Posts filed under 'deer in the headlights (concert commentary)'
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……
June 22nd, 2008
Now I know you’re like the Band here — real enquiring minds — and you’re probably wondering why DID these resorts dry up? You might think like Prof. Bezelel over there, it was cause the fishing dried up, leaving only tiddlywinks and croquet for entertainment.
But I think the REAL reason was this: you drag the missuz out to the middle of nowhere, make her cook those salmon on a hot wood stove in the middle of summer, maybe even can a few dozen pounds to take home, then take care of the younguns while you and the boys go out for a pull on the oars and a pull or two on the jug, I’m betting it didn’t take Women’s Liberation to finish off the He-Man Fishin Era.
This next song, Devil’s Dream, might just be a window into many a fishin widow’s psyche fryin up the 9th or 10th fine kettle of the old man’s fish.
June 22nd, 2008
Used to be a time when folks from Seattle and Gomorrah would pack up the baby, grab the old lady and make the hard arduous haul up into the hinterlands of Camano. Rent a cabin out at the end of the known world then fish, clam, crab, hike, play horseshoes, cook on the woodstove, watch the sunsets from the beach setting over Whidbey and the Olympics. What some folks think of as nostalgic now or sorta Norman Rockewell Americana, we think of as home…..
It’s a real pleasure for us anachronistic South Enders to see a part of our heritage not only preserved but put back into use. A sort of living history here at Cama. We always thought of the past not just as prologue. We thought of it as prolonged.
Personally I think it’s a good trend. Something we can build on. If the price of gas keeps climbing, we can probably shut down the Mark Clark Bridge to commuter traffic. The real estate market should go thru the basement. I mean, already every house listed north of MY shack – which is almost at the end of the island – they’re advertised as North End homes. Close to amenities….. (long pause) WHAT amenities? The Dollar Store in Stanwoodopolis?
So we salute the State Parks. With a little luck and some more oil speculation, the whole island will be South End pretty soon, returned to its former pristine, backwash condition, a place where time stands still and the stills still stand. Course, it can’t come fast enuff for most of the band here…..
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