Hammer Mill Days

You know, any other band would be talking about a summer tour right about now. But that's what "normal" bands do. They play in front of actual people and stuff. Big Green? Not so much. Here's the thing about Big Green. We are not a "normal" band. We are a musical collective, a band of brothers, a loose association of critters, a gaggle of organisms, a ... I don't know, something else that implies more than one of us. And weird. The very suggestion of a "summer tour" brings to mind something quite different from what most people picture. We're not rolling into Akron or Missoula, playing in a urine-soaked noise cave, and sleeping on someone's floor. No, sir - typically, we're sleeping in the urine-soaked cave. That cave? It's called the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. Okay, so we never, ever do normal tours. I'm not saying we never will, but everyone ELSE is saying it, so who am I to argue? No, sir ... whe...

There's more news of drone deaths, this time including western hostages. "Mistakes can occur", president Obama says, employing the passive voice as his predecessor Ronald Reagan often did. The American captive, aid worker Warren Weinstein, had asked his government to work toward negotiating his release, to no avail. We do not make deals with "terrorists". Unlike during practically every war our country has been involved in previously, in the context of the "Global War on Terror", prisoner release negotiations have been barred, whether on the part of the United States government or by private parties, such as the families of the captives. Thus, no release, and ultimately, death by drone. What brought this policy about? Perhaps it's the experience of, again, Reagan and the fallout from the Iran-Contra scandal. The official line at that time was, "we will not negotiate with terrorists", but the effort towards back-channel negotiations beca...

Where did you put the GPS? I don't know this neighborhood very well. Okay, well ... pull out that AAA map and unfold it. Yes, I'll wait. Jesus. Well, you caught Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I on a little automotive tour of the greater Little Falls, NY area. All it takes is some kind of vehicle - in this case, Mitch Macaphee's 1968 Chevy Nova - and a little curiosity. Sure, the muffler just fell off (again) and I can see the road going by under my feet, but these are minor inconveniences. Spring is here, people - it's time to start living the life. Let's get our sorry asses out of that drafty old hammer mill and fill our nostrils with the scent of new life. Or ... not. Up to you. Sometimes the best of intentions, as you know, lead one astray. It reminds me of a song Matt Perry wrote many moons ago - still applies today, though. Good intentions, I've all these good intentions My good intentions won't row the boat ashore Good intentions, yo...

After years of speculation, Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy for president. At this point it feels as though she has been running for three years or more. American election seasons have been way too long since the 1970s, particularly over the last few cycles. I personally think this has been accentuated by the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle and cable opinion/advocacy journalism, like FoxNews and MSNBC. I watch the latter more than most anything else, and I can tell you, they have been obsessing over 2016 since the day after the 2012 election, literally. It is permanent presidential electoral politics, restricted to horse-race coverage for the most part. (Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry and Rachel Maddow focus on policy more than their colleagues, to be fair.) What about policy? It doesn't look good, frankly, and it's kind of depressing. Hillary Clinton is mouthing platitudes about inequality and being a "champion" for ordinary people, but that seem...

What are you going to do, play on garbage cans? That works for some songs, but how long can it possibly hold up? We need a more permanent solution to our problem. (Did I say that?) Okay, so ... this will come as no surprise to any long time followers of Big Green, but we make recordings using technology roughly equivalent to stone knives and bear skins, as the late Leonard Nimoy once put it. (My guess is that he had 1000 times the resources when he cut "Mr. Spock's Songs from Outer Space," but I digress.) We are plagued by technical glitches and the spotty performance of superannuated recording equipment, including a first generation digital workstation with no practical means of exporting song data or sound files (namely a Roland VS-2480 from the year 2001). It is choked with projects and ready to keel over. Now, don't get me wrong ... we have invested in newer technology. Mitch picked up a new blender last week. Great for daiquiris (I hate daiquiris!) and it ma...

Hard to find the words to describe how I feel about the video of Walter Scott's murder at the hands of an officer of the law. I think the thing that impressed me the most about it was the craven disregard for the victim's condition, as well as the casualness of the officer's actions and apparent demeanor. I am inclined to suspect that the police department was telling the truth when they said, prior to the emergence of that video, that the officer had followed proper procedures. That this represents standard operating procedure comes as no great surprise. The question I have is, why didn't the Eric Garner video prompt a similar self-examination within the NYPD? Of course, the North Charleston Police Department would likely have stuck to the police officer's original story if the video hadn't surfaced; that Scott had grabbed the officer's taser, that he had posed a threat to the officer's life, that the cops had administered CPR in some kind of timely ...

Not a real good bookkeeper, I admit it. Never have been particularly good with numbers. Don't know much about geometry. (There's a song in this somewhere.) So what happened to the March podcast? Well, as you've guessed if you follow our various pointless postings in cyberspace, we have moved to a bi-monthly format, given the production demands of Ned Trek, particularly the musical episodes. We're currently producing five or six songs for what will ultimately be the June episode, and we should be recording the April episode in a week or so. So ... production is moving forward, but like Issa's snail climbing Mount Fuji, it is proceeding "slowly ... slowly." My illustrious brother had a cold for a couple of weeks, like half of humanity up here in the great frozen north country. He spends a good deal of his day outdoors, feeding and entertaining all manner of wild critters. Not so different from being in the restaurant business, actually, and you know how ...