PopCult

Your humble blogger is on the mend after a harsh summer cold, followed by some sort of ritualized bloodletting, so I’ve put together a partly-new Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear today on The AIR.  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.

It’s a free-format extravaganza as this week’s first hour is, with one exception, all newly-released tunes by the likes of The Heavy Set Paw Paws from Beckley, plus J. Marinelli, Byzantine, The Settlement, Brian Diller, Pulp and Slate Dump. We have a sneak peek of an upcoming single from Aliza Hava, who splits her time between Nashville and Ashland, Oregon…and who comes to us via our Chicago Pipeline. “Let It Roar” will be available on all streaming services on July 22, but you can get another new track of hers if you pre-order her upcoming album on Bandcamp. That album will be out in September, and you can get the title track, “Into The Light” now.

Also, I probably should have asked if you pronounce her name “Aleeza” or “A-Lie-za,” but I didn’t, so you can either be astonished at my accuracy, or amused by me mangling yet another name.

After all, I do still sometimes say, “dee-orama,”

After the first hour we revive an episode of Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2017, and I have to be honest, it’s one that I included in a compliation show just four years ago, but it’s also one of my favorite free-format cluster fudgesicles of a show that has everything from Oingo Boingo and Neil Young to Emerson Lake and Palmer and The Buzzcocks.

Your walking wounded blogger/radio host was able to put this weeks RFC together while still recovering from the rather stabby medical test I had done a week ago.  Links in the first hour will take you to pages for the artists…

RFCV5 231

hour one
Heavy Set Paw Paws “Summer Sweat”
J. Marinelli “So Much For The Tolerant Left”
Aliza Hava “Let It Roar”
Byzantine “The Clockmaker’s Intention”
The Settlement “Cycles (live)”
June Swoon “American Dream”
Brian Diller “Fill My Eyes”
Pulp “Spike Island”
Slate Dump “Honey, Watch For Deer”

hour two
Oingo Boingo “The Controller”
Neil Young “Sample and Hold”
Dubioza Kolectiv “Alarm Song”
Marc Ribot y Los cubanos postizos “Los Teenagers Bailan Changui”
The Cure “Let’s Go To Bed”
Red Vox “There She Goes”
The High Violets “Bells”
The Enid “Someone Shall Rise”
The Foreign Films “Sweet Sorrow”
The Hillbilly Moon Explosion “Heartbreak Boogie”
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band “Run Paint Run”
Mike & The Melvins “Dead Canaries”
The Residents “Japanese Watercolor”
St. Vincent “Krokodil”
The Dandy Warhols “Pope Reverend Jim”

hour three
Killing Joke “The Big Buzz”
Brian Eno “The Hour Is Thin”
Escapism “Ship To Shore”
The Range “Superimpose”
Filter “Pride Flag”
Dread Crew of Oddwood “Siren’s Song”
Atomic Rooster “Friday The 13th”
Black Stone Cherry “War”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Toccata”
Hooverphonic “I Like The Way I Dance”
Danielle DeCosmo “Don’t Know What It Means”
The Buzzcocks “ESP”
Operators “Bring Me The Head”
Spoon “Hot Thoughts”

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, Sunday at 8 PM 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 the most recent episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift. I know I’ve been neglecting my Swing Music showcase lately, but I play to rectify that situation with a stretch of new episodes coming every week beginning in August.

 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 digital. There’s a reason for that.

Last Tuesday I had a medical test done at the behest of my neurologist. He was concerned that, in addtion to Myasthenia Gravis, I might have something else causing weakness in my hands.

I went along with this even though the weakness in my hands is something that I only notice when I go to the doctor and he checks my hand strength.  After beginning meds for MG I have retrained myself to hold a pencil, pen and brush, and because I was never terribly good at playing guitar, I quickly regained the ability to play as badly as I had before the onset of MG. But he thought I might have a pinched nerve in my neck, so we scheduled the test…and then it got bumped back several months until last Tuesday.

I do not have a pinched nerve. I apparently have pain-free, moderate Carpal Tunnel and Cubital Tunnel issues. I do not intend to even consider surgery. I will say that, this particular test combined with an EMG, which is thoroughly unpleasant, was something I was not fully informed of in advance…the sticking of needles deep into my muscles up and down both arms and into my neck felt as brutal as it sounds.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this is a test that I don’t imagine many people ever agree to have done a second time. On top of the shocks and the needles, the technician did not read my chart ahead of time and used rubbing alcohol on my palms before I realized what was going on (I’m allergic to the stuff). So I had about three days of burning, itching, tender palms, and aching arms and no chance in hell of creating any physical art. The fun part was, three days later when the bruises began appearing. It looks like I was running around backhanding fire hydrants.

