Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Pit stop.

Where did you put the GPS? I don’t know this neighborhood very well. Okay, well … pull out that AAA map and unfold it. Yes, I’ll wait. Jesus.

This ride SUCKSWell, you caught Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I on a little automotive tour of the greater Little Falls, NY area. All it takes is some kind of vehicle – in this case, Mitch Macaphee’s 1968 Chevy Nova – and a little curiosity. Sure, the muffler just fell off (again) and I can see the road going by under my feet, but these are minor inconveniences. Spring is here, people – it’s time to start living the life. Let’s get our sorry asses out of that drafty old hammer mill and fill our nostrils with the scent of new life. Or … not. Up to you.

Sometimes the best of intentions, as you know, lead one astray. It reminds me of a song Matt Perry wrote many moons ago – still applies today, though.

Good intentions, I’ve all these good intentions
My good intentions won’t row the boat ashore
Good intentions, you know I’m good intentioned
Still I watched the world, I watched the world crash to the floor
and I just watched.

Well, I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us. What is it? I don’t freaking know. What am I, Kreskin? Anyway … my one-robot tour of greater Little Falls, NY, is something of a bust. That’s just as well. I should be back at the mill, toiling away at the next couple of episodes of our podcast, as well as all the associated songs. We appear to be up to seven new songs for the June podcast – that, I believe, is a new record. (Perhaps literally … if by “record” you mean “album”). I’ve got a lot of parts to put down, but somehow I can’t move.

Oldest story in the book, right? As soon as you have responsibility thrust upon you, you go looking for the exits. Fortunately, they are easy to find in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. There are a lot of missing doors and windows; it’s like living in a king size Swiss cheese.  But have faith – we have recorded Ned Trek 23, it has been sent to our non-union editors in Madagascar, and we expect to post the finished project sometime in the nearish future.

All right, I’m off. Marvin’s got the map out again.

Usual Rubbish

Bam boom.

What are you going to do, play on garbage cans? That works for some songs, but how long can it possibly hold up? We need a more permanent solution to our problem. (Did I say that?)

squxOkay, so … this will come as no surprise to any long time followers of Big Green, but we make recordings using technology roughly equivalent to stone knives and bear skins, as the late Leonard Nimoy once put it. (My guess is that he had 1000 times the resources when he cut “Mr. Spock’s Songs from Outer Space,” but I digress.) We are plagued by technical glitches and the spotty performance of superannuated recording equipment, including a first generation digital workstation with no practical means of exporting song data or sound files (namely a Roland VS-2480 from the year 2001). It is choked with projects and ready to keel over.

Now, don’t get me wrong … we have invested in newer technology. Mitch picked up a new blender last week. Great for daiquiris (I hate daiquiris!) and it makes a nice whine on high. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) installed a new oscillator the other day. THAT cost a packet. Seems like when it comes around to music gear, the well runs dry. Not freaking fair, I say. But then, I’m liable to say anything by this point in the day, or perhaps just build sentences using words that Android suggests (Android:) the same time as the most important …

Yeah, see? This machine doesn’t know how to make sense. Give me a rudimentary non-verbal robot assistant any day. Still, with our grueling production schedule – 20 songs a year, sometimes 50, sometimes umpteen thousand – we need to come up with a way of plugging these suckers together, like widgets on an assembly line. I’m sure this is the type of problem all songwriting teams have encountered since the beginning of recorded music. The difference between them and us is, well, we’re not paid. But it’s the mission that matters! Huzzah!

What is our mission again? Oh, right. Finish the songs.

Usual Rubbish

Pod-where? Dunno.

Not a real good bookkeeper, I admit it. Never have been particularly good with numbers. Don’t know much about geometry. (There’s a song in this somewhere.)

Tubey and the stump in the courtyard.So what happened to the March podcast? Well, as you’ve guessed if you follow our various pointless postings in cyberspace, we have moved to a bi-monthly format, given the production demands of Ned Trek, particularly the musical episodes. We’re currently producing five or six songs for what will ultimately be the June episode, and we should be recording the April episode in a week or so. So … production is moving forward, but like Issa’s snail climbing Mount Fuji, it is proceeding “slowly … slowly.”

My illustrious brother had a cold for a couple of weeks, like half of humanity up here in the great frozen north country. He spends a good deal of his day outdoors, feeding and entertaining all manner of wild critters. Not so different from being in the restaurant business, actually, and you know how demanding THAT can be. In any case, that pushed our production schedule back a couple of weeks … enough time for Mitch Macaphee to flesh out our plan to start a Mars colony before the end of the decade. (Well, THAT certainly took a strange turn.)

That leaves us a brief opportunity to mark the return of Spring and all the traditional rites associated with it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has taken it upon himself to erect a maypole in the hammer mill courtyard. Sure, it’s only five feet tall … and yeah, he made it out of the remnants of a sawed-off telephone poll, but it’s a good conversation piece, at least, and now the mansized tuber has some companionship out there as the warmer months arrive. Spring is busting out all over.

Cowboy Scat on YouTube: We posted another couple of songs to the YouTube playlist. For any of you who haven’t heard the whole album, here’s how to give it a listen.