The last new string band to venture up the street debuted eight years ago. There hasn't been a new Fancy Division "mother club" since 1960.

This year, there are two new outfits: the Pennsport String Band, whose home base is a room above a bar in South Philly, and the Adelphia New Year's Association, a Fancy Division mother club operating out of a guy's garage in Wilmington, Del.

Daily News reporter Becky Batcha dropped in on both as they made their frenzied final preparations for Tuesday's big parade to ask, in a nutshell: What on earth were you thinking?

Here, their stories:

Pennsport String Band:

The Boomer Mummers

The baby-boom generation has put a new spin on everything in its path, from politics, sex and pop music to, more recently, the botulism toxin. And this New Year's Day, with the scheduled debut of the Pennsport String Band, the boomers are remaking Mummery.

Subversively, Pennsport has no captain. No clubhouse. No year-round slog of paid gigs, like weddings and summer parades, to finance extravagances like the $2,000 costumes (that's $2,000 apiece) and the tens of thousands of dollars in props that have become the status quo for the Mummers Parade.

What it's got is about four dozen mostly middle-aged musicians, including seven women, who want to uphold the tradition of strutting up Broad Street on New Year's Day - and then just go home for most of 2008.

"Everyone is mostly over 40," said Rob Simiriglio, one of the band's four founders. "We don't have the time or don't want to take the time away from our families. We said, 'Why don't we start around Thanksgiving and give it a shot?' It's been a crash course in Mummery since then."

Like baby boomers' 401(k)s, the boomer Mummers are self-financed. The Pennsport organization has collected $325 in dues from each musician and from its affiliated dancers, for a total of not quite $20,000 - about a fifth of what's held to be the going rate to send a string band up Broad Street.

Like boomers' careers, the boomer string band aims to achieve a work-life balance - a strut-life balance, if you will - that puts family first.

Say, for example, that your daughter has a basketball game. You can skip rehearsal, no questions asked.

Say you've got a Shore house. You can spend July weekends there instead of strutting for dollars on the summer circuit to pay off some string band's clubhouse mortgage.

"I kind of like that trend," admitted Mummers Parade Director Leo Dignam. "Some of the people are getting sick of all the money involved and the practice, and they just want to keep the tradition. These old guys just want to have fun."

Like baby boomers' near-eyesight, the Pennsport String Band is a little fuzzy around the edges, compared to the Lasik precision of the pre-eminent year-round bands. But the musicianship is pretty good for a loose collective that's been practicing for less than two months.

When the Daily News visited a rehearsal last week in a room above Mooney's Pub at 4th and Ritner, the players were finessing the dynamics on a medley of Mummer standards, having already gotten most of the notes down pat. Music director Joe Accetta was reminding them to come in fortissimo, then turn down the volume for a "pretty" interlude.

Several players wore reading glasses perched on their noses to help make out the notations on the sheet music. Several more had a bottle of beer under their chairs to swig between songs, and the vibe was loose and collegial.

The big laugh of the night came when one musician wondered out loud, "Who's our assistant drill director?" and a half-dozen guys chimed "I am!" . . . "No, I'm the assistant drill director!"