Hammer Mill Days

  Okay, let’s do your presents. Start with the big one. No, not that one – the bigger one. How can you not see that? It’s almost 3 centimeters across! Oh, hi. Just caught us in the middle of our annual Christmas ritual – gathering around the abandoned drill press in the Cheney Hammer Mill and taking turns opening our gifts from Satan …. I mean, Santa ! (Unfortunate typo, though one that may find a receptive audience among the fans of Pagan Christmas ). It’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s turn, actually, but of course the order of the present-opening makes no difference. It’s the thought that counts, right? And well … a certain amount of thought went into this year’s pile of sugar plums. (Just to be clear – there are no actual sugar plums in the offing. That’s just a metaphor.) Not in the sense that they were well thought-out, but due to the fact that … well … we had very little cash to work with. Times being what they are, we haven’t been playing any gig

When I heard the news that Trump had pardoned the perpetrators of the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, my first reaction was much the same as when I learned of Chelsea Manning’s conviction: If we’re waiting for justice to prevail with regard to our illegal invasion and wanton destruction of Iraq, we will be waiting a very long time. Of course, this is not the first time Trump has freed mass murderers from accountability. For someone who claims to have opposed the Iraq war (even though he really didn’t back in 2002-03), he never seems to extend that sentiment to entail sympathy for the victims of the invasion. He is, of course, a wannabe autocrat, so any display of weakness is to be avoided. Trump likes a “tough” guy, though how machine-gunning unarmed Iraqi motorists, including a young boy, or stabbing to death a prisoner of war in custody amounts to “toughness” I will never understand. More like cowardice. A lot more. I, like many, was appalled by the actions of

  Take a look out the window and let me know what you see. What? What do you mean you don’t see anything? Did you open your eyes first? Okay. It’s just that you’ve made that mistake before, but …. let it pass. Hey, greetings from the great north country! As you may have noticed, particularly if you live in the northeastern United States, we’ve gotten a little bit of snow this week. In fact, it appears to be up to the second story of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house. That would be fine, of course, except that … well … we have to come and go occasionally, to get provisions, to frequent the local tavern (I’m talking Anti-Lincoln here), to mail parcels, etc. All of that vital, life-giving activity has been brought to a halt in the wake of a fearsome nor’easter that isn’t fit for Christmas, New Years, nor Easter. (That’s why they call it a nor … uh … never mind.) Yes, winter is here with a vengeance. I think it’s pissed at us for the previous co

Anyone who’s been reading this blog and listening to my podcast Strange Sound for any length of time knows that I’m a sometimes harsh critic of the institutional Democratic party. That same anyone would be aware that I am even more critical of the Republican party. The reason for this is fairly simple: whereas the Democratic party has some individuals within it – albeit a minority – who are principled progressives who want to make a difference in people’s lives, the Republican party is now literally a death cult that wants to cut rich people’s taxes. This week we exceeded 300,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, and you would barely know it by listening to GOP lawmakers or their idiotic president. (And yes, he is their president, lock, stock, and cracker barrel. I’m of the opinion that Trump is the purest expression of Republican values – selfishness, ignorance, bigotry, and self-aggrandizement.) I know both parties have a lot to answer for, but frankly, Republican poli

  Uh, Anti-Lincoln …. Abe … I was going to have a word with you. Actually, several of us were planning on, well, maybe starting a conversation about, well … it’s kind of awkward. How can I put this delicately? Ah, yes. – got it. You’re a stoned-out, drunken loser-ass mofo. Can we talk? Yes, that’s right, friends. It’s time for another intervention, this one directed at the Great Un-Emancipator, Antimatter Lincoln, who’s been with us since the day he stumbled out of whatever alternate universe he comes from via Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating machine. Seems like so long ago now, doesn’t it? Well, some things never change … and one of those things is Anti-Lincoln’s propensity toward inebriating and intoxicating substances, including (but not limited to) hard liquor, malt beverages, chicken fricassee (with cognac sauce), morphine, hooch, devil’s weed, and marijuana. Oh, yes … it’s time for another little talk with the tall guy. We thought th

The president of the United States is not going to give this up. The party that made him president is not going to stop supporting him in his delusions. All you T.V. pundits and mainstream media commentators waiting with baited breath for Republican lawmakers to “pivot” or “come to their senses” or “admit in public what they acknowledge in private”, save your breath. Donald Trump is the chosen leader of the Republican Party – chosen because he encapsulates all that they stand for: celebration of greed, white aggrievement, authoritarianism, and destroying the useful parts of government (i.e. the parts that help people in some way). They can no more abandon him than a snake’s body can slither free of its head. And while they haven’t tried this blatantly in the past to steal an election by ignoring or invalidating millions of ballots that have already been counted and certified, they have always demonstrated their potential for doing so. Let me be clear. As I have said in

