Famously Hot New Year, 2013-2014

A video, some Tweets and images from last night…

Watching the @FamouslyHotNYE festivities from @CapCityClubCola, going to descend for some music on the street… #fhny

Digging some Z. Z. Ward down on the street @FamouslyHotNYE. Very bluesy at the moment… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/jR7jxfzhNI

Z. Z. Ward singing a song called “Cryin’ Wolf.” Says it’s about drinking. Very popular selection with the crowd @FamouslyHotNYE#FHNY

Discreetly in the background @FamouslyHotNYE, like a roadie backstage, lurks the State House itself, beating heart of power in SC… #FHNY

Your correspondent, on the scene.

Your correspondent, on the scene.

 

Oops; forgot to show you the State House… See it back there? #FHNY pic.twitter.com/fiPn00A9EB

Z. Z. Ward favoring the appreciative crowd with one more number before Kool and the Gang… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/lPMAFB4QBt

A quick glimpse of the swelling, surging throng @FamouslyHotNYE#FHNY pic.twitter.com/nLL8hqndYo

Brad Warthen ‏@BradWarthen21h
So jealous of this item @pushdigital, overlooking @FamouslyHotNYE. https://bradwarthen.com  needs one of these. #FHNYpic.twitter.com/4yO09qgWyX

Kool & the Gang in tha house! Or on the street. Whatever… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/SydQXkOOZf

Kool & the Gang kooling off the Famously Hot Columbia, SC, crowd in front of State House @FamouslyHotNYE#FHNY pic.twitter.com/Mq9Qig13fW

One lone, Famously Hot soul boogeying at the top of the State House steps to Kool and the Gang… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/BLQyyKsZbX

Kool and the Gang schooling the young folk of Famously Hot Columbia, SC, as to what FUNK sounds like… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/wMmcsK9FaD

Love the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band jacket on Kool and the Gang’s trombonist! #FHNY

Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that the most active live tweeter at Columbia SC’s Famously Hot New Year’s is @BradWarthen? #fhny

@DanCookSC Hey, @FreeTimesSC didn’t name me one of the Twitterati for nothing… #FHNY

I’m doing a Nerd Dance on Gervais, like Dick at the end of “High Fidelity.” Sorry. Obscure pop culture reference there… #FHNY

And… a big finish with fireworks… #FHNY pic.twitter.com/Ow35UaPJQa

 

 

21 thoughts on “Famously Hot New Year, 2013-2014

  1. Kathryn Fenner

    It must have been awesome. It sounded like we were under attack at my house. At the finale our one year old Weim came over for comforting.

  2. Brad Warthen Post author

    It was really very nice. I’m not much of one for mob scenes, but this was nice. The bands put on a good show, and we had places to go in out of the cold when we wanted — Cap City Club and the Push Digital party.

    I say this as someone who had never wanted to be at Times Square at that hour on that night. When we were in London for New Year’s, and had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in the Trafalgar Square festivities, we did not. Instead, after dinner at an Indian place in the Swiss Cottage area, we walked to Primrose Hill, which provides a great vantage point for viewing the fireworks downtown.

    We found ourselves part of a throng of several hundred very peaceful folk of all ages, many of them quietly launching those upside-down luminaria things — a mini hot-air balloon consisting of a bag over a suspended candle, which drifts off into the sky. It was pretty magical. Then everyone counted down and then cheered the fireworks in the distance, then made their quiet way home.

    This was kind of like that, only with amplified music…

    1. Kathryn Fenner

      Well, most things are better from a VIP perspective.

      I hate crowds and, especially, amplified music.

      When I worked in Sears Tower, we used to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over the lake from the 75th floor conference room, with a boombox playing the symphonic music, including 1812 Overture. My way….

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        When I say “amplified music,” don’t imagine that it was LOUD amplified music. I hate that. My hearing troubles today could be linked to that one time in 1971 when I “sat” on the third row at a Grand Fund Railroad concert. We stood (who actually sits at something like that?) directly in front of speakers as tall as a two-story house. My clothes were flapping around my body as though I were in a high wind, just from the sound energy. I couldn’t hear normal conversation for three days after.

        No, this was much, much gentler. Nothing seemed amplified beyond the volume needed simply to be heard clearly by the outdoor crowd. The music couldn’t be heard at all from the Cap City Club. When we visited Push Digital, just two doors down from the stage, Wesley et al. had all their windows open for watching the crowd below, and the music drifting in as no more than pleasant background sounds, and no one had to raise their voices to converse.

        1. Silence

          I could hear the music from my house, about 15 blocks away….The fireworks were pretty noticable as well.

          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            I’m surprised. That suggests it was quite loud, but at no time did it seem so to me. And I’m usually pretty sensitive to that sort of thing…

            The Cap City Club must have good soundproofing, because we couldn’t hear a thing up there…

          2. Kathryn Fenner

            Bass travels further and gets louder. This is why those boombox cars’ owners aren’t quite as deaf as we think.

          3. Scout

            I think it is more that bass can turn corners whereas the high frequencies don’t. So it permeates places that the high frequencies get reflected out of – the result being the bass survives longer and farther away than the trebles. It’s to do with the difference in wavelengths that makes the long bass ones be able to bend and the short treble ones get reflected. I think.

            I majored in physics, for like a second or two. Then calculus happened.

          4. Kathryn Fenner

            My husband, who has a BA in physics, fwiw, thinks it is just that the waves are longer and pass more easily through walls, or vibrate with them. I dunno. I took self-paced astronomy.

          5. Scout

            He probably knows more than me then! 🙂 I thought I remembered they bend but who knows. Maybe it is a combination of both.

    2. Silence

      Against our cabbie’s advice, my then girlfriend and I did spend a New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square, back in 2000-2001. There was a throng of people, it was probably the biggest crowd I’ve ever been a part of. But it was fun!

  3. Bill

    Damn I Got Old Quick.I went to bed at 10 pm,but heard all about it from my niece.I saw Jimi Hendrix on the 4th of July w/fireworks(1970).Easier to get into frottage when your a teenager.It’s all been downhill from there:(they have the date wrong;he died two months later):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKgxXzE8sdA

    1. Ralph Hightower

      I sent my suggestion for 2014 NYE’s Headliner to Mayor Steve. Sam said he would forward my suggestion to the entertainment committee.

    2. Silence

      In the event that this was an actual comment, the comment would be followed by sensible, well thought out and intelligent statements….

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