Posts filed under 'deer in the headlights (concert commentary)'
January 14th, 2009
The South End String Band, for those of you who may be under some vague misconception that we’re a ragtag collection of musician yahoos, is actually a legal entity entitled SESB LLC. Meaning we’re a corporation. With limited liability. Not limited viability as some have suggested….
As such, we’re a lean mean profit churning machine. About the same time as the Wall St. Meltdown and Uncle Sam’s 750 billion dollar bailout to prop up LOSING entities, the SESB LLC got a letter from the IRS informing us we were going to be penalized $2500 for not submitting Form 1065 to them in a timely manner. Our bank account had swollen to about $1800 at the time. For you mathematicians , that meant our profits were soon to be losses, no doubt triggering our own stimulus package, judging by the U.S. Treasury’s aforementioned desire to help the fiscally floundering back on their feet and save Capitalism itself even if it meant converting it to Socialism.
You may not know it, but not many bands pay taxes. They’re like most artists. Sort of an underground black market economy. But the SESB LLC was a small beacon of hope in the storm tossed capitalist seas of 2008. At least until the IRS decided our deep pockets were needed to rescue, oh, Morgan Stanley and WAMU and a few other corporations more reckless than ourselves.
So this next song, DON’T LET YOUR DEAL GO DOWN, keep in mind, it’s honest hardworking bands like ours that may ultimately save the global economy . Even if we have to go broke to do it.
Tough economic times, ladies and gentlemen. Tough economic times……
January 14th, 2009
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.
August 10th, 2008
Now the Grange wanted to make this a Family Affair. You know, old time fun. Stick pony races. Sack races. 3 legged races. Horseshoes. I tried to tell em: kids nowadays got GameBoy and X-box. They aren’t real het up about the games we played before television and video. They don’t really believe that era existed…..
Some days I feel the same way. You think maybe life was simpler …. I got news for you. It wasn’t just simpler, it was practically primitive.
We might as well had Cave Drawing contests to attract the kids. Or saber tooth tiger races. IT chases you and YOU run for your life. Simple. And fun. IF you escape.
This next song we’re hopin the kids even MET a chicken once in their short modern digital lives. If not, maybe google it up while we play this.
August 10th, 2008
We want to thank Art by the Bay for NOT succumbing to public pressure to rename this event. So what if it’s not really by a bay? It’s by a school that’s named after a bay. Close enuff for me.
We’re the South End String Band. I’m gonna confess right up front some of us don’t live on the South End. And some of us don’t play strings. And, okay, some of us don’t live on the South End OR play strings.
Personally I’ve never really believed in Truth in Advertising. Sort of an oxymoron, you ask me. Like military intelligence or plastic glasses. Truth in Adverising, gimme a break….
So here’s a song for Art by the School that’s Named After a Bay by the South End String Band which probably couldn’t find the South End on a sunny day with an onboard GPS…..
June 29th, 2008
These are tough times in the library world around here. Taxpayers just don’t want to ante up for a new library in Stanwoodopolis. Just about every body else in the Puget Sound voted for one for their cities, but not us….. Sno-Isle musta figured the island might be the way to go. Get us hooked on having one in a rental unit, then see if we’ll put our money where our IQ is in three years when the lease expires. This is year one so in 2 years we’ll find out if Camano is any more willing than Stanwood and Gomorrah to build a temple to learnin.
Price of gas goes any higher, the Band’s voting to get a new library on the South End, maybe expand Tyee Store’s Harlequin Romance paperback section. Me, I already cut a trail thru the woods to get to it, I’m so sure it’s coming. I hope it comes soon. Those nettles are growin back and I’m real tired of bodice-rippin, pulse poundin love stories……
Previous Posts