Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Nail and tooth.

BANG! BANG! BANG! goes the hammer. POP! POP! POP! goes the rivet gun. RING! RING! RING! goes the phone. It’s our neighbors, the antique dealer. He’s telling me to shut the hell up. “Turn it down, the radio!” he shouts over the phone, and I smile quietly to myself.

Why am I amused by this? Hey… when you call a dump like this “home”, you must find amusement wherever it may be lurking. Here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we are always looking for new distractions. Is that because Big Green is not what you would call a “performing” band? Perhaps, perhaps. Fewer reasons to venture out of the mill, particularly now that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) makes our grocery runs for us. “You trust him with money?” I imagine you’re thinking right now. My imaginary answer would be, “No; we program him to work as a day laborer before he goes to the store. That’s how we roll.”

Well, goddamn-a, why do we need a robot’s money… when a Google search on “Big Green International House” turns up more than five million sites? No man can say. Perhaps it is that vow of poverty. Not that any of us took such a vow, but perhaps someone else took one for us. In any case, we have to keep busy somehow, right? And aside from Googling our own names (and album titles) there must be something productive we can do.

So hell, I’m building a new Big Green web site. It will be big… and green. Perhaps shiny, perhaps not. I’m not super crazy about shiny, to tell the honest truth – it makes things look too much like what’s looking at them. Anyway, that’s what all the hammering is about – that’s the sound of Web development up here in the sticks. That’s what it sounds like when someone is building a Web site you can really sink your teeth into. A site that is chewy, not cakey… just the way you like it.

As you might expect, we’re doing this – as we do our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN – on a shoestring. A little infusion of venture capital wouldn’t go amiss right now, truth be told. Get Bain on the phone. No answer? Hmmmm…. must have closed up shop. Start picking numbers randomly out of the phone book. (I’m addressing Marvin, you people – don’t try this at home.) Someone out there must be looking to drop some cash on an ill-considered venture.

Uh-oh. The phone. It’s my neighbor again. Or it’s Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm. Either way, I’m fucked.

Usual Rubbish

Grappling with hooks.

Hmmm. I like that one you had the other night. How did it go? Strum through that number once again, will you? There’s a good chap.

Ensconced once again within the crumbling walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, I can report that we of Big Green are back to doing what we do best: inventing snacks out of items collected from the goodwill box. If it weren’t for all this music stuff we might be good at it by now. Oh, the burden of servings such a demanding muse! Nothing is good enough, nothing! We work our fingers to the bone – nay, to the marrow – hammering out songs in the clammy basement of this condemned factory, then tossing them skyward… only to see them knocked back in anger. “Send me hooks!” demands the disembodied voice. “We are not amused!”

It appears that somewhere in the metaphysical accounting department some faceless paper-pusher assigned us a pop music muse. Let’s get one thing clear – we do not make pop music. We make crackle music – there’s a difference. It’s a whole ‘nother Rice Krispie. We don’t write choruses like, Keep the ball rollin, keep the ball rollin…! or We could have had it all-uh-hall…! Nah, nah, nah – our choruses go like this:

I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!
I’m not Kublai Khan, no no no!

… or …

Lincoln! It shouldn’t happen to our quality Lincoln!

No wonder that muse hates our guts (or at least our hooks). Though I think all of us agree – this is the kind of criticism we have received in the past from our various labels. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm (now Hegephonic); Loathsome Prick; all of them had their concerns with the material. They also had some concerns about our various retainers – Mitch Macaphee, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and our official spokesvegetable the mansized tuber (now tweeting at http://www.twitter.com/mansizedtuber ). Before putting any resources behind a terrestrial tour of any kind, they would insist that we cut them loose, shave off our long yokel beards, and start playing banjo versions of the Monkees’ greatest hits. For my money, I prefer to confine our performances to deep space… for the nonce, at least.

Well, is that the time? Got to get back to work on that album. Oh, yes… there will be another…. all in due time.

Usual Rubbish

What’s new.

Well, it’s finally coming down. The snow that is. And the lamp post. Yes, you heard me right – the lamp post came down … and Jim Bob is responsible.

Okay, truth is… I don’t know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it’s July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn’t know we had people driving us around? Well, that’s because we haven’t up until now. We’ve just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It’s like priming the pump, man.

Why this sudden obsession? Well, as you know, we of Big Green weren’t exactly born with the word “success” tattooed on our butts. (Mine has something else entirely tattooed onto it. I’m giving you twelve guesses what that might be.)  We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel for lo these past three decades, playing in dives, recording in the basement on superannuated technology, scratching for every inch, inching for every scratch…. you get the picture. (Actually, you get the sound file. We don’t do pictures.) What have we got to show for it? A second-hand robot chauffeur, that’s what. And one that can’t avoid major obstacles.

I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain, what with this being the season of kindness and gratitude. (Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sees it more as the season of mindlessness and attitude, but that’s how he rolls.) We’re still recording, still flailing away at the canon, committing item after item from the seemingly bottomless vat of unrecorded material to virtual tape. You can hear the results of these sessions on our podcast, This Is Big Green, where we post first drafts of songs we will eventually release as our next album(s).

So sure, we live in a drafty mill, no fuel for the fire, no food in the fridge, no miracle grow for the mansized tuber (not that he needs it).  But we’ve got something more valuable than any of that: a gift coupon to Tony’s pizza, good for another three days. To the limo… and damn the lamp posts!