Hammer Mill Days

  Hmmm. That’s kind of catchy. How about this one? Right …. nothing on the applause meter. Okay, your turn. That’s just goddamned awesome. Now let me try one. Sucks. WHY WAS I BORN? Oh, hi. Yes, we’re working. As one of those performing rock/pop groups that composes its own material, we, of course, need an editorial process. You just walked in on one of our markup meetings. Here’s how it works: we write out a lyric on a big sheet of white paper, then hang it up on the wall. Everyone gets a chance to cross words out and add words in. We decide with a roll of the dice who goes first. If the winner of the dice roll is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I have to put a bucket on my head. Then Matt is invited to draw a face on the bucket with magic marker. Got all that? Sausage making 101 I’ve written about our creative process many times on this blog. Think of my posts as helpful tips for songwriting, especially for those who aspire to be as commercially ...

I probably spend way too much time thinking about elections. I suspect you think so too, particularly since I’ve devoted so many blog posts to the subject. I even talked about it a lot on my short-lived political podcast, Strange Sound , though not so anyone would hear. The fact is, I kind of hate elections. They’re nerve-wracking as hell, they often turn out badly, and I’m not a big fan of suspense, especially when it runs all night long. But that’s just experience talking – long, bitter experience. There are many things we can do that are more important than voting. Mutual aid, organizing, public service … all of these things make an immediate difference for people. But more than one thing can be important at the same time, and my contention has always been that voting is important enough to do , even if it isn’t as important as all that other stuff. For people like me – CIS-gender white males – the time commitment involved is negligible. So, though I’m not a huge...

  You want to use that one? Really? Which version? Hmmm … okay. That one’s not in the best condition. I think Mitch was using it to prop his closet door open. And then there’s the rising damp. Lots of factors go into this, dude. It’s not so simple. Like most bands, Big Green has a back catalog. The question is, what to do with all that material, sitting idle, not carrying its own weight. I’ve told our old songs to go out and get a job, but some of them are reaching retirement age, and that’s not an optimal time to start the search. The thing is, we’ve got a boatload of new material coming this way, thanks to the transitive property of Matt Perry, in particular. Yes, I (Joe) have written a handful, but Matt’s output far outstrips mine, and good thing too. ‘Cause I’m a lazy-ass mother. Putting it all on the table here. Reviving the nineties So, some who have known Big Green since its inception recall that we had a flurry of activity in the early nineties. ...

As anyone reading this blog knows, I come from a history of relative privilege. My parents weren’t rich; they were white working class during a time when being that meant a measure of disposable income that’s practically unheard of for working class people today. Dad worked, and his income was the only money we had coming in, whereas Mom ran the household and basically did all the menial work of cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, etc., etc. One thing they always made time for was voting. And again, being white, working class in those days meant voting was relatively easy. I inherited that state of ease from them, apparently, because I seldom if ever have to spend more than five minutes on voting. I walk in, sign a paper, get my ballot, fill it out, and drop it in the machine. Easy as fuck, particularly since my employer is fine with me taking the time to do it. For lots of other folks, though, not so easy. Calling all white people Okay, so, if you’re like me, y...

  I told you, I didn’t want to be disturbed. And just because I have a gaping hole in my wall doesn’t mean you can just jump right through it. Get out, and take those nasty things with you. Jesus! This mill is a prison ! Okay, I admit that I was overreacting a tad just then. My deepest apologies, and the same for Marvin (my personal assistant), who was once again in the process of invading my personal space for no good reason. Still, that doesn’t justify bad feelings or harsh words. We try not to fly off the handle around here – that’s part of our credo as a band, and it’s something we’re particularly, uh … shit ….. WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING DOWN!! Quadropedal unmanned vehicles What did Marvin want from me? Well, he made a new friend today and he wanted to show the bugger off. It’s one of those automated robot dogs – you know, the kind that chase people to death in your nightmares (or just in Black Mirror ). He thinks he found the robot dog out in th...

Democracy is always an approximation. The countries we describe as being democratic have systems that exclude some voters, make it hard to participate in one way or the other, and are otherwise imperfect. That’s to be expected. We don’t aspire to imperfection, of course. In many countries, people try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. In France, it’s the fifth republic. In Britain, constitutional monarchy. And right here, we have the U.S. constitution – penned by rich white men, for rich white men. During the Bush administration, people around the president were fond of saying that the the constitution isn’t a straitjacket. (Of course, they were mouthing those words in defense of torture.) Still, we are kind of locked into certain interpretations of it, and as such remain firmly under minority rule – just as the founding fathers envisioned it. I know others have said this, but apart from 2004, the insurrectionist party (formerly called the Republicans) lost...

  Did the mail come in yet? Oh, right. Looks like bills and solicitations. Again. Not a single handwritten missive in the entire pile. What was the name of that short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? “No One Writes to the Colonel” , or something like that? Well, somebody best tell the colonel that we’ve got him beat. When it comes to postal neglect, we’re number one, amigo. Hey, you know what they say, right? Every complaint is really about something else. So if we’re complaining about our lack of fan (or hate) mail, what we’re REALLY complaining about is the heat or somebody’s sore toe or the price of sorghum in Madagascar. The sorry fact is, we wouldn’t know what to do with fan mail if it was dropped on us via helicopter. It’s been so long since we opened the mail bag, I doubt that any of our current readers even remember that that was a thing. Hey, newbies – that was a thing! First tune, then play … the tune. Part of what makes people cranky around t...