  Did you hear that just then? That faint sound of bells ringing in the distance? That can only mean one thing …. the elementary school up the road is having a fire drill again. Third one this week. Oh … and of course, it’s December again, the month of joy and celebration. Which means, in this year of our lord 2020 (which happens to be the year of YOUR lord 2020 as well), we are fast approaching the first anniversary of the twentieth anniversary of the release of our first LP, 2000 Years To Christmas , a space odyssey … I mean, an album by Big Green. Now when I say “LP”, I mean “CD”, actually, because we never pressed vinyl on any of our records. That’s for the heavy wallet brigade, my friends, though we have considered converting Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of record-cutting machine. (For the record, he’s not keen on the idea.) Yeah, so here we are, a year later, still flogging the thing. And why not, right? Our first album is 21 years

We’ve entered a presidential transition, sort of. Sure, one candidate is crying foul and trying to foment a coup d’etat in the most ham-fisted way imaginable, but inasmuch as our short-attention-span culture has already all but normalized this insane behavior, we can consider ourselves well into the process of transition. And no, I don’t mean the the current president is transitioning to some new identity. I mean that he is in the process of being replaced by his general election opponent, who won the November election kind of hands down, despite all the noise. Given that Biden is busily appointing members of his executive team – some okay, others pretty bad – this seems like a good time to make our policy preferences known to the President-Elect. Everyone’s getting their two cents in, whether it comes in the form of suggesting new policy directions or pushing potential nominees forward. I personally think people on the left should pick an issue or two and start shouti

  Everyone assembled? Good. What’s that? Marvin, you’re not assembled yet? Okay, hold everything, people. Where’s Marvin’s quick-start manual? Oh, hello, everyone. Well, the holidays are upon us once again – a very special time in the world of Big Green, I can tell you. It has been said that we know how to celebrate Christmas like no other alt-rock band in history. Now, I don’t know who said that exactly and how they would know, but that’s what I’ve been told, and I’m sticking to my story. In any case, it’s undeniably true that few rock bands have started their recording careers with ostensible Christmas albums, and that we are among that very intimate club of unfortunates. What we haven’t done, of course, is release a Thanksgiving collection, but I don’t think we’re alone there. And I’m not counting albums that were released around Thanksgiving … not the same damn thing at all! Okay, well … not sure where I was going with that. Let’s just say that, here in the aban

This is the first week there was a general acknowledgement that Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States, and like a dam breaking, the news cycle was flooded with announcements of his cabinet picks. In a cleverly stage-designed event, Biden appeared with Harris and the beginnings of his “national security” team, inclusive of foreign policy. His nominee for Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, caused some serious crowing of approval on Morning Joe with the story of his Holocaust survivor uncle, who escaped from a Nazi death march and ran across an American tank, from which emerged an African-American soldier. “This is who we are,” Blinken said, referring to the image of America as a liberator and a light unto the darkness of a troubled world yearning to breathe free. What Blinken’s story didn’t include was an acknowledgement that, in all likelihood, the Black soldier was part of a segregated unit, as mixed race units were barred in the U.S. military throughout

  Well, then, where the hell is it? I left it right here. Jesus mother of pearl, everything grows legs around here, the moment you turn your back. I’m living in a den of thieves! An abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill full of thieves! Oh, hi. Just getting down to our yearly inventory of band equipment; a kind of rejuvenating exercise that keeps us prepped for any performance or recording opportunities that may come our way at random. Are we getting offers? Well …. not as such. in fact, big fat nothing. That phone hasn’t rung in weeks. Sure, that may be down to the fact that I unplugged it from the wall, but hell …. all that was calling us was creditors, looking for cash. Stupid creditors! They should have known better than to lend money to us. We’re just not trustworthy. (Especially that man-sized tuber. He has deep roots in the Genovese crime family. Um … actually, we’re only certain that he has deep roots – it was our assumption that they at some point touch something a

This is another one of those “while you were looking over there …” moments. It’s not surprising – Trump is denying the results of the 2020 election, refusing to concede, refusing to cooperate with the transition to a Biden Administration, filing bogus law suits, and so on. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic is going through the roof, infecting many, many thousands of people each day and getting worse. These are enormous stories that demand coverage, but because our media tends towards myopia, we really only hear about these stories, while other important stuff falls through the cracks. This is in fact what is happening right now, as the Trump administration enters its final days, reaching for its final opportunities to remake our federal government in its own contorted image. Here’s some of what they’re doing. First, Trump is placing some of his political hacks into posts deep within the bureaucracy of key federal agencies, as reported by the Washington Post . By plac

