Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Usual Rubbish

Hanky land.

What the fuck, was that a week just then? I know I’ve said this before, but time seems to be speeding up. I should ask Mitch Macaphee if the Earth is spinning any faster than a few years ago … and if HE has anything to do with it. (Always worth asking.)

Well, it’s been kind of quiet around the abandoned hammer mill for the last week. Just the sounds of quiet toil. Ah, the joys of wage slavery! Not much to report. Matt’s been out in the field, tending to his various populations of beast and bird. We’re working on the next album, punching up some of the Ned Trek numbers, albeit slowly. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is learning Swahili in his spare time (or perhaps Kinyarwanda … he can never make up his little battery-driven mind about anything.)

Besides recording, what have we been doing as a “band”, specifically? Well, if you REALLY want to know, probably the best way is to listen to the second half of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN – the part where Matt and I spend about an hour talking about nothing and next to nothing. For instance, our most recent episode featured the following weighty items:

  • What a way to wake upImagining Henry Kissinger trying out for the Monkees back in the late sixties, like Charles Manson did. Hanky’s Monkees, it might have been called. Or perhaps not. (This stemmed from our recollection of an earlier episode when we pondered whether or not Davy Jones might have been killed by primate poachers.)
  • Waking up and finding that not only are you in the Pleistocene era, but you are in fact Charles Nelson Riley.
  • Giving a rough-edged rendition of the Popeye theme song.
  • Way too many lame imitations of Peter Lorre (if you can imagine such a thing).
  • Once through the “Happy Anniversary” version of the William Tell Overture to mark our podcast’s 4th anniversary.

I know, it’s hard to imagine that any single podcast could contain so many wonders, but it’s true. And honestly, it’s just like hanging out with us in the Cheney Hammer Mill basement. Just as riveting.

Usual Rubbish

Tonight’s the night.

That's it, over there.Well, shut my mouth. There appears to be some kind of celebration taking place up the street from the Hammer Mill. Maybe we should mosey on over there. Or maybe not. This street’s getting a little rough. (I don’t mean crime-wise. I mean the pavement’s in pieces, as in potholes the size of a Buick … some with Buicks stuck in them.)

It’s a natural fact – we need to get out more. Big Green is getting house bound, or mill-bound, if you will. Part of it is our reluctance to play gigs anywhere on planet Earth. That is, admittedly, a failing of ours. Mea culpa. I don’t know why we don’t perform on our mother world. Maybe it’s the gravity. My keyboards weigh a ton on earth, but when we play, say, Phobos, I can pick them up with one hand. Sure, there aren’t a lot of music fans there … none, in fact, but setting up is a breeze!

We’ve been asked to consider playing a club or a college here on Terra. Why, just last week, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) said we should set up in the old man bar on the corner and jam until they boot our sorry asses back into the road. Inartfully put, perhaps, but his corroded tin heart was in the right place. So the other night I dropped in at that joint, sat there and stared at the piano for a couple of hours. I didn’t make any noise, so I left. I’m going back again tonight to see if there’s a different outcome.

Old man bar on Earth, zero-gravity lounge on Neptune – it doesn’t make much difference to us where we play, so long as we know what the hell we’re playing. I’ve never been good at set lists, but I know that if someone on stage picks the songs, it’s less likely that we’ll have to play a bunch of stuff people ask us to play. Like something by the Scorpions, for instance.

Whoa, is that the time? Time to go out in the street and be sociable. Talk soon.

Usual Rubbish

Yonder bound.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant), didn’t I tell you to pick those Legos up about three hours ago? Can’t you do anything without being told twelve times?! Are you even awake?! MARVIN!!

I'm your Lincoln ConciergeChrist on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and have dutifully (and pitilessly) posted our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN every month, on the month (or quite nearly). But gainful employ? Naught, my friend. Goose egg.

Arguably, it goes against human nature (and personal robot assistant nature, presumably) to be idle for so long. I’ve seen signs of restlessness, to be sure. Not from anti-Lincoln, of course, who spends most of his day in the forge room, swilling cheap rum that he got from god-knows-where. But his positive doppelganger, Lincoln, tries to keep busy in imaginative though annoying ways. (I keep telling him, I can’t afford a big fat car – it’s just not in the game plan. But just try telling Lincoln not to sell you something.)

Big GreenMarvin is always coming up with pass-times, as well as hair-brained schemes for making money. But I think he’s hit a wall, and it’s understandable. Even his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has wandered off to richer pastures, taking advantage of some time-share property he invented in Madagascar. (Something about hanging gardens … though I’m not sure about what stage of insanity he was in when he told me about it.) So Marvin sits and rusts a little every day, his battery running down. He needs a change of scene, and so do the rest of us.

That’s why I have started making inquiries about doing an interplanetary tour to support extraterrestrial sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Spoiler alert: Terrestrial sales have been abysmal.) Stay tuned for details. Big Green out.