oh, upper deck… i’m so happy it’s your fifth anniversary. i’m so glad that nestled in the heart of tourist trap/college fuck central, that you are there to ease my worries and make me feel so welcome.
i have such warm fuzzy feelings for this bar. something tells me that my experiences here in charleston would not be nearly as glorious without the tried and true guaranteed good smoky time i am sure to have each and every time i walk down that narrow alley, mysteriously wet and puddled with god knows what.
it is in this bar that i have started and more than likely ended some of my best nights in this town. i have also given an estimated 40% of my income away to car bombs, pbrs, vodka tonics, and if the timing is right a good ol’ happy hour pitcher of long island iced tea. there are some people that i only see at this place, and there are some people i was only priviledged to know because of their drinking schedule or their killer connect four skills.
dj nights, dance parties, 80s birthdays, art shows, happy hours, jello shots, naked women, stinging eyes, smelly clothes, ass holes, artists, musicians, dirty kids, preps, pizza, darts, hair cuts in the bathroom, the writing on the wall, you can do and see it all.
everyone who has over served and taken care of me, thanks a bunch.
and thanks for the free whiskey. nice touch.
~lv
Filed under: Charleston, Cumberland's, Lindsay Holler, Live, Local, Lucero, Morimoto, The Map Room
Even though Prince, Al Gore, and Eye might argue otherwise, three is the magic number.
The enchanted digit rears its head in Charleston tonight with a trio of promising shows downtown and in West Ashley:
Morimoto’s experimental fusion-y jazz will be accompanied by the crunch of tortilla chips at Yo Burrito (downtown at 86 Wentworth St.) from 7-10 p.m. (free show!)
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Cary Ann Hearst’s countryfied Cold Heart Thursdays at Cumberland’s (downtown at 301 King St.) continue to make patrons dance, laugh, and maybe shed a beer tear or two with a special appearance from Memphis-based alt-country/southern rockers Lucero. Tickets for this show were going fast; if there’s any left tomorrow night, they’ll be $15 (+ $3 if you’re under 21) at the door. I missed Lucero last time they came to town, but heard about how fantastic they were for weeks. Recommended for fans of Drive-By Truckers, The Damnwells, longnecks, good ol’ Whiskeytown, The Replacements — any diggable rock with a bit o’ twang. (Check out “I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight” from last year’s Rebels, Rogues, and Sworn Brothers)
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Aaaaand, local chanteuse Lindsay Holler headlines at The Map Room in West Ashley with her band, The Dirty Kids (hey, if drummer Nick Jenkins and guitarist Dave Linaburg, also in Morimoto, can make it to both shows, who can’t?). Holler’s haunting voice must be heard live to be fully appreciated, and her band seems to be settling further into a pleasing instinctive cohesiveness with each show.
Holler and the Dirty Kids just put out a new CD (Love Gone Awry) that I’ve got to pick up, stat. She’s got the first track from the disc, “Dirty Kids”, up at her website — check Michael Hanf’s delectable vibraphone solo in the bridge. I’ve always loved the earthiness in Holler’s voice, and “Dirty Kids” highlights it nicely with Coke-bottle percussion and Linaburg’s honky-tonk geetar.
Drinking buddy, drum teacher, and all-around fine fellow Ballard Lesemann wrote about the three other bands on the bill with Holler: Ilad, Mic Harrison & the High Score, and Magnolia Network — this Carolina collective lists “Round Swamp Symphony (of birds, insects, weather, automotive transport rumbles & sighs, rustling trees, silence, etc…)” under their Influences on MySpace…sounds promising. Can’t deny that simmering Carolina pride! Tickets to The Map Room four-band-a-ganza are a mere $5 — so, $1.25/band for all this fortifying folk.
It’s almost criminal, to be able to see six different, equally interesting bands in one night for $20 — but it sure makes a triple-showgoer’s wallet happy.
–sm
Rage, rage against the constraints of the Music Farm sound system and the corporate sponsorship (singing the Jack Daniel’s song with no stage lights was a cheeky touch)! Play that rock ‘n’ roll like it’s a honky-tonk, just sloppy enough to keep ‘em interested! Then turn ‘em around and stick a cowboy boot full of old-fashioned good tunes right in their earholes!
So, uh, that’s how Band of Horses went tonight. Current Awendaw resident and Carolina-bred lead singer Ben Bridwell came onstage wearing a Sera Cahoone (Carissa’s Wierd bandmate, drummer on BoH’s 2006 debut album Everything All the Time, Sub Pop labelmate, and the creator of last year’s subtly heartbreaking “Couch Song”) T-shirt, introduced the band, then waited as the house music came back up and his fellow Horses made final adjustments before launching into the first song of the night, a slow, twinkling bit of atmosphere that I didn’t recognize but which was quite pretty.
The crowd seemed both bemused and amused by the proceedings — around the third song, I heard a guy behind me say, “yeah, I guess they play this band on the radio sometimes or something?” — but any of the unconverted quickly warmed to the sextet. It was the aural equivalent to sitting down to a big table full of Southern comfort food — a rousing “Monsters” here, a forceful “First Song” there, a few new songs (featuring solid vocals from Bridwell that strongly recalled Jim James from My Morning Jacket) peppered throughout the mix, including the barn-dance-y banger that closed out the show, and the soothing crowd-pleaser (hey, we are in Carolina, after all) “Part One.”
Songs weren’t the only things making their first onstage appearances tonight; it was also BoH’s first show with their new bassist, Bill Reynolds from Asheville band The Blue Rags (thanks, Ballard!). It’s been a wild year for the Horses, who’ve been on a distinctly upward trajectory since the winsome Everything All the Time came out last March. After the album’s favorable reception across the blogosphere and in numerous papers of record, the band set off on tour last summer and in the midst of it went their separate ways with cofounding member Mat Brooke.
