Hammer Mill Days

  See, here’s the thing – I don’t even use a pick. I just slam the damn thing with my thumb. Yes, it’s primitive. Yes, it’s painful. But it gets the job done, sort of. So turn up the heat on that cookpot, dude. We’ve got some strings to boil! Hiya, folks. Yeah, you guessed it – we’re boiling old strings, home style, so that we can reuse them. I snapped the top string on my Martin, framming away on some random cover song, and well … someone stole my pin money. You know … the pin money I use to buy strings. Why, you may ask, wouldn’t I just use string money? Simple – because I need that money for cooking oil. Do I have to explain EVERYTHING, for crying out loud? The mechanical guitar tech I would be the first person to admit that we are not a stage-ready band. It’s been a long while since we played anywhere, and we’re rusty as an old hinge. And as any working musician knows, you need to have your systems in place if you expect to sustain yourselves through...

NOTE: The Russian invasion of Ukraine began a day after I finished this post. The points are still relevant, in my humble opinion.. jp In light of some of the Twitter arguments I’ve been getting into, I thought it might be a good idea to return, once again, to the Russia/Ukraine issue. It’s not hard to find people who are more well-informed on this score than I am. I am not an expert. That said, many of the commentators I see on cable television are not experts, either. I see that as a license to bloviate in these dark and disturbing times. As many of you know, Twitter is no place for a nuanced foreign policy debate, and I’m not certain that blogging is any better suited to the task. I’ll let you be the judge of that. I have blogged on this issue before, most recently just a couple of weeks ago . And so here I go, as the shadow of war falls over all of us once again. Let’s make a few things clear, shall we? Point one: Putin is not a nice man When I criticize ...

  Damn it, what’s the temperature out there again? Fifty-seven and windy? Mother of pearl. This is an effing roller coaster, man. Tubey was frozen to the ground last night, now he’s sprouting corn flowers. It’s insane! Oh … hi, friends. I know you probably don’t think of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) as ground zero in the climate crisis that’s underway. In fact, you probably don’t think of the Cheney Hammer Mill at all, right? That’s a shame, because like Xanadu, the mill doesn’t exist unless you believe in it. (Is that how Xanadu works, or am I thinking of Brigadoon? I can’t keep these mythical paradise worlds straight.) Weather or not Got a news flash for you: this place ain’t insulated. The fact is, it barely even has window glass. That’s not our fault, people. Those nasty kids from up the street keep chucking rocks through our windows. Purely coincidentally, it tends to happen when we’re rehearsing . Whatever the cause may be, t...

Anyone who thinks what we’re doing to Afghanistan is uniquely cruel has not been paying attention over the last few decades. We did something very similar to Vietnam after that endless war ended. We sanctioned the government, denied them aid, blocked others from trading with them, and so on. That lasted decades, and I have no doubt that, given the prevailing political mood, the Afghan strangulation might last years, at least. What the hell is the point of this policy? We bled rural Afghanistan for twenty years. Every family lost someone to our bombing runs, drone strikes, or night raids. Sniveling hacks like Lindsey Graham seem satisfied that all this killing has accomplished something, but he’s wrong, as usual, unless the point was to make some people a lot of money. As we sit around grousing incoherently about retail terrorism, a million people are on the brink of starvation, and we won’t even let them have their own damn money. Keeping the creep-asses happy I...

  You know what they say, man. Everyone as time went by got a little bit older and a little bit slower. Stay in the toaster long enough, and hell, you’re toast. Stick a fork in it. Insert your favorite over-the-hill cliche here. Hey, lookit – I know I’ve been more reflective over the past year than in previous years. When your ass starts to get old, it spends more time looking back. (It can hardly do anything else, actually.) I’ve posted a few reflections on the bad old days . Spun a few yarns about scraping the bottom of the barrel of backwater live music. Hey, there’s always room for one more story, right? Maybe. Hippy anniversary It happens that this spring is the 35th anniversary of a little project that coincided with the birth of Big Green, back in the eighties. I’m thinking of this now not so much because of the anniversary, but because I’ve been digitizing a video of a 1987 gig I played with Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and Ned’s childhood fr...

As I write this, we appear to be inching towards that thing we always say we don’t want but nearly always opt for. The difference this time is that we’re flirting with a conflict that, at minimum, will send the global economy into yet another tailspin, and, at maximum, will result in terminal nuclear conflict. Neither seems to me a good option. I have written about this previously , of course – as has nearly everyone. My hope has been that we would begin to back away from the breach, but that hasn’t happened yet. This past week, French President Macron met with Putin and seemed to come away with assurances that the Russians wouldn’t escalate the situation. Somewhat encouraging, though it is a slender thread from which to dangle the fate of this insane world. Mutually supporting motives This threatened conflict has brought the art of Kremlinology back with a vengeance, which must please Putin no end. In truth, the practice never entirely went away. But now there’...

  I know it’s not the 20th anniversary any more. Stop reminding me! We’re practically at the 23-year mark, for crying out loud. I’m just too damn lazy to change the promo. Mea culpa, okay? MEA CULPA, GODDAMMIT! Whoops, sorry. Was a bit on edge just then. I was talking to our advertising manager, otherwise known as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He keeps telling me that I left the 2000 Years To Christmas billboard up too long. The suggestion is ludicrous. Accurate, but ludicrous. I didn’t program him to tell me the truth. (To tell the truth, I actually didn’t program him at all.) Incremental sales … without the increments It actually doesn’t much matter whether or not we advertise, frankly. We don’t sell a lot of units, which may be a function of the fact that we don’t put out a lot of new material. I am being generous, of course – we haven’t put out a new album in nine freaking years . Where did that time go? Same place all time goes – into the hol...