So that’s why this week’s art is digital. As for what it is…I decided to indulge in a bit of synaesthesia. What you see above is my impression of the sound made by the machine that the needles plunged into me was making.  The needles had little microphones on them, and they go by those sounds to detect what’s going on in your body.  It was basically loud and annoying static, turned up very high.

Aren’t you glad you asked?  I hope I’m able to make some real art for next week.

And apparently this is the third time I’ve used this as a title for a Monday Morning Art piece.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, beginning at 2 PM (EDT) on The AIR, we bring new episodes of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack, and 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.

Nigel Pye has managed to hit episode 102 with Psychedelic Shack. For some reason, Nigel was more excited about this episode than he was about episode 100.  It’s a pretty cool collection of trippy music.

Check out the playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 102

Andy Partridge “Humanoid Boogie”
Lickerish Quartet “Lighthouse Spaceship Revised”
Mike McGear “Rainbow Lady”
Roger Glover & Guests “Sitting In A Dream”
TC&I “Comrades of Pop”
Reparata & The Delrons “Captain of Your Ship”
Prince “Pop Life”
The Beach Boys “The Elements-Fire”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Grace Slick & The Great Society “Sally Go Round”
The Turtles “Last Laugh”
Klaatu “Around The Universe In 80 Days”

At 3 PM (EDT), Herman Linte put together a mixtape show paying tribute to the late Chris Squire, the virtuoso bass player for YES, who passed away ten years ago last month. Since Prognosis had not begun when Squire died, Herman wanted to take this occasion to collect some of his most memorable bass and vocal perrmances.

Check out the playlist…

Prognosis 129

Chris Squire “You by My Side”
YES “Heart of the Sunrise”
Squackett “Life Within A Day”
Rick Wakeman “Chamber of Horrors”
Pink Floyd Tribute “Comfortably Numb”
Conspiracy “Say Goodbye”
The Syn “Mr. White’s Flying Machine”
YES “Cinema”
YES “Onward”
Chris Squire & Alan White “Run With The Fox”
Conspiracy “Violet Purple Rose”
YES “The Gates of Delirium”
Squackett “Perfect Love Song”
The Syn “14 Hour Technicolor Dream”
Chris Squire and Billy Sherwood “Days of Wonder”
Cinema “It Can Happen”
YES “Tempus Fugit”
Chris Squire “Amazing Grace”

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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of music from Weird Al Yankovic The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of Beatles Blast, featuring episodes heavy on the Ringo, as it is the lad’s 85th birthday today.

As promised in last Tuesday’s episode of Radio Free Charleston, above you see the music video for Chuck Biel‘s latest tune, “RIPStaVEr.”

Billed as “Original Progressive Metal featuring Chuck Biel (Composer/Creator) and International Mallet Artist Scott Milam and featuring the RiPStaVEr Strings” on YouTube, this remarkable piece of music (and video) features the Maestro, Chuck Biel, along with another Maestro, Scott Milam, and The RIPStaVer Strings (featuring Kristi Holstein), and it’s pure Film Noir eye candy.

As for what it means, the Oxford English Dictionary describes the word as a colloquialism that originated in the US in the early 19th century and is now archaic. According to them, a “ripstaver” is an impressive person or thing—a beaut, a corker, a crackerjack, a doozy, a humdinger, a knockout, a lollapalooza, a jim-dandy, or a ripsnorter.

The earliest example of the usage in the OED is from an 1828 issue of the Bower of Taste, a short-lived magazine in Boston: “She beheld him striding down the street, lustily exclaiming to himself, ‘She’s a ripstaver, so help me Davy Rachel!’ ”

The dictionary’s next citation is from the anonymously published Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee (1833): “In ten minutes he yelled enough, and swore I was a ripstavur.”

Eventually, Chuck’s tune and video will be cited in the OED.

Dive in, it’s a mini-epic.

You can hear “RIPStaVer” on last week’s Radio Free Charleston Sunday at 8 PM and Monday at 11 AM on The AIR, or listen on demand at the RFC PopCult post.

