Hammer Mill Days

  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 ...

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...