Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 682)

As I mention almost every week, Tuesday is “New Show Day” on The AIR.  As such, we have new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift for you. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Our first hour is our usual collection of cool local, independent and brand-new music. We open with brand new music from no less than Novo Combo, the legendary New Wave band that featured West Virginia’s own Jack Griffith on lead guitar.  Last week Jack contacted me and offered me a new song, and it wasn’t until he sent it to me that I realized it was not a solo track, but was instead new music from Novo Combo.

A new album, collecting new tracks with previously-unreleased demos, is due out later this year, and you can follow the band and get the latest news at their website, or their Facebook page.  It’s a real treat to see these guys back in action.

The single, “Don’t Throw Your Love Away,” is available now on all streaming services.  When I recorded today’s show, I wasn’t sure if their website was live yet, but rest assured, it is and they are gearing up for a big release with all four original members this Fall.

The rest of our new first hour is loaded with sets of music featuring female artists like Sierra Ferrell, Unmanned and Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, and another set featuring new surf music from five bands on House of Tabu Records plus our old buddy, Guitarmy of One.

House of Tabu, who publish Exotica Moderne Magazine, have launched a new magazine, Reverb International, that covers surf music. I’ve had my copy of the first issue for a few weeks,  but haven’t had a chance to crack it open yet. I know it’s going to be great.

We wrap up our first hour with a new song from The Dread Crew of Oddwood, and a classic track from Feast of Steven.

For our second and third hours, we go back to an episode of Radio Free Charleston International from 2016.  This one hasn’t been heard for over seven years, so it’ll be new to most of you.  It’s loaded with a wild and eclectic collection of tracks by national and international artists.   This file had been mislabelled, and it was MIA for many years.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages where you can learn more about each artist and buy their music or find out where to see them (where available)…

RFC V5 172

hour one
Novo Combo “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”
Massing“Go Away (Rejuiced)”
Sierra Ferrell “Wish You Well”
Unmanned “Parasite”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess“Does She Have You”
Paula Cole “The Replacements & Dinosaur Jr.”
Bjork “Oral(Remix)”
Kitten & The Tonics “Memphis Red”
Lords of Atlantis “The Bastion”
The Madeira “Cities of Gold”
The Tentakills “Rage of Atlantis”
Test Subject 17 “Patient Zero”
Guitarmy of One “Must Be The Season of Treason”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood  “Revenge Prawn”
Feast of Steven “Season of the Wizard”

hour two
Steve Vai (featuring Mohini Dey) “Bop!”
Ultravox “Some of Them”
Jerry Lee Lewis “Lewis Boogie”
The Incorruptibles “Lowdown and Dirty”
Laura Mvula “Show Me Love”
Anderson Stolt “Chase and Harmony”
Emily Kinney “Molly”
Paul McCartney “Jenny Wren”
The Shelters “The Ghost is Gone”
Roger Daltry and Wilco Johnson “Ice on the Motorway”
Paul Weller “Instant Karma”
Product of Piracy “In The Land of the Dead, the Living Man is King”
The Last Shadow Puppets “Sweet Dreams TN”

hour three
Sky Technology “Crazy Machines”
The Strokes “Drag Queen”
Leland Sundries “Apocalypse Love Song”
Tim Nielson “Dark Age Dancin’”
Link Wray and the Raymen “Jack The Ripper”
The Avett Brothers “Satan Pulls The Strings”
ABC “I Believe In Love”
The Shift “Moon Boots”
Volbeat “Marie Laveau”
The Monkees “You Bring Me Summer”
Paul Simon “Cool Papa Bell”
Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals “Pink Balloon”
Viv Stanshall “The Young Ones”
Jo-Ann Campbell “Let Me Do My Twist”
Oingo Boingo “Goodbye, Goodbye”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we offer up a brand-new episode of The Swing Shift that, as I write this, does not yet exist.

Normally I record RFC and The Swing Shift on Mondays, but things got hectic that day, and rather than skip another week, I plan to record this week’s episode first thing Tuesday morning, about fifteen hours after I’m writing these words. .

I will tell you that it will open with a track from the new Rod Stewart/Jools Holland Swing album, and it will include the complete version of “Keely’s Boogie,” by Keely Smith, which I had to truncate last time. I’ll also toss in a bunch of stuff, and if possible, insert the full playlist right here…

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Our art this week is a detailed pencil drawing (using the trusty Blackwing Palamino) on paper for pens. It was drawn over the course of a week, and is just an exercise in playing with textures.