Dating back to August, 2011, and positioned strategically at the head of this post, you should see this week’s vintage episode of Radio Free Charleston. Our 142nd installment was called “It’s Just A Flesh Wound Shirt.” Our music this week was by InFormation, The Renfields, and the Charleston Light Opera Guild cast of “Hairspray”. In addition, this episode features a quick look at Dan Kehde’s then-new play “Cupid Falling/Cupid Rising,” a short film by K.D. Lett, and animation by Frank Panucci.

This was our first episode back after taking off most of July. We’d produced a 70-minute anniversary show, right on the heels of cranking out eight episodes of FestivAll coverage in two weeks, and needed a break. We came back strong, with a show that combined great live music, and our friends The Renfields making their RFC debut, with a healthy dose of theatre, film and animation in the mix. After busting our asses producing the prior shows, it was a relief to get back to a “normal” episode.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

Remember folks, eat smart. Food goes in your mouth, not your nose or ear.

The PopCulteer
July 4, 2025

It’s a holiday, and my readership will be low because so many of my readers check out PopCult while they’re at work.

Add to that the fact that your humble blogger has had a rough week due to some medical tests that did not go as expected,  plus this particularly holiday is not one I feel like celebrating for the next few years, and you can guess that I don’t really have much prepared for the column/post this week.

So we’re going to go a bit random.

First, today at The Regatta, the little-known band tasked with the job of going on after the awesome Velvet Brothers is KC and The Sunshine Band.  It just so happens that Mel Larch devoted an episode of her Disco Showcase, MIRRORBALL, to KC and we will be replaying that show for you this afternoon at 2 PM 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.

In honor of the Disco-ification of the Regatta, starting at 9 PM tonight, the AIR will run twelve hours of MIRRORBALL, for your listening and dancing pleasure.

***

A word of advice for folks getting medical tests done: Do not assume that the technician doing the test  has read your chart, particularly if you have  unusual allergies.

***

The Gilded Age has returned for its third season on MAX (soon to revert back to HBO MAX). If you’re a fan of this spectacularly-acted period drama, it’s time to sign up for MAX for a couple of months again.

***

I hate writing obituaries. One reason for that is that I really don’t like it when someone I admire passes away.

Also, when somebody I don’t admire dies, I don’t get too much satisfaction from abusing their corpse in print. Even if their demise gives me great pleasure, and possibly even a grin that you couldn’t remove from my face with a sandblaster, I hate the idea of intruding on the genuine grief of people who, for whatever reason, loved and admired the dead S.O.B.

My ego is not so great that I feel the need to parade around the dead body pointing and laughing in public.

So I keep quiet.  Unless the person is an undeniably huge figure in the local scene or pop culture, like Michael Jackson on Stan Lee, I prefer to simply let their passing go by without a mention in this blog. And even in those cases where I feel compelled to write about them I’ve tried to be respectful while setting the record straight about my reasons for not being a fan.

This post is not a response to any particular recent demise. It’s a general response to the question, “Why didn’t you write an obituary for …?”

There are three possible answers.  Either I don’t know enough about the person to write a decent obituary, or I had no idea who they were, or I know too much about the person to write about them without upsetting their friends and/or family. No amount of score-settling is worth being a prick to other people.

***

I want to get this post online within the hour, so I’m going to just stick in random photos from our recent travels now. The plan is to drop a lot of photo essays next week.

Yesterday I gifted my lovely wife with a Disco Pineapple from Temu. We wanted to send a photo to our friend Pixie, and decided to stage a Plastic People Disco Pineapple Party for her.

While we were waiting to get on the train to Chicago about a month ago.

In Chicago, the mobile office was set up to do important work, while I used my old phone to monitor a security camera at home.

Across from our hotel, we found Chip City, a newish cookie chain. Just to piss off all the people who get mad that cookie chains exist.

The inside of the elevator at the hotel was covered with stickers. Yes, that’s a Buc-ee’s sticker you see before you.

We seen da Bean.

At the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (photo essay coming next week) we were surprised to learn that there was a trolley service in the Clarksburg/Fairmont area.

My current Facebook cover photo. Since this was taken, another Corgi model and some plastic folks have been added.

And that is this slapdash edition of The PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, even when I don’t really feel like it.

The original plan was to bring you a bunch of photo essays next week so I could play catch-up with all the cool stuff I got to see last month. That is still the plan, but we’re going to get a head start today because, Tuesday of this week I had some medical tests done, and they have impaired me somewhat. Typing is not easy, and next week’s Monday Morning Art is likely to be digital, unless my hands get better real soon.

