Hammer Mill Days

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....

  What’s in that box? I’ll tell you what’s in that box. There’s nothing in the damn box, man. But that box over there, the one with the torn flaps, that’s got some gig posters in it. From 1987. A little late on those. Hey, there, Big Green fans! Just catching us in the middle of Spring cleaning. Now, I know what you’re going to say. “Joe”, you’ll say, “this isn’t Spring, it’s late summer, nigh unto fall, you idiot.” And then you’ll flip me off and storm out of the room in search of cleverer bands. But before you’re out of earshot, I’ll just remind you that we’re late with everything we do. We don’t eat breakfast til lunch time, no lunch til dinner time, and so on. The more you know! Damaged collateral Back to cleaning. Man, you wouldn’t believe how many recondite corners there are in this stupid barn of a hammer mill. Somehow that moving company we hired to carry our stuff from our lean-to in Sri Lanka to here managed to squirrel something away in ever...

  We got another one of those notes, man. One of those neighbor notes about the uncut lawn. Let’s say they’re a little disappointed in us. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in us, too. We really SHOULD have mowed that lawn, but we were too damn LAZY and SHIFTLESS. (Please share this post with our neighbors so that they will feel validated.) Anyway, here we are in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, no validation in sight … not even for our parking. You know, I think we might be the subject of yet another community effort to rid the neighborhood of ne’er do wells. Frankly, I object to being termed in such a way. I may not always do well, but I certainly sometimes do well. I can’t speak for any of the other members of our entourage, but I for one try to remain on the straight and narrow. (It’s been a bit too narrow lately, though.) Call in the lawn robots Now SOME people I know, and I won’t say who, hire robots to mow their lawn. I’m not super comfortable wi...

  Hmmm. That’s kind of catchy. How about this one? Right …. nothing on the applause meter. Okay, your turn. That’s just goddamned awesome. Now let me try one. Sucks. WHY WAS I BORN? Oh, hi. Yes, we’re working. As one of those performing rock/pop groups that composes its own material, we, of course, need an editorial process. You just walked in on one of our markup meetings. Here’s how it works: we write out a lyric on a big sheet of white paper, then hang it up on the wall. Everyone gets a chance to cross words out and add words in. We decide with a roll of the dice who goes first. If the winner of the dice roll is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I have to put a bucket on my head. Then Matt is invited to draw a face on the bucket with magic marker. Got all that? Sausage making 101 I’ve written about our creative process many times on this blog. Think of my posts as helpful tips for songwriting, especially for those who aspire to be as commercially ...

  You want to use that one? Really? Which version? Hmmm … okay. That one’s not in the best condition. I think Mitch was using it to prop his closet door open. And then there’s the rising damp. Lots of factors go into this, dude. It’s not so simple. Like most bands, Big Green has a back catalog. The question is, what to do with all that material, sitting idle, not carrying its own weight. I’ve told our old songs to go out and get a job, but some of them are reaching retirement age, and that’s not an optimal time to start the search. The thing is, we’ve got a boatload of new material coming this way, thanks to the transitive property of Matt Perry, in particular. Yes, I (Joe) have written a handful, but Matt’s output far outstrips mine, and good thing too. ‘Cause I’m a lazy-ass mother. Putting it all on the table here. Reviving the nineties So, some who have known Big Green since its inception recall that we had a flurry of activity in the early nineties. ...

  I told you, I didn’t want to be disturbed. And just because I have a gaping hole in my wall doesn’t mean you can just jump right through it. Get out, and take those nasty things with you. Jesus! This mill is a prison ! Okay, I admit that I was overreacting a tad just then. My deepest apologies, and the same for Marvin (my personal assistant), who was once again in the process of invading my personal space for no good reason. Still, that doesn’t justify bad feelings or harsh words. We try not to fly off the handle around here – that’s part of our credo as a band, and it’s something we’re particularly, uh … shit ….. WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING DOWN!! Quadropedal unmanned vehicles What did Marvin want from me? Well, he made a new friend today and he wanted to show the bugger off. It’s one of those automated robot dogs – you know, the kind that chase people to death in your nightmares (or just in Black Mirror ). He thinks he found the robot dog out in th...

