PopCult

This week we bring you a really cool episode of Radio Free Charleston from August, 2009. Despite debuting in the summer, it has a huge element of April Fool’s Day in it. “Kirby Captain America Shirt” is loaded with great stuff. Our 78th episode included music by Tofujitsu and Deni Bonet, plus brilliant animation by Nina Paley.

The April Foolish part of the show is the fact that the host segments, in which I claim to be on Charleston’s West Side, were actually shot in Pittsburgh. Although many people thought that this was a sly comment on the number of movies set in West Virginia that are actually filmed elsewhere, the truth is that we shot these during a last-minute surprise birthday week trip to visit my sister who lives in the Pittsburgh area. If we hadn’t shot our host segments while we were up there, the show would have been delayed.

That wasn’t really an option. Deni Bonet was included on the show to promote an appearance at the late, lamented LiveMix Studio, and delaying the show would have meant that the show and the accompanying notes in the Charleston Gazette would have hit after her performance. So we sort of had to multi-task and turn a quick fun trip into a host segment shoot.

Note that, next week we have to jump ahead two shows because episodes 79 and 80 are currently missing in action. One of these days we will find and restore those missing gems to the online line-up.

Original production notes are HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 26, 2024

Your PopCulteer is hitting the road for a quick trip this weekend, and if you behave yourselves I may come back with some news and photos and stuff. In the meantime, we have a very special episode of MIRRORBALL and other radio notes to tell you about.

This week, as we prepare for a big-deal Fourth Anniversary/100th Episode of The AIR’s Disco Showcase next week, we have one more new episode of MIRRORBALL debuting Friday afternoon 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.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch goes back to ground zero and explores the Disco scene of 1975 that inspired the movie, Saturday Night Fever.

It was 1974 and 75 when writer Nik Cohn investigated the discotheque scene in Brooklyn for New York Magazine. His article, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” was published in July, 1976, made national news as a human interest story and was later turned into the movie, Saturday Night Fever. Cohn later claimed to have fabricated the entire article, but he did provide detailed notes at the time, and may have just been saying that to fend off any lawsuits from the people mentioned in the piece.

The importance of this article cannot be denied.  In 1998 The New York Times, in a profile of Cohn, wrote:

Without Cohn’s original story, it’s possible that disco would be a dimly remembered fad from the days of the Ford administration: no Bee Gees megahits, no Travolta superstardom, no nostalgic polyester parties for decades ever after. Barry Gibb reportedly once said to Cohn, “It’s all your bloody fault, isn’t it?” He may have been right.

In this week’s MIRRORBALL you’ll find sixty minutes of the records that Nik Cohn mentioned in his notes for the article. This formed a playlist that was copied in clubs worldwide as Disco became a thing and made the leap from the dimly lit dancehall dens of the day to a multi-million-dollar industry that took the underground Gay and Black club scene into the mainstream and made “Disco” a household name.

Back then, this was just the most danceable Soul and R&B available, but the iconic elements that became Disco are all present: The strings, the backing vocals, the postive lyrics and most of all, the beat. These are the quintessential songs that “have a good beat that you can dance to.”

Mel wanted to take a dip back into the origins of Disco as she prepares for her 100th episode, which will premiere next Wednesday, and kick off a four-plus day marathon of every episode of MIRRORBALL on The AIR.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 099

Blue Magic “Welcome To The Club”
The Major Harris Boogie Blues Band “Each Morning I Wake Up”
Faith, Hope & Charity “Mellow Man”
Ecstasy, Passion & Pain “Good Things Don’t Last Forever”
Jimmy Ruffin “Tell Me What You Want”
Sons Of Robin Stone “Got To Get You Back”
Satyr “Free And Easy”
Richard ‘popcorn’ Wylie “Georgia’s After Hours”
Ivano Fossati “Night Of The Wolf (Tema Del Lupo)”
Gloria Scott “Just As Long As We’re Together (In My Life There Will Never Be Another)”
Eddie Kendricks “Date With The Rain”
The Intrepids “After You’ve Had Your Fling (Get Down To The Real Thing)”
Margie Joseph “I Can’t Move No Mountains”
Act 1 “It’s The Same Old Story”
Creative Source “You Can’t Hide Love”
John Gary Williams “The Whole Damn World Is Going Crazy”
Moment of Truth “Helplessly”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, speaking of anniversaries, we bring you an encore of an episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from 2022.  This was the show where Sydney Fileen celebrated six years of bringing you classic New Wave Music on The AIR by producing a new show that had every artist from her pilot episode, in the same exact order, only those artists were all represented by different songs.

