PopCult

The last weekend of April is rapidly approaching, and since your humble blogger is busy sheltering in place instead of doing what he had planned for Wednesday, how about we tell you all about some cool STUFF TO DO all over and just beyond the borders of the state, to tell you about, noted as briefly as possible.  This ought to take you through the next week, folks.

Again, I’m just scratching the surface here. Please don’t think this is all we have to offer.

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, even if your promotional graphic uses cruddy AI art, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.

We have two featured event this weekend, both on Saturday. First we have a tribute to the late Daniel Boyd in the form of a wrestling show held outside A Walk In Time collectibles on Charleston’s West Side within sight of Patrick Street…

Second, we have a great event that will wrap up the WTSQ 2026 Spring Fund Drive.. Folklore music will host thirteen local and regional singer-songwriters performing 13 original songs. The evening will feature Corduroy Brown, Tai Ray, Mark Price, Holly Forbes, Andrew Adkins, Emmalea Deal, KC Shingleton, Makenna Hope, Zach Harold, Sarah Rudy, Jordan Dyer, Gracie Mae, & Sean Richarson…

We are 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.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM.  Many Sunday afternoons at 2 PM they also have live music. This weekend they have music from Zach Elmore on Friday and Minor Swing on Saturday.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing.

You might also find cool musical events at 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.

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 illnesses 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. If somebody asks you to refrain, please respect their weishes and don’t be a jerk about it.

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 happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

Continue reading

I’ve written about this before, but that was decades ago and since today is Earth Day, I thought it might be time to retell the story.

Above you see a flyer for the Earth Day 1990 concert that Radio Free Charleston sponsored, along with the group Project Earth on the campus of West Virginia State College (before it grew up and became a University).  It was the twentieth year that Earth Day was celebrated, and we wanted to observe it with something memorable. The flyer you see is a rare example of yours truly being able to create nearly-legible lettering, back in the days before MG gave me a great excuse for my awful penmanship.

This was a high-water mark for the radio incarnation of RFC.   I had to pull off promoting and organizing a concert on short notice with absolutely no support from the station management.  By this point, the acting general manager was openly hostile towards RFC, and the program director was more interested in sacrificing the show so he could wrest the GM’s job away than he was in helping the station actually make money.

But we pulled off a huge event.  Seven bands took the stage at the Davis Fine Arts building. In between we had speakers and low-level bottom-feeding politicians, some of whom brought their own hecklers (whatever happened to those guys anyway?).  Campus security told me that, by their count, close to two thousand people drifted through the Davis building during the course of the eight-hour show.  I was interviewed by WCHS TV (by a very young Tim Irr, in fact, back in his cub reporter days).  Somehow we managed to provide free Gino’s Pizza and Pepsi products for the audience–who got in free.

I look back and wonder how we wrangled it.  It was an incredible day of music, good vibes, bad political theater and in retrospect, it was a bit of a last hurrah for that initial broadcast incarnation of RFC.  The show was cancelled two weeks later.  That wasn’t really a huge shock.  I was miserable working at the radio station by that point.  Management was so antagonistic towards RFC that they actually refused advertising for the show. The only way I was able to promote this concert on other disc jockey’s shifts was by mislabelling the promo carts.

Which I did, to excesss! I apologize once again to the innocent bystanders in the traffic department.

Anyway, the concert was a triumph.  Many of the musicians involved are still active in the local scene, and have turned up on the video version of RFC and can still be heard on our internet radio version.

Clownhole reformed in 2023/24 and recorded many of their original songs that they performed that day. The Beckner brothers from Go Van Gogh are still making music with their bands: Stephen in Speedsuit and Mark in Nixon Black. Spencer Elliott, from Some Forgotten Color has become a reknown guitar master, with international releases (and a new one in the works).  Sean Richards from Strawfyssh performs in the area regularly and is the man behind the “Sober Curious” venue, Pumzi’s. Two of The Swivels have recently been collaborating, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that project.