  Okay, I know I drew the short straw. Let’s give it another go, shall we? Best two out of three. Ready …. steady … pull. Damn. Short straw again. Best three out of five? Oh, hi. I’ll be honest – I’ve never been much of a gambler. And yet here we are, drawing straws to see who will go out and do the weekly shopping. Now I know what you’re going to say – “Joe!” you’d say, “You have a personal robot assistant. Why not send HIM out to shop?” Very good question. The trouble is, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is a dead ringer for some rogue ripoff automaton that has been terrorizing the local shops for a good six months. No matter how we identify Marvin as distinctly himself, the store owners around here lack the … um … subtlety to imagine that Marvin might not only be a totally different robot but, in fact, one that shares none of the nefarious habits of the nasty robot. Appearances can be deceiving! Look at us , for crying out loud. You’d think we were a band or

The dust is settling on election 2020, at least for some of us. The Trump team is still in full-blown denial, and most of the rest of the Republican establishment is rolling right along with them. In the parking lot of a landscaping company in Pennsylvania, presidential lawyer and confidante Rudy Giuliani scoffed at the idea that the networks would project the winner of a presidential election … like they have for my entire life and probably longer. Rudy seems to think only the courts can decide elections, but to be fair, I think his mind might have been on the porn shop next door when he was saying that. Strange, strange man. Unfortunately, Rudy isn’t the only one smoking crack these days. I found this in my daily briefing from the New York Times ( The Morning , November 9): Democrats are almost certainly fooling themselves if they conclude that America has turned into a left-leaning country that’s ready to get rid of private health insurance, defund the police, ab

  Hmmmm, that’s weird. Is that really us? Are you sure ? Sounds a bit more like Captured By Robots. Of course, we might have recorded during that period when we were captured by robots. Could explain a lot. Yeah, here we are, folks. Big Green has survived yet another national election here in the United States. You’d hardly know it was happening up here in the sheltering hollow of the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York. Just pull down the shades, pull up the drawbridge, stick a cork in the chimney, and poke your fingers in your ears. That’s how we deal with lots of stuff here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – bill collectors, building inspectors, the people who actually own this property, the local constabulary … just pretend you’re not here. Couldn’t be simpler. (Though more than once, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has given away the game by detonating one of his experimental substances just as the coppers are walking away.) Holing up in the mill g

Well, wasn’t THAT a cluster fuck. As I write this, the presidential race has not been called, but it is clear that the Biden campaign substantially under-performed expectations and that they dragged a lot of down-ballot races down with them. Even if Biden pulls it out, which he may have done by the time I post this, the Senate is basically lost – a tremendous lost opportunity in a year when Democrats had a lot of advantages going in to the election. Add to this the loss of a number of House seats – maybe ten – including, quite probably, Anthony Brindisi’s NY-22 seat to former Congresswoman and Trump acolyte Claudia Tenney. That is a terrible outcome by any measure, and I have little doubt that Republicans are high-fiving all over the place at having separated their fate from that of President Trump, with the help of a feckless Democratic party. There’s no question but that incumbent presidents are traditionally hard to beat. More often than not, they fend off challe

  Is this thing on? What? I think you’re muted, man. Yeah …. the little audio symbol has a cross-out graphic superimposed on it. Huh. Funny how that works. Oh, hi. Yeah, the century is finally catching up with us … or we’re catching up with it. It’s no secret that we of Big Green tend towards the Luddite side of the ledger. When a visitor asks us to turn the heat up a bit in the Cheney Hammer Mill, we trudge out into the forest looking for dead trees to chop up. When a neighbor asks us for a cup of sugar or a pint of milk, we trudge out into the forest looking for dead trees to chop up. (That’s just something we do when people ask us stuff. Don’t ask me why … or, well, you know what we’ll do.) So, while as a band we were relatively early to the internet and early adopters of MP3 files (as well as early arrivals in the blogosphere), a lot of this newfangled technology is way over our heads. I would ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to explain it to me, bu

