Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Tin can alley.

Better take this slow, Mitch. Those suckers look sharp, real sharp. Sharp as a … a very sharp thing. Got a thesaurus? No, it’s not a creature from the Cretaceous. It’s a book with…. oh never mind.

Well here we are, on the first leg (or arm, perhaps) of Big Green’s much anticipated (by us) [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 – an aimless romp through the chewy center of the galaxy and from one end of our voluminous songbook to the other. Oh yes, we’re going from A to Z on this one. That was something we settled on in the rehearsal cellar, mainly because we couldn’t decide what the hell to play. So Matt pulls out this massive loose-leaf tome of songs from hell, arranged alphabetically, and we started paging through. From All Saints Come to You’re Dripping… it’s a veritable cornucopian magnum opus of Big Green numbers from back in the day. Our set lists are the stuff of nightmares, frankly. (And who’s this Frank Lee you keep speaking of?)

Okay, so… we lifted off rightly enough. At least that’s what I’m told. I was unconscious… or so I’m told. (How would I know I was unconscious when I was unconscious?) No, I bit down on a cough drop and fell over backwards, I’m told, then was strapped into my couch on the rented spacecraft of doom Mitch procured for us. Actually, that was probably the best way to get me on board the sucker – feet first. I was all for getting some other type of transport. Perhaps a long elevator or some ultra-lift shoes – something, anything that would get us closer to Betelgeuse.

Well, now, I may have been overreacting to the spacecraft. It’s actually not that bad once you’ve gone a couple of million miles in it. By the time I woke up, we had gone that and then some. Of course, now we’re making our way through the asteroid belt – perhaps the pointiest part of the solar system – on our way to an engagement in the Jovian system. Which, incidentally, we may be a little late for, as this is taking longer than I’d thought likely. In truth, I’d rather our pilot, Mitch Macaphee, err on the side of caution rather than treat us like one of his lame experiments. (Did I say that? Let it pass, let it pass….)

For now, I’m just strumming on Matt’s guitar, waiting, waiting to be told to start performing, sharing this tin can with a dyspeptic crew of oddball mofos. Oh, the solitude of space travel! How I miss it.

Usual Rubbish

Tune it.

Turn the first little knob on the top. Yes, that one. Turn it. A little more. More. Right, now back it off a little. Good… now the next one – turn it clockwise. I said CLOCKWISE! What do you mean you’re from the land down under? What’s THAT got to do with ANYTHING?

Ho, man. Just getting ready for BIG GREEN’S [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011, and as you can see, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be the guitar tech again this time out. Thought it might be wise to go over the basics, just one more time, before we really need his help. No, he can’t tune a six-string guitar all by himself. He needs someone to hold the fat end while he turns the tuners – but that’s not the main drawback. You see, Marvin is made of bits left over from other experiments, in essence, including machine parts from Mitch Macaphee’s shop – air powered tools, drills, vise-grips, sanders, and the like. Sometimes when you ask him to do an open tuning on the Martin, he turns that tuner like he’s taking an air wrench to a lug nut… then it’s SNAP!  He also gets very confused on Matt’s Ovation 12-string, which Matt has set up like a six-string. (Too many machines.)

Would that that were our most serious problem on this tour. Not a bit of it. I told you, I seem to recall, about the dark vessel Mitch appears to have hired for our transport. It resembles that ship that took that fateful journey to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, that wouldn’t make me particularly nervous… except that Jupiter is on our itinerary. Seems like too much of a coincidence. No one else seems uncomfortable, but… well… I am. Open the pod door, Marvin. I said OPEN THE POD DOOR, MARVIN!

Guess I should start being nicer to the boy. At least pre-emptively. You never know what kind of situation you might find yourself in. I can imagine a scenario wherein we might find ourselves trapped in a reality that resembles what people in 1967 thought 1999 would look like.  That would not be good. But anyway….

We have a tour to plan. Bookings to book. Shoes to pack. Songs to rehearse. And guitars to tune. MARVIN!! (Please…) 

Usual Rubbish

Pod bay door.

The good news is, we’ve scored a ride to the stars. The bad news is… it’s aboard a doomed ship sent from hell. Not the kind of luxury we’re accustomed to, but hey… we’ll manage.

Big Green will be departing for Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, and points east (I believe it’s east) on September 29 for our [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Not that the date is much of a concern, now that Mitch Macaphee has a tenuous hold on the time-space continuum. If we miss our launch date, what the hell, we just have Mitch send us back a few days. Depending upon what kind of a mood he’s in, that could be easy or hard, very hard. (Actually, Matt thinks that if you run backwards really fast, you will go back in time. Call me a skeptic… though I’ve noticed that when you run forward real fast, time seems to move forward. If this were an elegant universe, the converse would be true. And no, I don’t mean the sneaker.)

I should mention that, as we wait for our departure, we are in the midst of what I would call a series of “mini-sessions” in our Hammer Mill basement studio. These are related to production of our new podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, the second installment of which is now available on iTunes and directly from us peoples. This time out we’re featuring a somewhat rich discussion of the thinking (or lack of same) behind our song “Quality Lincoln”, a rough draft of which we include on the podcast. What we’re doing is laying the basic tracks for a song, playing that on the podcast, and then finishing the song later for separate release. The result may be another album, a series of EPs, or something else entirely.

I should also add that “Quality Lincoln” is not so much one song, but rather three songs, knit together with sturdy fibers of ludicrousness. I suppose there are better ways to spend one’s time as he/she waits for an accursed space vessel to pick him/her up. I just can’t think of any, and I’ll wager neither can you.  Or perhaps I am mistaken.

Well, is that the time? Was that me talking just then? Perhaps. Hey – give the podcast a listen and let us know what you think. Send an email or something. More fodder for the podcast.