Tag Archives: hammer mill

Usual Rubbish

Was that a… truck?

Did you hear beeping?Wait, I heard something. That beeping noise. Did you hear it? Go out and take a look, will you? I’ll just sit here and finish this cardboard sandwich. What? That’s the microwave beeping? Turn it off, then. There’s a good chap.

Oh, yes … hello. Just getting a little impatient here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful (now roasting) upstate New York. It’s been so damn hot we can’t even manage to borrow enough electricity to run our fans, and now the refrigerator has gone south (looking for warmer climes, perhaps) and all of our provisions have gone sour. (Except for the lemons, which have turned strangely sweet in their spoilage.) Nothing to eat but cardboard. Here’s the good news: there’s not a lot of that, either.

I just sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to greet the delivery van that will be dropping off the initial pressing of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, Big Green’s ludicrous new album, hot off the digital presses. Its release date is July 31, but we are expecting advance copies any moment now. Though this is the fourth time in the last hour I’ve sent Marvin out to the brickyard, searching in vain for the UPS truck or the FEDEX van or some over-the-road tractor trailer. He’s about ready to revolt – in fact, I think he’s considering joining that terrifying band Captured By Robots again. I still have nightmares. (Not about that, obviously …. mostly other stuff.)

Hey, I’m looking out the window and I see the ass-end of a semi. Marvin is out there, making some unintelligible hand signals (or claw signals, I should say). They appear to be interpreting his gestures as encouragement to continue backing into our courtyard. This is getting exciting! Yes, they’re moving closer, turning the cab. I can see the side of the trailer now. Big letters that spell, “Mayflower Moving”. Hmmmm… I didn’t know they delivered packages.

Okay, I have to look into this further. Far from delivering anything, they appear to be taking things out of the Mill, like …. LIKE MY ARMY SURPLUS DESK AND CHAIR! LIKE MY DISCARDED MATTRESS! This is shaping up to be one hell of a week.

Usual Rubbish

Inside the Scat.

Still raining? Oh, sure. Hand me the paddle and the sieve.

Well, most of our homeland in upstate New York is under water today. The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill is practically floating away. What better time to crack out an advance copy of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick? What else is there to do, right?

We just released the June edition of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and in celebration of the arrival of summer, it is a two-hour marathon review of the new album, featuring the all-star cast of Ned Trek:

  • Mr. Ned himself, the talking dressage horse
  • Willard Mittilius Romney, commander of the starship Free Enterprise
  • Doc Tom Coburn, who sounds a lot like Foghorn Leghorn
  • Carl Sagan (deceased), famous astrophysicist
  • Richard Perle, neocon chickenhawk supreme
  • The robot Richard Nixon
  • Mr. Sulu (still strangely hanging out with these losers)
  • Lee Majors (still strangely introducing these losers)
  • Mr. Andy Williams (…. not!) 

You’ll hear biting commentary on every track. Then you’ll hear the track. Then you’ll hear … something else, I’m not quite sure what. (I was half asleep and completely underwater while editing this, it will surprise no one to learn.)

The actual album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick is ready for release, so watch this space: {     }. If you watch it long enough and you don’t see anything, by all means contact us. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to locate some buckets. About fifty of them. And sandbags!

Usual Rubbish

Fragments of brain.

If I could think faster than a slow crawl, I would. That’s the issue, always. And don’t look at me like that, Marvin. Not ALL of us have electronic brains.

What would I do with all that brain power? Well, for one thing, I would get our next album out a bit quicker. Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick seems to be in perpetual becoming mode. I know you’re sick of it, I’m sick of it, Matt’s had it up to here, the president has started complaining, the ambassador from Madagascar has issued a protest against Big Green – suffice to say, no one is happy. Hey, well … we’re working as fast as we can. It takes a while to bake all those discs, especially without a convection oven like the big, famous groups have. And then hand painting all those covers. Jesus!

At least, in these modern times, we no longer have to perform the music separately for every disc we sell. That was a real pain in the assets. Eventually, someone – I think it may have been Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, but I’m not certain – told us all about the concept of mastering, then spinning copies off of the master, etc. Up until then, we were recording each copy individually. Talk about quality control issues! Sheesh.

We’ve got an assembly line set up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, just like the good old days when proles were hammering out … well, hammers within these very walls. (Very clammy walls, I should say.) Big Green is applying the lessons first applied by Henry Ford, in that we line up a bunch of underpaid individuals (including robots and man-sized tubers) and have each one handle a piece of the manufacturing process. Then we drastically underpay them, but not so much that they can’t afford to buy one of the discs on their way out the door.

Well, there’s the factory whistle again. Time to get back down to it. LINE THREE! LUNCH IS OVER!