Archive for January, 2008
January 22nd, 2008
We get a lot of inquiries from the press, historical societies, Rolling Stones magazine and the Smithsonian Museum, how is it the Band got its start? How did a Musical Force the likes of which hasn’t been heard in these parts since Gramma served up those half cooked baked beans that awful winter of ’62, how did it come together? Or as Prof Bezalel would phrase it – what is its ETIOLOGY??
A good question, Perfessor. Truth is, it was Erich’s mom who can take the credit. Her boy was getting ready to move lock stock and wine barrel down to the South End and we were over to one of their moving- in barbecues, some kind of burnt animal on the grill, and Mrs. Schweiger was fretting over what would become of her baby boy down here in the culturally challenged wilds of the South End. She was wringing her hands and holding her head and kinda starting a low moan. There’s no theater here, she’d say and wring her piano playing hands some more. There’s no concerts, she’d say and tear some more at her hair. There’s really nothing here, she’d say and we’d start to go around all over again.
Now, I didn’t know Erich ALL that well myself, but I could see obviously Mrs. Schweiger had had someone ELSE raise him. This was a boy who wasn’t even FROM Wisconsin who’d search out the nearest taverns every weekend trying to find one showing the Green Bay Packers. It isn’t a Philharmonic, the Packers, it’s a football team. I AM from Wisconsin. Culture IS the Packers there. Mrs. Schweiger didn’t have a thing to worry about concerning the South End and Erich’s continuing aesthetic journey.
But she DID ask me and I’d said, now now, Mrs. S, it isn’t like he’s moving to the Ozarks or the South Pole …or Green Bay for that matter. YOU”D a lied to her too, seeing her extreme distress. COURSE we got cultural nousishment here, I said. Poetry readings at the Grange. Opera at the Performing Hall at Tyee. Concerts in the Park. (She didn’t know there’s no park…or that I meant parking Lot) Theater in the round. Sounded good to me. I told her how all these artists and musicians living on the South End were transforming it, practically a Renaissance in the making here. I was hoping she hadn’t noticed the UFO bus stop or the elephant head rusting on the side of the art gallery that looks like an old garage, which of course it was.
Anyway she finally quit her moaning little by little and I promised her her boy was gonna be fine. He wouldn’t revert to one of those barefoot hillbillies who only live to make moonshine or wine and raise hell. We’d raise him in the worldly ways of South End gentility. Protect him from the temptations of Stanwood and Gomorrah… Which is why we started the Band, a kind of Finishing School of Higher Learning. Imbue him with South End societal ways. I think we’ve done a fine job with this young man. Altho Mrs. Schweiger doesn’t speak to me any more…. But I blame that on the Green Bay Packers, not the Band.
January 22nd, 2008
Tonight we want to take you on a tour of the South End. We offered free drinks and eats and after the show, our representatives, I mean, well, our people, will want to talk to you about some special opportunities. No pressure here. Just want to help you folks.
Down in the La-la land we call the South End, we take our culture pretty seriously. And because our culture is based on the faith of our nettle farming ancestors, we aren’t real sure what to make of the culture of the Scandihoovien northerners or the suburban newcomers or the infidel off islanders or, really, anyone who doesn’t worship Stingy-oto, the nettle god. The true god.
For awhile we started sending missionaries to spread the gospel according to Skeeter Daddle, our patron saint of the prickly plant. Didn’t work. Caused some backlash and next thing we knew we had folks coming to the South End trying to convert US to a non-nettle philosophy. Plenty of bad feelings. Lots of name calling and finally pushing and shoving and violence.
Now we got new belief systems cropping up. People who worship violent video games, people who channel the electron gods, people who google and yahoo 24/7, people whose deity is a flat screen, 150 channel cable- ready, hi def 5 speaker internal DVD wall mounted plasma TV.
Stingy-oto is angry. Stingy-oto is real angry. He knows this means all-out, no holds barred, righteous I-got-the-news Culture War. The pre-computer, nettle loving children of the Old Ways versus the blind followers of the one eyed false prophet of the Virtual World. Oh, I know some say it’s too late. Some say the computers have already won. Some say the world will never return to a natural, pristine, simple state. The say the Garden gates are closed and chained. They say the genie can’t get put back in the jug.
I say this: they obviously never been to the South End. Simple’s a state of mind there. Simple’s a virtue there. Simple’s a way of life.
So tonight we’re gonna take you there, to a place where the backporch goes on nearly forever. Where the glass isn’t half full or half empty, it’s just ready for fillin…. We’re gonna show you a place where life is, well, real simple. The way all our songs are. The way we are. The way Stingy-oto wants it. We’re gonna take you on a virtual tour of the South End sorta like Rick Steve’s tour of Europe thru the back door, only we’re goin thru the back porch. If the free booze is working its magic, this might be positively inspired. If you’re a tee-totaller, well, this may seem like real bad pschedelia from the 1960’s. We will, of course, apologize later……
Feel free to sing along, you know, if you’re not already lost. After the service we’ll have our sales reps, I mean our representatives, our people, I mean, we’ll put you in touch with someone who can maybe show you how you too can find the South End. You guessed it, it’s simple. And it goes something like this rightchere. Hit it girls!
January 22nd, 2008
Good evening, buckaroos. We’re the South End String Band and we want to welcome you to the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center. I suppose I could get up here tonight and rail about how culture in America has gotten dumbed down, shrunk up, pixellated, sterilized, mass produced and just plain ruined. Easy to do. Rant and rave about low IQ hi def TV, splutter about internet pornography, beat my fists bloody about American Idol. I could throw a cord of my best maple onto the bonfire of the Culture Wars, smear myself with blackberry tattoos and stick a sea lion bone thru my nose and howl to the moon all winter long.
The Moslems hate this western culture and half of us westerners do too. Violence and sex and the worship of money. Satan’s serving Big Macs with whisky by a naked teenager, they think. And the Chinese are workin on the special sauce using lead paint and soy, probably sell you a Whopper for 10 cents. The Culture Crusades are gonna be fought the rest of our lives and the rest of our kids’ lives. We think the enemy is Satan or the Sunnis or the Shi-ites or the Taliban or the Liberals.
But the enemy is really something that’s already won — and most folks barely noticed. The so-called enemy is technology. Digital, satellite, nano, speed of light computer technology. Driven by money and mega corporations and governments. Course us Cro-Magnons feel bad about losing our cave drawings and the drumming around the fire circle. But the tribes with the bronze tools, they’re always gonna win. You better get metal too.
This time it won’t take centuries. The good old days folks want to save, they’re in the rearview, looking closer than they really are, but they’re already roadkill on the digital highway. I don’t blame people for hanging onto their old ways, for wanting to preserve a way of life that makes sense to em. You couldn’t drag the band here into the 20th century, much less the computer age. So tonight we want to take you to a simpler time, a time where we plowed with jackasses and harvested and baled nettles and made our implements by hand. Made our music ourselves and played that music with friends and neighbors.
Oh, I know, I’m gonna miss that era too. But tonight, let’s not worry about that or our e-mail or the netflix we could be watchin or the latest installment of American Gladiator, let’s imagine, well, a slower paced life. Bank up the stove, pour yourself a shot from the jug and kick off those muddy boots. The culture wars are gonna have to wait awhile, but in the meantime, let’s have a twist of this……