Tag Archives: Trevor James Constable

Hello, Captain Neutron – we are receiving you

June 3, 2022 Joseph

Sure, there’s probably a reasonable explanation behind it. Why wouldn’t there be? Lord knows, everything we know is firmly rooted in reality. Except, of course, for our upstairs neighbors. And Mitch Macaphee. Yes, yes … and Anti Lincoln, too, but only when he’s drunk. Which is most of the time.

Just spending a little time as a Big Green family, sitting around the hammer mill, reading the headlines to one another. Now, as you know, we can’t afford a subscription to the real newspaper. That’s way beyond our humble means! Luckily, there are the internets. All you need to do is borrow a little wi-fi, do a search or two, and voila! Instant news. Not terrestrial news, you understand – that would cost money. No, we read news from outer space. It’s fresh, it’s interesting, and there’s always a head-scratcher or two in there.

From a land beyond time

Here’s something, Bob! (Your name is Bob, right? I always assumed that was the case.) A strange radio-emitting neutron star has been discovered in a stellar graveyard. Now, I know what you’re going to say. We shouldn’t be so morbid, reading about stellar graveyards. Why not focus more on what’s happening in stellar nurseries? Hey, you know, we find news wherever we can. If it leads us into stellar graveyards, so be it. Don’t be so judgmental, Bob!

Still, you have to admit that it’s interesting. I mean, what are the chances that another race from a land beyond time would have stumbled on the same invention that Marconi did? Even more intriguing, they appear to be trying to communicate with us, via radio. It seems to me that we should be able to decipher their language relatively easily. Why? If they’re on the surface of a neutron star, whatever they’re saying must be the deep-space equivalent of GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! We just work backwards from there.

I think it's trying to tell us something, Lincoln.

Strange magnetism

At the same time, scientists are detecting a new type of magnetic wave emitting from the earth’s chewy center. Is this a coincidence? I think not! The coincidence of these two stories on the same week is certainly no coincidence. (Wait, what?) I think it’s only right that we speculate on why this is happening at this particular juncture. To my tiny mind, there is only one possibility …. mother earth is responding to the neutron radio waves with magnetic fields. It’s like neutron man is calling collect, and she’s accepting the charges. Like any good mother would.

Skeptical? Well, there’s really only one way to test this theory. We need to break out Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device. The thing’s been in mothballs since we used it to bail Anti-Lincoln out with those crypto-kidnappers last year. But dramatic rescues are only one of the device’s practical uses. It can core a apple, make mounds of julienne fries, raise pole cats, and interpret interstellar communications, particularly those emanating from invisible flying predators.

Point it to the sky, Mack!

Damn, I wish we were more resourceful. If we had half the moxie of those forties guys that used to sing backup in our Ned Trek songs, we would have solved this mystery by now. As it is, it’s taking most of the week just to drag the Orgone Generating Device up from the cellar. And then Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has first dibs on it. (He’s making julienne fries.)

Usual Rubbish

What the hell is next – a boat ride?

March 11, 2022 Joseph

Yeah, we tried that. Nobody makes money doing that shit any more. Think of something else. What? Oh, god no. That’s not even a thing, dude. Where have you been for the last forty years? Right here? Oh, that’s right. Never mind.

Well, here we are, friends, facing the onset of another spring in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. This may be our twentieth, but I’m not entirely certain. Somebody page back through the blog posts. Don’t stop until you see Trevor James Constable and some dude who looks like a nebula. (If you run across Big Zamboola, you’re getting closer.)

Nickel’s worth of difference

Times being what they are, we’ve been scraping around for new ways to make a few bucks. So far, no luck. I’ve been polling everyone in our little entourage for new ideas. Even old ideas are welcome, so long as they come with a 90 day warranty. Trouble is, the members of our entourage pretty much don’t have lives, so they’ve got nothing new to say that we haven’t all heard fifteen times. It’s somewhat discouraging, I will allow.

Today antimatter Lincoln was piping up with a few tarnished gems. He suggested doing something called matching pennies, which apparently is a game for two people who have nothing better to do than to slap pennies on a wooden table in hopes of filling their pockets with loose change. Back in the day, he used to raise fifty, maybe a hundred pennies in a single day playing this game. When I slapped that idea down, he suggested something called matching nickels.

