The Results Are In!

In the great 2008 Flaw Freebie Concert Ticket Contest, you were asked to send a suck-up letter to suckingup@murphysflawband.com, in which extra points would be given for mentioning the astonishingly good-looking banjo player.

FIRST PLACE (1 ticket)
Donn Cunningham, Pasadena, CA:

Uh...

Hmm...

Well uh...

Let's see...

Nevermind, I'll pay the $20.

See you there.

SECOND PLACE (2 tickets)
Bob S. Hill Jr., Utica IN:

As Murphy Flaw's ONLY Hoosier Groupie - if not its only groupie east of Mendocino - I think it would be swell to get two free tickets to whatever the hell the band is doing because basketball season hasn't yet begun here and my wife needs something with which to light our barbecue.

HONORABLE MENTION:
Joy Felt, Reseda, CA:

Dear Abby, I mean, Dear Flaw,

I’ve never written an advice request letter before so you may find this a bit long. Please do not edit my words of panic. So you see I have this friend and I just don’t know what to do about our relationship. He’s always a bit of a raskal and doesn’t believe me when I tell him that I had to walk the dog and couldn't do my homework . I’ve tried bribing him with chocolate but he’s a curmudgeon when it comes to bribery. I’ve tried being mean by ignoring him, but he simply laughs uncontrollably. I’ve even tried changing my time with him. Alas and alack, I’ve been unsuccessful. So, even though I could easily tell you about my 17 closest friends, and why they deserve a ticket to this special concert as well as my heroic efforts, I still aim to have him be less relentless. My final effort must then certainly be a kindness by presenting him with A-Flat deal where he cannot B-Minor in attitude nor B-Dim’d in in his enjoyment. He might, however, only enjoy a Quarter of the program altho I suspect that Half of his pleasure will be Waltzing to the concert hall to see a bunch of folks Staff(ed) with axes and picks in hand for his entertainment pleasure. It will be grand for the banjo player to C him. I must mention that my friend’s frustration is that I don’t always follow directions...like not first extolling the Flaw’s virtues. So, I must mention that the Flaw ...well...ain’t flawed. Ask their following and the judges at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest. They’ve had to defend their many wins and are not likely to step aside any time soon...thankfully! Therefore, 2 little dots do not keep me from refraining to repeat my forte proclamation....for a kool time see the hot stuff of Murphy and the Pickers. With tones in every register and no decrescendo at the end they are certain to delight! Respectively submitted, THE RASKAL (J.F.)

HONORABLE MENTION
Phil Meyers, North Hollywood:

The banjo player is astonishingly good-looking, but can't hold a candle to the fiddle player. (Does this mean I win?)

Did we say FREE TICKETS? Why, Yes, We Believe We Did!

Dear patrons of the arts,

A week to go before the big concert and we know some of you are hanging back in anticipation. Kind of like when somebody brings out the big chocolate cake, but you don't want to be the first one to dive in.

We understand. About the cake. Frankly, we don't know how this applies to bluegrass....We sure could use some cake right now, though.....mmmmmm

FOCUS! FOCUS!!

Oh, yeah....we're here with FREE Tickets to the Flaw concert to whet your appetite (mmmmm, cake....!).

No, this isn't welfare, and it's not some kind of government arts grant project, either.

(Uh, do you KNOW of some welfare or a government arts grant project? We're just asking for a friend. Five of them, in fact.)

Here's how you can win the tickets:

1. Compose an email telling us how wonderful we are.
Tips: Concentrate on the astonishingly good-looking banjo player. Don't talk about hair -- few of us have any. That's all the help you're going to get.*

2. Send it to suckingup@murphysflawband.com

3. First place entry: 1 ticket.

4. Second-place entry: 2 tickets.

Now, if you're bringing a date**, you have to engineer your entry so that it will jusssssst miss first place and magically fall into the second place category and you're set for a wonderful evening in beautiful Granada Hills, inside the delightfully air-conditioned Blue Ridge Pickin' Parlor.

Operators are not standing by but some blinking computer is, so get to work.

/The Flaw

* additional regulation: entries containing the phrase "me love you long time, soldier" will either win or be disqualified, depending on whether they refer to the astonishingly good-looking banjo player.
** this is hypothetical, since people who listen to the Flaw generally can't GET dates.

Dear Patrons of the Arts,

All is not well across the Flawed landscape these days. The band has foolishly agreed to stage some kind of "CD Recording Concert" on Saturday, July 19, a scant (you do the math; we're tired) days from now, at the Blue Ridge Pickin' Parlor, somewhere in Granada Hills, which is somewhat north of Los Angeles (ditto).

And now various members of the band are in full-on, screaming banshee panic mode. There are three main streams of angst flowing into a mighty, neurotic river:

• We're not prepared to get up and play in front of a paying audience, practicing only once a week, and most of that time devoted to tuning the banjo.
• Nobody will pay $20 apiece to come hear us (though it's just $15 in advance, we're just sayin'...)
• We're all going to die. Of embarrassment.

Bad enough? Not for the Flaw.

There's more.

The guy upon whom we were relying to record the concert, a professional sound engineer, has to go to a wedding. So now there's nobody available to record the concert that's so bad nobody will pay to hear it and there will be rotting embarrassed band corpses all around anyway.

Our legacy is intact.

There is a fallback position for the recording. We have a telephone answering machine with a fresh tape in it that we can set near the stage and we think we can get some CD tracks with that. Of course, each song will be limited to one minute and we can't start until we hear the beep.

There will be updates as the situation worsens. Meantime, here's the concert poster. Staple it to a loved one so you don't forget.

--The Flaw