In case you missed it the first time around, here’s the playlist…

Big Electric Cat 093

M “Neutron”
Bow Wow Wow “Mile High Club”
The Humans “Pipeline”
The Fixx “Stand Or Fall”
Adam Ant “Dog Eat Dog”
Kim Wilde “2-6-5-8-0”
The Buggles “I Love You Miss Robot”
The Human League “The Lebanon”
Romeo Void “A Girl In Trouble”
Split Enz “Shark Attack”
Yazoo “Situation”
Pete Shelley “Telephone Operator”
The Waitresses “Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful”
Elvis Costello “Secondary Modern”
Ultravox “The Ascent”
Depeche Mode “Wrong”
XTC “Meccanic Dancing”
Martha and the Muffins “This Is The Ice Age”
Missing Persons “Hello I Love You”
Trio “Hearts Are Trump”
Wall of Voodoo “Two Minutes To Lunch”
The Go Gos “We Got The Beat”
Animotion “Let Him Go”
Gary Numan “I Nearly Married A Human”
Orchestral Manuevers In The Dark “The Punishment of Luxury”
The Beat “Rough Rider”
ABC “4 Ever 2 Gether”
Heaven 17 “Who’ll Stop The Rain”
Thompson Twins “No Peace For The Wicked”

 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,  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day.

Today I have three great Kickstarter campaigns to recommend. I’ve already kicked in on all of them, and I think a lot of my readers will be interested too. Also note that two of these have not funded yet, and need to reach their goal by the end of April (early next week), so pay attention.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Kickstarter Alert here in PopCult. There are a few reasons for that. The main reason has been that campaigns have been getting shorter, and with many of them, by the time I have room to fit them into the blog, they’ve ended. That’s the case with some of these, but I’ve also been battling some outside forces that have kept me from writing this until now.

Frenchy & The Punk “Midnight Garden”

First up we have the latest album from Frenchy & The Punk.  This band should be familiar to fans of Radio Free Charleston, going all the way back to our video incarnation, where they first appeared in 2010. After releasing a very cool cover of Souixsie & The Banshee’s “City of Dust” six months ago, they are now campaigning to fund an all-new album, Midnight Garden. They are close to their goal, but they need a push to reach it by next Tuesday.

Here’s what they have to say about their history and the new album…

Frenchy and the Punk’s first album, Eternal Summer released in 2007, was an all-French stripped down indie cabaret type of record. We’ve written and recorded seven full-length albums and one EP since then and our sound and stage show continues to evolve. Our most recent release was Zen Ghost in 2022.

This new album we are kickstarting here, Midnight Garden, will be our eighth recording under the name, Frenchy and the Punk. It continues our evolution of sound bringing in even more dance rhythms, soaring vocals, undeniable melodic and catchy guitar lines and the signature Frenchy and the Punk eclectic and creative sound our fans love!

To kick in on the campaign and help Midnight Garden come to fruition, go HERE and select a reward level. They have a variety of cool rewards ranging from the new album to their back catalog on CD, vinyl digital and flash drive, Kickstarter exclusive apparel, and other really cool reward options. Act fast because this campaign ends next Tuesday.

