Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Yonder bound.

Marvin (my personal robot assistant), didn’t I tell you to pick those Legos up about three hours ago? Can’t you do anything without being told twelve times?! Are you even awake?! MARVIN!!

I'm your Lincoln ConciergeChrist on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and have dutifully (and pitilessly) posted our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN every month, on the month (or quite nearly). But gainful employ? Naught, my friend. Goose egg.

Arguably, it goes against human nature (and personal robot assistant nature, presumably) to be idle for so long. I’ve seen signs of restlessness, to be sure. Not from anti-Lincoln, of course, who spends most of his day in the forge room, swilling cheap rum that he got from god-knows-where. But his positive doppelganger, Lincoln, tries to keep busy in imaginative though annoying ways. (I keep telling him, I can’t afford a big fat car – it’s just not in the game plan. But just try telling Lincoln not to sell you something.)

Big GreenMarvin is always coming up with pass-times, as well as hair-brained schemes for making money. But I think he’s hit a wall, and it’s understandable. Even his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has wandered off to richer pastures, taking advantage of some time-share property he invented in Madagascar. (Something about hanging gardens … though I’m not sure about what stage of insanity he was in when he told me about it.) So Marvin sits and rusts a little every day, his battery running down. He needs a change of scene, and so do the rest of us.

That’s why I have started making inquiries about doing an interplanetary tour to support extraterrestrial sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. (Spoiler alert: Terrestrial sales have been abysmal.) Stay tuned for details. Big Green out.

Usual Rubbish

Freak all.

You’ll have to excuse me. I’m on the phone with Frigidaire. My dehumidifier has been recalled. Oh, the humanity! You know, if I had a pet manatee, I would consider naming him Hugh. Hugh Manatee. How’s your day going?

Got no gene for thatIt’s a little quiet around the Hammer Mill today, now that the dehumidifier has been unplugged. Dank, musty old place. Sometimes I think we’re frittering our lives away in this ruin. But then, there are worse ways to go. And I’m rather fond of fritters, myself, particularly apple fritters with a dusting of cinnamon. Mmmmm, boy.

What’s new in Big Green land? Well, sales of our new album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick are breaking all previous records. What records specifically? Well… it’s at the top of all “least popular” top ten lists. Sales are reaching nearly one unit, call it none. Could have something to do with our marketing strategy. I told Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that tossing a copy of the album out into the street and hoping patrons chance upon it was probably not the most effective approach. But hell, what do I know?

Big GreenFact is, folks … we make music and other related sounds. If we had been born to be salespeople, God would have given us briefcases and Rolex watches. And smartphones, so we would have something to do while we drive. He (and I’m sure any big boss god would have to be a dude) would also have endowed us with the irresistible drive to make hay, to spin gold, to generate wealth in immense quantities by any means necessary. Like, say, manufacturing cheap dehumidifiers with virtual slave labor in China and marketing it under hollowed-out brands like Frigidaire in the United States. Or writing, producing, and releasing mucho commercial music.

But God in his infinite wisdom put Richard Nixon on this earth …. I mean, saw fit not package us with the “batteries” of ambition included. Hey … Freak all. That’s what I say. How about you?

Usual Rubbish

August arrives late.

Well, that was strange. It was just the end of July, and now look at us. Summer evaporated – must have been all that sun.

It took a few weeks, but Matt and I finally got around to thinking that we should post an August episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. I’m sure some of you may have thought we were taking an August break, much like our political class and most people of means in Europe do every year about this time, but no soap. Let’s get this clear: Big Green is a WORKING band. They’ll be no slackers around this abandoned hammer mill, my friends. Yeah, I’m looking at YOU, Marvin (my personal robot assistant). It’s up every morning at 5 a.m. and sweat!

Phew, that was exhausting. Anywho, what do we have on the podcast this month? Well, let’s have a look-see. First off, we’ve got a special episode of Ned Trek, entitled Ned Trek XII: The Manassery. Introduced by Lee Majors, as always, this ludicrous extravaganza features a peerless pantheon of figures from the American conservative tradition, including Ronald Reagan in a role inspired by that of Captain Christopher Pike, post disaster. A must-listen for anyone with way, way, way too much time on their hands.

Big GreenThen there’s Matt and my usual broad-ranging conversation about nothing in particular, interrupted not once but twice by previously unreleased recordings of Big Green songs. The first, “Plenty of Time, Plenty of Blood”, is a number pulled from the archives; another four-track cassette recording, probably from 1990-91, somewhere in there. The second, right at the end of the podcast, is a recent recording of a song called “Ask For Leave”. This is one of those rough-draft recordings, not quite fully tracked, which we did a hasty mix on for the podcast.

Yeah, I know – it goes on a bit too long. But if you can stand two hours of THIS IS BIG GREEN, perhaps you can also endure 78 minutes of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our new album. Give it a listen. (If you’re short on scratch in these hard times, contact us and we’ll send you a copy gratis, while supplies last.)