Basically, I used a ruler to draw angled boxes with White-Out, then filled them in with the goal of making it look like pavement or marbled tile…or a cross between the two.

I used a little White-Out after the fact to add more fake detail to the drawing and to pop part of the seams. This was just me playing with textures and light and shadow and putting in more effort than thought.

It was a long week.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM and 3 PM on The AIR, we bring you brand-new episodes of both Psychedelic Shack  Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Unfortunately, as I write this, I have, once again, not received the playlist info for the programs, or the programs themselves. Herman tells me that Prognosis brings us highlights of a new boxed set devoted to Emerson Lake and Powell (not Palmer), while Nigel Pye says that Psychedelic Shack opens with Traffic, and then continues with “really trippy music, man.”

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of musical numbers from The Simpsons, on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault. This is a replay of the show we ran last Wednesday and is not a commentary on any recently-deceased murderers who can’t sue us for calling them that now that they’re dead.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon it’s time to boogie all night with ten hours of randomly-chosen episodes of our music specialty shows, because it’s tax day…why stress out over anything else?

In the above video you will see how thumbtacks and paper clips are made at a Japanese factory.

This is to prove that there are no depths to which I will not sink to make a really bad pun.

From July, 2009, Radio Free Charleston’s 76th episode, “Peace Sign Shirt,” was the last episode of the show hosted on the Charleston Gazette servers, and it features cool videos of  two particularly long songs by Option 22 and Suburban Graffiti. Those are punctuated by a Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie, and a couple of important announcements. I get all serious and stuff over what was essentially no big deal. It seemed huge at the time.

After this episode of RFC, we began posting the show directly to MySpace, which eventually turned out to be a disaster when they unceremoniously dumped all their video uploads, then brought them back, then disabled a ton of them again.  That’s why we find ourselves remastering and re-uploading the older episodes of the show to YouTube to this day, and it’s why four episodes are missing in action.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 12, 2024

We lost one of the great comic book writer/artist/editors and historians Wednesday.

Trina Robbins passed away after suffering a stroke in February.

I’ve been a fan of Robbins’ work for at least fifty years, but I had no idea how wild of a life adventure she’d lived until I read her autobiography back in 2017.  She was very happy with my review, and we struck up a casual friendship via Facebook. I’d go on to review several more books by her over the years.  I’ve remained a fan since I discovered her work in Comix Book back in 1974.

In her book, Robbins tells of her upbringing as a poor Jewish girl during World War II, and her association with early science fiction fandom, before she fell into the world of Hippies, Comix and Rock and Roll. Famous and notable people come and go through her story at a rapid pace. I can’t recall reading another biography that mentions Harlan Ellison, C.C. Beck, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Robert Crumb, Alan Ginsberg and other semi-mythical beasts in the context of real people in the subject’s life.

Her comics career spanned Underground Comix, The National Lampoon, DC’s Wonder Woman, Misty and Barbie for Marvel, and several incredible works for independent publishers in recent years.  She also designed the outfit for Vampirella, which Frank Frazetta painted for the cover of the first issue of her magazine back in 1969.

As has has been pointed out in several obituaries this week, she was name-checked in the first verse of the Joni Mitchell song, “The Ladies of the Canyon.”

My interactions with her were always pleasant, and I can’t stress enough how important she was, not just as a cartoonist and a feminist, but also as a historian, preserving the legacies of unjustly overlooked female creators. She was a truly remarkable woman and she will be greatly missed. Condolences to her family and her partner, Steve Leialoha.

New MIRRORBALL On The AIR

Your humble blogger is still a bit gutted by the passing of Trina Robbins, as well as recovering from a day spent doing our taxes, so the rest of this week’s PopCulteer will star the playlist for today’s new episode of MIRRORBALL on The AIR. The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes her hour of Disco to a well-curated assortment of classic dance tracks from the golden age of Disco. She opens the show with a from Kleer, then mixes big hits from Sister Sledge and The Spinners with hidden classics from Timmy Thomas, The Undisputed Truth and more.