Some of the musicians are no longer with us, too.  That’ll happen when you’re talking about an event that transpired thirty-six years ago. We recently lost Brian Young, and I am still compiling a video tribute to him. That one really hurts. Before that we lost Gary Price and Tommy Medvick from The Swivels and Johnny Rock from Go Van Gogh, and the loss of those close friends makes this a bittersweet memory, but still a fond one.

With so many lasting friendships dating back to this special day before many of my readers were born, you can see why I wanted to take another look back. This is sort fo like me looking through a scrapbook at my days as a star high school football player…if I had ever been remotely athletic and didn’t hate going to high school. We all have triumphant memories from our youth. It’s fun to wallow in them once in a while.

Of course, the day could have been even bigger.  Had I put in my request a week earlier, the show would have been headlined by Peter Buck, of R.E.M.  I’d gotten friendly with his manager, who steered a few other acts on his roster my way during while I was doing the radio show.  This concert came together on such short notice that there was no way I was going to be able to land a big name.  I did get to hang out with Peter a year later, the night before R.E.M. appeared on Mountain Stage, but that’s another long rambling nostalgic story with details that still can’t be divulged.

Anyway, this was a great day, and it was nice to go out on a high note.  Within a month, RFC was off the air, I left Project Earth after it was taken over by agents of the Jim Humphey’s campaign (the attraction that the group held for me was that it was non-partisan, when the group was seized by people who wanted me to work the phones for a politician whom I couldn’t possibly hold in lower regard, I was out the door). I don’t even know if the group is still around.  But that night….it was worth it.  We had a huge party for the RFC crowd, raised awareness of environmental issues, and it was the 21st birthday of Little Susan, the official little sister of RFC.  Happy Birthday, Little Susan, where ever you are.

Oh, and we didn’t litter too much either. That would have been bad.

There were folks on hand to record video and audio of the event, but to this day I have not be able to track down either. It remains my great white whale of lost RFC artifacts.

Which is probably not the best anaology to use on Earth Day, now that I think about it.

Anyway, Happy Earth Day. Maybe one of these days we can actually celebrate it by not coming up with new ways to destroy the planet.

Tuesday is NEW RFC DAY on The AIR  and today, just like we copied and pasted from last week,  it most certainly is again as we bring you a brand-new first hour of Radio Free Charleston combined with an episode of RFC Volume Four that hasn’t been heard in nine years. 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.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show with a killer first hour that opens with a track from Cricketman, a Ska band from Huntington that I just found out about last week, and continues with new music from the likes of The Moon My Twin, Joe Jackson, Los Grainders, The Tentakills, Mega Ran, Duck City Music, The Anchoress, Foreign Kids, The Heavy Hitters, The Holler Hounds and The newly-formed Matt Berry Trio.

We cover the gamut from Ska to Rock to Surf to Prog to Rap, Soul, Jazz, Trance and more, and that’s just in the first hour.

Because I have several more routine, but time-consuming, medical things to do early this week, for our second and third hours I decided to reach into the archives and bring you a classic, two-hour, episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Four that premiered in May, 2016.

This time it’s a really cool show that debuted exactly ten years ago this week, and, like last week,  this episode of RFC Volume Four has not been heard since late, 2016.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page in the first hour…

RFC V5 267

hour one
Cricketman “Adults”
The Moon My Twin “Backbone”
The Holler Hounds “Take Your Shot”
Los Grainders “Deep Grotto”
The Anchoress “I Had A Baby Not A Lobotomy”
Foreign Kids “Garden”
Joe Jackson “I’m Not Sorry”
Mega Ran “Pipe Bomb”
Duck City Music “Don’t Disrespect”
Gardenn“Empty Bottles”
The Heavy Hitters “Vain”
Matt Berry Trio “Everything’s Peachy”
Nothing To Protect  “Step By Step”
Best Dressed Ghost“Let’s Go Home”
The TentaKills “Daggertooth”

