Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Honestly, what more can I say about Sounds Familiar? I've written about it here, here, and here: Nice Columbia based record store chain that had a good selection, and knowledgeable staff but fell victim to the Internet revolution as did most record store chains. This location, on Parklane near Columbia Mall, was the penultimate one to close, leaving the Rosewood store alone for the last month or so. Note to the almost antique "cassettes and records" slogan given on the sign. I wonder how many of either they sold in the last 10 years?

However little else I might have to say about the chain, I will say that today was a magnificent day for taking pictures, especially if you like clouds -- and I do!

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Well, given the events of last Friday, I suppose it's time to do a closing on South Carolina's biggest white elephant. That's the date that Hard Rock Park "chose" to move from Chapter 11 reorganization to Chapter 7 liquidation. Why?

The park, which said it was worth $400 million when it opened in April, was unable to attract any bidders willing to pay at least $35 million for the park at a Dec. 15 auction, according to court documents.

I find that amazing, even with all the other financial beef-wittery that has come to light lately. The Sun News's stories on the park are filled with comments from the locals to the effect that they could have told the owners what was going to happen, although it also appears that many people did tell them. One of the articles (which I don't have a link to right now) detailed the park's origins: Apparently the pitchmen were thrown for a loop when they were told that the Hard Rock empire was approachable for branding the rock-and-roll park they were pitching. The problem was that they weren't pitching a rock-and-roll park, but a "standard" amusement park, and weren't planning to pitch to Hard Rock, but they brainstormed some rock-related ride names on a lunch napkin and sold the concept. That's the kind of story that becomes a legend if a venture succeeds, and a cautionary tale if it doesn't...

In the event it seemed that the owners were better at promoting to corporations than to tourists, and aside from the unforseeable blunder of trying to launch a venture in the annus horribilis of 2008, they priced tickets too high ($50 + $10 parking), didn't advertise, and didn't promote with local hotels.

I had two chances to visit the park. The first was on the Fourth of July 2008, when I was taking pictures of Waccamaw Pottery. As I was standing in the parking lot, I could see the Led Zeppelin roller-coaster running in the distance, but it was about lunch time, and after that, I ended of taking a helicopter ride over the beach instead. I also had a week to myself at the beach in August, and thought about taking in the park then, but it was hot, I didn't feel like getting on 501 in tourist season, and I figured it would be better in October, but that was not to be as the doors closed in September.

Oh well, it's only rock and roll!

UPDATE: Here's a link from commenter "Beach Guy" that has the origin details I mentioned.

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As the Christmas season rolls round once more, I am put in the mind of Peaches Records & Tapes. Peaches was a record store chain whose "gimmick" was their easy-to-assemble kits of LP storage boxes. These were of wood and made to mimick retro peach shipment boxes complete with vintage appearing art. (Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks had an excellent album Orange Crate Art inspired by the same conceit).

Peaches had only one location in the Columbia area, a large space on the College Street side of the old Sears complex on Harden Street. The store had the not entirely positive distinction of having turnstiles, bag checks, and other theft prevention measures that were quite unusual at the time, but once you got in, it was quite nice. Although they did have a tape section (that's where the whole And Tapes thing came in), their main focus was vinyl, and they had quite an interesting selection. Possibly it was due to their Columbia location being close to USC, or simply that they had more floor space than The Record Bar or School Kids, but there seemed to be a higher possibility of finding something really interesting there than at those other shops.

They also had a large collection of "cut-outs" (new, but discontinued records) through which I loved to browse when I had the time and money (money was definitely in shorter supply than time..). I remember in particular finding an album by the German group Trio which had the killer songs "Da Da Da (I Don't Love You, You Don't Love Me)" and "Boom Boom" which as far as I could tell was available nowhere else in Columbia other than the studios of WUSC.

