Rockafellas and Me, Part 6: Friends and Favorites

One of the things Rockafellas always seemed to allow was a close-up relationship between the bands and the audiences, whether it was hanging out in the parking lot before and after the show, or sticking around for all-night drinks in the Purple Pit, the level of access was always on a personal level.
Two of my [...]

Rockafellas and Me, Part 5: The Shows Must Go On (and on, and on, and…)

Only a few more days until the Rockafellas Reunion and I keep remembering stuff. Here, then, are some more great shows I’ve dredged up from my admittedly spotty memory.
Hoodoo Gurus were a hugely popular band on the airwaves of WUSC, so when they played Rockafellas the place was packed. “Bittersweet,”
Leilani,” “Kamikaze Pilot,” they played them [...]

Rockafellas and Me, Part 4: Big Names, Small Names

With the responses I’ve received from the previous installments of these musical memoirs relating to the many great shows I saw at Rockafellas, my memory was jogged about a few that I have so far left out, so here they are in no particular order.
Some of the artists I was lucky enough to have seen [...]

Album of the Week: Give Us Your Poor–17 New Recordings to Help End Homelessness

Various Artists
Give Us Your Poor
Appleseed Recordings
“Maybe they’ll go away if you don’t see them,” says the unnamed narrator in the opening track of this eye-opening, heart wrenching collection dedicated to raising awareness of the ongoing homelessness problem in the United States. An issue that seems to have been shuffled to the back of the social [...]

Rockafellas and Me: Part 3, The Locals

Rockafellas and Me, Part 3: The Locals
Rockafellas played host to many national acts, but its most important function in the Columbia music scene was as the home base for a host of local musicians. The club was a magnet for them, and on nights they weren’t playing somewhere else you could count on seeing at [...]

Rockafellas and Me: part II

(This is the second in a series of posts sharing some memories of the late, great Columbia SC live music club Rockafellas, which is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its closing with two nights of shows next weekend featuring many of the local bands that played there)
Rockafellas’ size was in almost opposite proportion to its [...]

Rockafellas and Me: A Musical Memoir

(This is the first of several posts I’ll be putting up this week and next, in preparation for the Rockafellas Reunion coming up November 16-17 in Columbia, SC, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the closing of the best little live music club this town’s ever seen.)
When I arrived at USC in the fall of 1985, [...]

Next Great American Band, Episode Three

After missing last week’s show, curiosity got the best of me and I tuned in to take some more punishment in the form of the Next Great American Band show’s third episode. It seems to have settled down into a kind of routine mediocrity, with nobody really standing out as the band to beat. Here [...]