hour two
Michael Cerveris “Phoenix”
Larry Groce “The Boxer”
Garagecow Ensemble “I Never Slept With Allen Ginsberg”
Blue Million “Will You Think Of Me”
Company Stores “No Middle Name”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “One Thing I Do Know”
Quick And Dirty “Super Ninja”
Ann Magnuson “Man With No Face”
The Big Bad “Maniac Mansion”
The Velvet Brothers “Savannah Moon”
Whistlepunk 2.0 “The Good”
Pepper Fandango “Wayward Girls”
David Synn “Space Gun”
Karma To Burn “Forty”
Dog Soldier “Christmas Song”

hour three
Qiet “Bring My Day”
Hybrid Soul “Chain of Fools”
Time And Distance “Hell To Pay”
The Jasons “Camp Arawak”
The Nanker Phelge “21st Century”
Mother Nang “Bully”
The Smoky Room “Sound The Alarms”
Byzantine “Agonies”
Talented “Put Ya Gloves On”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Finest of Dreams”
Tape Age “Wish I Could Have You”
Under Surveillance “Breaking Point”
Ona “Sleep Rinse Repeat”

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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM get ready for two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 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 Thursdays and Sundays.

This week’s art is a pencil and ink depiction of the Museum of Ceramics, located in East Liverpool, Ohio.

I wish I could tell you more about the museum, but when we drove by there a few weeks ago, they weren’t open. Still, the photos I took inspired me to do this drawing, and we do intend to go back to East Liverpool for a visit at some point this year.

As for the drawing, I started out doing this as a pencil sketch on illustration board, but even with my trusty Blackwing Palamino, I was not happy with the level of detail and clarity.

So I reverted to my comic book artist days and “inked” much of the drawing with cheap markers from Five Below. Rather than erase the pencils, I blurred them with a tissue to give the piece some tonal qualities that I liked. I really liked the depth and texture that I got combining the pencil and ink, so I may be using this technique more in the future.

It came out better than I expected, really.  And there was less paint to clean up.

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 we do the same with 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.

Tonight at 8 PM, tune in for a classic edition of The Comedy Vault. That’s followed by two-hour blocks of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast at 9 PM and 11 PM, and then an overnight assortment of our Haversham Recording Institute programs at 1 AM.

This week we going back to December, 2009, to restore an installment of Sunday Evening Video that was reduced to semi-code gobbledygook by the progression of time and technology. (With some browsers, you’ll have to click in the corner to watch these on YouTube–I can’t figure out why)

The Dean Martin Variety Show was one of the highest-rated shows on TV in the 1960s, but people forget how progressive and subversive the comedy on the show was. Martin introduced American audiences to Monty Python and Marty Feldman, and at a time when the racial divide in this country was rarely breached, the Dean Martin show regularly featured stand-up comedy from Black comedians and performers. The show also addressed what could have been touchy social issues in the patented Rat Pack “who cares as long as nobody gets hurt” manner.

In the above clip, a recurring bit where Nipsy Russell and Dom DeLuise played the “NBC Barbers” who would be cutting the hair of that week’s guest, the guest is Peter Sellers, who discovered earlier in the day that he could reduce Martin to tears by doing a campy “gay” voice. Without any prior warning, he began the sketch, in which he was supposed to be speaking normally as himself, using that voice. You can see how it caught Russell and DeLuise off guard, but when Dino enters the sketch it really takes off.

The cool thing about The Dean Martin Show was that Martin never rehearsed. He’d walk in at the last minute and read his lines off the cue cards, often ad-libbing just to mess with his well-rehearsed co-stars. Below you can check out some more clips from The Dean Martin Show, featuring Goldie Hawn, Don Rickles, and more. This was the heyday of the show, not the last few years when the show was reduced to cranked-out celebrity “roasts.” These are examples why, in the history of comedy, Dean Martin matters.

Finally, here’s Dom DeLuise and Orson Welles on The Dean Martin Show, doing a sketch that was originally written by Marty Feldman and Barry Took for At Last, The 1948 Show for the BBC, but was not used until a later series called It’s Marty.