They didn’t have to shoot the whole band, though, and the group cleaned up in 2006 end-of-year polls; swept the PLUG Awards (think indie Grammys) by earning nods for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Americana Album of the Year; and recently (as in, a week ago) were named as finalists for this year’s peer-judged Shortlist Music Prize — they’re up against Tom Waits, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joanna Newsom, Hot Chip, Beirut, Cat Power, Girl Talk, Regina Spektor, and Spank Rock.
In the meantime, they moved into Kevin Taylor’s old house, had a few beers, watched some football, and made nice with the locals: tuba master/photographer/pool creator Clint Fore (a.k.a. Clint4) played bass for BoH on their Australian tour, they brought Cary Ann Hearst and the Gun Street Girls on a Southeastern U.S. tour in March, and tonight’s openers (who I missed, ARGH!) A Decent Animal will abandon the Atlantic for a West Coast jaunt with BoH in July.
To read more about what Bridwell and co. have been up to since they headed back home, check out former City Paper writer (and current law-learnin’ badass) Ashford Tucker’s fun and funny Pitchfork interview from January. Thanks for the free show, Jack Daniel’s! Here’s hoping for another Studio No. 7 party (featuring Spoon, mayhap?) in Charleston soon!
(Download/listen to the original demo versions of “The Funeral,” “Our Swords,” and “Wicked Gil” from Everything All the Time here, plus “Dingle,” a song that didn’t make the final cut.)
–sm
(Let me preface this by avowing how much I enjoy Cheerwine, the ready availability of which is one of the best perks of living in South Carolina.)
So, not having the money (or desire, really) for cable, on the rare occasion when I watch TV, I’m stuck with the channels I can pick up with my $5 antenna — NBC, ABC (only on clear days), CBS, ETV, Fox, and MyTV. Considering the three programs I tend to watch are Nova specials, Seinfeld, and The Simpsons, this is not such an unbearable thing. However, one major downside to watching free, non-ETV television is the dearth of commercial variety. Let’s just say, if pressed (or paid!), I could sing you the entire “Hoover Country” song, including the stanza they cut out of the 30-second spots (“Shoppin’ on the run/Just havin’ fun/You never know just what you might see/Oooooh ooooh this is Hoooover Country…”).
In the last week or two, a pair of new Cheerwine commercials have aired repeatedly on Fox during the 10-11:30 p.m. time slot. They both star the “Cheer-watch News Team,” led by “anchorwoman” Stacy Sharpe’s cleavage, as they “protect your right to drink Cheerwine” through hard-hitting, soft-drinking “investigative reports.” Sure, the faux broadcasters bit is a little trite, but they’re just a framing device. Really, the Cheerwine ad creators are aiming to get your attention through the oldest, laziest gimmick possible: unadulterated stereotypes.
The relatively innocuous first spot, “Northerners Hoarding Cheerwine!” features a pair of track-suit-clad “Yankees” stuffing cases of the beverage into a car trunk. When “correspondent” Skip DeLuca asks, “Why are you taking our Cheerwine? Where in New York are you taking it?”, one of the men pulls a lollipop out of his mouth and responds, “We’s from Charlotte.” The clip ends with a shot of the car driving away, a microphone cord trailing out of the trunk. Mobster jokes, yawn. The first time I saw it, I rolled my eyes at the complete lack of creativity but otherwise shrugged the whole thing off. Then I saw the second spot, “Teens Denied Cheerwine!”
In it, Skip DeLuca heads to “a local convenience store” where the owner is refusing to sell Cheerwine to teens. He walks in and asks the owner — an Asian man — why he won’t sell Cheerwine to everybody. The man responds with, “Read sign!” as his wife emerges from behind him and frantically points at a hand-lettered “You MUST be 21 to buy wine” sign in front of the Cheerwine. Skip DeLuca tells him that “Cheerwine’s not a wine, it’s a cherry different soft drink that everybody can enjoy…” The store owner’s response? “Ahhh. THEN PAY NOW!” as he snatches the can out of Skip DeLuca’s hand.
I was aghast when I saw this. Although I question why I found “Teens Denied Cheerwine!” so much, much more offensive than the mobster ad, the combination of both of them has me teetering on the edge of boycotting Cheerwine altogether. It’s not just that these commercials are racist (and vaguely misogynist) — it’s that they’re mind-numbingly unoriginal. They’re the complete opposite of the brilliant Geico cavemen commercials, which Slate.com’s Seth Stevenson (I would LOVE to see him pick apart these Cheerwine ads, btw) wrote about earlier this year in his fantastically pithy “Ad Report Card” column.
What really eats at me is the fact that no one at the Carolina Beverage Corp. (Cheerwine’s parent company) had a problem with this commercial. ‘Perhaps it’s just a trial run for a new campaign,’ I thought hopefully as I headed to the Cheerwine website. No dice. The website, where you can watch both of these commercials, used to be filled with various promotional gimmicks and a neat section where you could print out Cheerwine recipes (I actually made a Cheerwine cake from one of them a few years ago, and it was delish). Yeah, those are gone now, replaced with a new site constructed around the “Cheer-watch News Team” theme. Just in case you haven’t had your fill of Asian jokes, you can click on a “Meet the Kims” link on the homepage (“Huang was one of Korea’s top Olympic ping pong prospects” — curious, what with Huang being a Chinese name) and listen to “a message from Mr. Kim.” Guess what it is? “Pay now!” Hm. Color me sensitive, but I’m thinking I probably won’t be paying now or later.
–sm