  Did the mail come in yet? Oh, right. Looks like bills and solicitations. Again. Not a single handwritten missive in the entire pile. What was the name of that short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? “No One Writes to the Colonel” , or something like that? Well, somebody best tell the colonel that we’ve got him beat. When it comes to postal neglect, we’re number one, amigo. Hey, you know what they say, right? Every complaint is really about something else. So if we’re complaining about our lack of fan (or hate) mail, what we’re REALLY complaining about is the heat or somebody’s sore toe or the price of sorghum in Madagascar. The sorry fact is, we wouldn’t know what to do with fan mail if it was dropped on us via helicopter. It’s been so long since we opened the mail bag, I doubt that any of our current readers even remember that that was a thing. Hey, newbies – that was a thing! First tune, then play … the tune. Part of what makes people cranky around t...

  Man, it’s hot today. Maybe we should make some tea. Like a whole pot of tea. Perfect day for it. Just fill the pot with water, put it on the counter and watch it come to a boil. No problem – lovely pot of tea. Well, it’s August, and it’s hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum in here, as the sages of Monty Python once said (with a cartoonish Aussie accent). It will come as a surprise to no one that there is no air conditioning here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. In fact, the closest thing we have to air conditioning is some holes in the roof – holes that let the air in. Sometimes the air is cool, sometimes not. It’s conditional, on account of the changing weather …. air conditional. Things my comic books taught me Summers like this remind me of my misspent youth. I say “me”, because no one else here remembers my misspent youth. Even Matt, who misspent much of it right alongside me, doesn’t care to remember, and who can blame him? If you remember the ...

  Jesus, how the hell did they make that image? Did they use chisels and clay tablets? I can’t even read the fricking thing. You know you’ve been around too long as a band when your earliest promo packages were written in cuneiform. Well, it’s the doldrums of summer once again, which means we’re digging into the archives and mining our inglorious past for the occasional nugget of … whatever. I’m starting to think that Big Green was founded before the invention of the camera. Actually, it’s simpler than that – we started playing before everyone had broadcast-quality video production studios riding in their pockets. As a result, there aren’t a lot of shots of us playing, hanging out, cavorting, etc. It’s almost like we didn’t exist before the late nineties, and we most assuredly did. But back in the day, you had to wait for the photographer to show up …. and when you’re broke, it’s a long wait. Live from someplace Big Green has some old recordings, of ...

I spy with my little eye …. a table! No, that’s a chair. No, that’s Mitch Macaphee’s experimental water bong. Yes, yes, finally …. that’s a table. It’s only the last object in the room, for crying out loud. Jesus. Do you know any OTHER games? Here’s the problem with personal robot assistants: they don’t have deep cultural knowledge about what it’s like to be a human being. I mean, Marvin isn’t even programmed to play I Spy. What the hell was Mitch Macaphee thinking when he left that tidbit out of the poor bastard’s memory bank? Beats me how he can be expected to make his way through the world without knowing classic parlor games or learning how to square dance. (And no, Marvin doesn’t know how to doe – see – doe.) Time on our hands Now, the more industrious amongst you will no doubt surmise that, if we are playing parlor games, we have little better to do. As nasty and condescending as that claim obviously is, it’s also just as obviously true. Yes, damn it, a...

