Tag Archives: hammer mill

Get yours here.

Hey … let’s stop in at the Petrified Creatures Museum. It sounds, well … very dessicated. And interesting. Perhaps. I don’t know … what do YOU want to do, Marvin (my personal robot assistant)?

Yes, we’re taking a day trip. The weather is nice, so it seemed like a good idea to leave the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill behind for a few hours. Trouble is, it’s a little hard to find entertainment that suits everyone’s eclectic tastes. Marvin is a little reluctant to give the Petrified Creatures Museum a look, perhaps because they may mistake him for one of their exhibits and NEVER LET HIM LEAVE. He was scared, even (yes) petrified. Poor creature.

What else is there to do, driving along route 20? Well … there are a lot of campgrounds. There’s an ice cream place called “Banana Dan’s”. There are some really cool mountains, if you like mountains. That should be sufficient to satisfy anyone’s taste. But here I am, in a car full of freaks – Marvin, Anti-Lincoln, Mitch Macaphee, the mansized tuber … Matt refused to go, choosing instead to mind his wildlife charges. Anti-Lincoln is pretty much against everything. Mr. freaking negative. Mansized tuber just wants to go to gardening centers. That’s where he goes to meet other plants. It’s like a nightclub, without the booze. Mitch? He’s only interested in conferences and laboratories. He just stares out the window at the passing scenery, dreaming up formulas for making the whole thing go blooey.

Look, Marvin! (meh)Well … so much for our pleasant day out. What’s next on the agenda? Not much. Just back to the hammer mill. We’ve got some music to work on. Where’s that going? I don’t know … another album, maybe. Not sure how we’ll release it, but we will make it available in some way, shape, or form. Maybe we’ll have Marvin hand deliver it to everyone in Upstate New York. Maybe we’ll sell it in the anteroom of the Petrified Creatures Museum. Maybe BOTH of those things.

One other thing we’re working on – a kind of Big Green subscription service. We’re contemplating the price being somewhere between $0 and gratis. Sign up, and we’ll send you disc copies of our first two albums (while supplies last), a digital copy of our third album, and advance digital releases as they are completed. Still ironing out the details, crunching the numbers, etc. (Very crunchy, those numbers.)

String theory.

That thing is way out of tune … I mean WAY out of tune, dude. Use my phone. No, not my SMART phone … that Bell Princess phone over in the corner, next to the mansized tuber. The dial tone is a low F#. Just transpose, for chrissake. DIVAS!

Yes, you’re listening in on another Big Green rehearsal. It’s like you’re a fly on the wall. In the Cheney Hammer Mill, that makes you inconspicuous …. not because you’re so small, but because there are so many flies on the wall, you meld in with the multitude. Anyhow, we’re running through a few numbers, putting down tracks, laying in a groove, etc. etc. Sometimes it’s hard to keep all of these various stringed instruments in tune with one another, especially when the city cuts off your electricity, your internet connection, your phone service, your water, and your air. (That last cut-off only happens on Type-M planets.)

No, we haven’t had our electricity cut off this week (yet), but life is still bloody complicated. Four-string bass guitars are hard enough to tune; try a six-string acoustic! Don’t even talk about pianos and organs. (No, really … don’t even talk about them. An off-color word can make them slip out of tune.) Fortunately for me, my keyboards are of the electronic variety, so tuning is as simple as turning a little knob or clicking an item in a graphic user interface. Or pushing on a bender and securing it with tape. (Non-standard method.)

Still flat as a pancake.Matt and I are putting the finishing touches on the next batch of Ned Trek songs. When I say “finishing touches”, I mean “adding essential musical elements without which the songs would be virtually unlistenable.” Details, details. In any case, we have six (or is it seven?) numbers under construction, some of which border on the blasphemous, others tinkering with long-held practices of civilized peoples, still others merely dabbling in the art of giving grave offense. A controversial collection? Depends on your point of view.

Important side note: No animals or humans were harmed in the making of this music. Though Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has suffered slightly from mechanical wrist overuse syndrome (or MWOS), as he is our defacto percussionist.

Inside April.

Jesus, that’s god-awful. Turn that shit down, man! What the hell are you listening to, anyway? Some kind of reality show reruns? Oh …. it’s our podcast. Nevermind.

Okay, so we have this podcast, see? And it kind of sucks, see? But we’re proud of it anyway, so that naturally leads me to want to tell you all about the latest episode, hot off the presses here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?

Item the First: Ned Trek XXIII – Doo-Dah Dancing – This episode of our post-modern satirical space opera (a bizarre-ass mashup of classic Star Trek, Mr. Ed, and the 2012 Presidential election) is loosely based on the 3rd season classic ST episode entitled “Turnabout Intruder”, in which Captain Kirk’s body is taken over by an ex-girlfriend/scientist – typical season 3 ridiculousness, and perhaps the most asinine episode ever. In this distorted version of that degraded reality, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney is forced to exchange consciousness with a one-time dance partner with ambitions to, dare she say it, take over the Free Enterprise and rule … the universe! Special appearances by Peter Lorre and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among others.

That's freaking childish.Song: Aw Shoot, by Big Green – This song is from our 2013 album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. It’s a funky little number, somewhat reminiscent of the theme music from a bad 80’s foreign sci-fi film whose name I won’t mention. Scandinavian accents are kind of a giveaway.

Put the Phone Down – Matt and I discuss a range of issues touching on matters of vital importance to the future of humankind … NOT. Mostly some bad singing, talk of racist friends of the family, insults heaped upon the memory of Al Jolson, and so on.

Song: Poor Dick, by Big Green – Another selection from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one tells a tale of Rick Perry taking desperate measures to save his pal Dick Cheney by procuring a replacement heart for the ailing Vice President, taking care not to pick one that pumped life-giving blood through the veins of a socialist. Rick finds the perfect donor: Breitbart! Hilarity ensues. Only song I know that uses “aveoli” in a rhyme scheme.