The PopCulteer
June 19, 2020

From now until the end of June we will post at least once a day with details on what you can experience at home during this pandemic year for Charleston’s annual festival of all arts. For 2020, FestivALL is when The Internet Becomes A Work Of Art. Every day we will bring you up to date on this year’s VirtuALL FestivALL, plus we will flash back to some of our video coverage from previous years, and I will dig into the archives for one post in the Monday Morning Art Exhibit, collecting some of my favorite pieces from the nearly fifteen years that I’ve been posting my original work here in PopCult.

The big event Friday is an online ballet class at 3 PM. Come take a free online ballet class with professional ballet dancer who is also a West Virginia native – Alicia Mae Holloway, dancer with Dance Theater of Harlem! Details are HERE, registration is required.

Other FestivALL events for today include another chance to take in The Alban Arts Center’s Eugene O’Neill Project, which I told you about last Friday.  You can also participate in the CAMC “Run For Your Life” virtual run/walk. The Show Your Pride window display contest is already underway, and you can vote HERE. Ice cream and the arts is also underway, and details for this coloring contest for kids can be found HERE.  The Virtual Art Fair will open on June 14th on the FestivALL website – check it regularly for the gallery and links to shop your favorite WV artisans this summer.

You can also vote on The Artbus, check out the Art-for-ALL Kids’ Juried Art Exhibition look into the “Faces of First Responders” Tribute Mural and teens can participate in Life: Unedited. FestivALL is off to a strong VirtuALL start!

The FestivALL Flashback

2011 was the year where I had the insane idea of cover the holy hell out of FestivALL, and trying to present it in an almost daily form as episodes of Radio Free Charleston. Today we bring you two more of these shows that feature music from The Kingfish Five, Joseph Hale, 600 lbs of SIn and Uncle Eddy and Robyn, Sierra Ferrell, Don Baker, John Radcliff and John Lilly. There are also scenes from The East End Main Street Streetworks Art Auction, Sunday Funday at The Clay Center and Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art Show.

The Monday Morning Art Exhibit

 

Our pick today is actually four pieces that ran during the month of June, 2018. Each Monday that month I posted a digital piece that was inspired by a recent trip to New York City. We were there on an unusually bright and sunny day with a dominant blue sky, which gave me the name, “Blue City.” for these cityscapes done in a variety of styles.

You can click on this compilation of the four pieces to see a much bigger version.

Friday On The AIR

We’re going to offer up our fourth edition of MIRRORBALL and a summer mixtape episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Friday afternoon on The AIR. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

At 2 PM we present an AIR Music Special, the fourth edition of MIRRORBALL, hosted by Mel Larch. June is Pride Month and this week Mel celebrate the role of LGBTQ artists in the phenomenon of disco music. You’ll hear music from Sylvester, Alicia Bridges, Dan Hartman, and more.

You can tune in at 2 PM and hear our latest MIRRORBALL. Later today, it will go up in the Podcast section of The AIR website, so you can listen on demand. Let us know what you think. MIRRORBALL will also be replayed Saturday at 5 PM, Sunday at 11 PM and Tuesday at 1 PM. We’ll probably sneak in a few more airings during the week.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen treats us to a special “New Wave Hits” episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. Sydney promises almost two solid hours of pure New Wave goodness with minimal interruptions, as you can see in this playlist…

BEC 059

The dB’s “A Spy In The House of Love”
Re-Flex “The Politics of Dancing”
B-Movie “Nowhere Girl”
Pretenders “Back On The Chain Gang”
The Cars “Shake It Up”
Talk Talk “It’s My Life”
Kissing The Pink “One Step”
Neneh Cherry “Buffalo Stance”
Billy Idol “Dancing With Myself”
The Go Gos “We Got The Beat”
Talking Heads “Once In A Lifetime”
The Fall “Totally Wired”
Siouxsie and The Banshees “Cities In Dust”
XTC “Millions”
The Smiths “This Charming Man”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “Surfin’ USA (Summer Mix)”
Kate Bush “Babooshka”
The Cure “Pictures of You”
The Sugarcubes “Motorcrash”
Depeche Mode “Just Can’t Get Enough”
New Order “Blue Monday 88”
Peter Schilling “Major Tom”
The Clash “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”
Blondie “Atomic”
The Dickies “Poodle Party”
Echo and the Bunnymen “Lips Like Sugar”
The The “This Is The Day”
Grace Jones “Pull Up To The Bumper”
Gary Numan “We Are Glass”
OMD “Electricity”

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, Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM and Thursday at Noon, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day as we go into VirtuALL FestivALL mode all weekend, replacing our regular features with posts loaded with art and video.