New ideas in old bottles

I suppose when all else fails, we could just play music and ask people to pay us, like we used to do when we were younger. But where’s the challenge in that? It just sounds too easy. Aside from that, we live in the middle of nowhere. Actually, it’s more like the outskirts of nowhere. There aren’t a lot of good venues in this burg, my friend. Not that any good venues would hire us, but … well, you know what I mean.

Of course, back in the day, I would play practically any gig to keep the lights on. I played in clubs, in fields, in hotels, on boats, at casinos – you name it. One time I did a gig with a Dixieland band on a cheesy cruise ship. It’s the kind of thing you flog your way through, mostly fail at, then slink away with your pockets full of ill-gotten gains. Did I care, really? Nah. It was a job, man, just a job. But I was twenty-something then, and a bit short on brains.

Hey, check this out

All this week I’ve been posting songs from that April 1987 Factory Village gig on our YouTube Channel. Take a look and check out Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and me backing up our late friend, songwriter Dale Haskell, on stage at QE2 in Albany, NY – Eleven tracks in all, opening for Love Tractor.

Usual Rubbish

There’s a thank you in this somewhere

November 26, 2021 Joseph

Over the river and through the woods to Macaphee’s house we go. Isn’t that the lyric? Got it wrong again? Damn. Okay, here goes. Over the river and through the woods to Trevor James Constable’s house we go.

Oh, hi. Didn’t think anyone would be reading the blog on Thanksgiving weekend, but here we are. My guess is that you’re trying to get away from your annoying relatives, especially uncle Sully, quaffing his gin, telling you all about it. That’s the kind of holiday we know and love – food and family conversation, both thoroughly indigestible.

What’s cooking, bad looking?

Let’s talk about the fare. People have this mental picture of what the traditional Thanksgiving feast should be like. Naturally, it is a concoction of many different stories and fables. The harvest feast shared by English settlers and Wampanoag people in 1621 was likely a diplomatic gathering of sorts. Who the hell knows what they ate? Corn, maybe. Freaking pine cones.

Yeah, well … we don’t go in for these fables. None of that in the old Cheney Hammer Mill. Of course, we’re all vegetarians, except for one or two vegans. Actually, Anti-Lincoln is a pescatarian, though in a very narrow sense, as he only eats one kind of fish. That’s the ancient Coelacanth, and frankly, they’re a little thin on the ground in Central New York. Most of the ones you find up here are fossilized. Sometimes they’ve got a little friend in the rock with ’em.

A thankless job

I don’t want to even suggest that Big Green is exemplary of bands in general. Contrary to popular 1960s belief, the groups don’t all live together, as Frank Zappa suggested so many years ago. And no, we don’t all gather around a big walnut table on Thanksgiving day and break bread together in fellowship. Ridiculous suggestion. The table is oak, and it used to hold woodcutter’s tools.

One of us has to cook. I usually leave that task to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). That’s because you can write up a menu, insert it into his scanner, and he will attempt to make it real. That’s the good part. The bad part is that he makes it real bad. The tofurkey is like tire rubber from the 1930s. The stuffing came out of an abandoned easy chair. And don’t even get me started on the sweet potatoes.

I know you’re supposed to thank the chef, as well as the author of the meal, but it seldom happens around this dump. Next time Mitch invents something, let’s hope it’s edible.

Incoming: annoying holiday mail

You know how people you hated in high school sometimes send a letter around the holidays telling you what they did all stupid year? Well, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar. Just a festive photo of the high times we’re having this Thanksgiving, so as to lord it over all you losers who are spending the day alone with a can of spam.

Of course, like anyone on facebook, I had to embellish the image a bit. Hard to gloat when you live in an abandoned hammer mill. All of our photos turned out hideous, so here’s a shot of me at the Macy’s multi-promotional parade, brought to you by EveryCorp(R) – slogan: “If it were in our inventory, we’d sell you ass.”

BIG GREEN