Tag Archives: hammer mill

Usual Rubbish

A la post.

Hey, it’s a nice day. Think I’ll spend it in the courtyard. Or maybe on the road to Old Forge. Or not. Any suggestions?

Kind of quiet around the Hammer Mill these days. Maybe it’s just the dog days of summer howling a little louder than usual. Everyone seems to be taking a pass on everything, regardless of how little effort may be involved. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) couldn’t be bothered to plug himself in to his wall recharger, complaining that it took too much energy. How does that make sense? Maybe in robot-ville, but no place else.

I’ve done some minimal work on recordings this week, pulling together one mix, tweaking another, enhancing this, pouring chocolate sauce on that. Exhausting effort, as you might imagine. Tonight brother Matt and I will work on this again, with brother Marvin and brother mansized tuber standing by to assist. As I mentioned before, we’re working on six new numbers that will appear in the next episode of Ned Trek, the Star Trek parody series we include in our now less-than-monthly podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.

Didn't you plug yourself in, Marvin?If you’re not familiar with this … um … form of entertainment, go to our podcast home page, scroll down to some of the earlier installments, and give it a listen. Ned Trek is usually the first item in the podcast. At some point, it may acquire a life (or podcast) of its own, but for now suffice to say that it is a monthly skit based on old “classic” Star Trek episodes, starring a crew of modern day neocons headed by Captain Willard M. Romney, his first officer and talking dressage horse Mr. Ned, and others. (Oddly, there’s one hold-over from classic Star Trek – Mr. Sulu, who basically plays the one sane person in the room.) It, well, makes us laugh, if nothing else. Pretty much the reason we do anything, I suspect.

Hokay, well … I’m kind of toasty after having played a set with Puttin’ On The Ritz up in Old Forge last night, so I’ll stick a fork in this. Be free.

Usual Rubbish

Next stumbles.

Process that track. Delete that wave. Get a little drunk and then dig your grave. I don’t know, what is the work song equivalent of my current occupation? Most professions have been reduced to someone sitting in front of a computer terminal, tapping away and grimacing. Here at Big Green, we are no exception. As I am now demonstrating, by sitting in front of a computer and typing. And grimacing.

Well ... maybe not.Sure, I know, we should perform. I think that’s a marvelous idea. Right now, our performances are our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which appears nearly every month right here on this channel (check local listings). We could haul our sorry, superannuated asses down to the local gin mill and slog through some of our hundreds (yes, literally hundreds) of songs, most of which have never been heard outside a small circle of friends, and I wouldn’t rule that out. Maybe we’ll do some Stage-It performances, or something like that. Who the hell knows?

The main thing is (and this is important!) we are still making ridiculous music … still bizarre and asinine after all these years. Right now, the place to hear it is here. And as I look around at the clammy walls of the empty, abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adoptive home, I am reminded of why we got into this in the first place… that spark of an idea that started Big Green decades ago, in a place far (well, not so far) away. That voice that came to me, early one morning, seeping into my cloudy, half slumbering consciousness, to whisper those inspiring words: “You need to make money somehow, you dope-ass loser … get a band going!”

Actually, it was louder than a whisper. And it wasn’t a disembodied voice; it was my roommate at the time, asking for my half of the rent. He was one of those guys who put labels on stuff in the refrigerator, each one sporting his name. To me, though, those labels always read “eat me”.

But enough about ME. What have you been up to, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Tossed together.

Not much I can add to that, brother. How about another piano? No, no … not a different individual piano instrument, I mean another piano PART! Holy Jebus!

You are genetically weird.Oh, hi. Sorry about my outburst there. No, I wasn’t having an argument with my illustrious brother Matt, I was just rehearsing for our conversation later on today. I know it may seem strange, but I have to rehearse for just about everything that occurs in my life. Which is even stranger, in fact, because I almost never rehearse for gigs. In fact, you might describe me as downright hostile to the idea. (As a friend once famously said, “Rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow.”)

Now I should say here, no one has ever accused Big Green of not blowing. That just never has been part of our DNA. Granted, we have some errant strands in there; some stray genes that make us more susceptible to, say, living in abandoned hammer mills (which, on a rainy day like today, is kind of like living in a water treatment plant) or keeping personal robot assistants … like Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Yeah, we have a lot of personal and genetic history to live down, but we soldier on. Damn the torpedoes! (No, I mean, really, damn them. Those suckers smart.)

Speaking of abandoned hammer mills, we’re hammering out some new songs for the next episode of the podcast. They started out to be “first-draft” essays of the kind we did in 2012 – those rough little numbers that ended up on Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick in slightly less rough shape. But as we go, they keep getting more and more complicated. Recording is more like painting than sculpting, I have to say – you can keep slopping new paint over the old, sometimes until the canvas is inches thick with the stuff. When sculpting, you can only knock so many chunks off that rock before you’re left with … I don’t know … a smaller rock?

Hey, Matt … where’s my spatula? I’m going with the post impressionist look on this one. (Just practicing again. Love to hear the sound of my own echo in this old barn of a place.)