Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

August down.

Hey, let's go to outer spaceMan, it’s so hot in here. Marvin, can you turn up the air conditioning? Oh, right … our air conditioning is a broken skylight. Sigh. Okay … break another skylight, then. Use my forty-foot pole … the one I use to keep my distance from things (and people) I don’t like.

Yes, friends … it is the end of summer, past the dog days. August is coughing up blood, writhing in the blistering sun. (Look on the bright side, brother.) Not much going on around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as you might have suspected. I laid down a piano part on perhaps one of the most ludicrous recordings I’ve ever played on. I saw some bluejays in the courtyard. What else happened? Not mucho.

Whoever said being a musician is tantamount to perpetual unemployment was on to something. (Hey … I think that was me.) You can see why we often opt for these less-than-optimal interstellar tours, in lieu of the more profitable terrestrial variety. Pretty simple, really … crappy work is better than no work at all. We are always open to seeking a new audience, even if that means holding our breath for weeks at a time. (There must be a better way to travel through space. Where’s Gene Roddenberry when you need him?)

Once we get finished with the current set of recordings, Big Green will likely take a romp around the known solar system; maybe a 2-week Autumn tour to promote … I don’t know, whatever we have to toss out there. Trouble is, on most alien worlds, the music fans have six or seven arm-like appendages, so you have to have a lot of product to keep them satisfied. Hell, they can absorb our entire canon and still have several arms free. We’ve got to get busy!

My hope is that, this time, wherever it is we’re traveling to, we have the assistance of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser. His absence was sorely felt on our last, disastrous foray into the galactic hinterlands. Which proves that having a crazy driver is better than no driver at all. (At least out where there’s very little to crash into.)

Usual Rubbish

Rainy day schedule.

Okay, kids. Line up for lunch. No, we’re not going outside. Rainy day schedule today. Break out the coloring books and the tunafish sandwiches.

I got my process, man. Or somethin.

If you’re anything like me, that was your favorite kind of lunch hour in grade school. No going out on the playground and putting up your dukes against whatever red neck wanted a piece of you that particular day. Why the reverie? Not sure. I guess all that rain beating down on the roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill has made me think of some of the other sprawling, musty barns I’ve inhabited for years at a time. Other squat houses, apartments, schools, lean-to’s … hell, submarines, even. Don’t knock it! It can rain all it wants, and no leaks (unless you opt for the screen door).

What’s up this week? Just toiling away in the vineyards of Big Green-ville, scratching out weird new numbers, honking noisily into microphones, tapping away at Ned Trek scripts. Mostly just making stuff up on the fly – that’s what we’re best at. And when I say “best”, I mean “not worst”. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) gets into the spirit of honest creative toil once in a while, running his internal adding machine until spools of tickertape unravel from his nether regions. It’s a marvelous … or, rather, Marvin-lous sight to behold.

Some people (mostly derelicts along the curb outside the hammer mill) have asked if we’re working on a new album. I have no answer to that. Matt and I just work, and then one day maybe an album appears. It’s a kind of alchemy. I’ve described the process on this blog before, so I won’t bore you with the details of our songwriting and recording methods. Suffice to say that it looks more random that it is, and yet still, it is fundamentally random … and random-mentally fun. That latter part is what’s important.

I’ll keep you posted on our projects. Just enjoy your sandwiches … and try to color within the lines. There’s a good chap.

Usual Rubbish

Crackpot diary.

Twelfth day before the mast. I see a ship on the horizon. The Dutchman? Nay. ‘Tis nothing but a garbage scow. Or perhaps a pleasure craft that’s lost it’s way. Avast.

That sounds odd.Oh, hello, there. I was just engaging in a little imagineering, to borrow a term. It gets kind of quiet around this big old barn of a hammer mill, so you have to think of other things and more exotic places. I am certainly not alone in that. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) went on a flight of fancy this past week. I think he imagined himself a paper shredder in a busy office. Hard to tell, really, except that he kept muttering “stapling machine” to himself, as if he were talking to a neighbor. Then he would make this grinding noise, and confetti would blast out the equivalent of his blowhole. Not my choice of fantasy, but hey … whatever floats it, right?

I’ve taken a few moments between sessions to scroll back through some of the music we’ve made over the last year or so, under the name of Big Green but in support of the Ned Trek program segment of This Is Big Green. In the aggregate, it definitely constitutes a crackpot diary of sorts, kind of like Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, only even more bizarre, in a way. I think it’s the horse voice, and the fact that all of Mr. Ned’s songs have a kind of dressage horse dance meter to them. Then there’s those forties guys. Not sure what to make of them.

Is there an album in this? Glad you asked. I wouldn’t rule it out, but that goes into the project hopper alongside our long-planned “resurrection of songs past” album. We’re halfway between recording systems right now, still using our distressed old Roland VS2480 system with enhancements; hopefully moving to a standard open Mac-based system, perhaps Cubase. Whatever we can get to work for us. We’re semi-primitive, you know, so we have to try things for a while before we make a change.

More on that later. I’ve got to listen to some of those crackpot songs again and see if maybe there’s grounds for having one or more of us committed. They don’t do that so much anymore? Right. Just as well.