Tag Archives: interstellar tour

Usual Rubbish

Pod bay door.

The good news is, we’ve scored a ride to the stars. The bad news is… it’s aboard a doomed ship sent from hell. Not the kind of luxury we’re accustomed to, but hey… we’ll manage.

Big Green will be departing for Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, and points east (I believe it’s east) on September 29 for our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Not that the date is much of a concern, now that Mitch Macaphee has a tenuous hold on the time-space continuum. If we miss our launch date, what the hell, we just have Mitch send us back a few days. Depending upon what kind of a mood he’s in, that could be easy or hard, very hard. (Actually, Matt thinks that if you run backwards really fast, you will go back in time. Call me a skeptic… though I’ve noticed that when you run forward real fast, time seems to move forward. If this were an elegant universe, the converse would be true. And no, I don’t mean the sneaker.)

I should mention that, as we wait for our departure, we are in the midst of what I would call a series of “mini-sessions” in our Hammer Mill basement studio. These are related to production of our new podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, the second installment of which is now available on iTunes and directly from us peoples. This time out we’re featuring a somewhat rich discussion of the thinking (or lack of same) behind our song “Quality Lincoln”, a rough draft of which we include on the podcast. What we’re doing is laying the basic tracks for a song, playing that on the podcast, and then finishing the song later for separate release. The result may be another album, a series of EPs, or something else entirely.

I should also add that “Quality Lincoln” is not so much one song, but rather three songs, knit together with sturdy fibers of ludicrousness. I suppose there are better ways to spend one’s time as he/she waits for an accursed space vessel to pick him/her up. I just can’t think of any, and I’ll wager neither can you.  Or perhaps I am mistaken.

Well, is that the time? Was that me talking just then? Perhaps. Hey – give the podcast a listen and let us know what you think. Send an email or something. More fodder for the podcast.

Usual Rubbish

Close quarters.

Here. Squeeze your head into this helmet, see if it fits. What? No, I’ve never seen the movie Scarface. Not all the way through, anyway. Why?

Mother of pearl. I’m surrounded by moaners. Nobody wants to wear a freaking space helmet, not even Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s afraid of getting “helmet hair” of all things. (His so-called “hair” is made of leftover brass fittings from what appeared to be a Victorian era lawn mower.) I keep telling these people – if we’re going to pile into that substandard missile Mitch Macaphee found for us and fly to distant solar systems, we will need at least minimal protective gear, to include a) a helmet, b) a bag of oxygen, c) some portable food, preferably sandwiches, d) THERE IS NO “D”, e) boots, non hobnail variety, and f) a bunch of other stuff that you might need for space travel on the cheap. (Look it up on the Web.)

Would that that were the worst of our problems. Fact is, Mitch’s missile is a real piece of crap, not worthy of sending a payload of trailmix into space, let alone flesh-and-blood musicians such as ourselves. I have put out some inquiries about alternative transportation. Nothing yet, I’m afraid. Beginning to think we should abandon the idea of private transportation and just sign aboard one of those interstellar budget tours. You know – you take a jitney to the moon, wait there for about six days until the big Trailways spacebus shows up. You squeeze in next to a spotty couple from Boca Raton while a morbidly obese business man in a rumpled tan business suit coughs his lungs out in the seat behind you.

Yeah. Been there, done that, haven’t you? Well… haven’t we all? Anyway, I’m a little tired, frankly. Matt and I have been working at a furious pace ever since we started that pod cast. A session a week – nearly an hour and a half of music making! Yes, I know that sounds impossibly ambitious, but… we’re motivated. We’ve started about half a dozen recordings. Our plan is to do a rough initial draft of each song, play that on the podcast, then finish tracking the song and release it later as a finished number. We’re starting with Quality Lincoln, which will be featured on the next episode, due out…. in a matter of days…. right?

Right. Yeah, I’m tired. Sandman’s beating me to death. What did I ever do to him, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Cheap ride.

Well, I guess THAT didn’t work. Spectacular failure, old man. What’s next on the agenda? Setting toast on fire? Turning gold into lead? Some other feat of science?

Oh, hello. If you detect some sarcasm in my voice, it’s no accident. I’m merely ripping on Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, whose latest experiment/get weird quick scheme was an abysmal failure. Sometimes I think old Mitch is losing his touch. Sometimes I think we of Big Green should be looking around for another mad science advisor. Not to replace Mitch, you understand, but rather to keep him company in his dotage. Maybe that would give him someone to talk to about how his time travel experiment was about as amazing as someone hiding in a closet for half an hour. No, Mitch – I’m not kidding… it was just that bad. I’ve seen grade school magic tricks that put that to shame, man.

All right, maybe I’m being a bit too hard on the guy. Frankly, I’m a little miffed at him over another matter entirely. (I think the psychologists call that “transfer” … or perhaps “coconut”… one of those two.) As you know, we’ve been searching the local bulletin boards, want ads, and health food store countertop flyers for some kind of conveyance that will reliably carry us from planet to planet on Big Green’s upcoming [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Naturally we asked Mitch to keep his good eye – the one that doesn’t see evil things – open for anything vaguely appropriate to the task. Would that I had bitten back those words!

I am reminded of the old saw (hack saw?), “be careful what you ask for.” Nothing truer could be said of Mitch’s spacecraft search. He was gone for a couple of days this week and came back with a largish missile in tow. (No, it wasn’t a “tow missile”, dammit.) Mitch pulls up and says, in effect, “Here’s your ride.” And I’m looking at this thing, my mouth agape. Matt’s mouth was agape as well, as was John’s. (Lincoln’s was not agape, but it was open slightly.) I mean, that missile was battered, leaking, beat to hell. I think he bought it off of Col. Gaddafi, or perhaps from rogue elements of his famous “kung fu” brigade.  It looks like a freaking SCUD that someone never bothered to drain the fuel out of. And … worse yet … we’re supposed to fly to Andromeda in that bloody thing?

No way in hell, man. No way am I getting in that lousy hunk of junk. And when I say, no way, I mean only under certain limited circumstances. (Let the record show that I’m beckoning to my counsel.)