Mitch McConnell and the people he represents (i.e. not so much his Kentucky constituents as mega-donors across the nation) realized their decades-long dream this week – the seating of a sixth hyper-conservative Supreme Court justice who will very likely play an important role in rolling back labor rights, voting rights, the regulatory power of federal agencies, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and much more in the decades to come. Stick a fork in it: the Supreme Court is now locked down by reactionaries for the foreseeable future, thanks to the determination and ruthlessness of the Republicans and the lack of focus and passion on the part of Democrats. We had three major electoral opportunities to regain control of the Court since 2000, and we blew every one of them, and now we’ll have to deal with the consequences. Readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast, Strange Sound , will know that I grew up in a white, suburban, solidly Republican town in upstate New

  Hmmm, yeah. We’re getting close to the expiration date on THAT little scam. Hard to sustain that 20th anniversary narrative for more than a year, right? And hell, we missed the International House tenth anniversary. And people are beginning to figure out that our Volcano Man recording is not the famous one from the comedy movie. What’s the next grift, Lincoln? And how do we keep it secret? Thank god almighty Marvin isn’t typing this conversation into the blog … right …. Marvin …. ? Oh, damn! Uh …. we were just working on the … um … lines for a play we’re writing about corrupt musicians . Fictional corrupt musicians. Pretty convincing, huh? Sure, like most writers, we draw on life experience. I mean, your first play is bound to be a veiled autobiography, right? It’s hard to imagine a band getting by on grift alone. It’s simply not remunerative enough, for one thing. Then before you know it you’re squatting in abandoned buildings, like maybe an old mill somewhere i

It’s full fledged campaign season again, folks – my very favorite time of every four year cycle … not . Elections are necessary but painful, essential but insufficient, and so on. I acknowledge all of that and will participate, as well as encourage others to do so, but god don’t they make it a pain in the ass? I don’t watch that much television, but I’m nevertheless being bombarded by ads for one candidate or the other. This week there was a Biden ad with a voiceover by Sam Elliott. (I was waiting for him to recommend a visit to Kinney Drugs. ) Then there’s the Trump ad that has Biden saying he’s going to raise taxes, cutting him off before he gets to the “on people making more than $400,000 a year” part. I guess when all else fails, Trump – like every other Republican – goes for pappy tax cut. Low hanging fruit. Most of the GOP ads in my local Congressional district race (NY 22) are being pushed out either by the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee or third pa

You’ve forgotten it again? Damn it, man! I hope you realize what this means. No, I mean, I really hope so … because I haven’t any idea what this means. Not a rhetorical question at all. Oh, hey, everybody. I may be the only upstate New Yorker who says “hey” when he means “hi”. Or possibly not. In any case, hope all is well with you out there, beyond the walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. The colder months are coming on up here in the great north country, and we’re still looking for things to burn for warmth. We ran out of old hammer handles years ago. Then went the stair railings. Next, we pulled up the Rochester floors in the old executive offices, just above the shop, and tossed them into the fireplace. Fuel got kind of scarce after that – I personally think it was a mistake to burn the fireplace mantel in the fireplace. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Last week we were giving capitalism just one more try. Well, it didn’

Probably the most amazing thing about the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process is the degree to which she and all of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee insist that there’s no underlying agenda behind her nomination, even though that agenda has been the most consistently central motivating force in GOP politics for the last four decades. That’s no exaggeration – this has been their core mission since the dawn of the Regan era. It’s been a relentless push over the course of forty years on the part of conservative politicians, political action groups, and the obscenely rich funders who back them, quietly and not so quietly. And yet they all sit in that Senate committee room and attempt to gaslight the American public, making stirring speeches about the roles of the coordinate branches of government and the crucial distinction between politics and civics, assuring us that they’re only interested in applying constitutional principles in a fair and measured way

Any sales this week? Huh. Didn’t think so. That album is a goddamn drug on the market. Which is a strange saying, as drugs sell pretty well, generally speaking …. much better than our albums. Damned capitalism! Well, here we are, my friends. Your friends and comrades in Big Green, frittering away our time in this abandoned hammer mill in upstate New York, dreaming of the days when we had things to eat other than fritters. (Actually, fritters are pretty economical, if you know how to make them. Two words: saw dust.) We were having our weekly planning meeting, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was delivering the quarterly sales report. How did it go? Well, the good news first – there were, indeed, sales. And yes, there was revenue. Though the amounts were so infinitesimal that they can neither be accurately calculated in natural numbers nor seen with the naked eye. (I tried clothing my eyes, but I still couldn’t see anything.) Now, I know what you’re going