I mentioned up front that the Christmas season made me think of Peaches. That is almost entirely due to the fact that they were the only store in town which stocked Christmas 45s in depth. Then as now, Christmas albums started popping up everywhere, record store or no as the days turned to fall (though I think they usually waited at least until Halloween was over in those bygone days...). Christmas 45s were a bit more rare however. Of course you could find this year's Christmas songs at The Record Bar, but classic Christmas singles hardly ever. Starting in the late 1970s on cassette, I had been building a Christmas song program, adding and rearranging things a little every year as I found more of the music I wanted. Today we would call it a "mix tape". Anyway, I remember finding a number of tracks in their Christmas single collection that were impossible for me to find otherwise. The Temptations "The Night Before Christmas" for one, Elton John's "Step Into Christmas" / "Ho Ho Ho" for another and Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" for a third.

As far as I can gather, Peaches made a very bad business decision in the 1980s: They believed that the CD format would not catch on. As it turned out, this was very much not the case, and by the time they saw the writing on the wall, it was too late to retool and the chain went bankrupt. (Of course, even chains that bet on the CD have been killed by downloads, so Peaches would probably be gone now in any event).

After the chain folded, their (almost completely glass-walled) store stood empty on Harden Street for years. It stayed intact for longer than you might expect, then windows started being broken, and the thing became an eyesore. Finally when the old Sears strip was revamped for at least the second time, they knocked down the whole Peaches building, and put up the current Office Depot structure. I guess they shook the tree.

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This building, not technically a Columbia Mall outparcel since it is not reachable from the mall perimeter road, has had several tenants. Right now it is a Verizion store, but at some point in the 1990s, it was Coconuts Music.

Coconuts was a fairly generic CD store, and really the only reason to have gone at all was the location, which was fairly close to my parents' house (I was living out of Columbia by then). On the other hand, Sounds Familar on Parklane was not that much farther, and when I was in town, I was just as likely to end up on the Manifest side of town anyway. So, what i'm leading up to saying is that my own personal boycott of Coconuts did not cause me any great hassle or inconvenience.

The way it happened, as I recall now, is that I had heard some great song on the radio by a band I had never heard of. When I got to Coconuts, I found that this band had in fact been around for a while and had five or six albums out. No problem, I thought, I'll just read the track lists and I remember enough of the lyrics to figure it out. So I pulled out one CD and flipped it over. Huh. There was one of those metal spiral anti-theft, ring-the-buzzer, stickers on back. A big one. Right on the track listings. Well, OK, there's three of this CD, try another. Same thing. Try one of the other albums. Same thing. Every darn CD I looked at had a huge sticker all over the track listings.

I brought this to the attention of the manager, and the response was basically That's the way we do things here.

I decided that wasn't the way places I shopped did things, started a boycott, and a few years later they were gone.

Nowdays, of course, I can just google as much of the lyric as I can rember, find the track and artist and have it from Amazon Prime in two days without leaving my house. (Yes, I could just order the MP3 from Amazon and have it immediately, but I still like having the CDs for backup purposes).

At one time, Sounds Familiar had quite a little record store empire. They had locations on Parklane, Garners Ferry, Colonial Life Boulevard, Harbison and in Myrtle Beach. There was a period of time when I really liked to go to their stores (especially the Myrtle Beach store) becase they had lots of interesting "import" CDs. (And if you don't understand the difference between import CDs and "import" CDs, I'm not going to explain it here.). They also had a very good selection of Beach Music LPs and CDs as well as a nice stock of used recordings.

Unfortunately, the industry began to change radically as first CD duplication technology and tnen Internet downloads began to take off. All record stores were hard hit and Sounds Familiar was no exception. I believe the Myrtle Beach store was the first to close, followed (I think) by this one and then the one on Harbison. In the case of this store, it can't have helped that it was just across the street from the larger and more esoteric Manifest location in Boozer Plaza.

The locations on Parklane and near Garners Ferry continue to soldier own. I was in the Garners Ferry location last week, and it appeared to be doing OK, if not great, but the last time I went by Parklane, it seemed to me that half of the floor space was just empty.

