Tag Archives: mitch

Total recall.

No, no. Good monster. You don’t want to kill your benefactor, do you? Here … have some more porridge, there’s a good chap. (Hoo boy.)

Oh, hi. Yep, that’s right; I’m in the process of talking down one of Mitch Macaphee’s greatest creations (at least in his own estimation). Yes, it seems that Freakenstein, once set loose by Dr. Macaphee, did a tear around the neighborhood, pulling up lamp posts, opening fire hydrants, and generally making a nuisance of himself. He went into the local pawn shop and got a few items out of hock – items he, of course, had no personal connection with (since he was only just invented and has never known the joys of personal property) but nonetheless liked anyway. What did he use for money? No cash needed … when you’re Freakenstein.

Okay, so … predictably, the complaints start rolling in from all over town. And it’s clear that we need to do something about this. It was a bit like when Big Zamboola first got here and started throwing his hyper-energized magnetic fields all over the place. Or like Matt’s used vegetable stand (every item guaranteed recovered from passing produce trucks).  What do those things have in common? Not much, except the fact that people complained mightily about them. That’s what happened with Freakenstein, prompting us to ask Mitch to call his sorry ass back to the mill.

Well, so Mitch deputized Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and put him on the task. He was clever enough to fire up Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device and point it in the general direction of the monster. Well, land o’ goshen, that worked like laying out breadcrumbs – he just followed that beam right back here, his arms loaded with ill-gotten swag (mostly from the pawn shop), some worn-looking Bean boots on his oversized paddles. Now it falls to me to talk him out of trashing the mill … even worse than it’s trashed now, that is. And hell, he’s feisty. (I don’t mean he likes listening to Feist, either. Literalist.)

Well, somehow in the midst of all this pointless activity, I had time to post another episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, now available on iTunes. Check it out, manzie. And keep an eye on your fire hydrants. Never know.

Freakenstein.

I know. I shouldn’t have interrupted him with my petty complaints. He’s a mad scientist, not a T.V. and stereo repair man. My bad, totally. Dude.

Oh, yes… that’s right. We are not the only ones reading this. Sorry out there in the blogosphere. Big Green is in the midst of a band meeting of sorts. No, we don’t typically do these. Like most groups, we all live together in our funky (i.e. “groovy”) musician bachelor pad, with the retro sixties modular furniture and gooseneck lamps of the type you might find in Darrin Stevens’ house (assuming he actually had a house and not just a set that is, in essence, a house sawed in half). My point is…. um … (yes… it was a house sawed in half, perhaps by some kind of witchcraft, or … craft services….) Damn it!

Okay, I’ll stay on point. We’re meeting about that thing, that bloodthirsty killer. No, not “The Thing”, as in the sci-fi movie “The Thing”. I mean the thing that Mitch Macaphee created in his spare time. He was working on it last week when I tried to pull him off so he could fix our monitor power amp. Simple work for a genius, right? I mean, he freaking invented Marvin (my personal robot assistant) using spare parts, bailing wire, etc.  Well, he had some more spare parts and, as I said, some spare time, and …. well … he invented some kind of killin’ machine.

What is it called? You may well ask. After all, how else are you going to avoid it, right? Mitch isn’t really good at names. I mean, we call it Freakenstein, but that’s just because we’re not really good at names either. Only Mitch can control it; only he can call it back. But Mitch is like the stereotypical insurance salesman of mad scientists. Once he sells a policy, you never hear from him again. That’s the way Mitch works. He builds something, sets it loose on an unsuspecting public, and then forgets about it. On to the next thing. And if it goes on a mad rampage, well… that’s as it may be.   

How can you protect yourself? Well… I asked Mitch, and the only thing that will ward Freakenstein off is that helmet Mr. Spock wears – you know the one. You saw it in the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog every year, right? Well…. should’ve asked Santa for it back in 1967, because that’s the thing that scares the fertilizer out of Freakenstein.  

 Okay…. band meeting over. I move to adjourn. Anyone second? Freakenstein seconds. Meeting is adj….   FREAKENSTEIN?!?

Sing it loud.

Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare … disgusting. Oh, well.

Yep, we’ve got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally – he wouldn’t stop blinking. I think it’s all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end.

Right, well…. we’re not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green. No, we are practical mofo’s, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo’s you read about in the Sunday paper.  Fact is, we’re recording an album and we need to freaking hear the bastard – we all admit that. To deny it would be just plain silly.

What’s the album about? Glad you asked. Give a listen to the last episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, wherein I believe we give a rough explanation of the project. I believe we do – don’t quote me on that. It’s probably somewhere between our seventeen apologies for the previous month’s episode and our airing of cousin Rick Perry’s latest song, “Come Back Mean”, which features the immortal lyric:

Kick me a dog
Go scour the neighborhood
Bring me the best kickin’ dog you can find
Go get me Planned Parenthood

Old Rick is singing from the heart right there. (Though it does sound eerily reminiscent of another organ slightly to the south.)

Yes, so… we’re taking all of cousin Rick’s songs, polishing them up a little bit, and placing them on a long playing record (a.k.a. a bunch of MP3s) where they can be downloaded by the likes of you. What you’re hearing on the podcast are “first drafts” – rough mixes of basic tracks. What you will hear on the final album (working title: “Cowboy Scat”) will be finished pieces (of something), which in many cases may sound…. substantially like the podcast versions …. but (and this is important) not necessarily!

Okay, well… I’ve wandered a bit. Nothing new there. Ooops. And there goes the light switch. Technology!