Shipboard tales.


Bit of turbulence. Nothing to worry about. Just large hunks of jagged rock hurtling through space at blinding speed, missing our paper-thin titanium hull by feet (if not inches). So pull up a bamboo mat and relax.

Yes, we're still bobbing our way home at sub-standard speed in our partially-disabled rent-a-spacewreck. Our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour now shrinking in the rearview mirror, we have managed to limp as far as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where we are now dodging larger than average planetoids, popcorn-like fragments, and other assorted celestial debris (including some familiar looking stuff I last saw in the crawlspace above my old garage from seventeen rentals ago.... always wondered what became of that).

Since there's precious little for any of us to do out here, and since Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has taken it upon himself to do all the cooking for our merry little band of wanderers (frozen waffles again??), I will take this opportunity to regale you with some tidbits of Big Green back story. Way more than you want to know about us.... here it comes.

Why Hammermill Days? Well, when we started this blog back in 1999, it was actually called "Notes from Sri Lanka" - check our deep archive and you'll see. We changed it to Hammermill Days a few years ago. As you know, every band needs a back story. You know the deal - raised by wolves, dropped by martians, etc. Frankly, we didn't have an actual personal history, so we invented one, using the old (and now long-since demolished) Cheney Hammer Mill (in Little Falls, NY) as our mythical home. (Because all bands live together, right?) The rest is obvious (or is that oblivious?).

Who is "The Mayor" in "Sweet Treason"? Okay, well... none of you would ask this question, but the man-sized tuber just asked me, so here's the answer. There's this stanza in Matt's song "Sweet Treason" that goes like this:

Joe, the mayor's systematically going through your mail
He's sifting, but not finding
He's searching for some west end sandwich
Ten years good and stale


Well, this was a song written as a birthday present to me (best ever!), which explains my being addressed several times. When Matt and I lived in Castleton-On-Hudson, NY for a couple of non-contiguous years (1981, 1984-5), there was this tall, fuzzy-headed kid that used to hang around town, apparently eating out of dumpsters. We referred to him as "the mayor" of Castleton. They could have done worse.

Whoops - need to take drastic evasive action to avoid an asteroid. Got to go. Happy new year, earthlings.

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