Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Old Man Fall.

2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, I know, I know – heat costs money. Unless we start burning shit, right? I mean, we’ve got a lot of fuel in this joint, don’t we? And when that runs out, we’ve got a mad science advisor on hand. He can either invent some way to keep us warm, or we can burn those many notebooks he has, all stuffed with theorems to destroy whole planets. We’d be doing humanity a favor!

Howdy, everyone. Sure, we want to do humanity a favor. But we also want to do ourselves the favor of keeping from freezing to death. If the coming winter turns out to be anywhere near as chaotic as this past summer, people will be porting us out of this dump with a pair of ice tongs. Oh, the humanity! And yes, I am being a bit paranoid over the question of how we are going to heat this place, particularly as the nights are get colder and damper. And spookier. But let’s face it – as squatters here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have no means of acquiring energy from mega-corporations and using it to keep ourselves toasty. Besides, the idea is loathsome to us. Give in to big corporations? Bah! We’d sooner, well …. burn something other than what they’re selling.

There are a lot of drawbacks to living in an abandoned hammer mill. Lack of heat is one of them, sure, but the real problem with our Big Green lifestyle is that we tend to sleep through the worst weather, no matter how bad it gets. That is not a good thing. It’s not that we’re particularly comfortable here. It’s just that we’ve been musicians so long that our diurnal clock has ceased to function properly. You’re supposed to be up all night, in bed half the day, then it’s supper for breakfast and you’re off. (Supper used to be my very favorite breakfast!) Of course, we used to drink like fish … or like fishes. Maybe just Phish. (I think they drink Saranac, actually.) If we still did that, well …. we’d jam more.

See? There is a resemblance.

Which makes me think, hey …. in this weird ass COVID world we now inhabit, why don’t we join all of the other out-of-work musicians and start jamming on YouTube or Zoom or some other web platform? Well, I can think of one reason – our internet access is dotty, to say the least. I’d like to say we have a legitimate node or ingress to the Web here at the mill, but I don’t want to be accused of lying. Let’s just say that it’s sub-optimal, so if we ever do start cranking out virtual performances, live or pre-recorded, we’ll probably have to tap into somebody’s broadband wifi. I’m looking at you, Ken’s Barber Shoppe!

No doubt about it – Fall is the season that hangs us up the most. Always has been. But here at Big Green, we make the best of things, even if things are …. well … just things. Maybe we can convert Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of space heater. (He was partially constructed from an old hot water tank, as legend has it.)

Usual Rubbish

Foot stomping.

2000 Years to Christmas

Start with a one, and a two, and a three, and a … ouch! Damn it, man … I can’t do this in slippers. I need my stomping shoes!

Oh, hi. Yeah, it’s us again, making music again, or dying in the attempt. One thing you can say about this crazy rock music kick, if it ever catches on, is that it’s all about the rhythm section. It’s pretty simple once you get started. And after you learn how to spell “rhythm”, you’ve taken the first step to glory. Then all you need is a sense of timing and some good stomping shoes … and a decent drummer. And of course a bass player. Yes, yes … and rhythm guitar. Oh, yeah … piano. How could I forget that one? Well … maybe it isn’t all that simple after all. But it is contagious, my friends. Mucho contagious.

Listen to me rambling like an idiot. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, or just bad air. Maybe some of that west coast forest fire ash is making its way back east. Whatever. Our project this week is an attempt to find the rhythmic core of every song we do. First, we get someone to strum the chords on a guitar. That might be Marvin (my personal robot assistant), except that he can’t even hold a guitar unless it’s in a zero gravity environment, like the deck of the Jupiter Two. So maybe anti-Lincoln …. or my brother Matt, who can actually play a guitar. (No, that’s too easy.) Then we pull out the rhythm arranger. Now I know you’re probably picturing a computer workstation of some kind with a pad controller midi-ed into it. Well, dream on, my friends. Our rhythm arranger is a bunch of pots and pans arrayed in a circle, and the rest of us beating on them with wooden spoons. (It’s just about getting the flavor, right? Then we bring in the drummer.)

Strum that thing, Marvin.

Is this a fools errand? More than likely. But what other kind of errand are we likely to run … I mean, aside from sending Mitch Macaphee, the world’s third greatest mad scientist, down to the corner store to buy some batteries? You musicians out there know how this works. You just try a bunch of different things, different combinations of instruments and patterns, until something starts to gel. You don’t know how it happens, but it always does. Of course, you have to stir the mix properly, and make certain the water is hot enough, then refrigerate three hours before serving. But enough about Mr. Wiggle. I’m sure you’re just dying to know more about our creative process. Well, I’ll tell you, my friend …. so are we. That’s why we’re sitting around our makeshift living room in an abandoned hammer mill, banging on pots and pans. It’s a conjuring trick.

Next week: how to make Jello. Again.

Usual Rubbish

Hangups.

2000 Years to Christmas

Never mind, Lincoln, I’ll get it. Hello? Yes, this is the Cheney Hammer Mill. Who is this? Hello? HELLO? IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Actually, that’s probably not true. I just like to get the pot boiling a little bit before I start typing in earnest. Yes, like so many of you, we at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill get an unending stream of fundraising and advertising scam calls, each and every day. I’ll tell you, it’s hard to get about the work of an unemployed pop band if you’re getting interrupted every twenty-five minutes by a furiously ringing telephone. There are things that Big Green must not do to remain Big Green – these telemarketers are trying to take that away from us, and I won’t have it, do you understand?

I know what some of you are thinking right now. “Joe,” you’re thinking (and by the way, thank you for calling me by my given name) “Why don’t you just get an answering machine?” Good question, nameless interloper. The fact is, we already have an answering machine …. it’s called Marvin (my personal robot assistant). We just place the handset on his left shoulder and punch a few buttons, and our callers will be greeted by a tinny, stilted voice that sounds like an audio ransom note – words cut from different magazine articles and pasted together. Marvin then records their comments and plays them back to us while standing on one wheel. Sure, he squeaks and rusts more than your typical telephone answering machine, but hell … he’s here and willing to do the work, right?

Wrong number again? What a bunch of freaks.

Okay, so … now you’re thinking, “But, wait a minute, Joe. How come you guys have so much time on your hands that you can spend a pile of it worrying about stupid shit like this?” That’s an even better question, which is a short hand way of saying that I have no idea. The simple fact is, we can’t play in public spaces, we don’t have broadband so we can’t play remotely, and we’re in the midst of our Summer music production doldrums, which is to say that none of us feels like doing anything other than sleeping through September. But then every time I try to get a few extra winks, that phone starts ringing again. So, it turns out that your implied statement above is absolutely correct – we have done fuck-all this summer, and we’re getting antsy.

Somewhere, a phone was ringing. Sounds like a bad novel from the 70s.