Watch the video for “Hypnotize,” the lead single (which will open next week’s RFC) here…

Toe & So Long #2

I recommended the first issue of this delightully different comic book last year. At the time, I figured the best way to describe it was to quote liberally from the Kickstarter campaign. Let’s go back to what I posted then for the campaign for Toe & So Long #2…

“Toe and So Long” is an oddball/nonhuman sci-ish-fantasy buddy comic series that refuses to scream at you (or not be weird) about indecision, trauma, & addiction. Toe is a big gray guy, and So Long is a cat. I think I’ve cleared things up here for everyone. Oh, you want more? Ok, well, this whole thing got started by Jacob Michael Campbell, who wrote, designed, and is coloring (and will do the lettering) for this comic project. He’s been a professional graphic designer since age 16, as well as a general creative guy. Think music, illustration, and general ideasmithing. Well, Jake’s also got tremors! So he went out to find Alexis Vivasllo, the best comic book artist to translate chicken scratch into pure gold. We hope you’ll support this project and join us for a long time on the Plain of Doors with Toe & So Long!

The Kickstarter page went on to describe the story…

Toe, a hulking gray humanoid, and So Long, a fluffy black kitty, wander (endlessly) a Plain of Doors that lead to an infinite amount of scenarios for them to experience. It’s a routine that’s left this dynamic duo in an accepting haze. They share many memories from their adventures, but there’s a missing piece to every journey that they’ve always just…ignored. Soon, the pair will find a purpose for their searching impulses, starting a new journey along a path they thought they’d already traveled a dozen times before.

Issue #1 of Toe & So Long is a 34-page romp exploring the routine that the two find themselves in. Magnificent displays of interdimensional power and world-wielding entities abound, but a wash of malaise begs more questions with every otherworldly exhibition. Every answer introduces a new query.

I love this kind of bizarre existential fantasy and enjoyed the hell out of the first issue. Chances are, if you’re a fan of Adventure Time, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Rick and Morty, Doctor Who, The Forbidden Zone or Grumpy Cat you’ll probably find something to love about Toe & So Long.  The first issue did not disappoint, and Issue #2 is funding now, and needs to reach its goal by April 29.

There are a variety of reward options, starting at a mere five bucks for a digital edition, and if you missed the first issue, you have the chance to catch up now. This campaign is less than a hundred bucks from funding as I write this, but don’t let that damper your sense of urgency. Go fund it now, HERE.

Check out the video…

The Prisoner Action Figures Wave Two

Before 2023 there had never been officially-licensed action figures made of Patrick McGoohan’s classic Science Fiction/Spy epic, The Prisoner.  That changed when the rewards for the first batch of Prisoner figures finally showed up, more than two years after the campaign funded.  You can find a few of the leftovers from that wave now at Nacelle.  These are five-point figures in the popular 1/18 (four inch) scale, and the end result was very impressive.  Now they’re ready to do it again, with a much more impressive array of figures for The Prisoner Action Figures Wave Two.

Because of the expense of creating the first line of figures, they really only had one body type, which was used for Number 6 and with a different head sculpts, other characters.  This campaign was such a success that they are being more ambitious with the second wave, offering figures made with five body sculpts (including a female body) and several different headsculpts. In this wave you can get Leo McKern’s Number 2, as well as Angelo Muscat as his butler.  Fans of the show know that there were several different “Number 2s” (both male and female) during the run, each one seemingly replaced after they failed to break the will of Number 6.

The figures available in this wave include: Number 6 disguised as The General; Number 2 from Checkmate; Number 2 from Dance of The Dead; Number 50, The Watchmaker’s Daughter; The Taxi Driver from Arrival; a second edition of the sold-out Number 6 from Wave One; Number 6 from Chimes of Big Ben; a two-pack featuring Leo McKern’s Number 2 and his Butler; a two-pack featuring Number 2 and Number 100 from It’s Your Funeral; and several bundles and combinations of figures. If you go for the whole deal, you get an exclusive T-shirt.

This campaign ends on May 16, but it is already beyond being funded. You can kick in HERE, and watch the video below…

I do need to warn you that the Prisoner campaign uses BackerKit, a service that isn’t affiliated with Kickstarter, to charge shipping after the Kickstarter campaign ends and is ready to be fulfilled. I understand all of the reasons that folks running Kickstarter campaigns use BackerKit. It’s great for them. It apparently has all sorts of advantages in terms of organization and helps them manage their campaigns.  By not charging for shipping until the project is ready to go, the folks running the campaign don’t get surprised by any shipping rate hikes. It makes a lot of sense for folks to use BackerKit to manage their campaigns.