So today I’m going to bring you a little photo essay devoted to some of the cool stuff they had at last month’s WonderFest USA in Louisville to celebrate 60 years of Lost In Space.

The lovely Marta Kristen Kane was on hand, representing the original cast, and Ron Gross, the artist of several books based on the original LiS as well as trading card sets that I’ve written about in Non Sport Update was there. A selection of awesome Lost in Space props, replicas and artifacts, some of which were showcased on MeTV’s Collector’s Call, was on display, thanks to Tony Hardy and Tracy’s Corner.

We’re going to bring you photos from that display today. Your PopCulteer was in full “Temu Fashionista” mode, as you can see at top right, and for the first time, all the photos here were taken with the new phone.

Here’s a taste of Lost in Space, at WonderFest…

It wasn’t until I was editing the photos that I realized how much cool stuff was in the background that I didn’t get close-ups of.

The life mask fo Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) was put to good use throughout the show (and the display).

The replica of The Jupiter II spaceship was huge, and incredible.

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So I’m recycling the headline and graphics from last year. Had a rough day of medical testing yesterday, so give me a break.

It’s a holiday weekend and Regatta weekend, and we feel obligated to once again start our trek through STUFF TO DO this week with a weather advisory. As I write this, it’s hot…not as bad as last week, but still hot and humid.  If you’re going to do stuff outdoors, remember to stay hydrated.

The Charleston Sternwheel Regatta happens starting Thursday, and you can find out everything you need to know about it HERE.  As for yours truly, I’m getting over a summer cold, had a brutal and invasive test yesterday and hate being outside in the heat, so I won’t be anywhere near the Regatta. I don’t gotta Regatta. I gotta note. The only thing I’ll regret skipping is The Velvet Brothers Friday evening. If you plan to go, follow that link and have a blast.

There are Fourth of July celebrations all over the state this weekend. If you are not disgusted and ashamed at the state of our country, they are relatively easy to find online. Google is your friend. Please remember, if you choose to observe the holiday by setting off your own fireworks, everybody will hate you.

As always, you should remember 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. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Smoke signals.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

City Center Live at Slack Plaza in Charleston has announced their schedule for the summer. You can find it HERE.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend Matthew Malinoski is listed for Friday, and Saturday Luke Molina entertains the crowd at the air-conditioned bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and 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. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff.

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

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online with a few bonus events for early next week…

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Get ready for three hours of largely brand-new music and a mostly-recovered announcer on a new Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear today on The AIR.  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, (all times EDT) with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

This week it’s all free-format local, independent and whatever music, with loads of fantastic new tracks.  Our third hour is dedicated to presenting a mixtape of artists brought to my attention by August Forte, of NoVo Management & Publicity. August has been feeding me great independent music from Chicago, Nashville and other points since I got on his radar when I featured the Chicago band, Tautologic, on a video edition of Radio Free Charleston back in 2020. Chances are, I’ll do this again in a few weeks, with a completely different line-up of artists.

On the way to that third hour, we have a killer line-up of amazing artists.  There’s new music from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Chuck Biel with Scott Milam, Byzantine, Brain Eno & Beatie Wolfe, The Settlement, Project Gemini, Buni Muni, Brian Diller, The M.F.B. and more.

We also mix in some goodies from the RFC Archives, and a few ringers from BIG NAME artists.

Check out this playlist, and follow the links to the artist’s pages (where possible).

RFC V5 230

hour one
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “I Wanna Live”
Chuck Biel with Scott Milam “RipsTaVer”
Byzantine “Irene”
Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe “Play On”
June Swoon “Passover”
The Settlement “Do It For You”
Matt Berry & Project Gemini “Stay On The Ground (Woodland Carnival Version)”
Buni Muni “Last Call”
Falling Stars“Do Your Thing”
Novelty Island “Weird Fields”
Dukes of Stratosphear “Tin Toy Clockwork Train”
Adrian Belew “Beauty”
Brian Diller “Holiday”

