Hammer Mill Days

  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 ...

As you well know, the other shoe dropped last week regarding Roe v. Wade , which is now history. The joyless anti-abortion zealots up the street from me must be enjoying the closest thing they know to a celebration. Maybe they’ll take the baby-float mobile out for a ride. (No, seriously: they had a vehicle with a plastic baby on the roof and P.A. speakers through which they would read anti-abortion screeds, inaudible because of their cheap audio gear. We called it the “baby float”.) I wrote a post on the impending abortion decision a couple of weeks ago entitled “ The Right To Be Forced Into Childbirth “. What I didn’t get deeply into then was the degree of fraud Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court committed during their confirmation hearings. That was, of course, their way not only of protecting themselves but of offering their supporters cover by gaslighting everyone who had paid any attention to their careers up to that point. Perjury and Prevarication Let...

  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...

I saw Larry Summers on television today. That says all you need to know about the corporate media’s state of discourse on the economy. The Democratic leadership in Congress is like a deer in the headlights – they are just effing doing nothing. Didn’t they have at least two shots at reconciliation? Has it occurred to any of them that they should pass something under the Byrd rule, seeing as they plan on leaving the filibuster intact? I suspect the answer to these questions is a resounding no, and I suspect the reason for that answer may be, well, Larry Summers. The austerians appear to be winning the day in the Biden Administration and the Democratic-led Congress. They are afraid of spending money on anything apart from the military, which is the beneficiary of lavish amounts of public funds in excess of $800 billion per annum. The notion that social spending is responsible for recent price rises is simply laughable. There are other, more likely causes. Pumping pr...

  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...

As someone who tends to pay attention to these things, I watched the first night of the January 6th Committee hearings with some interest. MSNBC spent a week winding up to these public meetings, and the committee did not, in my estimation, disappoint. I don’t know who in America remains persuadable on this issue, but it’s hard to watch the proceedings and not come away thinking about what an outrage January 6 was. When I say January 6, I mean the whole enchilada. The day was just the culmination of a long process which the president at the time set in motion. As shocking as the attack was – and I, like many, watched it unfold with disbelief – Trump had long demonstrated his contempt for elections, and spent much of 2020 undermining the credibility of mail-in and absentee ballots. This was because he knew that Democrats were more likely to opt for vote by mail than to show up at the polling place. The hearings are highlighting this dynamic, and it’s all to the good. ...

  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 ...