Tag Archives: hammer mill

Post haste.

What the hell, was that September just then? Fricking amazing. This is truly the meltaway year. We’re almost down to the chewy caramel center. (I think of September as mostly nougat, frankly.)

THAT'S where we'll be? Huh...Well, I suppose it’s safe to say that we won’t be posting a September podcast. Yes, we recorded one. Yes, we still have a computer and internet access. No, I didn’t leave it in my other pants. It’s still under construction, okay? It’s in far more capable hands than mine, I might add. And I am confident that those hands are hard at work, editing wav files, and not shuffling cards or clicking a remote or (God forbid ) tapping on a phone. (This would not be a good time for me to get a text with a link to some lame video.)

I guess it’s hard to deny that we have essentially departed from our monthly podcast schedule. That is, in part, due to our titanic laziness, but also to the fact that our Ned Trek productions have become much more ambitious in recent months, demanding more and more resources, elaborate sets, casts of thousands, pricey special effects, craft services for the crew, exotic oils for  Marvin (my personal robot assistant), you name it. It isn’t easy to produce an epic. Nor is it easy to produce a hack-job podcast, but (and this is important) doing so is easier than the thing with the epic. Are you following that? Good.

I have to think that more than a few of you are wondering, “Well … he’s got time to write this stupid blog post. Why doesn’t he just use that time to finish the podcast, or write a song, for pity’s sake?” Good question. We in Big Green have always been of the belief that timely and accurate reporting is key to the success of any band. If you don’t know what we’re up to, we won’t know either, and THEN where will we be? In Coventry, that’s where! (Actually, I hear that’s quite pleasant this time of year.)

Anyway, where is this getting us? Must get back to finishing that September … I mean, October podcast. Stay tuned.

Plastic baloney.

Is that all we have to eat around here? Jesus Christ on a tricycle. I thought there was some more of that plastic cheese sitting around. Never mind. Just give me another slice of plastic bread. Sigh.

Balogna ... now with more plastic!Oh, hi. Yep, it’s that time of year again. The ba-roke period, as our dear departed friend Tim Walsh used to say. Fighting the cat for scraps, except that we would never do that. In times of want, we have occasionally resorted to eating doll house food. Dibs on the plastic baloney! (Hey, don’t scoff … it’s actually not that much worse than tofu baloney.)

So, why exactly is Big Green wearing a cardboard belt this month? Why, you may ask, would a band with more than 300 songs under copyright need to scratch the floor for discarded fragments of past meals? It’s starving artist syndrome, my friends, pure and simple. Yes, we suffer for our art. Just the other day, I got my leg caught in a banjo string. Hurt like hell, dragging that banjo around behind me. Got a lot of dirty looks, too. Now I know what Paul McCartney was singing about when he did that Christmas record ditty called “Please don’t bring your banjo ’round” or something like that. Folks get real sensitive about that sort of thing, I’ve discovered.

Hey, well … I’ve wandered a bit, banjo or no. It got cold around the Hammer Mill last night, so we wrapped the place up a bit … at least the parts we live in. The unseasonable cold weather has at least given me the opportunity to finish my Ned Trek 20 script and pass it along to Matt, so that he can add about six pounds of weird to it. We’ve recorded our voice parts and are in the editing stage right now, so podcast fans … keep cool. We’re almost there, man. Don’t. Freak. Out.

Well, got to get back to my evening meal. Kind of chewy. Polystyrene really sticks to your ribs, though. (Though what it’s doing in the vicinity of my ribs I have no idea.)

Sweep up.

Oh, sweep up! I’ve been sweeping up the tips I’ve made! I’ve been livin’ on Gatorade, planning my getaway!

Grab a broom, hey willya?Apologies to Paul Simon. Actually, except for the Gatorade part, that sounds like the story of my life just lately. Trying to tidy up the cavernous squat house we call the Cheney Hammer Mill ahead of the coming winter months. Nothing worse than a dusty house when the snow is up to the rafters – ask anybody who’s spent a few frigid seasons here on the dark side of the year. So, just plying the old broom across the brick floor.

Marvin (my personal robot) is running the vacuum in the background. Not a vacuum cleaner, you understand – an actual time/space vacuum he created with the orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind so many years ago. Amazing how that thing still runs after years of neglect, no one to tend its complex servos and circuit boards, not even our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee, who used to tinker with the thing from time to time before he relocated to his new lab in Madagascar. (Don’t go there! It may no longer even exist, the way he messes with the space-time continuum.)

While I’ve been occupying myself with domestic duties, I’ve been listening to a one-off CD of some of our Ned Trek songs. They need a little work, but I don’t doubt that we’ll release them in some more finalized form one day. I’m contemplating a late year holiday release or two on YouTube, maybe a collection of Ned songs sometime after that. It’s adding up to a lot of material, actually – about 25 songs and counting, pretty much all of which have showed up on THIS IS BIG GREEN in draft form. I know, I know … sounds like another Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yep, well … that’s how we roll these days.

Hey, listen to me, right? Interstellar tour, new album, YouTube videos. Slow down, maestro, you move too fast. You got to … hoo boy, there’s Paul Simon again. Stop it, man. More later.