As a patron/customer, I despise BackerKit. I hate having to log into a separate service, and than have to provide my payment information to a third party, and deal with their clunky interface. Most of all, I hate that I have to enter that payment info and pay even more to get a project that I helped fund months (or years) earlier. It’d be a tiny bit less annoying if BackerKit accepted PayPal, like Kickstarter does. Having repeated that, I did indeed kick in on The Prisoner campaign because I really want these figures, and they won’t be delivered until June of next year, so it’s reasonable to wait and see what the shipping charges will be.

There is no “He” and if there was, he wouldn’t really be away.  I’m just running out of clever headlines as we launch into this week’s list of STUFF TO DO.  There is indeed plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State as we exit April and prepare to enter May and wonder how the year is passing by so quickly.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you 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.

Folklore Music is having their first anniversary show of their Mountain State Music series of concerts. For this special event they decided to go bigger than normal.  They will be featuring 6 WV bands/artists on the beautiful stage of the historic Capitol Theater in downtown Charleston, a location well familiar to longtime fans of Radio Free Charleston.  Attendees will get to see and hear Alabaster Boxer, Andrew Adkins, Brenna & The Boys, Hello June, Khegan McLane & The Raccoon Wranglers and Makenna Hope.

We have a fun new RFC today on The AIR.  Our new episode of  Radio Free Charleston features one hour of new stuff, followed by two hours of a vintage RFC International that will make fans of Swing Music very happy.  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 tons of replays throughout the week.

Today we open with one hour of our usual RFC blend of local, independent and world famous musical artists. We open the show with a new track, released just yesterday for Earth Day, by Chicago’s Ethan Sellers.  Ethan is the driving force behind the bands Tautologic, Logical Fleadh and Le Travaillant, all of whom you have heard on RFC. “She” is Ethan’s first release under his given name in over fifteen years, and it’s a treat to have it open the show.

We also feature new music from Massing, Unmanned, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, The Paranoid Style and another Chicago band, The Vaudevilens.  Vaudevileins’ new album,  Lights Out, was released to coincide with the solar eclipse and they will be celebrating the release with a show at ROXY in Lockport, IL on Sat, April 27. Written during the pandemic and in the wake of its aftermath, the songs on Lights Out explore darker themes, the sense of giving up, and inevitability—a reflection of 2020’s isolation and the era’s political and societal landscape.

Our first hour also includes new music from Ian Hunter, a couple of tribute album tracks, a classic from the Maestro, Chuck Biel, and a track from Mind Garage, who really, really ought to be in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Our second and third hours this week and next will bring back two episodes of Radio Free Charleston International that served as the pilot shows for The Swing Shift.  Since I could play anything I wanted on RFC International, I devoted two early episodes to Swing music, which has been a passion of mine for over forty years. These shows proved so popular that they inspired me to create The Swing Shift, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this week’s RFC, we bring back the first of the two pilots, which has not been heard since I launched The Swing Shift in July, 2016.

Links in the artist’s names in the first hour of our playlist below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music.

Check out the playlist.

Radio Free Charleston V5 173

hour one
Ethan Sellers “She”
Douglas Imbrogno/GarageCow “Lights”
Massing “Frozen Blood (Rejuiced)”
Unmanned “Red Shirt Blues”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Shotgun”
The Paranoid Style “Bad Day For The Group Chat”
Vaudevileins “Killing Feelings”
Mind Garage “Doctor John”
Alan Davey, Paul Rudolph, Nik Turner, Adam Hamilton, Danny Faulkner “Epitaph”
Keith Richards “I’m Waiting For The Man”
Ian Hunter “This Ain’t Rock And Roll”
Split Enz “Ghost Girl”
Chuck Biel “Tears At Sunset”

