Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Usual Rubbish

Looking back.

Are you sure that happened in 2007? I’m pretty sure it was in 2006, but if you say so, I guess I’m wrong. The years all fold into one another, don’t they? I was just saying that last year, and … well … there you have it,

Oh, hi. Just playing a little game of total recall here with Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Now, of course, he can’t say much aside from a few metallic squeaking sounds, but he can give me tickertape readouts like any good electronic brain from the middle of the last century. We’re trying to recall when our first subterranean tour happened. Hell, I don’t know why I don’t just look at our old blog pages instead of relying on Marvin’s Commodore-era processor. (Except that when I wrote those blog posts back in the day, it was on a computer almost as primitive as him.)

Did we actually do this at some point? 'Fraid so.I suppose more than a few of you have noticed that we don’t do a lot of tours anymore. Maybe the occasional day trip to a distant asteroid once in a blue moon (not to mention the gig we did on that blue moon once), that sort of thing. We have become more sedentary over the passing years, and one glance at those old blog posts confirm it. God knows, back in THOSE days we were sailing off to distant solar systems at the drop of a hat, teaming up with extraterrestrial guitarists (like sFshzenKlyrn of the planet Zenon, a real shredder), braving all manner of threat and hostile conditions. Heady times indeed!

Well, that was then. Now we hang around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, wandering our way into our makeshift studio a few times a week to record songs or podcasts or what have you. Some would say we have given up. Others would say we’re a bunch of useless assholes who don’t deserve the time of day. Still others might argue that our dietary preferences are an abomination and run counter to the laws of god and man. Who am I to say that any of them are wrong? Busted!

We’re about looking forward, not backward. That’s the only way I can keep myself from walking into walls. I’m a practical man, some might say.

Usual Rubbish

New year, old gear.

Damn it. What the hell is up with this amp, Mitch? It’s ticking like a bomb. You didn’t, um … turn my amp into a bomb, did you? Did you?

Och, the challenges we face! And this hammer mill in the Winter, full as cold as a north wind blowing across Loch Lomond.  What the … look at me! I’ve got foreign accent syndrome, the Scottish variety. How the hell did that happen? Where’s the justice, damn it? And I don’t mean the town justice. I know right where that dude is. Now … where was I … ?

Oh, right. Let me say up front – and this won’t be surprising to longtime followers of Big Green – that this band has always been technologically challenged. Back in the day (1980s and ’90s) it was because we had no money. Our PA was held together with duct tape. We used so much of the stuff that there was none left to plug the holes in our duct work. Pretty soon we had to start calling it gaffer tape so that the ducts wouldn’t feel left out. But then the gaffers started to complain. For chrissake, we didn’t even have any gaffers, and there they were, complaining about the freaking tape!

Blessed warmth.Fast forward to the 2000s. As many will remember, we were living in a five room lean-to in Sri Lanka back in those days. We had scratched together enough filthy lucre to buy some recording equipment, which we used to record our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, now a classic of the genre (the genre being poor-selling albums). But still, our technological infrastructure was lacking. I remember us clustered around a single mic, warming our hands over a moth-eaten tube head, and fashioning CD packages out of bits of cardboard. Working our fingers to the bone!

So yes … in comparison to those difficult days, our current challenges seem light indeed. Nonetheless, it’s hard to make music in the modern era with 20th century instrumentation. Sure, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can sit in on a couple of instruments from time to time, but it’s hard to think of him as true automation. And without automation, you need many iterations of each take. That’s why our recording process is so damn slow …. we do it nice because we do it twice. Even thrice. Or fice.

Then there’s the exploding amps. That slows things down a bit, too.

Usual Rubbish

Secret Satan. (I mean, Santa.)

Hmmm, let me see. Nicely wrapped. Let’s see what’s inside. Okay … huh. An empty bubble pack that used to contain a ballpoint pen. Nice. So …. who amongst you could have known that that’s something I’ve always wanted?

Oh, hi, everyone. Yeah, it’s that time of year again, and Big Green is celebrating the holidays in the usual way. We put on a bunch of cheesy records. We make a little extra rice and mustard greens. And then there’s the Secret Santa exchange of gifts, which we do in the traditional way … one gift at a time, and the recipient tries to guess who the giver is. How exciting. Someone bring me my sodium bicarbonate. This could be a long night!

That’s not to say that the holidays are any less problematic in our makeshift home than they are in everyone else’s. There’s a lot to look out for here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – a lot going on beneath that cool, clammy exterior.  For instance, if you’re stringing the lights on the parapet, watch the icicle lamp string …. it’s got a short in it. And we try not to put a tree out in the courtyard, because the mansized tuber tends to get attached to it. (No, I mean literally attached. Those roots are always growing.)

No clues!But really the greatest danger is having Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, pick your name out of the hat for Secret Santa. Christmas is his time to offload all of the failed experiments from the past year, and there are usually quite a few of them. You may end up unwrapping a package that contains a beaker of radioactive sludge or something that’s ticking like a bomb. (“Hey, Mack …” you’d say in your 1940s New York accent, “What the heck is this thing? It’s ticking like a bomb!”)

I don’t like to mention this in mixed company, but the fact is that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was a Secret Santa gift from Mitch. He was trying to build some form of pleasure vehicle, but something went badly wrong, so he put a makeshift head on it and called it “Marvin”. Don’t ask me how he got Marvin into that flat box. It’s a bit like the Casper Mattress package – open it up and FLOP! Out comes Marvin.

Well, if I don’t see you, have a great Christmas, tremendous holiday break, whatever floats your boat.