  I told you, I don’t have the money. You can look in my guitar case – go ahead. Here’s he key to the padlock. Rummage through the back of my amp. There’s nothing in there but decades-old cigarette butts and some tortoise shell picks I never use. Hey, get your hands off me! Where are you taking me? HALP! What the …. ? Oh. So it was just a dream. What an em-effing relief. Thank you, Jeebus. Sorry, folks – I must have dozed off in the middle of our conversation. Dreamland is a bizarro world. Squares look like circles, time collects in puddles, and people eat potato chips with a fork. And that’s just in my normal dreams. Thing is, I almost never have bad dreams, unless I’m dreaming about our old corporate record label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. Which is what I was dreaming about a little more than five minutes ago (according to the time puddle). Bad old days I know most bands tend to reflect back upon their careers and celebrate their own youthf...

  You know, there are better things you could be doing with your time. Like, I don’t know …. mowing the lawn. Oh, right – we don’t have a lawn. How about rearranging the bricks in the courtyard? That’s one task that won’t do itself. Or beating the rugs. Mind you, I’m not a big fan of corporal punishment, but they’ve really crossed a line with me over the past few weeks. Oh, hello, reader(s). You just caught me in the middle of berating Marvin (my personal robot assistant) for not being industrious enough. Yes, I know – he’s an automaton, he only responds to programming, I’m not being fair, etc., etc. The thing is, I don’t know how to program a robot, and his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, is not speaking to anyone this week. All I have left is a dressing down, robot or no. Multi-platform clusterfuck Marvin has a few responsibilities as my personal robot assistant. One is taking charge of Big Green’s social media presence. I should say here that Marvin is in n...

  Okay, that club on Route 5 … was that the Garden Cafe or Looney Tunes? It feels more like the latter than the former, frankly. Jesus, what the hell am I asking YOU for? The only thing YOU remember is random facts about some log cabin and the battle of Gettysburg. And even THAT you get backwards. (Though to you it seems forwards.) In case you’re worried, no, we’re not writing a memoir of Big Green. Who the fuck would buy that? If nothing else, I can practically guarantee that there will never be a (1) tell-all retrospective, (2) drippy bio-pic, or (3) lost journal having to do with this, the world’s most obscure indie rock group that ever recorded more than 100 of their own songs. That said, we will milk it for a blog post or two. The first one was last week ; the second, this week. The third will have to wait its turn. Back to the Early ’90s So anyway, in the early nineties we made the questionable decision of basing ourselves in the Utica, NY area, our ...

  Ever watch Dr. Who? Sure you have. And no doubt you’ve seen how he regenerates himself every once in a while. It’s like restarting an old computer, except that when it’s done booting, it’s a new computer. That almost NEVER happens in real life, you know. Almost never … unless you’re Big Green. (Or, frankly, any other band I’ve ever known.) We got to talking the other day. Our mouth parts moved and sounds emerged from our throats, then floated through the air and vibrated our ear drums. Those little thingies translated the vibrations into electrical signals that were then piped up to our brains. At that point, the impulses – call them voltsters – circulate around in the brain like ants in an ant farm, until they and their confederates make their way down to the mouth and vocal cords, making the whole process begin again. It’s amazing! Anyway, we were talking about how many versions of Big Green there had been down through the ages. We started chalking up th...

  Think we ought to go? Nah, maybe not. Though I don’t know. Maybe we CAN go. But we probably shouldn’t. And anyway, who the hell is going to pay? Not me, man. Unless they take bottle caps. With the bottles still attached. Hello, blog friends. It may seem like you’ve caught us in another serious controversy, but that’s not the case. We’re just sitting here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home, and shooting the breeze about this thing we should have done, this thing we shouldn’t, and so on. Kind of amazing that we all get along with each other so well after spending so many years with these dumb, lousy-ass fuckers. There’s a lot of love here. Who caught the Katy? What are we sparring about? Well, I’m gonna tell you. I was browsing the internets, clicking through the facebooks, and I saw an ad for Taj Mahal’s upcoming tour . No, I’m not talking about the ornate monument in Agra. I’m talking about the blues singer, Taj Mahal, who I started...

