CONCERT DISPATCHES

     There was a time, not long ago really, when we all lived in a different place….. a place you could locate on a map.  A geographic place.  I lived on the South End,  a skinny turkey neck backwash of real estate at the keester end of Camano Island.  There were only a few of us that far down in the remote moss backed old growth nettle regions.  Not much work back then.  At least not legal work.  Not much now for that matter.

 

     The South End was always more a state of mind than a GPS coordinate.  Us homesteaders came here to escape the 20^th century clutter, the rat race, the careers, the busted marriages, the law —- all the debris of our individual disasters.

 

    I guess we were escape artists.  Or maybe just con-artists..    But in the end, we became what all artists become, all good artists  — we became our own creation. 

 

    The world changed since I arrived here.  While I was trying to avoid the present, the future snuck up from behind me.  The South End’s still here — you can google us up, get a mapquest readout, drive right up to the shack door and knock.  But if you’re hearing my voice, you know I’m beaming out to you from the virtual radio tower of cyberspace.  If the digital world has a South End  –and I’m here to tell you it does  — this is what it looks like.  I’m Skeeter Daddle, a latter day Huck Finn tromping Camano’s backwash in search of an America long thought lost, a banjo on my knee and a grudge against Mark Twain for marooning me in a childhood no longer sanctuary.  Sit a spell with me.  I got some stories to tell…..

CAMANO SENIOR AND COMMUNITY CENTER
SPAGHETTI ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE

As most of you South End fiscally alert socialites well know, the Band was scheduled to play a benefit for the Camano Senile Center’s SIPS AND SUDS spring fundraiser this coming Sat. March 7th. They were bringing in adult beverages for your sampling pleasure in hopes bibulous fun might mitigate your economic anxieties …. a proven remedy for the South End String Band. Even in prosperous times…

And the Band, ever eager to please, had been hard at work getting ready for this concert. We’d worked on synchronized sipping until our wrists ached. But I have to confess, we never really got very good at it. Sipping just isn’t the Band’s style. Guzzling, slurping, gulping, chugging, glugging, now THAT we got down.

In the end we realized it just wasn’t going to work. Sipping…..come on! These are Tough Economic Times and they call for decisive action. Sipping’s just a bit underwhelming when bold strokes are called for. So the Camano Senior and Community Center decided to take a proactive path toward economic recovery. Their stimulus package, conceived in the foggy weeks of this bleary, dreary winter, brings a ray of hope to the seasonally and fiscally afflicted. In the recesses of its low wattage inner sanctum boardroom, the Center determined to act courageously, knowing half hearted measures would likely prove ineffective. Difficult times call for decisive action. Difficult times demand visionary thinking. Difficult times require unified teamwork They decided it was whole hog or no hog.

In the end they approved an economic recovery package that may well prove to be a model for a national stimulus program. If your 401-K has sunk lower than my Chevy on its rusted rims, if your credit cards are growing fangs, if your once friendly hometown bank is pestering you about that missed mortgage payment, you definitely will want to consider the Spaghetti Feed Stimulus Package the Center is offering on March 7th. They’ll be operating the breadline from 4-7 and they’ll most definitely be serving adult beverages.

And if the promise of vino and brews gulped, not sipped, isn’t enough to lift your spirits, the South End String Band will lift those spirits FOR you, both literally and metaphorically. Our intrepid band of fiduciary refugees who make their home in the fog-shrouded nettle regions of Camano’s backwashed southern climes, have been preparing most of our lives for the opportunity to pass on our South End fiscal wisdom, according to Skeeter Daddle, the Band’s investment guru. If anyone can show you the path to Enlightenment Thru Unemployment, us folks can. Don’t wait for the PBS series when you can fill your bellies and quench those nagging fiscal questions in one easy seminar. Misery loves company so come on down! We’ll all take turns on the pity potty.

Mark your calendars. Saturday, March 7th, 2009: The Day We Fired Our Investment Counselor and Learned How To Maximize Poverty For Fun and Pleasure. The good times are here again!

SPAGHETTI FEED STIMULUS PACKAGE 4- 7 PM. $10.50 for members and $12 for us huddled masses at the door.
www.southendstringband.com

SOUTH END STIMULUS PACKAGE EXPLAINED AT THE FLOYD CONCERT
I know a lot of you folks are watching the economy going down the garbage disposal without water running and you’re thinking wait just a South End minute here. The banks and the mortgage brokerage firms brought us to this sorry state of affairs and we’re going to give them MORE of our money? You’re thinking maybe give them a HorseWhipping instead.

So tonight we’re gonna help clear this up. A little South end Macro Economics 101, 3 credit course. Think of it like this: The Band here goes out and leverages our holdings to get a pretty sweet percentage rate on a short term loan to make our CD’s. We go to BigQuack Studios, tell Mark Dodge, our producer, we’re forego paying recording fees and pay instead with this hedge-yer-bet fund we got that’s bundled up each band member’s mortgage and car loans, plus their credit card debt, then sell this little commodity to investors in Smokey Point and Arlington. We get Skeeter Daddle LLC, our in-house investment ratings outfit, to rate the South End Sring Band Ponzi Group its highest rating.

Pretty soon Conway and La Conner investment brokers are recommending us so we get more loans, make another CD even less saleable than the first, bundle IT into a new financial instrument, pay ourselves great salaries, buy ourselves new houses and vacation condos, amortize the debt and voila, Seattle and New York smell a good deal and we’re cooking with oil, foreign, domestic, who cares? Cabin Fever, our 3rd CD, comes out, sales plummet, but our salaries bump up. The economy is humming, everybody’s on the bandwagon, excuse the pun, and we’re in the driver’s seat.

Until the day we want to put out our Greatest Hits triple CD and WAMU won’t loan us a dime, Big Quack wants its money, the City of Stanwoodopolis goes bankrupt leaving streets after the last storms that look like the Volga River froze after the ice broke up, Asian investors get panicked …. And well, you watch it every night on the news…..
All because we couldn’t make that Greatest Hits CD!! So tonight we’re asking you to help restore faith in the American Capitalist System. The South End String Band Ponzi Group is selling our greatest hits CD on 3 individual discs. Legends in their Own Pathetic Minds, Victims of Unbridled Ambition and Cabin Fever. 12 devalued American dollars each or 2 for 20 or all 3 for 25. AND !!! we’re gonna throw in 10 shares of our hedge yer bet fund. If it all goes the way the bank bailout did, we’ll restore investor trust and hopefully give each band member a fat little raise tomorrow. Thank you for believing.