This week we go back to April, 2013 for Radio Free Charleston 183, “Defenders Of Bulletman Shirt,” with music from Albert Perrone, Saprogen and Radio Cult plus two trailers for local movies that were shown at the Keith-Albee Theater about a week after this show debuted. Host segments for this episode were shot at TriCon, a large comic book convention that used to be held in Huntington.

Our first trailer is for Ladybeard, an Apartment 2B Production, directed by David Smith, and featuring a cameo by yours truly.  The other trailer is for “Trace Around Your Heart” Seth Martin and Friends and Ian Nolte created a stirring motion picture, sort of “A Star Is Born” with country music…and puppets.

In the host segments, you’ll see all sorts of sights and sounds of TriCon, including your PopCulteer cavorting with local convention guests, Jason Pell and the late Daniel Boyd. It’s a little bittersweet because Danny and TriCon are no longer with us.

You can read the full production notes and see more photos from TriCon HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 17, 2026

As I may have mentioned recently in this blog, I need to play catch-up with some comics, books and toy reviews in order to keep PopCult sufficiently poppity and cultural.

Today we’re going to do comics.

I’ve got two great comics to tell you about that you can buy now, and two comic book Kickstarter campaigns to recommend. So let’s dive in…

Thrill Seeker Comics Anthology #2
by Scott McCullar and various
Bandito Entertainment
$9.99

This 40-page giant anthology collect’s Scott McCullar’s terrific pulp-inflected super-hero homage comics, with new material combined with some long-out-of-print earlier works. This is a retro-comics treat, loaded with great art, clever writing, and loads of pop-culture references. You never know when Doors lyrics or slightly-disguised Cobra Troopers will pop up.

The writing is clever and fun, and the artwork is great. The main character is The Yellowjacket, a retro-reboot of a public domain, Golden Age character (coincidentally, the star of the very first Golden Age comic book I ever owned a lifetime or two ago). In a fun twist, this Yellowjacket, rather than wearing tights like his 1940s incarnation, is dressed more like the original Sandman or Crimson Avenger, sort of a super-detective in a trenchcoat. Both of those characters were rebooted back in the 1940s to be more like their tights-wearing colleagues.

Trust me, comic book nerds will understand what I’m saying there.

The supporting cast is made up of various other superheroes, some very recognizable as homages to other heroes of the past, others more original creations. Some of the villainous henchmen will be very familiar to fans of Real American Heroes.

This book is just a load of fun and it can be ordered directly from Scott at his website, where you can also read his blog, pick up the first issue of Thrill Seekers Comics Anthology and get a preview of his upcoming publications, including his take on the now-public-domain adventures of Popeye and further installments of Thrill Seeker Comics.

We go to the blurb, to wrap this up:

THRILL SEEKER COMICS ANTHOLOGY™ #2 featuring YELLOW JACKET: MAN OF MYSTERY™, THE MIGHTIEST EMERALD MANTIS™, THE BOLD BOWMAN: ROBIN HOOD™ and The Dame Detective MS. TITTENHURST: FINDER OF LOST THINGS™ by Scott McCullar (GREEN ARROW SECRET FILES & ORIGINS #1). An anthology series with a shared universe.

SAINT MOSES THE STRONG
by Philip Kosloski (Writer), Grayson Bowling, Clareanne Ysmael (Artist)
Voyage Comics
$7.99

Okay, I have to be honest here. I only ordered this book because I know the penciller. Grayson Bowling and his father, Lee, are regulars at The Marx Toy Show, so I’ve known them for more than fifteen years. I remember Grayson as a kid, working with his dad to create custom Marx-style playsets and figures, and I follow him on Instagram where I’ve enjoyed watching him develop into an excellent classic comic-book style artist.

So while I was eager to see Grayson’s artwork in print, I didn’t really know what else to expect from the comic book.

I was very pleasantly surprised. In addition to Grayson’s layouts and pencils, which reminded me of the work of Russ Heath, one of the all-time great comic artists, I was really impressed by the writing as well as the inks and colors.

