Hammer Mill Days

Which star is this again? I get them mixed up sometimes. We did Betelgeuse. We did Aldebaran. One big red, the other little yellow. Now it's time for a blue star ... Rigel. Perfect place to play the blues. Big Green playing the blues ... on our interstellar tour to support Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick ? Well ... sure, why not. That's some of what we started out by playing many, many moons (and many suns) ago, before we started writing a lot of our own music. We played Taj Mahal numbers, real standards like Statesboro Blues, and similar stuff, along with songs by The Beatles, The Band, Neil Young, etc. In our early days as Big Green, we had an alter ego cover band that performed under a series of ridiculous names, including "The Space Hippies", "I-19", and others. (One club owner, I recall, refused to hire The Space Hippies, claiming that, if he did, he would be "laughed out of Utica." That's when we founded the band, "Laughed o...

Some more thoughts about issues of the day that seem very much like those of yesteryear (2013, that is). Iraq revised (again). After an absolutely awful year of conflict, fueled by the ongoing civil war on its northern border in Syria, Iraq has been back in the news this past couple of weeks - more specifically, the Iraq war and the battle of Fallujah. There has been the predictable discussion of, was the battle (actually, two battles) worth it, have the sacrifices our troops made been in vain, should we have left a residual force in place? In the process, though, the picture that emerges of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is, frankly, hard to recognize. Just one example: when network regular General Barry McCaffery was on MSNBC this weekend weighing in on the capture of Fallujah and Ramadi by al Qaeda linked elements, he opined that, if Saddam Hussein hadn't been removed by the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, he would have had a nuclear arsenal by now. The lie...

Frankly, sFshzenKlyrn , I never knew there was any such thing as reverse gravity. Had I known that, I might not have agreed to play this gig. (Said the man floating helplessly in space.) Oh, yeah - someone's reading this. Hi, Earth friends. Another dispatch from the road with news of Big Green 's 2014 Interstellar Tour in support of our album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick . I have to pause here to put in a brief plug for our tour sponsors, SPAPOOP petroleum snacks, a division of Koch Industries. SPAPOOP: So good, you'll forget it's not edible! Get some today! No, really ... today! Right now! Okay, in all honesty, we had to do the promo to ensure that we have enough fuel to get to our next engagement. That's the way it works out here on the interstellar club circuit (particularly with these plain clothes gigs). Most of the time, there's not cover or drink minimum - people just pass the space helmet around. Sometimes it comes back full of SPAPOOP. It...

This year is starting out very much like the last one ended. Here are a few of the ways I'm thinking of. Conflict in Syria. Juan Cole reports that 2013 may have been the bloodiest year thus far in Syria, with an estimated 73,000 killed in the ongoing civil war, and more than 130,000 since the conflict started. This ongoing disaster is, in many ways, a regional conflict with a Syrian focus, as one representative of the International Crisis Committee put it recently. The only solution, it seems, is for the warring parties to say "enough", to agree to some means of saving what's left of their country, even if it means Assad remains in power. That would be a hard pill for many to swallow, but what is the alternative? As Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States put their ample resources into fighting a proxy war with Iran, the Syrian people are caught in the middle. Six million refugees and no end in sight. Time to push the extremists aside and sue for peace. Energy...

Hand me that bottle, will you, Marvin? That's right - the one with the brownish-green liquid in it. I think it's spiked with marzipan or something. That's about as hard as it gets on this miserable pimple of a planet. Jesus Christmas. Oh, hi, friend of Big Green . Well, here we are on Aldebaran Five, soaking up the radiation, drinking gloog, making slemoth, and generally doing what living beings do on Aldebaran Five, at least when they're in between performances. As you might have surmised from our previous posts, we were hideously late for the one-week run we had booked on A-5, so we had to shuffle things around a bit. Actually, we canceled a gig on Sirius (the star system, not the satellite radio network). Can't think it bothers them much. They never take anything .... serious .... lee. My apologies. Anyway, how is it going here on A-5? Not too shabby. Our current album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick has sold relatively well here. Fact is, we would be...

We are approaching the grim milestone of twenty years after the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement - a pact that is described even by bland media outlets like NPR as having benefited only corporations in the 3 countries affected. Twenty years after its passage and signing by President Clinton, the evidence is in and it seems clear that many if not all of the criticisms were justified. And now that it is well-established and that we have entered into numerous other trade deals modeled on NAFTA, mainstream news organizations can report the obvious, namely: NAFTA has fueled immigration to the U.S. from Mexico. By forcing Mexican corn farmers, for instance, to compete with Cargill, the agreement effectively destroyed large segments of rural livelihood in Mexico, sending economic refugees streaming into their cities and ultimately across the U.S. border in a desperate bid to find gainful employment. (I might add that, coupled with the high demand from the U.S. for ...

Ahem . Still bobbing out here in deep space. Nothing to keep us company but the echoes of our increasingly impatient throat clearings. Ahem! Well, while we have so much time on our hands, time to crack open that big Christmas present we left all of you who subscribe to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN - namely, our annual Christmas Spectacular. What's inside the box this year? Two solid hours of Big Green madness, including: Ned Trek XV: Santorum’s Christmas Planet - This special, expanded holiday edition of our (un)popular Star Trek parody features six - yes, six - new Big Green songs, sung in character: Christmas Shine - Captain Mitt Romney's joyful rumination on getting full value out of his human resources throughout the holiday season. And he's not going to say it again. Horrible People - Mr. Ned contemplates the fate of all animals during the dangerous Yultide ritual celebrations. (Backing vocals by those '40s guys.) Dick'smas Xmas - Even the robot ...