The state of the record store industry is one of those things I'm ambivalent about. I hate to see places where I found a lot of great music close, but on the other hand, I'm not going to stop ordering music online either.

UPDATE 28 June 2012: It turns out that this strip mall is actually listed as 422 Bush River Road rather than having a Colonial Life Boulevard address. I have updated the post title to include the correct street address. I should also mention that all Sounds Familiar locations have now closed (and can be found in the alphabetical closings list).

How can I convey just how much of a *BIG*DEAL* the Tricentennial was for us in 1970? Well, let's just say that it was a much bigger event in our lives than the Bicentennial was in 1976. (And if you don't know what the Bicentennial was, you're a whippersnapper, and there's no helping you). If you were in Third Grade in 1970, as I was, along with the rest of my classmates at Satchel Ford Elementary in Mrs. Anderson's homeroom, the Tricentennial was a good part of your year.

Not only did we learn South Carolina history tidbits in school all year, but there were constant references on TV, and futuristic geodesic dome museums built downtown (Senate Street?) with all kind of historic artifacts. It was such a big deal that we were all mad when the Weekly Reader did a story on California's Bicentennial and didn't mention our Tricentennial at all.

But the biggest thing about the Tricentennial at school and even at family gatherings with cousins was the Tricentennial songs. We knew all of them by heart, and sang them constantly that year.

The songs were all composed by music teacher Nelle McMaster Sprott (with some lyrics borrowed with permission from the State's Poet Laureate, Archibald Rutledge) and seem to have been discovered by the Tricentennial Commission almost by accident. If it was an accident, it was a happy one, and an album of the songs was pressed by the Tricentennial Commission and sent to all the state's public schools (and was available for home purchase, along with sheet music for all the songs). I can hardly overstate how ubiquitous and well-loved this album was in 1970. You can quibble about a few lyric choices like "come and feel the pain" in Carolina Sunshine (though the intent is clear), but I think the album still stands up very well today.

For some reason though, the album and songs were orphaned after the Tricentennial. I suppose the Tricentennial Commission disbanded, and that might be the reason, but for whatever cause, the album was never re-issued even on LP much less as remastered for CD. That means what I am able to present here was recorded from a 39 year old LP in all its scratchy glory, but when you set the Way-Bac Machine to 1970 and put yourselves in the shoes of those third graders again, can you honestly say you don't agree with:

We are good Sandlappers,
Yes we're good Sandlappers.
And we're mighty proud to say --
That we live,
Yes we live,
In the very finest state of the USA

I know I can't.

1) Sandlappers
2) Come With Me
3) Sunny Yellow Jessamine
4) Indian Ghosts
5) Country Things
6) Carolina Sunshine
7) A Carolina Wren
8) We Belonged to the Land
9) Someting To Sing About
10) Stand Tall for South Carolina

[NOTE: I have replaced the full versions of the songs above with 30 second clips. I have heard from Mrs. Sprott's granddaughter that she is working on a web-site dedicated to her grandmother. When it's up, I will link it here!]

UPDATE 9 November 2012: Here's some interesting information on the Charleston, Columbia & Greenville Tricentennial buildings.

UPDATE 18 February 2020: I have been remiss in not noting the November 2017 passing of Mrs. Sprott. She certainly brought music and joy into the lives of many people. Here is her obiturary.

Also, as I said above, I had replaced the full versions of the Tricentennial songs with thirty second clips at the request of Mrs. Sprott's granddaughter. That made sense in the days before everything had been uploaded to youtube, but currently the songs are already widely available, so I think it no longer makes sense to not have them here. Thus, I am embedding each song, from youtube (where they were uploaded by someone else, not me) below:

We Are Good Sandlappers:

Come With Me:

Sunny Yellow Jessamine:

Indian Ghosts:

Country Things:

Carolina Sunshine:

A Carolina Wren:

We Belonged To The Land:

Something To Sing About:

Stand Tall For South Carolina:

The Whole Album: