Wednesday, July 3, is a day that typically passes with little acknowledgment from SceneSC’s social outlets. On July 3, 2008, I secured SceneSC.com with no grand plan in mind. What a time to be on the internet. The rise of social media, the birth of streaming, and now, the fall of the archives. Just this week 25 years of entertainment history vanished into the cosmos as MTV News went dark. It’s not much better for local outlets. Much of the local music coverage outside of Newspapers.com archives — mostly The State’s archives — is not accessible or extremely hard to find.
As we would film live sessions or Papa Jazz sessions I’d often mention to the artist that the reason we were doing this was so we could look back on it someday. I stand by that and am proud of what we’ve been able to document with a small and mighty small team of contributors through photo, video, and write ups. Now the podcast, it will return soon, helps document the music scene. Pulling off all four mediums at once is the dream.
Part of why I moved over to Substack is so we could use their monetization feature to make enough money to keep the site online. So when I toss in that subscribe button, it’s mostly to keep 16 years of local music scene history online.
SC artists have been rolling out the new tunes lately. Last week we premiered the new Brave Baby tune “2 Things at Once” and I had a chance to chat with the band and spent a lot of time with the new album. It’s a great one and hits the streets this fall.
Here are six more tunes released this week and added to our SC New Music playlist. Of note, the Channel Tres x Toro y Moi collab song. Read more about that on Stereogum.
The initial Jam Room Music Fest lineup dropped, a free music festival happening on Main Street on Saturday, October 26 in Columbia, SC. Headlining this year’s fest is Athens, GA act of Montreal. The Saturday fest also features Ted Leo, Daddy’s Beemer, Moses and The Wilderness, Today is the Day, Secret Agent 23 Skiddo, and PATx and PSYCHiii presenting their CO-fi project. Stay tuned for another headlining-level artist and more locals to be announced soon.
I serve on the board of the Jam Room Foundation, which helps put on the festival, and we’re really excited to share the full picture of what we have in store. As for my role, I spent last week learning the most cost efficient stage and sound options, and the rest of my year has been alcohol and special events permitting, grant writing and applications, and the nitty gritty fun stuff of putting on a free fest.
Historical Nugget
Our first write up in the Free Times from November 2008. Here’s that compilationthat I was working on.