IIt’s a wild assemblege of crafty dancefloor motivationals. Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 097

Kleer “Tonight’s The Night (Good Time)”
Aquarian Dream “You’re A Star”
Foxy “Hot Number”
Timmy Thomas “Touch to Touch”
The Natural Four “Try To Smile”
The Spinners “Rubberband Man”
T Connection “Saturday Night”
Sister Sledge “We Are Family”
“Jimmy Castor Bunch “Space Age”
The Undisputed Truth “Let’s Go Down To The Disco”
Goody Goody “#1 Dee Jay”
Deodato “Whistle Bump”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM we bring you  an encore of a birthday salute mixtape edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from the Summer of 2022. Sydney Fileen delivered a special mixtape edition of her show that presents two full hours of the New Wave era music of Siouxsie & The Banshees, including tracks from their first ten studio releases.

Peruse this here playlist for a preview…

BEC 092
Siouxsie’s Birthday Party

“Helter Skelter”
“Jigsaw Feeling”
“Nicotine Stain”
“Premature Burial”
“The Lord’s Prayer”
“Hybrid”
“Spellbound”
“Night Shift”
“She’s A Carnival”
“Painted Bird”
“Dear Prudence”
“Belladonna”
“Red Over White”
“Cities In Dust (Eruption Mix)”
“The Unrest”
“Candyman”
“This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us”
“Hall of Mirrors”
“Strange Fruit”
“The Passenger”
“The Killing Jar”
“Carousel”
“Turn to Stone”
“Peek A Boo”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon,  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day.

Here at Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor your PopCulteer is preparing to enter into the perilous waters of this year’s tax preparation.  Since I am a little preoccupied with that, how about we go to a truncated version of our least-read weekly feature?  There’s plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State as we pull out the calculators and slide rules.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. This is going to be a short one because I don’t have access to my full resources. All of these shows are “weather permitting.”

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Leslie Brooks. Saturday Minor Swing takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery, possibly all at once.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Thursday at 5:30 PM the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin makes the world a better place with music(details below).   Friday, Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Next Tuesday Spurgie Hankins Band returns to the Glass. You can check below for the graphics for other cool weekend shows at The Empty Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is still not entirely over yet. It’s a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, stray bullets from Republican primary shootouts, liver sports, people who put cucumbers in Greek Salad and other damned good reasons to be careful. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order…

And because I’m not sure when STUFF TO Do will land next week, here’s a look at an event for next Wednesday…

It’s time for another covers mixtape show Wednesday as The AIR brings you a special episode of Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EST) Beatles Blast brings you an all-star hour of  top artists performing their versions of classic Beatles songs.

We open with Beyonce, of course, who covers the White Album standard, “Blackbird,” as the opening track of her country-crossover album, Cowboy Carter.  We also pay tribute to the recently-departed Steve Harley with his epic cover of “Here Comes The Sun.”

Then we bring you all four Beatles songs that were performed at Woodstock, and this means we repeat a few tunes, but the arrangements are so different that I don’t think Beatles fans will mind. Then we bring you some mid-60s bands doing their turn with Beatles material and wind up with some classy covers by Allan Holdsworth, The Jam and Fiona Apple.

And in the middle, just to keep you on your toes, we have the Fab Four themselves performing “Nowhere Man” live in Germany in 1966. It’s a fun collection of elcectic covers.

Here’s the playlist…

Beatles Blast 108

Beyonce “Blackbird”
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel “Here Comes The Sun”
Richie Havens “With A Little Help From My Friends/Strawberry Fields”
Joe Cocker “With A Little Help From My Friends”
Crosby Stills & Nash “Blackbird”
The Sorrows “We Can Work It Out/No Reply”
Glen Dale “Good Day Sunshine”
Silkie “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”
The Beatles “Nowhere Man (live)”
Allan Holdsworth “Norwegian Wood”
Saturna “Come Together”
The Jam “Rain”
Fiona Apple “Across The Universe”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EST) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch brings you two encore episode from just a few months ago.  Curtain Call will return with a new episode next week.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault brings you an hour of musical interludes from The Simpsons.

We have three hours of new RFC today on The AIR.  We have a new episode of  Radio Free Charleston,completely newly-recorded to make up for last week’s power-outage-induced compilation show.  To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.

This week we have three hours of newly-assembled coolness with the first hour comprised entirely of recently-released music, including new local tracks from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Jim Lange, Unmanned, Massing, Sierra Ferrell and more, plus new Custard Flux from our Chicago pipeline, and new major artist releases from Pet Shop Boys, Sheryl Crow and The Anchoress. Plus we have a track from the latest House of Tabu release by Kitten & The Tonics.

