Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The House of Blues at (The bankrupt) Barefoot Landing in Myrtle Beach seems to make a policy of booking major "legacy" acts into its rather intimate space. In the past, I've seen Boz Scaggs, Cyndi Lauper, The Beach Boys (Carl Wilson was visibly failing), and Blondie there.

The only problem I have with the place is that while they have a reserved seating area, the tickets don't seem to be available on the standard web site, and standing up for two hours gets old pretty quick for me nowdays.

Steve Miller has, of course, been around forever, but scored his greatest success in the mid 70s with the "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book of Dreams" albums. Supposedly he has never allowed a recognizable picture of himself on an album cover, and at the peak of his fame, could ride his bike around venue parking lots without being recognized. He has never had what you could call a "great" voice -- it's a very servicable reedy tenor, and the fact that it's never been perfect means that it hasn't dropped off much either: he was in good vocal form for Saturday's show. The Steve Miller Band is now apparently a six-man outfit. Two guitars, a bass, drums, keyboards and a (very flamboyant) second vocalist.

As you'll recall, when I saw The Doobie Brothers in North Charleston, and Al Stewart in Newberry, I was surprised at how lax the venues were about cameras. In the past it almost seemed like places would break your kneecaps before letting you in with a camera, but apprently, as in school, the Battle of the Cell Phone has been lost, and other cameras reap the benefit. Since I regretted not taking the closing-cam to those shows, I checked on the HOB ticketing site, and non-removable-lens cameras are allowed, so in it came.

The curtain opening number was "Jet Airliner" (with the synth prologue [mostly missed here] playing before the curtain dropped), and Miller went on to play pretty much all of his hits and well known songs: "Jet Airliner", "Abracadabera", "Wild Mountain Honey", "Serenade To The Stars", "Swingtown", "Dance Dance Dance", "Take The Money & Run", "Jungle Love", "Space Cowboy" (dedicated to William Shatner), "Livin' In The USA", "The Stake", "The Joker" (acoustic), and "Rockin' Me". He also played a few blues numbers (it was originally "The Steve Miller Blues Band") that really let the second vocalist shine.

In short, it was an excellent show, and if you get the opportunity to catch him, do.

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Holy Moley that was a blow! There was debris all over the streets of Forest Acres, the stoplights at Forest & Trenholm and Forest & Beltline were out (and Trenholm Plaza dark), trees in the road on Millwood, and this tree, with downed powerlines, in Shandon just across from Za's pizza.

Going home, I had to turn around and backtrack when I came across this scene:

and then found that of course my power was gone (though luckily I didn't seem to have any trees through the roof). I got power back around midnight so I could actually post this. Hope everyone is OK!

The Swimming Pool Qs played the Rockafellas Reunion at The Tin Roof on Senate Street last Saturday. I saw them first at Bell Camp and then at Rockafellas back in the day, and a number of times since then. (Most recently at Doc's Gumbo Grille, just a block or so from the Tin Roof).

I'm afraid I did not stick around for any of the other bands' sets though I'm sure they were great.

The Qs played a fairly short set Saturday (somehow I missed the fact that they were at Wet Willie's on Friday), hitting both The Deep End and the A&M era, but not 2003's Royal Academy of Reality.

The sound was pretty good for an outside venue. The rain had stopped about an hour before, and the sun finally started to come out about the time the Qs took the stage. I have to admit the crowd was pretty sparse, but both the audience and the band seemed to be having a good time.

I noticed today that the bridge over Gill Creek at Eight Mile Branch behind the old Forest Lake Shopping Center (and beside the old Forest Lake Park is closed.

Google maps suggests that the road, at least on the east side of the bridge (in the area behind Zoe's) is known as Forest Lake Place, but doesn't seem to realize that it goes all the way over the creek and out to Trenholm Road. I do have to admit that it's not entirely clear to me either whether the area to the west of the creek is an actual road or just a parking lot. If it's a real road, it's pretty poorly maintained, but if it's a parking lot, why have a bridge in the first place?

At any rate, there is no indication how long the closure is to last and there did not seem to be any actual bridge work going on that I could see at all...

According to their archived web site this house was built in 1893, and it does remind me of the houses in Fernandina from that era that I used to see growing up.

After being vacant for a while, it was an event and catering operation. I was a bit surprised when I found that online -- I had expected that it had probably been a B&B. The last archived version of the web site dates from June of 2008, and given the threadbareness of the paint in several places, I would guess it probably closed not long after that. It's certainly a beautiful property and I'd like to see it survive even if only a a law-office or whatever...