hour two
The M.F.B. “Plastic Nimbus”
The Heavy Hitters Band“Watch Yo Mouth (live)”
Frank Zappa “How Could I Be Such A Fool”
P.P. Arnold “Am I Still Dreaming”
Mediogres “How Long Do We Have To Stick Around This Hen House”
Novo Combo“Don’t Throw Your Love Away”
Sean Richardson “Let Me Sleep”
Hello June “Honey I Promise”
Broken Relics “Rodeo”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Restless Spirit”
William Matheny “Stranger’s Voice”
Massing “Stay Inside (Rejuiced)”
Katie and the Honky Tonks “Mind Your Business”
Frankie and the Witch Fingers “T.V. Baby”

hour three
Tautologic“Wheels Fall Off”
Saycouth “Phantom Love”
Well Tempered Madness “ “No Sticks”
Carey Ott featuring The Freaks of Nashville“World Gone Crazy”
Cosmic Bull  “Once The Dust Settles”
TAFKAVinceBand “Magazine Pages”
Love Interest  “Motherwound”
KirkbyKiss“Standards and Practices”
Wrong War “The Call”
OmenBringer “Tungs”
Catherine Grace Campbell “Orion”
Radio Free Honduras “Bellos Momentos”
Maxx McGathey“The Staircase”
Brett Ratner “Carribbean Street Fair”
Scott Collins “Killer Crush”

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, Sunday at 8 PM 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 the most recent 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.

 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 pastel crayon study, finished in acrylics, and to be honest, still incomplete. It’s based on photos I took at the large mall in Chinatown in Chicago, and the colors are not accurate.

There was too much red in the photos, and I was playing around with changing some of those colors, and this is sort of half-way through the process. As a study, it captures a lot of what I wanted to, but it needs more work on the color.

Eventually, anyway.

And yes, the title is a nod to The Dickies.

When I do the larger version, I suspect I’ll be including more detail and using more contrast in the non-sun parts.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also classic 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.

Next week Prognosis and Psychedelic Shack will return with new episodes. We almost had them this week, but stuff came up.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault devoted to the soon to retire, Dr. Demento.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of episodes of Herman Linte’s Prognosis that focus on lesser-know Prog Rock bands.

The musical, BOOP!, for which I have acted as a bit of a cheerleader since I saw it in Chicago in December, 2023, announced that it will end its Broadway run on July 13. If you are anywhere near New York City in the next two weeks, I implore you to get to The Broadhurst Theater so you can experience the best and most fun Broadway musical in the last several years.

This closing is very sad, but not unexpected news. Launching against an unprecedented slate of high-profile shows with gigantic marketing campaigns and big stars, and facing what seemed to be some kind of grudge against it by the Broadway elite, BOOP! faced an uphill battle.

A nonsensical review in the NY Times, that both praised the stars, music, lyrics and choreography and also said that the show shouldn’t exist, certainly stunted the show’s momentum (which was nearly universally praised, otherwise).

The outrageous snubs by the Theatre Wing (the folks who manage the marketing event known as The Tony Awards) fed conspiracy theories about how the established producers wanted to make an example of BOOP! as a warning to outsider producers who don’t play their games. Or maybe it was just snobbishness because the show is based on the classic cartoon character, Betty Boop, and since Broadway had their ass kicked by Disney so many times, they’ve grown to  hate animation.

I don’t know about all that nonsense. I do know that I think BOOP! is the most entertaining show to hit Broadway in years, and I say that as the producer of Mel Larch’s Curtain Call.  I heard the cast recordings of all the nominated shows and they ranged from pretty decent to downright awful. That BOOP! was not nominated for Best Musical will forever taint the credibility of the Tony Awards in my eyes.

They did nominate Jasmine Amy Rogers for best actress in a musical, because even they could not deny how her Broadway debut is the beginning of what will be a legendary career, but even then they gave the award to someone whose performance on the awards show left me completely unimpressed. They also gave token nominations to the brilliant choreography and amazing costume design, but the show did not win either of those catagories, either.

And let’s face it, the only hope BOOP! had for an extended run would have been for Tony Awards viewers to be exposed to it. Sadly they wouldn’t even let the cast perform during the ceremony. More fuel for the conspiracy theories, I guess.

There are rumors that the show may live on as a touring entity. I know it would certainly thrive in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and I would imagine people would flock to see it again in Chicago. I don’t know if the show would be able to keep Jasmine Amy Rogers on board for a tour.  Her rocketship to stardom is already taking off, and it might be time for her to branch out into other endeavors. I know she’s recording a Pop album for later in the year, and any Broadway show would be extremely lucky to land her as their lead.

Above you will find a playlist of some videos that will give you a taste of BOOP! the Musical.