Tag Archives: Hegemonic

Usual Rubbish

All the king’s robots and all the King’s pens

Get Music Here

We got another one of those notes, man. One of those neighbor notes about the uncut lawn. Let’s say they’re a little disappointed in us. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in us, too. We really SHOULD have mowed that lawn, but we were too damn LAZY and SHIFTLESS. (Please share this post with our neighbors so that they will feel validated.)

Anyway, here we are in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, no validation in sight … not even for our parking. You know, I think we might be the subject of yet another community effort to rid the neighborhood of ne’er do wells. Frankly, I object to being termed in such a way. I may not always do well, but I certainly sometimes do well. I can’t speak for any of the other members of our entourage, but I for one try to remain on the straight and narrow. (It’s been a bit too narrow lately, though.)

Call in the lawn robots

Now SOME people I know, and I won’t say who, hire robots to mow their lawn. I’m not super comfortable with that idea. The part I’m not comfortable with, I should add, is the “hire” part. Why buy the milk when you own the cow, right? We have our own damn robot, thank you very much. His name is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and if you Google his full name, you’ll come up with about twenty years of posts on this very blog. Or some nonsensical artificial intelligence story. Same damn thing.

Thing is, the lawn robots descend onto your property in a swarm and cut the grass in about ten minutes – just a big flurry of activity, then they’re gone. Marvin could NEVER do that. If he tried to get a job with the lawn robots, he would never get past the first interview. They would laugh him out of Utica, for chrissake. Think of that: Laughed out of Utica. Good name for a band, I think. But I digress. I can’t ask Marvin to do our lawn. It’s a matter of principle. Marvin was created for greater purposes, like vacuuming the hall. I can’t allow him to lower himself in that way.

Sign ’em if you got ’em

What Marvin really needs is a contract. We used to have one of those, with that crazy corporate label Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., of Indonesia. It was signed in red ink, actually, though it may have been blood, now that I think of it. Those guys were kind of rough. They weren’t getting us to do shit by using Jedi mind tricks. It was more the truncheon and tire iron method. But hey, you don’t want to hear about our contract signing ceremony under duress. This is supposed to be a HAPPY occasion.

Mow the damn lawn. Stuff it!

It’s actually a good thing we’re no longer under contract to Hegemonic. We can release our new songs into the wild like birds and let them fly on their own volition. Labels always make you do dumb shit you don’t want to do, then cut up your albums to make two or three. You call that value? Jesus Christmas. What an industry! Even our mad science advisor, exploiter of the intergalactic time warp, Mitch Macaphee thinks that’s unjust, and he’s crazy as a loon. Maybe crazier.

From green to red

Yeah, so there are drawbacks. And the first is no money to pay the damn bills. A smarter band would just let them do what they want with their music, but nobody ever accused us of being smart. At least not to our faces.

Usual Rubbish

All’s well that ends.

That’s no good. They will certainly have lifted the phonograph needle by that point. The phonograph needle… you know… the thing that scratches along the record and makes the music come out. Don’t you know anything about technology?

Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there, peering in from the void of cyberspace. Just working my way through some technical issues relating to our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Getting into the minutiae with our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who will actually be making the records this time out. Yes, we do have a corporate label – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., a.k.a. Hegephonic Records – but they are kind of a “hands off” outfit (unless you owe them money; then it’s another story … one involving off duty military personnel, typically …. I’ll stop there).

What all that means is simply this: under our “contract”, we make the product from start to finish. We write the songs, record them, cut the discs, package them, carry them to all of the stores, etc.  Hegephonic does the rest. (That is to say, they rest up until there’s some looting to do. It’s complicated.) So, we’re just trying to work out a few of the details with Mitch, who apparently has never heard of the gramophone record. Have you been to the talkies yet, Mitch? They’re like a freaking conjurer’s trick!

The fact is, Matt and I prefer to concentrate on more artistic matters… like what’s going to happen at the end of every song. Sure, most pop songs just fade away, but the story doesn’t end there, my friends. Indeed, a lot of meaning is lost in that fade-out groove. Big Green, for its part (which part I decline to say), is dedicating itself to recovering some of that lost value for the benefit of listeners everywhere. And we’re going to do that by putting them out on the interwebs – a collection of last gasps, as it were. Some funky, so sullen, some so bizarre even I can’t fathom the implications of their existence. It cannot be so! I find myself shouting when I hear them. And yet it is so.

So…. something to look forward to. That’s what we like to hear. Now … about those photographic plates…. Don’t drop them! They’re glass, you know.

Usual Rubbish

What next.

Sweepin’ up after that big storm. Man, the weather these days. Good goddamn thing that global warming story turned out to be a hoax. If it’d been true, we’d be worried about all this extreme weather. But no, no…. everything’s fine. Experts agree.

No, today’s not contrary Wednesday. It’s contrary every freaking day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. I’m spouting that stuff about global warming in hopes of ingratiating ourselves to a potential corporate sponsor. Who, you may ask? Well, it’s someone Big Green worked with before – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., king of the extractive industries. Tearing Earth a new Asshole since 1953™. From the tar sands of Alberta to the gold mines of Irian Jaya to the fracking fields of Pennsylvania, the name Hegemonic has been synonymous with … well, with making big piles of money out of big piles of slag. Who better to shake down for some cash, right?

Oh, yes… I know what you’re going to say: This will lead to evil and sadness. Stop the hurting, you’ll say, and start the helping.  But fear not, my friend. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm (also known as “Hegephonic”) is an enlightened actor in the extractive industries. It says right here in this May 2007 press release when they began work in Mindanao. Back when there was a Mindanao. Okay, bad example. Nonetheless, our “friends” at Hegemonic can be of great assistance to us, and as luck would have it, we have something of value to them as well. Something they want very, very badly.

Wait for it!

It’s mineral rights to the Cheney Hammer Mill. You see, by happy geological accident, the Utica Shale and the Marcellus Shale converge right below the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That means there’s an Auntie Maude’s Fortune of natural gas right below our feet. And no, this isn’t another one of those mad schemes cooked up by Mitch Macaphee. Unlike the mercantile tunnel to China (now plugged), this is a sure thing. All we have to do is let them rip down the mill and gouge their way into the Earth’s crust like a titanic bloodsucker, drawing the lifeblood from our dying planet and selling it by the cubic foot to heat the McMansions of exurban neo-yuppies. Nothing to it.

One other thing that interests them: Freakenstein. I think they see him as some kind of secret weapon against union organizers. We tried to interest them in Marvin (my personal robot assistant), but he’s simply not intimidating enough.