Hammer Mill Days

Smallest town in the biggest state. Father Joseph, what would be my fate? So starts this month's anthem of the Hammer Mill. Can't get that tune out of my head, man! This writing finds us chin deep in production for our next album. Imagine Matt and me in a roomful of 1-inch Ampex tape, all spooled out and tangled like Don Knotts had it in his space capsule in The Reluctant Astronaut. Yes, we always aspire to such heights. "Why not the best?" we ask ourselves, and the answer, of course, is obvious. (Go right to the source and ask the horse.) Why do we do this thing over and over again? This "making an album" thing? We're past the age of consent ( well past) and not famous on our home planet. Our best-selling album is welded to the hull of Voyager as it makes its way out of our solar system. (We sold one copy to NASA. They bought it because it features a lead vocal by the late Kurt Waldheim.) The fact is, we are driven. When Big Green first rose out of ...

Just some random thoughts on the major party conventions, now that they're over. Don't have a lot of time to write this, so it's going to be... well, random. Tale of Two Crackers. Bill Clinton's big speech on Wednesday night capped what seems to me like a political rehabilitation of monumental proportions. At some point, everybody started loving Bill Clinton, and he has become a major statesman ... or as close to that as you can come in this age. It wasn't terribly surprising to see this process happen with Ronald Reagan, who - despite having a spotty popularity rating during his presidency - the media always portrayed as wildly popular, and around whom an image-enhancement industry of sorts has been at work since his departure. But Clinton? Does anyone remember how denigrated he was throughout his presidency? I suppose people have gradually come to the realization that things weren't so bad in the 1990s ... since everything since then has pretty generally su...