Saint Moses The Strong is a very Catholic comic book. It tells the story of a fifth-century saint, of whom I had very little previous knowledge. And this book works, not only as an inspring tale of repentence, forgiveness, redemption and strength, but also as a solid adventure tale.

And while it’s very religious, it’s not like a Jack T. Chick comic book. Chick comics are fun for all the wrong reasons. They read like Ed Wood dropped acid and woke up in a Baptist church, then decided to devote his life to what he thought he learned there.

Saint Moses, on the other hand, is a level-headed, respectful and non-didactic story that’s enlightening and educational, and leaves you wanting to learn more.

it’s a comic book about getting into heaven, not going to hell. That’s pretty refreshing in this day and age.

Plus the artwork is just spectacular.

You can order Saint Moses The Strong directly from Voyage Comics, who have a number of other interesting titles at their website.

It’s Fun To Kill People Volume 1 – A Dark Comedy Comic
By Anthony Stokes and Marco Leone
Kickstarter Campaign running another week

Taking a turn into a considerably less-Catholic direction, we have a collection of Anthony Stokes’ slapstick comedy terror comic, It’s Fun To Kill People. I’ve been a fan of Stokes since his debut series as a writer, Decay, and it’s wild to watch him shift gears and tackle multiple genre with equal excellence.

In It’s Fun To Kill People, imagine if Richie Rich, instead of having billionaires for parents, was the offspring of a couple of serial killers.

It may be hard to believe this…but hijinks ensue.

It’s Fun To Kill People Volume 1 is a 90-page Trade paperback written by Anthony D. Stokes, Illustrated by Marco Leone, Colored By Fabi Marques, Barlo Moriera, Alessandro Ruggiero, and Lettered By Stephen Kok.
In addition to Issues 1-3 there’s also a previously-unpublished Christmas Special.

You can find the Kickstarter Campaign HERE. If you laughed out loud at any part of A Clockwork Orange, then this is the comic book for you.

Red Ram: Toxic Suicide #2
by Paul Rashid and J.C. Grande
Kickstarter Campaign running 20 more days

We have another cool comic book Kickstarter campaign to tell you about, and like Thrill Seeker Comics Anthology, it’s a second issue of a comic book we told you about previously.

The Red Ram: Toxic Suicide is the brainchild of Charlestonian Paul Rashid, MD, a board-certified Psychiatrist, and an old buddy of your humble blogger going back over thrity years, to the days of Comic World. He’s created this comic book both to indulge his life-long love of comics, but also as a bit of an outreach to help make people more aware of mental health issues and erase some of the stigma of mental illness.

The Red Ram: Toxic Suicide #2 continues the story of Technology Titan RJ Ronaldson who, in his alter ego as The Red Ram, is at the end of his battle-damaged vigilante career. But before RJ can set down his mantle, he gets roped into one last war with his arch-nemesis.

The first issue (which you can get as an add-on reward to this campaign if you missed it first time around) introduced the characters and set the story into motion, and it’s going to be great to see what happens next.

You can kick in on Red Ram: Toxic Suicide #2 at THIS LINK. Rewards include the basic comic book in print or .pdf form, along with print variant covers and retail bundles, add-ons include the first issue and Paul’s loving tribute to a certain show about nothing, .

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Be sure to check PopCult every day for fresh content and all of our regular weekly features.

Today I’m going to take a little break from writing about pop culture to get a little personal.

Ten years ago today, I was officially diagnosed as having Myasthenia Gravis. I’d been silently suffering with it for at least eleven years prior to the diagnosis.  I wrote about it at the time HERE. Ten years on, Myasthenia Gravis has become a recurring character in this blog, more like the wacky neighbor in a sitcom than a chronic auto-immune disorder. I imagine some of my readers start rolling their eyes every time they see “Myasthenia” in a post.

