Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Usual Rubbish

Latchkey musicians.

I thought the light was on your side of the stable. Jesus … just reach over and click it on, will you? What? No electricity? I paid the light bill, damn it. Oh … I see. No wiring in the barn. Got it.

Well, friends, you know what they say – if you’re planning on spending years in a squathouse, it’s a good idea to spend the night there before you sign the paperwork. (Yes, even squathouses require paperwork. Look it up.) That’s what we elected to do, since our nasty third-floor neighbors in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill started driving us out of our longtime squat with their loathsome habits and noisy weekending. It’s not easy to contemplate giving up the home you’ve known for nigh onto twenty years. But if nothing else, we of Big Green are practical. That’s why we only tour venues that are deep in interstellar space – it keeps the competition down.

Anyway, we got a tip on an old horse barn a couple of minutes from the hammer mill; apparently no one has used the building for a decade or more. We trooped over there, on foot, and bunked down for the night. Now, when I say “bunked”, I don’t mean to suggest that there were actual bunks in this place. It was kind of like a stationary hay ride … not that I’ve ever been on a hay ride, but I’m guessing it’s a slightly more kinetic version of what we experienced last night. Am I making myself clear?

Is it morning yet? Mother of pearl ...

Then, about 5 a.m., some dude came in and mistook Marvin (my personal robot assistant) for some kind of agricultural implement. I think he was digging post holes or something else kind of farmer-y. That’s when we pulled up stakes.

Okay, so the red barn isn’t going to work out. It was worth a go. We’ll just tough it out on the ground floor and basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill for the time being, checking the classifieds and the local Pennysaver for affordable rentals, then X-ing them out because we can’t afford rent. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, is working on some kind of force field to throw up between us and our feisty neighbors upstairs. (I told him there’s at least two floors between us and them already, but hey … he needs something to do.)

Usual Rubbish

House hunting.

No, man – that’s just not acceptable. We have a budget, remember? A very tight budget. We just can’t afford something that ostentatious. Perhaps a step or two down from that, like … like maybe a pole barn. Or a shed.

Oh, hi. Yeah, you’ve caught us in the midst of the sort of dilemma all bands face at some point in their careers – finding another place to live because the squat-house you’ve been occupying for twenty years has been taken over by ne’er-do-wells. Don’t you just HATE when that happens? It’s kind of what we went through back in the late nineties, when we were evicted from our beloved lean-to in Sri Lanka. Oh, the memories. Sad was the day when that thing collapsed. (As a famous cartoonist once put it, it leaned fro. Or perhaps closer to the mark, it leaned-too much.)

So, once again, we are in search of lodgings. Our upstairs neighbors are simply insufferable. And honestly – we’re not super picky people. We didn’t get our hair in knots over the odd explosion here and there, or the noisy parties, or the constant arrivals and departures at all hours. Then there were the inhuman things they did to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), dressing him up like a farm hand and dropping him out in the courtyard with a pitchfork in his claw. But the final straw was the music, oh the music! They have some kind of song service, and they dialed in the eighties this past week. Seriously, eighties pop radio wafting down from the third floor. I feel like I’m back in my Albany apartment circa 1982, listening to my neighbors cranking out Loverboy crap at two in the morning.

Nah. Waaay too tony for us.

Have we confronted them? Of course. And as you know, I have extensive training in conflict de-escalation, so I was among the first to ascend the stairs to the third floor and politely request a conference with the new occupants. A little later on, as the urgent care nurse was wrapping gauze around my battered forehead, it occurred to me that our approach to this problem may be a little off.  Maybe we’ve been here too long, I thought, rubbing my chin and wincing in pain. Hence the house-hunting project.

We’ve gone through the local squathouse listings, worked our way through mills and barns, and now we’re down to shacks, sheds, huts, and … well … brickyards. Yeah, I know – pretty meager, but ANYTHING’s better than listening to “Turn Me Loose” one more freaking time.

Usual Rubbish

One man’s ceiling.

Oh, Jesus … not again. If you don’t quiet down, I’m going to call the police! What? Of course they’ll come. The cops don’t hold a grudge. And besides, I doubt they even remember that little note l left on their cruiser last year. It was a joke, for chrissake.

Ah, hello out there. Back to domestic bliss here in the formerly abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I say “formerly” because in our absence during our Ned Trek Live Springtime Tour Extravaganza 2019, not only did snapping turtles move into our basement studio, but some even more combative creatures took up residence on the third floor of the mill. I send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) upstairs to find out what the commotion was all about, and he came back with an upside-down pitcher on his head. We then sent him back up there with a bundt cake Anti-Lincoln’s aunt Mildred made, but they weren’t having it. They threw our peace offering into the courtyard! (It made a crater on impact. Auntie Mildred should have shelled those walnuts.)

Okay, now … let’s just try to keep our heads, shall we? After all, we don’t own this mill. We just squat here, and frankly it’s selfish of us to think that we can have this place all to ourselves. Still, those folks are noisy as hell. They party on until the wee hours of the morning, pulling together drum circles and howling at the moon. At one point we though we could out-gun them with our PA equipment, but that was a joke – our main speakers are about 40 years old and sound like freaking kazoos. And those people don’t seem to mind the sound of kazoos. In fact, they might enjoy Matt’s early composition, the theme from Destination Space, played by an orchestra of kazoos (all tracked by Matt himself). Then again … perhaps not. So let’s find it and crank it up to eleven! THIS IS WAR!

Better have another word with them, Marvin.

Damn. I lost my head in the span of a single paragraph. These are trying times indeed, my friends. On days such as this I rely on the sage counsel of Antimatter Lincoln, a man  who has seen his share of hardship and sorrow, who has navigated the treacherous shoals of total warfare, who held onto his vision for a better world through the worst of times. Well … I mean, his doppleganger did, anyway. Anti-Lincoln did the opposite of all that stuff; he basically watched the Twilight Zone and ate TV dinners for a living before he met us. (That’s when he moved on to beef jerky.)

Arrrgh. There they go again! Where are my headphones?