OMAHA, Neb. — Alternative rock band 311 announced that it is tired of fielding and handling a near-constant series of non-emergency municipal calls for assistance while out on tour, according to sources close to the group.
“Look, it’s hard to be a working band who shares their name with a local non-urgent hotline,” said bassist Aaron “P-Nut” Wills while Googling how to replace broken streetlight bulbs. “It’s backbreaking to tour 330 days a year, ride the county fair circuit until I can’t even look at a deep-fried Oreo, and, on top of all that, people expect us to fill in potholes and figure out why their garbage collectors are always late. I mean, I know it’s easy to confuse the band who hit the charts with ‘All Mixed Up’ with your local hotline for non-emergency city issues, but we can’t spend all our time bailing out taxpayers.”
“In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to register 311.com as a website,” added Wills. “We got worked.”
Janie Glowerman, a lifelong Omaha resident and non-fan of 311, says she never intended to contact the band for her issues.
“I just wanted to let the city council know that the trees on Q Street were terribly overgrown,” said Glowerman. “But when I tried to get a hold of the non-emergency line, I somehow got transferred to 311 singer/rapper Nick Hexum. It was hard to get him to stop talking about whatever ‘311 Day’ is, but eventually I was able to let him know those darn elms are a public nuisance. I have to admit, though, when the band showed up, they actually did a really great job trimming those trees. SA Martinez sure knows his way around a pair of clippers.”
Omaha City Councilman Jeffrey Johns confirmed that cities on 311’s tour schedule had come to rely on the 1990s rap rock staple.
“City services are already overextended as it is,” said Johns. “And we basically can’t keep our cities properly running without Hexum, P-Nut, SA, and various others picking up some tasks for us. Municipal services simply aren’t in the budget for most cities with midsize venues. It certainly doesn’t help that we can’t rely on the Police for law enforcement since Stewart Copeland got into writing operas and we damn sure can’t rely on Eve 6 for anything at all.”
As of press time, an exhausted 311 was skipping an encore of “Amber” to deal with a rat infestation in Topeka.