  Okay, I really think you have the order of operations wrong. One thing has to come before the other thing, and you’ve got the wrong thing first. Dude, it’s not that hard – why are you blinking those lights so frantically? This isn’t differential calculus … whatever the hell THAT is. Oh, hey, out there in normal people land. Just having a little conversation here, nothing to get excited about. Just a handful of friends getting together for a quick jawbone. That’s a big motherfucker, man. I’ve seen smaller jawbones on a donkey. Whoa, is that the time? Okay, well … gotta go, guys! Great chewing the fat with you. Right … now that I’m out of earshot, JEEEsus, what a bunch of asshats. That’s what I get for raising the issue of touring again. Let me ‘splain. Cart before the horse You know the old saying: don’t put the cart before the horse. For one thing, the horse might decide to drive away in the cart. And if you’re applying a different meaning to the ...

  Sure, there’s probably a reasonable explanation behind it. Why wouldn’t there be? Lord knows, everything we know is firmly rooted in reality. Except, of course, for our upstairs neighbors. And Mitch Macaphee. Yes, yes … and Anti Lincoln, too, but only when he’s drunk. Which is most of the time. Just spending a little time as a Big Green family, sitting around the hammer mill, reading the headlines to one another. Now, as you know, we can’t afford a subscription to the real newspaper. That’s way beyond our humble means! Luckily, there are the internets. All you need to do is borrow a little wi-fi, do a search or two, and voila! Instant news. Not terrestrial news, you understand – that would cost money. No, we read news from outer space. It’s fresh, it’s interesting, and there’s always a head-scratcher or two in there. From a land beyond time Here’s something, Bob! (Your name is Bob, right? I always assumed that was the case.) A strange radio-emitting neu...

  I’ve seen that one before. That can be anything, for crying out loud. Just because a rock looks like bigfoot, doesn’t mean that there’s an actual bigfoot. And when you add Mars into the equation, all bets are off. Just call me when you find your missing clue. Oh … hi, there. We’re just flipping through a few photographs. Typical suburban activity on a Thursday afternoon, am I right? Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that the residents of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill are as prone to random conspiracy theories as the general population. That said, conspiracy theories do have some purchase around the premises – even the ones that are easily debunked. Vacation photos from the red planet Take these rover images from Mars (please!) . Everyone thinks they see something recognizable in the background. One object looks like a lawn ornament of some kind. Another looks like a still from that bigfoot video from way back. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is...

  First, you solder the lead onto the post. Then you fire up the tube pre-amp. Once that’s glowing nicely, you crank up your guitar to 11 and turn the big, fat, plastic knob on the console until your ears pop. And that’s why they call it pop music. Yes, hello, there, and welcome to another post. I am your postmaster general, Big Green Joe, stranded here in the decaying abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York. We’re here just trying to make a little music the old-fashioned way. What do I mean by old fashioned? I mean in the way of the old masters. And no, I don’t mean Da Vinci or Rembrandt. I mean the bands of the 1960s, when all recording was linear and destructive. More money, more excuses I don’t want to suggest that money doesn’t help a recording project succeed. The thing is, when you’re broke and living in an abandoned mill, you typically can’t afford much in the way of gear. So if we’re planning on doing another album , we need to improvis...

  Yes, that’s a whole different approach. I never thought of doing it that way. Yes, very innovative – thank you for the suggestion. Of course I’ll give you credit. I’ll write it in the sky if you insist. You insist? Hoo boy. Lesson number one for you young songwriters out there: never take advice on your craft from a robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been putting his two cents in a lot lately, and frankly, it’s worth every penny. We’ve been trying to pull together some new songs for our next project (another word for “album”), and he’s suggesting to me that I should start every song on kazoo. It’s all about process. Sometimes. Now, everyone has his/her process. We’ve discussed ours on this very blog . Some songwriters have a favorite instrument, some a favorite room. Some like to start with the music, then the lyric, others the opposite, and some a random mix. Marvin obviously prefers the kazoo. I think it’s fair to say that my brother Mat...