This week felt so much like insult upon injury. I sometimes think back four years and wonder if I would have believed then that times like these were even possible. This country is being ruled by a narcissistic proto-autocrat that doesn’t care how many people suffer as the result of his enormous selfishness. Because of his massive incompetence and carelessness, more than 210,000 people have died of COVID-19, including people within his own circle of acquaintance; he himself has caught the virus and spent several days in the hospital. And I’m sure the Fareed Zacharias of the world were expecting that he would emerge from that experience a newly sober and serious man, a president at last, ready to take this disaster seriously. They were, of course, grievously disappointed – Trump never changes, and like honey badger before him, he doesn’t give a fuck. Not sure how Trump thinks people will react to him saying that COVID is nothing to be afraid of and that we shouldn’t le

Damn, my voice sounds so weird. What the hell year was this? Really? They had microphones back then? Damn ! Oh, hi, out there. Just winding back the years here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our squat house in upstate New York – a drafty decrepit old shelter for the moldering bones of Big Green, the planet’s most obscure indie band. There’s one distinct advantage to squatting in a big barn of a place like this – plenty of storage room, even with the crazy neighbors who moved in upstairs. Lord knows, we have a lot of baggage, collected over decades of uninterrupted failure. Let’s be clear: It’s not easy to do what Big Green has done – completely avoid even so much as accidental notoriety or remuneration for the music we’ve made since the mid 1980s. We’ve never collected the prize, but what we HAVE collected is a mountain of junk that does not include a trophy of any kind. And one man’s junkyard is another man’s archive. Sometimes we methodically work through

China ate Joe Biden’s lunch – that’s one of the many incoherent things Trump said during Tuesday night’s debate. The fact is, though, that Biden kind of ate his own lunch in Cleveland this past week, and it probably didn’t taste all that good. I don’t claim to be an expert on debates … and I don’t think anyone is an expert on whatever that Tuesday night clusterfuck was supposed to be … but Joe left a whole lot on the table in that exchange. Like most mainstream Democrats with their heads stuck in the “I’m not a liberal” nineties, he gave away the store to Trump on a number of points, particularly having to do with police conduct, health care, and so-called law and order. So, okay, I’m not affiliated with the Biden/Harris campaign, but here are a few suggestions for the team on what Big Joe might say in response to some crazy shit coming from our president: Health Care – At one point, Trump bragged about killing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

Hey … did I mention we had a special going? I did? Okay. Well … I won’t mention it again. Just pretend I didn’t say anything. Right, then …. night night. Oh, hi. Just got off the phone with our manager. Yes, that’s right. It may surprise some of you to know that Big Green has management. Sure, it doesn’t look like we do from the outside. This band has always had a certain quality of randomness to it …. or perhaps an uncertain quality of randomness. Now, I’m not suggesting that that’s some kind of clever management ploy meant to drive buzz and idle speculation about the band …. what will they do next? Nah. It’s more that we simply have the worst management in the history of the music business, hands down. Now, I don’t mean to sound overly critical. It’s just that we haven’t had a gig in the United States – yay, on the planet Earth, even – in more than 25 years. Our records go nowhere, unless it’s by accident (like our song Volcano Man, which is benefiting from a

You know what’s really hilarious about American politics? It’s when news people, commentators, and even politicians themselves expect someone like Mitt Romney to act like someone who totally isn’t Mitt Romney – that is, someone who has an ounce of integrity or any impulse beyond self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. That was the spectacle this week, in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s not-wholly-unanticipated passing. Almost immediately the speculation started bubbling up through cable television and the internet …. what will Romney do? Will he stand up to Trump and McConnell? Will he insist on fairness and a single standard that applies to both major political parties? I mean, it’s a regular laugh riot. Sure … Mitt Romney is going to stand between the GOP and the fulfillment of one of its most cherished goals: a radical transformation of the judiciary from top to bottom. Really, people? As someone who has spent a good deal of time online doing bad imitations of Romne

  Yeah, I know, I know – heat costs money. Unless we start burning shit, right? I mean, we’ve got a lot of fuel in this joint, don’t we? And when that runs out, we’ve got a mad science advisor on hand. He can either invent some way to keep us warm, or we can burn those many notebooks he has, all stuffed with theorems to destroy whole planets. We’d be doing humanity a favor! Howdy, everyone. Sure, we want to do humanity a favor. But we also want to do ourselves the favor of keeping from freezing to death. If the coming winter turns out to be anywhere near as chaotic as this past summer, people will be porting us out of this dump with a pair of ice tongs. Oh, the humanity! And yes, I am being a bit paranoid over the question of how we are going to heat this place, particularly as the nights are get colder and damper. And spookier. But let’s face it – as squatters here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have no means of acquiring energy from mega-corporations and