Our second hour opens with a new local Rap track from Duck City Music, then veers into a lenghty set of Progressive Rock, and winds up with a couple of day-late Eclipse songs.

Our third hour digs into the RFC archives for some classic local tracks, and then winds up with Americana and New Wave tunes.

Consider it a three-hour tour with no danger of getting shipwrecked on an uncharted desert isle. Rudy don’t do boats, kids.

Links in the artist’s names below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music. Check out the playlist.

RFC V5 171

hour one
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Chasing You”
Jim Lange “Reverend Aakin Jaykins’ Shakin’ Revelations”
Kitten & The Tonics “Alarmium”
Pet Shop Boys “If Jesus Had A Sister”
Unmanned “Edge of Night”
The Anchoress “The Living Dead”
Custard Flux “Equinox”
Massing “Dayblind”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood “Evil Tide”
Disco Risque “The Scene”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Restless Spirit”
Sierra Ferrell“Rosemary”
Alabaster Boxer “Singback”
Sheryl Crow “Digging In The Dirt”
Shadows on Mercury “Calculate (Control)”

hour two
Duck City Music “Incarcerated Scarfaces”
The Progressive Souls Collective “The Core”
Dr. Curmudgeon “Ex Ridiculum Ut Sublimi”
The Settlement “Rainbow”
Steve Hackett “Ghost Moon and Living Love”
Klaus Nomi  “Total Eclispse”
Graham Parker “Total Eclipse of the Moon”

hour three
John Radcliff  “Hold On Tight”
Under The Radar “Krakatoa”
The Heydays “I Never Slept With Alan Ginsberg”
The Concept “Guitar Pick In My Kool Aid”
The Ghosts of Now “Patton’s Blues”
Miniature Giant “Kill Yr FriENDs”
4 OHM MONO “Void All In Between”
Novelty Island “Paprika”
Slate Dump “TIPPLE”
Erik Woods “There’s War In The World”
Velez Manifesto“The Poseur”
Skafish “She’s Taking Her Love Away”
63 Eyes “Pool Game”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift with the plan to return with a new show next week.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

This week’s art is a small study (using Winsor Newton inks on textured paper) for a potential Edward Hopper-style painting.

This was done quick ‘n’ sloppy just to get the composition and rough colors down. Chances are the finished piece will change the angle, and maybe lose the buildings next door and maybe the fence. I’ll also be using a different medium. As you can see the ink was a little hard to tame in places.

I based this on a few quick photos I took out the window of The Amtrack Cardinal somewhere between New Jersey and Washington DC last January.

I’m still trying to get to the point where I can imitate parts of Hopper’s mastery of light and shadow, but apply it to my own surreal subject matter. It’s fun to try and learn new things at my age.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a recent edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of Cheech and Chong on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of The Swing Shift. It kicks off with our recent four-episode look at Boogie Woogie, and I also scheduled another four-parter, this one devoted a rough history of 100 years of Swing, back when we hit episode 100 of our show.

About ten years ago we featured a song on the video version of Radio Free Charleston about a tiny, rotund and evil man named Patrick Morrisey. At the time he was the Attorney General of West Virginia, and his terms in office were marked by him filing nusiance lawsuits against Democratic administrations, while also filing lawsuits to advance the agendas of pharmaceutical companies, coal companies, Big Oil, and pretty much any business that wanted to pollute our state and harm its people.

Of course, now he’s running for governor on a platform of exterminating transpeople and minorities, polluting our state even more and basically doing whatever else ALEC orders him to do. He’s running as a Republican (of course) and his opponents are a shady used car salesman millionaire son of a Congresswoman; a shady millionaire son of a Senator and grandson of a disgraced and convicted former governor; and a shady election denier who was the top election official in our state.

I don’t have songs about them, but we do have this one, with a Boylesque dance by Leo Tuxedo and lyrics on the screen so you can follow along to this song by The Laser Beams. It’s relevant again, but it looks like there’s a long line of candidates for governor who somehow all manage to look worse than Jim Justice, who might be the worst governor of WV in my lifetime. We’re sharing it here because we’re sick of seeing his awful commercials every time we turn on the TV for weather and traffic reports.