Tag Archives: interstellar tour

Usual Rubbish

Practice makes more practice.

All right, then. Ready? One, two, three, four ….  wait, whaaat? That’s not how that song starts. The bagpipes come in on the third verse, not right at the beginning. Where’s that screaming guitar, Mitch? You promised me a screaming guitar!

Oh, man. It’s really been too long since we got out on the star-dusty trail and played a few remote venues. Pulling together a live show is hard when you’re this rusty. In fact, it’s starting to make interstellar space travel seem trivial by comparison. But what the hell, we’re doing it – Big Green is going on another galactic tour, assuming we can find a spaceship worthy of such a journey. No matter what the difficulties may be, the daunting challenges … we will not be daunted. Forward! Forward into the breech, me lads!

So much for the motivational speech. Actually, I think the toughest problem we have on this project is, well, personnel. We’re a little thin on the ground here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. In fact, Matt and I are the only humans in this band. The rest of it is made up of robots and possibly space aliens. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be sitting in on drums this time out. I say “sitting”, but it’s really more like standing. He doesn’t actually play the drums – he just emits the sounds of drums in a vaguely rhythmic fashion. I’m starting to think he may have been fashioned out of some old machine parts recycled from the Caribbean.  Or maybe he was a Victor Borge imitator in a previous life – I don’t know.

One, two, three, GO!

What about the guitar? The lead guitar? No worries – Mitch Macaphee isn’t sitting in with us. But he DID promise to build us a self-playing guitar programmed with all of our recent Ned Trek era songs. That would be a tremendous time-saver, but as always, Mitch overpromises and underdelivers. He did go so far as set up a guitar on a stand with a transistor radio taped to it, tuned to the local classic rock station. I suspect he thought we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that and a REAL automaton guitar player, since we typically ask guitarists to just play like some guy on the radio. (He’s got us all figured out.)

Okay, so we’ve gotten through two songs. A few more to go, right? Right.

Usual Rubbish

There it goes.

That was firecrackers, right? It’s getting closer to fourth of July, I guess. Or maybe it’s someone’s birthday. Please tell me that was firecrackers, because if it wasn’t … ugh … there goes the neighborhood.

Yeah, well … we went to bed to the sound of gunfire last night. Some knucklehead pulling a Yosemite Sam imitation right out in front of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Could be they thought the place was empty – it is, after all, abandoned. Anyway, we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out there to have a look. He’s kind of like one of those tactical bomb-sniffing robots, except that he doesn’t have a tactical bone in his body and he hates the smell of explosives.

Anyway, he tottered out there and took a look around, then came back in with a couple of bottle caps. Not 100% sure that was related to what we sent him out there for, but there you have it. We may be looking for a gunman who enjoys drinking soda while he/she is shooting up the place. Hey, look … we have to go with the robot we have, not the one we wish we had. He’s not a tactical robot; he’s more of a strategic robot in that he helps us map out our plans for interstellar tours. (Trouble is, he does it in a language I don’t understand … a language shared by maybe a half-dozen robot assistants worldwide, all built by Mitch Macaphee.)

Oooh! Let's go to Gallactic Centre! That sounds like FUN!

Needless to say, the recent degradation of our little neighborhood is hastening our decision to go out on the road again. And when I say “road”, I mean deep space pathways … imaginary lines through the trackless void. We’re working on an itinerary for a Spring Tour 2019, starting off in the outer reaches of our own solar system, then moving on to some of the more distant locales where the gravity is unpredictable and the audiences more profoundly diverse. It’s all still on the drawing board, but we’re thinking it looks something like this:

  • May 12, Neptune
  • May 15, Proxima system
  • May 20, Barnard’s Star system
  • May 27, Procyon system
  • May 30, Epsilon Indi
  • June 5, Jupiter, red spot

Naturally, we’ve got some gaps to fill. And then there’s the question of transportation. Details, details! Don’t bother me with trifles. We gotta get on the road before some of these local Yosemite Sams start using us for target practice. Tour for your life! (Hey … there’s a theme.)

Usual Rubbish

In the hole he goes.

Let us pray. In the name of the father, the son … and in the hole he goes. That’s all I’ve got. You want some more? Some hail Marys or something? Try dial-a-prayer.

Even agnostics can find reasons to pray. Mine was on the occasion of examining the space craft that will take us on our next interstellar tour, yet to be named, tentatively slated for early this summer. To call this vehicle ramshackle is to curse it with false praise; I’m guessing this thing never got to the top of the troposphere before taking a Boeing-style nose dive. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, says he can spruce it up a bit, but it’s going to take more than a little spruce to make that shitwagon spaceworthy. Try again, Mitch.

This enterprise has taken on a bit more urgency since the publication of that image of the Black Hole at the center of galaxy M-87. Our first thought, of course, was that this might be another stop on our tour, another venue. Forget the light-devouring, soul-crushing gravitation … it’s a black hole named Powehi, for chrissake. How could we not play there? I’m leaving it to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to handle the booking arrangements, but whatever the paycheck may end up being, just picture the live album: The Main Event Horizon: Big Green Live from Powehi.

Hmmm... Looks promising.

Okay, now … talk me out of it. I hate, hate, hate space travel. The food is terrible. The gravity is highly inconsistent. You get stiffed by every manner of space creature, most of whom think humans are some kind of mannerless androids. (I typically make an effort to explain to them that Marvin is the only one who actually approaches that description, but often to no avail.) And yet … we keep doing it, right? What drives us on, to gig where no man has gigged before? Ambition? No, it can’t be that. I don’t think we have enough ambition between us to bend over and pick up a twenty someone dropped on the sidewalk. Wealth? Don’t even. The thrill of performance? Please!

Come to think of it, I have no idea why we tour. And maybe that’s the best reason to do it.