Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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0 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, April 7, 2004 9 “To stop the flow of music wWouldbe like tlj.e stopping of time ^ ^ itself, incredible and inconceiv Story ideas? Questions? Comments? AARON COPELAND El-mail us at gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu composer PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK The 17 members of Carolina Alive sing a cappella songs and other jazz favorites. Carolina Alive strikes chord at USC BY CARRIE GIVENS ] THKCAMKCOCK Combine perfected, reverberating voices, classic songs and a pinch of pizzazz. Add a healthy serving of practice time and mix well. The resulting confection is the remark able talent known as Carolina Alive. A core USC vocal ensemble, Carolina Alive has been delighting audiences for decades. Stalled in the 1970s by Richard Conant, who directed the group for 29 years before retiring in 2002, the group spurred from an idea to add choreography to a vocal group and has evolved into the a cap pella Carolina Alive Vocal Jazz Ensemble. The vocal group not only has a new name, but [ also a new director in music doctoral student Shannon Jeffreys. The group’s repertoire includes Mozart works, Broadway hits, popular music by the Manhattan Transfer and The Real Group and lesser-known jazz tunes. The group’s concert Saturday night at the School of Music Recital Hall featured songs from Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Soloists Mary Katherine Lawson and Beth Shurtleff captivated the audience with scat music. The stirring per formance was greeted with a standing ovation from the audience. Jeffreys explained that the group performs “a variety of music with intricate, progressive har monies.” She said that they try to strike a “bal ance between songs that are familiar... and some that not many people know.” The group even in cludes instrumental pieces performed vocally. Carolina Alive’s 17 members range from first year journalism students to those pursuing a doc torate in music. Jeffreys said that she has been impressed by the students' energy and dedication. “The dynamic of the group is phenomenal,” she said. “They are awesome singers.” Carolina Alive members devoted much of their personal time to practicing the often-difficult music. “This year has been a little atypical,” Jeffreys said. “We have been working on getting the style down.” The dedication has paid off. Carolina Alive per forms for community groupd, as well as alumni and homecoming events. Carolina Alive’s popularity also extends be yond Columbia. Over the years, the talented group has performed for dignitaries such as Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, as well as for celebrities Walter Cronkite and Jimmy Stewart. They have toured the United States as well as the Bahamas, Mexico, Australia, Cuba and Egypt. Auditions for Carolina Alive Vocal Jazz Ensemble are held in August and are competitive. The audition will be a combination of “oral and audile music styles,” Jeffreys said. The Carolina Alive Vocal Jazz Ensemble’s next USC performance will not be until the fall semester. However, keep your eyes — and ears—open. You might catch them performing around town. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu BY MEG MOORE TilK 0AV1KC0CK In a musical world thick with over-production and synthesized sounds, it is refreshing to stumble upon an act that does things the old-fashioned way. The Virginia based Pat McGee Band not only makes magic in the studio, but it appears on stage around 250 times a year, keeping that necessary connection with fans who appre ciate real music. Released Tuesday, “Save Me,” the band’s latest album is a fol low-up to its major label debut on Warner Bros. Records, 2001’s “Shine.” Those countless hours on the road allowed the band to experiment and expand upon new tunes in a live setting, re ceiving instant feedback from ev ery group’s toughest critics — the fans. As singer and guitarist Pat McGee explained in a press re lease, road-testing prospective “Save Me” tracks allowed the group to “have more fun in the stu dio” and get more creative during the recording process. “With our last album we con centrated on making everything sound just right. This time the em phasis was on feeling,” McGee said. “We weren’t so focused on getting every last note in a three part harmony down, which meant we really had to make the perfor mances count.” Playing the new songs live also alerted the band to any parts that needed reworking. “Shady,” the last track on the new release, “started out an alt-rock-epic with a huge guitar riff, but it wasn’t working for us,” McGee said, “So we really