then you deserve one of the few remaining Big Green buttons. Just email us or send a comment via social media and we will fix you up, gratis, while supplies last. Because that’s the kind of band we are …. the kind that’s cleaning the junk out of its squat house.

Usual Rubbish

If you’re built upside-down, walk on the ceiling

September 2, 2022 Joseph

Hmmm. That’s kind of catchy. How about this one? Right …. nothing on the applause meter. Okay, your turn. That’s just goddamned awesome. Now let me try one. Sucks. WHY WAS I BORN?

Oh, hi. Yes, we’re working. As one of those performing rock/pop groups that composes its own material, we, of course, need an editorial process. You just walked in on one of our markup meetings. Here’s how it works: we write out a lyric on a big sheet of white paper, then hang it up on the wall. Everyone gets a chance to cross words out and add words in. We decide with a roll of the dice who goes first. If the winner of the dice roll is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I have to put a bucket on my head. Then Matt is invited to draw a face on the bucket with magic marker. Got all that?

Sausage making 101

I’ve written about our creative process many times on this blog. Think of my posts as helpful tips for songwriting, especially for those who aspire to be as commercially unsuccessful as we’ve been. Now, let me just say right here and now that not everyone is cut out to reach that lofty goal. It takes a certain special something to be this big of a flop. You either got it or you don’t, as the saying goes. And baby, we got it.

How do you write a massively non-commercial song that almost no one will be able to relate to, except perhaps your neighbor’s dog? Well, it’s not as hard as it sounds. You start with subject matter – something real niche-y, like the history of cardboard. We, for example, chose Rick Perry for one of our albums. Now that may seem like a crass attempt at capitalizing on someone else’s fame, drafting behind them as they sail along. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, it’s so far from the truth, it circled the globe and bumped into the truth from the other side.

The ballad of Cousin Rick

Look – if you’re going to be as unpopular as Big Green, you need to pick something to write about that’s even more unpopular. Rick Perry was low hanging fruit in that regard (see Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick). So Matt wrote a boatload of songs about him, and I wrote a handful. That’s our usual ratio. You could say I’m more careful when I write, but that would be a lie. I rely on found words, forced rhymes, and a bottle of tempera paint so that I can squeeze it all over my lyric sheet when I decide it’s garbage. It’s cathartic, trust me – just give it a try.

Thing is, as a band we’re kind of built upside-down. I mean, Big Green started out with the weird songs. You know what I’m talking about – Sweet Treason, The Milkman Lives, Going To Andromeda, all that stuff, then those umpteen million Christmas songs. After that, it was International House weirdness, then Cowboy Scat, and finally, Ned Trek. Now we’ve got a boatload of songs about … wait for it …. interpersonal relationships. You know – the stuff that most bands start with before they go all weird and shit. We’re like freaking Benjamin Button, except that I hate that stupid movie.

Where next?

I don’t know, man …. we’ve got some recording to do. Lots of songs, damn it. There’s certainly at least one album’s worth of unreleased material, and maybe even a box set. That’s right – we could record all the songs, put them in a cardboard box, set the box out into the middle of the road, and hope our fans chance upon it. That’s called “marketing”, kids. Ask your mother.

Usual Rubbish

Welcome to the song recycling center, Campers

August 26, 2022 Joseph

You want to use that one? Really? Which version? Hmmm … okay. That one’s not in the best condition. I think Mitch was using it to prop his closet door open. And then there’s the rising damp. Lots of factors go into this, dude. It’s not so simple.

Like most bands, Big Green has a back catalog. The question is, what to do with all that material, sitting idle, not carrying its own weight. I’ve told our old songs to go out and get a job, but some of them are reaching retirement age, and that’s not an optimal time to start the search. The thing is, we’ve got a boatload of new material coming this way, thanks to the transitive property of Matt Perry, in particular. Yes, I (Joe) have written a handful, but Matt’s output far outstrips mine, and good thing too. ‘Cause I’m a lazy-ass mother. Putting it all on the table here.

Reviving the nineties

So, some who have known Big Green since its inception recall that we had a flurry of activity in the early nineties. We were playing clubs, schools, etc., with a bewildering variety of guitar players. The decade before, we couldn’t hold on to a drummer for love or money. John White took up with us in the late eighties, so problem solved …. except then we didn’t have a guitarist. Then we got one, then lost one, got another, lost another, etc. Let me know when you’ve heard enough. (I know I have.)

Most of the recording we did in the nineties was with Jeremy Shaw, friend of the band, who played a bunch of gigs with us, did some video, and a few audio demos. One of the demos we did was a group of songs we recorded live and later released under the moniker LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. These were performances straight to DAT tape, no overdubs – we did a bunch of takes on maybe five or six songs. You can hear Jeremy really shredding that thing on Special Kind of Blood, Merry Christmas, Jane, and one or two others.

Look over there: something shiny

Okay, so our new material is nowhere near ready for release in any form. Frankly, we’re still in the composing and rehearsing stage. Then comes the de-composing. After that, Marvin (my personal assistant) fashions an album cover out of used ball bearings, and that’s how the sausage is made. But as of now, we’ve got a long way to go. I mean, we’ve got personnel issues to straighten out, we’ve got hinky tech problems, we’ve got rising damp. Our objective – a new album – is either very, very small, or very, very far away. Don’t ask me to solve THAT rubic’s cube.

What do you do when you don’t have anything new to share? Recycle the old stuff, that’s what. We’re chucking some older numbers onto our YouTube channel, so that fans of that platform can listen to our classic selections free of charge, any time that suits their fancy … even if they don’t have a fancy suit to their name. We uploaded 2000 Years To Christmas some time ago, of course. Now we’re working on our EP from the mid 2000s, the afore-mentioned LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. The first two songs are posted on YouTube, with more to come. What do you know about that? Something shiny.

Seasonal effectiveness disorder

Summer’s almost over, and I know I’m not alone in thinking that it’s about damn time. Still, we haven’t accomplished much this season. Not that this summer should be any different from previous ones. Hey, we’ll keep chucking old songs in the air until we get our arms around the new ones. (They ain’t chuckable quite yet.)

BIG GREEN