That video you see in the box above this text is Radio Free Charleston’s 127th episode, “Fever Strength Shirt.” It’s our second big fancy High Definition installment of the show.
Music this time comes from Mother Nang, The Nanker Phelge and Jonathan Tucker. We also have a promo spot for The 21st Annual East End Yard Sale, and remastered animation from Frank Panucci.
Detail of "Fever Strength"
Host segments were recorded on a very windy Sunday afternoon at the St. Albans roadside park, on the Kanawha River.
Our namesake shirt is “Fever Strength,” a design by Miss Monster, purchased from TeeFury.com last year. It’s a purty lady riding a dragon. Missmonster.com is the portfolio website of Melita Curphy, an artist who currently lives in Chicago originally from south Texas.
You can check out a cool page of her jewelry and other stuff here.
The 21st Annual East End Yard Sale is coming up on Saturday, May 7, from 7 AM to 2 PM, all over the Historic East End of Charleston. This is the big yard sale event in the area where people all over the East End sell all the stuff they bought from their neighbors at the previous year’s yard sale.
Rudy Interviews Amy, as the Cranky Neighborhood Guy interrupts.
This was a fun spot to record. I was just the on-camera monkey for this gig. The spot was conceived by Mark Wolfe, ad-libbed by me, Mark and Amy Williams, and photographed, directed and edited by Steven Allen Adams. Melanie Larch was on hand with a few artistic suggestions, and I was done with my part before Noon on the same day that we shot our host segments. Steve did a great job on the spot, and had it posted online later Sunday night.
It’s a busy week for Mark, who did this spot on Sunday, popped up as the subject of Sandy Well’s “Innerview” on Monday, and is observing his birthday Tuesday.
I'm talkin' 'bout Mother..."shut yo mouth!"...I'm just talkin' 'bout Mother Nang
Our first musical guest is Mother Nang. If you saw our April Fool’s show, and got the joke, then you saw a static shot of some action figures performing one of Mother Nang’s new songs. I could get away with this because I’ve known Spencer, Jay, Deron and RFC Big Shot Brian Young for more than twenty years.
However, since Mother Nang is still a local powerhouse of creativity, we had to feature them on the show proper, with a live performance recorded just last Friday at The Blue Parrot. This episode we feature Mother Nang performing a song ripped from today’s headlines, “Bully.”
Pardon me. Is this where we find the meaning of life?
Our animation is a remastered version of Frank Panucci’s “Porky Bang,” which was part of his existential series of enlightening animated shorts that we originally ran in 2007 and 2008. This short was entirely re-worked, with each pixel being carefully removed, massaged, and stretched into high definition, before being replaced in the proper order to reflect the new aspect ratio. The audio was processed through a sonic pre-umbulator program to simulate 5,7 surround sound.
Steve, Casi, Dave and Mark rock The Empty Glass this weekend!
Next up musically we have The Nanker Phelge, in a special one-camera shoot that would have more camera angles if not for a last-minute computer failure here at stately Radio Free Charleston Manor. Luckily the song, “Walk Away” is so strong that nobody would have even noticed that it’s only one static shot if we hadn’t mentioned it.
The Nanker Phelge will be performing at The Empty Glass this Saturday on a kiler double bill with Blue Million. These are two bands that feature some of the best songwriting in the state. The show kicks off at 10 PM and the cover will be somewhere between five and ten bucks.
“Walk Away” is just one of a batch of several great new songs that you’ll hear from Steve, Mark, Casi and Dave, and the current plan is to have the RFC cameras on hand to grab both bands this weekend. Fans of Blue Million and their frontman, Alan Griffith, should be on the lookout for an interview in the Charleston Gazette this weekend, courtesy of RFC friend, Nick Harrah.
Jonathan Tucker at Center Court in The Charleston Town Center.
We wrap up the show with Jonathan Tucker, singing at The Charleston Town Center just last Saturday. We had a busy weekend. The only part of this episode that was not recorded over the weekend was “Walk Away,” which we shot right before Christmas last year.
Jonathan had tipped us off that he’d be performing at the mall, and we were very happily surprised to find a thriving all-ages open mic right there in the center court, near Starbucks. You can be sure that we’ll be writing more about that here in PopCult!
Jonathan is a CYAC veteran, and you’ve seen him on the show previously when we brought you excerpts of “Lincoln” and “Mary.” We caught him doing “Speak Softly, Love,” better known as the love theme from “The Godfather.”
That’s about it for this week. Next week expect some music from Prank Monkey, the host band for the Wednesday night electric jam at The Blue Parrot, along with some added surprises.
Just in case the Vimeo version of the show doesn’t work, here’s the YouTube HD version:
Thanks for the shout-out. Excellent show as always.
As usual, good stuff. Jonathan Tucker is awesome.