How to make an album.


Hey, Lincoln... you seen my water jug? Didn't think so. How about anti-Lincoln? Drank it? What the hell... how thirsty is that guy, anyway?


Hiya, folks. Big Green here. Just working our way through tour preparations; pulling together all our gear and provisions, packing them onto the space elevator, and writing our wills (not a lot of confidence in the space elevator, frankly). Have we started the countdown yet? Nah. Getting close, though. I'm guessing we'll probably hit the starry trail around September 30 or so, just as we're scheduled to release our new album, International House - 16 tracks of pure Big Green pleasure, just in case you're interested. Anyways... our CD release party will be held in the star system of Aldebaran. Not that we want to diss our terrestrial listeners - we just got to go where the money is, friends. And that money.... is in outer space. (At least that's what our corporate uber-label Loathsome Prick has assured us.) You heard it here first.


As I imagine you've guessed by now, it's going to take a while for us to load the ship. So while Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber toil away, I'll tell you just what goes into releasing a new Big Green album. First, there's that bit about making the music. I've talked about this before. Oh, it's a painstaking process of cultivation and assembly. You start with good topsoil - rich Mississippi delta loam is the best. Turn it over a few times to get some air in there, then start planting random musical notes. If the weather is with you and you have a reliable robot (or root vegetable) to do the tilling and the watering, you will yield probably twice as much raw music as you plant. Then you start picking and sorting, then assembling them into DNA-like strings... and eventually whole songs.


The manufacturing process is a bit more complicated. I suppose you think we go to a CD replication house for that, eh? Not a bit of it... not when we've got all this factory space and lots of empty hands (not to mention root tendrils). Really, the hardest part is getting the songs into those discs. We get Marvin to get a big crock on the boil. We cook the songs down to a thick paste-like consistency (takes about five hours). Marvin and the man-sized tuber then apply the paste to the bottom of each disc with a wooden spatula, like frosting Christmas cookies. The coated discs are then placed face down on an anvil made of pure anti-proton material (absolutely pure!), and Big Zamboola sits on them one at a time, fusing the music right into the disc. Works like glass mastering, only cheaper. (We just have to keep feeding them pizzas. They're like interns, you know.) The album art is then handpainted on by anti-Lincoln. (He's better at it than his posi-doppelganger.)


Okay, well... now you know. Go and tell the world how Big Green makes their albums and, lord knows, maybe in a century or two, everybody will be doing it that way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

R.I.P., uber rich lady atop killer empire

Image
When the queen of England died last week, I felt bad for the 96-year-old human being that she was, a lady about the age of my late mother. I take no joy in the death of anyone, even people I’m not crazy about, so all due condolences to her family who, I hear, are planning a quiet little funeral. Did I say little? I meant large … in fact, six billion pounds worth of funeral. Such is the institution of the British monarchy – still crazy after all these years. No, I’m not a fan of “The Royals”. I watched The Crown on Netflix or whatever, and it was mildly entertaining in a slightly nuanced gossipy kind of way. (They went way too easy on Thatcher and made Robert Kennedy look like a cheap wing man for his wife-beating brother the President.) But generally I avoid T.V. dramas about royalty mostly because it bores the living piss out of me. Then there’s that small matter of imperialism , but let’s try to keep our thoughts positive, eh, what? They’re changing the guard at T
Read more

Pulling the plug is never as easy as it looks

Image
I don’t know. I’m effing sick of this. Are you effing sick of this, too? You are ? Wow … okay. For how many years? Damn …. why didn’t you say so? I was just doing this to keep YOU happy! Well, you learn something new every day. Or at least every week. Except last week – I was kind of too busy to learn anything. It gets like that sometimes. Anyway, let’s just agree to say that you learn something new every little once in a while. Maybe every time Sylvie brings you some water. Like in the Leadbelly Song . But I digress. What the this is The “this” we’re kvetching about is this thing called blogging. We’ve been doing it for twenty years, and somehow – seemingly unnoticed by us – the world has kind of moved on. Now everything is social media, social media, etc. A few still blog, outside of the corporate shills, but it’s not really a thing anymore, and well … that’s a shame. Still, blogging has its place. I just don’t know whether or not its place is here, exactly.
Read more

Stop hiding your light under that bushel.

Image
Well, Trump started channeling QAnon in a big way this week at an Ohio rally. I’m assuming anyone who reads this blog knows what QAnon is. It’s basically the blood libel, updated for the modern age. Some idiot posted some random shit on 4chan (which happens basically every second) claiming that s/he is a secret intelligence operative and was spilling tea on upcoming FBI raids on Trump’s political enemies. It was supposed to happen in 48 hours and, of course, it didn’t. That failure, however, didn’t stop the true believers. These people must be total knuckleheads. Who would earnestly believe this crap? Of course, people have a tendency to believe whatever places them in a positive light. Whatever the case may be, QAnon has a lot of followers , and they are apparently laser-focused on the conspiracy theory. Trump is their greasy, corpulent pope. It makes total sense that he would pull those people close – they are the scrum who never left him. What they think they’re
Read more