Jan. 19 @ Tay’s House - Charleston, SC
On the way to Charleston, we stopped by SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a tourist trap monstrosity between North and South Carolina. 100 miles from said roadside attraction, we counted 30 bill boards. Visible from the road upon nearing the locations were huge signs reading SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a giant sombrero that you could go up in, and a huge statue of a "mexican" dude.
This place seemed like a 1950's "cultural experience". Everything was really colorful, and it was full of statues, and characters, and pink and orange and yellow and green. Animal statues everywhere, giant fake cactus statues, and a huge burger on the side of the restaurant there. After a few minutes of taking pictures, the place became dull and monotonous and depressing. There is a sort of fake meta-culture that is propagated throughout all the "different" stores there. It's like a mixture of tacky Americana, Mexican, Southwest, African, Native-American, and Island culture. Nothing really made sense and it was mostly depressing. We got some solid pictures, and that's about as much as we will ever need from that place.
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Our arrival into Charleston was pleasant, as it was a pretty little city peppered with palm trees. The show was being held at Tay's house, and he is a very friendly and rad dude. He makes me think of a 1970's electrical engineer in a specialist electronics magazine advertisement.
At the show, there was a small crowd of people that seemed very interested in actually seeing what was going on. This is probably because it was a Monday night. Apparently there is no good live music venue in Charleston, and so people resort to house shows. One of the guys we met there (Robbie) said that this was his 5th house show in one week. Pretty impressive if you ask me.
House shows are fun, and the south is fun. The south gets down. This show was dedicated to real-life opulence and decadence. This show was dedicated to braided gold ropes. This show was dedicated to marble busts in your mahogany library. This show was dedicated to red velvet stanchions.
January 29th, 2009 by Sam