Tag Archives: mansized tuber

Usual Rubbish

Social media killed the radio star.

2000 Years to Christmas

I spy with my little eye … a chair! Right, that’s the one. Now your turn. Well now … you can’t say chair, because I just did and there’s only one in the room. Pick something else, damn it!

Sheesh – that’s the trouble with playing parlor games here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. For one thing, there’s no parlor. Even worse, it seems no one in our entourage has ever played a game before. Not even Parcheesi! We are creatures of the road, my friends, driven by eternal wanderlust. Except, of course, for most of the last twenty-five years, during which we’ve been nailed in one spot.

Sure, I know – if we’ve got all this time on our hands, why the hell aren’t we recording? Why aren’t we putting out new episodes of THIS IS BIG GREEN or NED TREK? Well, that’s a good question. I would add that to our list of Freakishly Unanswerable Questions, but then that dude would call me a “dink” again, and then I couldn’t show my face in my fifth grade classroom should 1970 ever return.

Turn it down, the radio

They say video killed the radio star. Well, we never were radio stars, but we got killed none the less – not by video, though. No, sir – social media killed us. It wore us down to a nub. Just look at what it did to Marvin (my personal robot assistant)! His hands are mere claws. And the mansized tuber – he is now a helpless Facebook addict, scrolling and scrolling his life away. Pathetic!

Not like that, you idiot! Use the hockey stick.

As official spokesperson for Big Green, I do spend a little time on Facebook, Twitter, and … uh …. some other stuff. But I’m not living on that shit. And frankly, it’s the podcasts that took it out of us. At its peak, THIS IS BIG GREEN was posting 12 shows a year, half of them musicals, which meant five, six, sometimes eight new songs recorded and finished in time to post, along with an hour-long episode of Ned Trek. Holy mother – I get tired just THINKING about it.

Hammock time, geezers

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we’re retiring. For one thing, we can’t afford to. For another thing, we’ve barely even started. We’re like the Elias Sandoval of indie music. “We could have made this planet into a garden!” (It’s from classic Star Trek. Ask your mother. Or better yet, you’re moron father.)

Will we do more episodes of TIBG? Probably, but we are definitely on hiatus. Those buzzards circling over the mill, they’re just waiting on a friend. Then it’s off to the rookery. As for us, we should probably switch to backgammon. I think even Marvin could figure THAT out.

Usual Rubbish

Climbing the ladder up into the basement

2000 Years to Christmas

Nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen, Tubey. Nobody knows but Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen …..

Oh, hey, there. Just singing a mournful little tune to the mansized tuber, now reachable on Facebook. Lord knows, we don’t like to complain here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – the fact is, we LOVE to complain, particularly anti-matter Lincoln (or A-Link as his friends now call him), who’s been complaining about the war since …. well, since the war. (He’s not specific about which war, but I think it was one of the badder ones.)

Hey, look … everybody has their bumps coming up the ladder. As the saying goes, be nice to everyone you meet on the way up the ladder, because they’ll be the same people you meet on your way down. What is the relevance of that statement? I have no idea. We’ve never been anywhere near that damn ladder. Couldn’t say if it’s wood or aluminum. That’s the kind of complaining I’m talking about.

Changing Pre-History

Now, I know we’ve spun a few tales about our origin story, but like any band, we needed to have an interesting back story, and I’m not saying it’s not true, but …. we may have embellished one or two details here and there. That’s as far as I’ll go, but bear this in mind – the Freakishly Unanswerable Questions are as true as the day is long. And the day is long, my friends.

Well, anyway … that’s the band’s story. Our individual stories are a bit more complicated. Take mine (please!). Back when we were concerned with making something like a living, we all had side gigs to support our Big Green habit. Mine were mostly playing in other bands, as I had no other skills and no inclination to develop any more.

The Bad Side Of Massachusetts

Here’s an anecdote. One band I played in with one of the co-founders of Big Green, Ned Danison, was an almost total waste of time. I remember a gig we had in Western Mass, an awful town whose name I won’t mention (North Adams) where we played a hotel gig, five nights a week for a couple of weeks at a time. The place has probably improved since four decades ago, I imagine, but back then …. hoo boy. The lodgings were adequate, but the money was crap, the music was awful, and the place was full of crazy people.

Did anything happen of interest? No. Ned and I worked on some songs that never saw the light of day. Was it a stepping stone to greater things? No. It was just another crappy gig. Not the first, and certainly not the last.

Don’t Listen To Me!

This is my way of saying, don’t follow my example. Don’t listen to anything that I say! If you’re reading this now, STOP WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Or start a band. Up to you, really. Don’t let me influence you.

Usual Rubbish

Joe to band: More album, less concept

2000 Years to Christmas

No, that’s a terrible idea. What the hell! Sometimes I wonder about your synaptic circuits, dude. I’m starting to think your think-o-lator needs urgent service. What else have you got? I got nothing.

Oh, hey, out there in cyber land. Just another day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York. And by “another day,” I mean another contentious debate over the best way forward for your friends in Big Green. As you know, rock bands spend a lot of their time working out their artistic direction over the course of ten, sometimes twenty years. Hell, if you don’t do THAT, you might end up drifting … or playing the same stuff over and over again …. which is, uh, kind of what …. we …. do ….

An extraordinary meeting

Well, we’re trying to get away from that sort of thing. That’s why we’ve convened a special meeting of the Big Green creative steering committee, which is comprised of the band members, of course, plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber. We used to include Anti-Lincoln in these meetings, but he kept talking about the war and, well, that gets old pretty fast.

Still, even without “A-Link”, as we call him, in attendance, we some time end up treading the same territory. For instance, we were on the topic of concept albums. I asked the group to suggest some possible concepts for upcoming Big Green collections. Most of the man-sized tuber’s suggestions were plant-based, but then Marvin piped up with the suggestion that we do an album themed around the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. I’m telling you, it’s A-Link all over again!

Can we leave Prince Leopold out of this, Marvin?

Why all Marvin’s ideas are bad ones

Okay, putting Lincoln aside for a moment, there are about a hundred reasons why doing a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War is a bad idea. First of all, I’m convinced that a not-insignificant portion of our fan-base is still sensitive about the accession of Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the Spanish throne. And while I don’t want to seem like a panderer, in these hard economic times, we shouldn’t go out of our way to alienate anyone unnecessarily.

This tends to be the problem with many if not all of Marvin’s ideas. There’s always a poison pill hidden in there somewhere. Honestly, a concept album about the Franco-Prussian War would inevitably dredge up unpleasant memories of the birth of France’s Third Republic, and THEN where would we be? That’s why all of Marvin’s ideas are bad!

The totally excellent solution

How about this? No more concept albums. From now on, Big Green albums will just be a collection of randomly generated songs with no relationship to one another or to some unifying idea. Thoughts? Any hands? (Or branches, tubey?)