In the decade since my diagnosis, the disease hasn’t much changed. I still have good days and bad days, but my bad days are generally better than my best days were before I began treatment. I still have trouble operating a touch-screen, which is why I rarely text. I am fortunate that I have a very mild case of MG, but one of the trade-offs is that I don’t seem to be anywhere close to being in remission.

And I’m okay with that.

For the first year-and-a-half I was treated with Prednisone, which I hated. I have since switched to a much better medicine and it looks like I’m not having any bad side effects from that.

I am actually in pretty good health for someone my age. Aside from the MG, I don’t have any major problems. My cholesterol is 133. I’m getting closer to a healthy weight. My blood pressure is fine. Following cataract surgery several years ago, my eyesight has improved to 20/20, but I still wear glasses to correct some lingering double-vision from MG. All-in-all, things are swell.

I have had some major life-changes. I used to go out four or five nights a week to record bands for the Radio Free Charleston video show. I can’t do that anymore. The meds that I take usually make me too drowsy to function after 10 PM.

When I do have the energy to get out and do things, I’m really enjoying travelling with my wonderful wife, Mel Larch. We have been together for 36 years, but for more than the first two-thirds of that time I was tied up with caregiver duties and simply could not travel.

Mel and Rudy at The ROQ

For the last ten years or so, we’ve been making up for lost time. Now we regularly go to Chicago, New York, Lexington, Louisville and other favorite cities. When possible, I try to share those trips with my readers with photo essays or video.

I mean, we’re planning a trip to the new Buc-ee’s in Dayton in a few weeks. It’s the type of worldly, sophisticated content that PopCult readers have come to expect.

I haven’t completely forsaken the local scene. In recent weeks I’ve made it out to The West Virginia Punk Rock Flea Market in Huntington, Ann Magnuson’s closing night talk at the Warhol exhibit at the Clay Center and just last Saturday, an incredible show by Lady D at The Roq, below the Quarrier Diner.

I’m hoping to do more stuff like that, now that things are normalizing a bit and some local music events are starting at earlier times.

I really want to go see Factory Reset, the resident Improv troupe for The Alban Arts Center, but they have an uncanny knack for scheduling shows when we’re out of town.

Bringing this back to how MG has affected PopCult (aside from being my go-to excuse when I’m not happy with a piece I do for Monday Morning Art), It hasn’t really done too much besides making it easier to decide to take RFC back to being mostly a radio show.

In the coming weeks in this blog you can expect more comics, books and toy reviews. We’ll still be providing new content on our sister internet radio station, The AIR. Radio Free Charleston will continue as a radio show, but…for the first time since 2015, we are planning to do more than one episode of the video version of the show this year.

And if we pull off all of the trips we have planned, you can at least expect photo essays of the new Buc-ee’s, a massive toy store, a wild grocery store/amusement park, The Warhol Museum, a really cool video store, The Marx Toy Show, The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, The KrugerFest Action Figure Show, The Hershey Action Figure and Toy Show, plus a Christkindl Market or two.

Basically, ten years into officially having MG, not much has changed. I’m still PopCulting. I’m not planning on that changing any time soon. It doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with MG, but last year readership of PopCult more than doubled over 2024, and the first three months of this year have already exceeded the readership for all of  2025. We’ve actually more than tripled our annual readership since we left The Charleston Gazette-Mail.  And I’m not even trying to promote it that hard.

I dont think all of that can be attributed to AI bots scraping this blog for content. There have to be some new readers out there…right?

Thanks for reading…even you AI bots.

While on Prednisone, I constantly imagined that I was being followed by giant food.

Record Store Day and ArtWalk in Charleston both happen this week, but we have even more cool STUFF TO DO all over and just beyond the borders of the state, to tell you about, noted as briefly as possible.  This ought to take you through the next week, folks.

Again, I’m just scratching the surface here. Please don’t think this is all we have to offer.

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, even if your promotional graphic uses cruddy AI art, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.

