MMM lives!

Mostly Music in the Midlands, its original version that is, fizzled out in the latter part of 2008 and came to a complete halt midway through 2009 as the demands of fatherhood, etc., put a serious dent in the free time needed for more frivolous pursuits like blogging. That, plus the appearance of Jeffrey Day's Carolina Culture blog (after he left The State newspaper in Columbia) meant that a true professional writer was now covering much of the same territory and doing so more thoroughly. Then Jeffrey halted the blog after awhile and began doing the fantastic updates for the USC Arts Institute. Now with the Institute's funding halted, I'm not sure whether Jeffrey will be still doing those great updates which bring together news on all the myriad cultural doings related to the university, though I sure hope so. Then there is the Free Times, which has done much to fill the void in Midlands arts coverage (through both its print and online manifestations) created by the total gutting of same in our daily paper of record. And lately we've had the bold venture of a print magazine covering the arts in our area, Undefined Magazine, which has put out several ambitious issues to date. 

To tell you the truth, I don't know whether it's the elements of arts coverage that have disappeared, or the ones that have sprung up lately, contributing to my decision...but here it is all the same: as Frank Costanza once put it, "I'm back, baby!" Mostly Music in the Midlands relaunches officially in the new year 2011.