Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

A Ripping Good Time: Radio Free Charleston 52

The fifty-second edition of Radio Free Charleston, “Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen Shirt” is online now!

This episode features music from Jonathon Glen Wood and Civil State.  We also have a promo video for “Jack The Ripper,” the new musical by Mark Scarpelli and Dan Kehde, which opens this week, and there’s some vintage campaign animation from 1960.

Host segments were shot downtown Monday, less than twenty-four hours before this show was posted online.  Yay for us. I’m wearing a shirt with the logo for RFC faves Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen, who will be among the guests and performers at the RFC Halloween jam session/costume party/screening on October 25.  The official announcement and full details for that show will be posted here in PopCult later this week.

The first bit of coolness  in the show is the clip I shot last week to promote “Jack The Ripper.”  This CYAC production of the new musical by Mark Scarpelli and Dan Kehde opens Thursday, and runs through October 11. For this clip I borrowed RFC’s Resident Diva, and “Mary Kelly” from the show, Melanie Larch, and “Jack,” also known as Symphony Idol winner Ryan Hardiman, and took them down the street from the theater to Brawley Walkway where we shot the footage in ten minutes.  Some post-production tinkering with the colors finished the spot.  The show is a must-see for fans of sophisticated, original musical theater.

Our first musical guest is Jonathon Glen Wood, and I’m telling the truth. I really didn’t know he was a musician when we first met.  We follow each other on Twitter, and I ran into him at Heathen’s bar in South Charleston where we both went to hear our mutual friends, Mark Bates and The Vacancies.  Jonathon was kind enough to let me hide behind him when a rather inebriated woman who looked like Ed Asner decided I was her new boyfriend.

When I found out Jonathon was a musican, I checked out his Myspace page, and was floored by the quality of his voice and his songwriting.  This was golden material, like Woody Guthrie and Hank Sr. had a kid (don’t try and imagine that, though).  When I heard that Jonathon was going to be performing at the recent Bridge event in Davis Park, I made it a point to have the RFC cameras there. You get to delight in the result with his quintessential country ballad, “Forgetting To Forget About You.”

Our animation this time is a 1960 Kennedy for President campaign commercial, complete with a catchy Sammy Cahn-penned jingle arranged by Nelson Riddle and executive produced by Old Blues Eyes himself, the entertainment director for the Kennedy campaign. They just don’t make ’em like this any longer. Good luck getting that tune out of your head.

Civil State is the new band led by Chad Fallecker, the former lead singer/guitarist for Professor Mike, who were one of the hottest bands in Charleston until they split up last year.  Chad is just handling vocals for this new band, which features  Patrick Kelley and Jamie  Johnson on Guitar, Michael Hayes on Bass and Josh Ruppert on Drums.

The sound is terrific, with a hint of the old P-Mike muse submerged into a new band chemistry. We were on hand to record some of Civil State’s very first show, and from that we present “3 On A 3rd.”

If you’re curious about Professor Mike, you can check them out on episode six of RFC-coming to the RFC TV Archive page later this week! Aside from the cool sound, Professor Mike was notable for having a large female fanbase, who thankfully did not look like Ed Asner.

We close the show with some spare animation from Frank. We’ll probably show this again in the future without credits rolling over it.

This was the first episode of RFC created using the new computer. We’re migrating to a new system here at Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor, and that’s why Monday Morning Art has been MIA in PopCult. Next week things will be back to normal, and RFC 53 with Corporate Orange and Ten Carp Lie will be staring you in the face.

2 Comments

  1. Bill Gardner

    Great show as always Rudy. Thanks for showing off my ‘hood.

  2. Elvis Capone

    That thing with them orange donuts scared me – but the music that played under it gave me happy pants. Is that Prokofiev? Herb Alpert, maybe? Why is Herb Alpert’s last name spelled so dumbly? It’s supposed to be “Albert”. Herb “Alpert” sounds stupid. He plays piano good, though.

Leave a Reply to Bill GardnerCancel reply

© 2024 PopCult

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