slowed it down and it im mediately worked.” They also received immediate confirmation of what worked. McGee explained that the track, “Annabel,” immediately became a fan favorite: “It’s got a real sum mer vibe and fans immediately latched onto it. We had them singing along.” Similarly, with “Must Have Been Love,” McGee said, “We knew from the reaction we were getting that it was a keep er.” The band’s devotion to its fans is also evident in McGee’s ap proach to songwriting. “I tried to write about situations people could relate to. It’s a way for them to connect their own thoughts and feelings with a song,” McGee said. He also recognizes the importance of taking advantage of inspiration when it strikes. The song “Don’t Give Up,” he said, “just popped into my head at once. As soon as I got off stage, I called my message machine and sang into it so I wouldn’t forget.” • With such steadfast devotion to its craft, the Pat McGee Band has earned a growing fan following — one that has continued to support the group’s success on the nation al music scene. The band.is currently on the road in support of their new re lease and will be playing the Georgia Theatre in Athens Tuesday. They will return to the region mid-May with a show at the Windjammer on the Isle of Palms May 17 arid in Charlotte May 19 at the Visulite Theatre. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK The Virginia-based Pat McGee Band released their second Warner Bros album, “Save Me,” Tuesday to fan support. The Vista after Returning for another season of crowd stirring fun, the Vista After Five concert series is making the beautiful weather an excuse to party. Beginning last week with The Fantastic Shakers, the senes brings party bands to the Vista every Thursday evening fora free concert. Dates are scheduled through the beginning of June. All shows start at 5:30 p.m. in the parking lot behind Jillian’s at 800 Gervais St. Donations and beverage proceeds go to the Centurions of the Palmetto Health S C. Cancer Center. t PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Kurt Cobaln, lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana, wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” one of the most famous songs of the ‘’90s. Cobain’s legacy endures in contemporary music BY KENT KIMES KBTCAMI'CS He was anointed as a voice for a generation. His band turned the music world upside down practically on the strength of one song — noth Ar; short of a revolution. W Then, like a flash, he was gone. For many Generation Xers, it's hard to believe that Monday marked a decade since Kurt Cobain, leader of alternative rock band Nirvana, left us. Investigators think Cobain died April 5,1994, of a gunshot wound to the head, but his body wasn’t discovered and his passing wasn’t made public until April 8,1994. Like the plane crash that claimed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopperat the close of the 1950s, April 8,1994 was the day the music died for another generation. “Kurt’s death cut the ground out from under an entire genera tion that was looking for a stan dard-bearer and felt, rightly or wrongly, that they had found one in him,” said Phil Fox, lead singer and main songwriter for Myrtle Beach rock band Wicked Gift. Despite Cobain’s death and the dissolution of Nirvana, the influ ential Seattle trio’s music lives on and is being discovered by a new generation, such as Canadian singer-songwriter Fefe Dobson, 19. “He’s a legend,” said Dobson, who was 9-years-old when Cobain died but cites him as one of her main influences. "I’m sure he’s go \ ♦ COBAIN, SEE PAGE 10 Say Aloha’ to next season’s hits, misses BY RICK PORTER KHTCA.MITS If you’re a private detective liv ing in Hawaii who’s had to give up your carefree lifestyle to take in your orphaned niece or nephew, you really should have sold your story to a TV writer this year. The 50th state, surrogate par ents and especially private eyes are big this pilot season, which is in full swing now behind lots of closed doors in Hollywood. The six networks have ordered more than 100 pilot episodes for the 2004-05 season, most of which will be shot by the end of April. Recent history said only about 35 of those will make the sched ule for the start of the season, with a few more being held for midseason. The rest will never see the light of day, outside of a possible run on Trio’s “Brilliant But Cancelled” series. wnn nouywooa Demg a rela tively small and gossipy place, a number of pilots have similar themes, characters or settings, as seems to happen ever year (al though none look to be as eerily similar as The WB’s “Do Over” and ABC’s “That Was Then” were two years ago). There’s a reason for that, said NBC’s Kevin Reilly. “Everybody’s in the same soup,” said Reilly, president of prime-time development at NBC. “Sometimes you have a smart ex ecutive who makes an observa tion and said ‘Here’s something that’s not being served’ or 'Here’s something I want to do.’ That message filters out to the agents, so they start pitching their clients, and it makes its way out to the community. “None of this is proprietary in formation. They’re just observa tions — but it kind of gets into the water, and the next thing you know, everyone’s drinking the same thing.” Thus, the evergreen but not seen-much-lately private eye genre is enjoying a comeback, with five of the six networks (The WB is the exception) de veloping shows about detec tives. Hawaii is the setting for three shows — one of whiclj, Fox’s “North Shore,” has al ready been picxea up—ana single people rais ing orphans are the focus of two pi lots (“Summerland,” a similar show, will premiere this summer on The WB). What’s odd about this crop of pilots, according to Carolyn Bernstein, The WB’s head of dra ma development, is not that such shows came across development executives’ desks. It’s that so many of them survived to the pi lot stage. “I can tell you that every year since I’ve been doing this, which is almost 10 years, writers come in and pitch shows in that arena,” Bernstein said, referring to the adults-and-orphans drama. The same goes for series based in Hawaii. “Every network, every year, develops Hawaii shows,” she said. “You just don’t neces sarily know about it because they don’t all get picked up to pilot.” Once pilots do get picked up — the networks ordered 35 new se ries for last fall, and several more for midseason — networks have to worry about whether they’ll be able to cui through the clutter. ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne notes that only sev en of the 17 dramas that debuted last fall are still on the air, and only three are scoring better than a 3.0 rating in the crucial adults 18-49 demographic. “We’re increasingly facing a world where there are so many options for people out there that launching a new show that’s not al ready pre-sold in some way, already brand ed, is increas ingiy anncuit, Lyne said. With that in mind, Lyne said ABC’s mission this development season was to find shows with “clean enough concepts or big enough ideas” to break through to wide audiences. She cites “Alias” creator J.J. Abrams’ “Lost,” about a group of plane crash survivors stuck on a re mote island, and “Countdown,” a drama about the first minutes of a SWAT team’s response to a cri sis, as potential breakouts. “Not every show needs to be a blockbuster, but we do need a hit,” she said. “That’s very clear.” CBS, which has a big lead in the Nielsen household ratings and in total viewers this season, isn’t straying far from what helped it get to the top. The network has several crime-solving procedural dramas and broad-appeal come dies in the works. Network chair man and CEO Les Moonves said that with such a big overall lead, “we’re actually paying more at tention to (demographics), even the dirty word 18-49.” The success of “The Apprentice” has helped NBC shore up its Thursday-night line up, but with two comedy main stays, “Frasier” and “Friends,” leaving the airwaves in May, the network has focused heavily on comedy this spring. Reilly believes the key to a breakout comedy is finding some thing that brings something fresh to the strictures of a half-hour show. It could be something as simple as a new take on a rela tionship story or something more technical, like using improvisa tion or tweaking the standard sit com format. “I’m pretty sure the next NBC hit (comedy); will not be just a version of something that’s al ready on the air,” he said. Of course, none of what the networks do between now and the new season — which will start during the summer for Fox, after tne Olympics on iNtso ana in tne traditional late-September peri od for some other networks — can ensure they’ll launch any hits (see this year’s “Tarzan,” “The Lyon’s Den,” “Skin” and on and on). Several networks rely at least in part on the response from fo cus groups, but gut feeling plays a role as well. “We pick up shows that we love. It’s a very simple kind of de termination,” The WB’s Bernstein said. “It’s not so much about 'What would the young peo ple out there want to watch?’ We pick up series that we’re passion ate about, that we feel like we can’t live without. “Obviously there’s spirited de bate about what fits that bill... But it’s always about what do we think is really compelling and has the most entertainment value., That’s how we program.” “We pick up shows that we love. It’s a very simple kind of determination.” CAROLYN BERNSTEIN WB’S HEAD OF DRAMA DEVELOPMENT Pat McGee stays devoted to fans