Hammer Mill Days

What is this ... another carton? This one's from Madagascar, no less. What the hell. Does it rattle when it shakes? Does it roll? If when it shakes it both rattles and rolls, it might be Jerry Lee Lewis. For the life of me, I don't know who's ordering all of these packages. They just show up at the door of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (Big Green's longtime squat-house) and subsequently disappear. At first I thought it might be Mitch Macaphee, but he has long since abandoned the notion of ordering goods from various merchants. He just invents whatever he needs, which is a handy skill to have. (Perhaps the handiest!) Then I thought maybe anti-Lincoln was behind all of this mail order, since some of the boxes came from Urban Outfitters. (He's taken to a more cosmopolitan wardrobe of late. Very smart.) I know, I know - I tend to get a little suspicious, living in a condemned post-industrial hulk like I do. A few months here and you start to see conspiracies aro...

We were treated to the spectacle of another Republican debate last night. I'll dispense with my usual comments about the format, style, and proprietary nature of the event - suffice to say that as a wholly-owned property of CNBC, it met the usual low standard of reality television production values. That said, on to what might be referred to euphemistically as "the substance". First off, it's worth noting that there are way, way, WAY too many candidates on that stage to allow any kind of reasonable debate. Setting politics and policy aside for a moment, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with the Republican party that they can allow this to continue? The policy distinctions between these ten are minor, at best. Hasn't it occurred to any of these people that, for the good of their party, it might be best to just sit this one out? In other words, sacrifice your own petty political ambitions so that there might be ample opportunity for substantive debate? Appa...

What are you going to be for this year's Christmas pageant? A reindeer? A slice of gooseberry pie? As small pile of pine cones? So many possibilities. I don't imagine that anyone reading this blog is unaware of the fact that the holidays hold a special resonance for Big Green. God knows, when they start blowing those freaking carols through every available loudspeaker, my head starts resonating like a church bell at Noon. That's what I call old time religion. And sure, we did do a whole album of Christmas songs, entitled (not surprisingly) 2000 Years To Christmas (2KY2C) - our first formal album. When I say "formal", I don't mean that we appear in tuxedos with massive red cummerbunds and top hats. I mean that we released a number of collections on cassette tape prior to 2KY2C that were anything BUT formal. More than a few of those were Christmas themed albums, from which we drew the 13 songs that appeared on 2KY2C . Okay, so ... as we have in previous ye...

I'm beginning to dread the next administration, whoever wins the upcoming election. It's hard to dispel the notion that we are heading into a period of increasingly bellicose foreign policy, in response to circumstances that are the direct result of our previous decades of bellicose foreign policy. Ugly as these circumstances are, they do not justify the further application of American military power in places like Afghanistan, where we've been blowing things (and people) up for 14 years, and Syria, where we appear to be fighting on both sides of the ongoing conflict. And yet virtually every presidential candidate sounds ready to keep the imperial ball rolling, even though the policy is an obvious failure in every sense of the word. The trouble with approaching these issues with an imperial mindset is that we are blind to our own failures while expressing righteous indignation over the failings of others. Russia's military action in Syria is a good example. They are p...

That doesn't sound right to me. Twist the knob a bit further. No, no - not that knob! The one below it. Give it a good twist. Wrong way! That sounds horrible. Try the next knob down. Oh, man ... these sound consoles are so confusing. All those knobs and buttons and sliders and levers, each one doing a whole different thing. And then there's the analog/digital thing, so a lot of the knobs and switches are assignable, which means they do DIFFERENT things for DIFFERENT people. Holy shit, that's complicated. My brain hurts. You see ... that's the trouble when you spend most of your life writing and playing songs and very little of your life learning the complex technologies involved in putting those songs across. Like most musicians, our reaction is ... you mean I have to learn TWO things? That's outrageous! Double duty, indeed. (As you can see, we are truly in the mainstream of American thought and sensibility.) I think about this every time I listen to old tracks ...

A couple of comments about the Democratic primary debate this past week. First of all, CNN is an amazing crapfest. Why the hell do we allow corporate media to turn this process into a property to be marketed like some cheap-ass reality show? And reality show it was, in both its tone and its production values. The ridiculous opening sequence, with hyper-dramatic music, the rumble of drums, and introductions torn straight out of some WWF bout or America's Top Chef. The only thing missing was a fully loaded clown car (though they did have that at the G.O.P. match-up). Okay, that was a sobering sign, to be sure. Even more infuriating than the sideshow atmospherics was the framing of the questions, delivered for the most part by Anderson Cooper. While the Democratic field is decidedly to the left, at least from a rhetorical perspective, of where they were even eight years ago, the corporate media questioners proceeded through the lens of Reagan's America. The signal example of thi...

The morning came up like thunder today. That was something. It poured so hard it felt like it was raining in my bedroom. Which, in fact, it was - the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill roof has some issues, as you've probably heard. Hey - over a century old, abandoned by its owners, neglected for decades ... you'd have a leaky roof too. So I'm sitting here at my superannuated mixing console, laptop open and running, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) holding an umbrella over me as I type. What better time is there to give a rundown of the recently posted October installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN , our podcast. Here's what's on deck for October: Ned Trek 25: Not the Children One, Please! - Based on the original Star Trek episode, "And the Children Shall Lead" (one of the most annoying episodes ever), the Ned Trek version features the current crop of demon spawn circling the drain that is the modern presidency. Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz appear as the...