Record Store Day is a big event where record stores get special releases, mostly on vinyl, of new or reissued albums by major and independent artists, and if you are a music lover and collector, it’s a fun day when they offer the cool stuff you want. It happens again Saturday, and there are big events at Orbit’s Record Shop in Barboursville and Sullivan’s Records in Charleston, and those are our featured events this week…

We are 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.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM.  Many Sunday afternoons at 2 PM they also have live music. This weekend they have music from Sandy Sowell & Gerry Collyard on Friday and Ty McClanahan on Saturday. Sunday afternoon stop in for Ray + Jon.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing.

You might also find cool musical events at 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. Saturday you can catch Joslyn & The Sweet Compression, Holly Forbes and Emmy Davis, with the show kicking off at 7:30 PM.

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 illnesses 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. If somebody asks you to refrain, please respect their weishes and don’t be a jerk about it.

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 happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

Wednesday

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Tuesday is NEW RFC DAY on The AIR  and today it most certainly is again as we bring you a brand-new first hour of Radio Free Charleston combined with an episode of RFC Volume Four that hasn’t been heard in nine years. 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.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show with a killer first hour that opens and closes with Lady D.  Your humble blogger and his wife made it out to The Roq, underneath The Quarrier Diner, last Saturday and caught an amazing three-hour set by Lady D and Mi$$ion, and it was so incredible that I knew I’d have to open this week’s show with her music.

Our first hour also includes brand-new tracks from The Heavy Hitterrs, Corduroy Brown, Duck City Music, The Moon My Twin and Joe Jackson!

Because I have several routine, but time-consuming, medical things to do early this week, for our second and third hours I decided to reach into the archives and bring you a classic, two-hour, episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Four that premiered in May, 2016.  Here’s what I wrote about it then:

We bring you two hours of great local music, this week featuring debut tunes from Todd Burge, Timothy Truman and Under Surveillance, plus classic cuts from the RFC archives by Lady D, The Tom McGees, Out of Nowhere, Dr. Curmudgeon and more.

This episode of RFC Volume Four has not been heard since late, 2016.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page in the first hour…

RFC V5 266

hour one
Lady D “Karma Is A Bitch”
The Heavy Hitters “Strawberry Peppermint”
Aliza Hava “Let It Roar”
Corduroy Brown “Fourth Avenue (live)”
Stitch Jones and His Bionic Marines “Buddy, Brotha From A Different Motha”
Buni Muni “Moringa”
Duck City Music “Vivid”
Joe Jackson “The Face”
Deni Bonet “Why Not You”
Frank Zappa “Uncle Remus”
The Moon My Twin “Hope”
The Settlement “Questions”
Cult Canyon “Real Sublime”
Lady D “Somebody’s Gotta Move”

hour two
Tim Truman “The Ballad of Oscar Wilde”
Todd Burge “I Believe This,I Believe”
Ron Sowell “You Might Take It Right”
Happy Minor “Gypsy Queen”
Lady D “I Tripped”
Farnsworth “Already Written”
No Rain “Don’t Come Around”
The Tom McGees “The Choice”
Under Surveillance “Pushed Me To Far”
Scrap Iron Pickers “Strange Bytes”
Dr. Curmudgeon “My Demon Math Metal Tune Just Ate Your Artsy-Folksy Americana Song…Sorry”
Under The Radar “All Along The Watchtower”

hour three
Hybrid Soul Project “Get On Up”
Out Of Nowhere “What Was Lost”
Sheldon Vance “Best That I Can Do”
J Marinelli “Human Landmine”
Ghosts of Now “Alaska Looks Like Arizona”
Karma To Burn “Domino 2JDean”
InFormation “She’s Like Poison”
Government Cheese “Camping On Acid”
The Renfields “Ramones Zombie Massacre”
69 Fingers “GGG”
Mother Nang “Fuggin’”
David Synn “Space Gun”
Hydrogyn “Rejection”
Crack The Sky “Invaders From Mars”
Hellblinki “Zombie Jamboree”

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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM get ready for two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 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 Thursdays and Sundays.