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When you say you've been to see "The Doobie Brothers", that's almost as uninformative as saying you've been to see "The Drifters" given the convoluted group histories involved. Suffice it to say that the current incarnation of The Doobies hews to the original concept, and includes founders Pat Simmons and Tom Johnston.

I've seen several shows at the North Charleston Coliseum complex, including most memorably The Eagles and Blondie, but I believe those shows were in The Coliseum proper, a much larger venue than the Performing Arts Center. The center reminds me of the Koger Center both in size and the awful European style bank seating. It seemed that never more than 5 minutes went by before some portly person or another was making way across my seat towards the far distant center. I would say the show was about 80% sold with the crowd being entirely middle aged and white..

Lack of aisles aside, the sound was very good, and the security was just as casual as Newberry. I had emptied my pockets of all nail clippers and change in expectation of being herded through metal detectors, or at least being wanded, but no such eventuality occurred. In fact, many people were taking pictures and recording the show on their cellphones. If I had know that in advance, I would have taken the closing-cam in and gotten some very nice shots and videos. At any rate, I expect some to appear on youtube and elsewhere over the next few days.

The frontman for Charleston's Blue Dogs opened with an acoustic set which was generally well received. I thought he was pleasant, but frankly didn't hear anything which would make me seek out a Blue Dogs album.

After he finished, the Doobie roadies finished setting up the stage, which took about 15 min and then the band came out. They had an interesting configuration, one that I don't think I've see a rock band use before. Of course the classic rock band setup is lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums. The Doobies have three guitarists and *two* drummers as well as bass, keyboards and sax.

So how were they? Well, I won't bury the lead too deep: They were excellent! Given the revolving door history of the band you have to start off a bit worried, but then Tom Johnston starts to sing, and well, they sound like The Doobie Brothers and if you get the chance you should go.

The setlist was what about what you would expect with all the hit singles up until the start of the Michael McDonald era (and they did do a very credible version of "Takin' It To The Streets").

The audience started a little skeptical but we were won quickly over. It's always a risk for a legacy group to try to sell new material, but the three songs from the new album were well received, mostly I think because they sounded like classic-era Doobies, not some new and evolved tangent. When they started a long blues jam with solos all round, they got their first mainly standing ovation as I think we largely came to the simultaneous realization: Hey, these guys are good!.

For me, the best moment was the encore set. When they came back out, they started a sort of non-descript mid-tempo rock where you were thinking yeah, that's ok, but what is it? and then Johnston started into the "China Grove" riff..

Woah ho, listen to the music!

These nine pictures are attempts at HDR. I took a tripod, and set the closing-cam to do 3 exposure brackets (1 "under exposed", 1 "over exposed" and 1 "correctly exposed"). I still have had trouble getting anything reasonable looking out of Qtpfsgui though other folks certainly have. There are just too many knobs and levers for me, at least for now. I did find another free program called Picturenaut, which actually produces nice results with the default settings. The downside is it only runs on Windows.

All the night pictures were taken on 15 October and the day pictures on 24 October. As usual, the fair remains an evergreen experience and if you missed it this year, you should try to catch it in 2011.

Lots and lots of other pictures after the jump. Be warned!

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This is kind of an interesting one in that it was totally unexpected. I know this Harden Street storefront has been a number of things, but I couldn't bring any of them to mind. Googling turns up virtually nothing -- except a page from the Spartanburg Herald Journal for 21 Feb 1962:

MISS SUN FUN South Carolina will be selected March 31 in Columbia as contestants throughout the state vie for hte title Sponsored by the Columbia Chapter of the American Business Clubs, winner of the state title will enter into competition for the national finals to be held in June at Myrtle Beach. The national winner will receive $10,000 in prizes. Application forms and rules have been sent to newspapers throughout the state. They may also be obtained from contest headquarters by contacting Miss Sun Fun South Carolina Pageant 942 Harden Street Columbia. Entry applications must be mailed before March 1.

I kind of remember the Sun Fun Festival and Miss Sun Fun being a big deal when I was little (though at the time of this article, I would have been 1 year old and oblivious). I had always thought of it as strictly a Myrtle Beach thing though, and didn't know it had state-wide entrants, and apparently even a national reach.

Indeed, while The Sun Fun Festival & Miss Sun Fun still exist, they now appear to be owned by the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, and I can't really recall hearing much about either since the 1970s.

It's still something nice to think about during dreary Februaries though..