Hi there.
I would like to take this page to talk about this year. Not only in music, but in everything. I could easily say that this year was probably the best year of my life. I guess I’m only like 12, so I haven’t had that many years yet but this one was definitely a good one. I’m hoping my puberty years will be just as good (just jokes, I’ve hit that already, I think). I have been fairly absent from SceneSC in the past couple months and that’s definitely one thing that I regret about this year, but sometimes it’s just difficult to balance everything.
I only started writing for SceneSC around May and back then, I was just a bright-eyed young boy looking for something for fun to do in the summer. I didn’t realize how involved I would get with the site and how many opportunities it would provide to me. I know feel like I know a whole lot more about the music industry than I used to which is perfect because that’s exactly where I want to be when I grow up. So yeah, I covered Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Hopscotch, CMJ, went to a countless number of concerts and even helped book shows. It’s been so incredible. Around October though, I got just kind of sick of the whole ‘going to a show then writing about it’ thing. I don’t know, it just lost a bit of its allure. It’s probably because in October I went to six shows and three music festivals so it got a little bit tiring. I also just didn’t feel as important anymore. I started to get the feeling that no one was reading my articles or the site (which isn’t true) and I was not as excited anymore. I think this was due to the fact that everyone at SceneSC was just sort of overwhelmed by everything and everyone felt the same about it. We were all just a little bit bored of the whole thing. I am just suspecting this though, as we actually haven’t had a group SceneSC meeting for who knows how long. Life is busy sometimes and it sucks.
But anyways, we’re coming back, and we’re coming back hard. We have a meeting tonight where we’re ONLY going to talk about the best ideas for everyone. It’s going to be incredible. We’re already talking about a show we’re putting on in March which will have some extremely brilliant bands on its lineup. So get excited. I’ll be going to more shows, writing more articles, and hopefully be able to balance it all with my schooling. ALSO, I’m doing something special. I’m doing a research project for the University of South Carolina about social media and music festivals/concerts and I’m going to be traveling around the U.S. and England next summer and reporting on all the music I see. It’s going to be wild, I promise you. Maybe I’ll make it into a video thing. That’d be sexy, right?
So next year’s gonna be cool. But this year was cool too. There was a whole lot of good music released and a lot of really brilliant live shows. I would have to say that the two winners of this year are Childish Gambino and Arcade Fire. I know Arcade Fire have been popular for a long time, and The Suburbs came out last year, but seriously, they DESTROYED the festival circuit this year, playing show after show, wowing crowds all over the world. I’ve never experienced something like when I saw them live. After the show, everyone at Bonnaroo was still singing the melody to Wake Up for the rest of the night, it was beautiful. And then Childish Gambino. His album Camp was just released to rave reviews and #11 on Billboard. Before this, he only released his music free from his website. He brought together an amazing live band, put on some huge shows, and worked extremely hard to get that album to where it was. He has a huge tour next year that everyone should check out.
I was also in a band this year which was very cool as I’ve never been in a band before. NOT TRUE. In high school, me and this guy Joe had a 3OH!3 acoustic cover band. Yeah. I bet you’ve never heard anything cooler than that. Anyways, our band One Two Skidoo was in a sense, also a 3OH!3 cover band, but we didn’t play 3OH!3 songs. I just really wanna keep writing 3OH!3 because I don’t think it’s a band that SceneSC have ever written about. Just making up for the lack of 3OH!3, man. But our band opened for one of my forever favorite bands Stepdad (http://stepdad.us) and it was absolutely incredible. We also played at a hick barn and I got yelled at for allegedly planning to touch some children’s boots, which I promise that I wasn’t going to touch, I think. But yeah, being in a band is difficult. I understand now that passion is really a huge aspect of being in a band, and I don’t think I have that passion. It’s just a bit too much for me.
Oh god, this is really long. Well, thanks for reading it, I could write so much more about all the shows and bands and music and everything in 2011 but I have to go listen to 3OH!3 for a really long time. I won’t be writing again until the new year. I hope all of you get nothing for christmas except 3OH!3′s newest album Streets of Gold (got a 1 out of 5 stars in Rolling Stone, SNAP).
