We have a bit of a bittersweet flashback today. May 2009 was “Mark Beckner Month” on Radio Free Charleston. Mark is a long-time friend and was a fixture on the radio incarnation of RFC as a member of both Go Van Gogh and The Tunesmiths.

Mark is still making new music, and we hope to bring you some as soon as we get our hands on it, but as many of you know, Mark’s bandmate in Go Van Gogh just passed away a few weeks ago, and we still miss him a lot. But we are presenting these shows in order, and even though we recently posted the unedited version of the film used in this show, here it is as we brought it to you back in May, 2009.

I had a wealth of archival material and new video featuring Mark, so I decided that, as a way to plug his “return” show with his band, Hitchcock Circus, I would devote an entire month of shows to Mister Mark Beckner. We kicked off what turned out to be his homecoming with this truncated version of the Go Van Gogh rockumentary, Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth.

This film was directed by Timothy Rock, the bassist for GVG. Stephen Beckner showed it during a movie night at his house, and I started wondering why it seemed familiar. Then it got to the scene where I’m crouched over a toilet blaming the band for the RFC radio show getting cancelled, and it all came back.

It turns out I was the cameraman and was the offscreen interviewer in addition to my cameo as myself. I have this bad habit of forgetting really cool things that I’ve done.

I was able to get a copy of the film from Stephen, and trimmed it a bit for time so I could present it as an episode of RFC. This is a rare episode of the show which was not named after a T Shirt for the simple reason, it does not include a “host segment,” instead empoloying a simple voice-over.  This is also one of the few RFCs that doesn’t have the opening theme, and with this 2014 remastering, I corrected one shocking omission–after the end credits and remastering card, I put the “Ya-Hooo” guy back in.

The original production notes can be found HERE. You can see the uncut version of Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth at this link, along with a bounty of other vintage Go Van Gogh video hijinks.