hour two
Joe Jackson “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Aint Got That Swing”
Glen Gray “Casa Loma Stomp”
Louis Prima “Buona Sera”
Jools Holland & Kt Tunstall “Night & Day”
Royal Crown Revue “The Rise And Fall Of The Great Mondello”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Hey Now, Hey Now”
Oingo Boingo “Minnie The Moocher”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Jump Jive ‘n Wail”
Bonzo Dog Band “Tubas In The Moonlight”
Bill Haley & His Comets “Rock This Joint”
Raymond Scott “The Toy Trumpet
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Ding Dong Daddy of the D Car Line”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Put A Lid On It”
Pardon Me Boys “Stairway to Heaven”
Atomic Fireballs “The Man With The Hex”
Ella Fitzgerald “Air Mail Special”
Tom Jones “St. James Infirmary Blues”

hour three
Glenn Miller and the Air Force Band “St. Louis Blues March”
Ruth Brown “Lucky Lips”
Benny Goodman “Sing Sing Sing”
The New Morty Show “Enter Sandman”
Big Joe Turner “Boogie Woogie Country Girl”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Honky Tonk Train Blues”
Ronnie Lane and Pete Townsend “Catmelody”
The Clash “Look Here”
Fats Waller “Handful of Keys”
Cab Calloway “Do You Want To Jump, Children”
Eartha Kitt “Ain’t Misbehavin’”
Der Dritte Raum “Swing Bop”
Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grapelli “Topsy”

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,  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 we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift since we have two bonus hours on RFC, I thought it might be overkill to crank out a whole new episode this week. The Swing Shift will return with a new show in two weeks.

 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.

It’s been a while since I’ve whined about having Myasthenia Gravis in this space, so how about I start out talking about that. I had a flare-up last week, spurred by the heat we endured for a few days, and by Friday I was so wiped out that I had to miss the memorial concert for Kai Haynes. We actually drove there, but I was feeling worse on the way up, and by the time we got there, there was little parking close by, and the walk was too much of a challenge, so we just came home.

Back home, I picked up a piece of art that I’d just barely started. It was a rough pencil sketch on watercolor paper based on several electrical power stations that I saw by the railroad tracks the last time we rode Amtrak.  The original plan was to try to do an Edward Hopper-inspired rendition of these giant industrial collections of framework, wire and transformers.

But my hands weren’t up to that. Friday night I painted a rough outline of what I wanted using some mostly-spent watercolor brush pens. The result looked sort of okay, but was clearly unfinished. Saturday morning and evening, I worked on it further, this time dipping the now-empty brush pens in Winsor-Newton ink, and augmenting that with some fine line Sharpies.

Because my fingers were fairly useless and my pen control was…not very controlled, I decided to take a break for a couple of hours. When I came back to finish it…it looked like it does now. I didn’t think it need any more.

Honestly, it looks better than it has any right to. I think I like the way it came out more than I would have if I’d been able to stick to the original plan. It doesn’t really look much like Hopper at all. I might have to revisit this style the next time my MG flares up.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a recent 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. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of Gilda Radner’s live show on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of Beatles Blast. I figure, you can’t go wrong with The Beatles, so there you go.

This week we are handing over Sunday Evening Video to our friend and former editor (and the instigator of this blog), Douglas Imbrogno. Doug and AmpMediaProject.com have created the lovely video you see above, and here’s an excerpt of what he writes of the story behind it…

Rebecca Skeen-Webb was a prolific songwriter, sweet friend and a dear musical compatriot of mine. After many hitches, open mics, and numerous rehearsals, we began playing out together as singer-songwriters at the latter end of the 20th century. We bolstered each other’s courage in a convergence of shared tunes, harmonic kismet and live performance. We learned by, well … by performing. It was a thrilling education and significant joy. Her song “Lights” remains one of my favorites, so much so that I recorded it and featured in on my first album after she was gone. Today, I am debuting a handmade music video version of the tune, in honor of this being her birthday month, although she has been gone from us a long while, now.

Doug goes on to tell about his musical partnership with Skeen-Webb, and you can read the whole story and hear her own rendition of the song HERE.

For more music and cultural content from Douglas John Imbrogno, it’s free to subscribe to his substack at: https://thestoryisthething.substack.com and you can read (and see and hear) more of his work at TheStoryIsTheThing website.

This is the first episode of Radio Free Charleston that was produced and posted independently of The Charleston Gazette. When it first went live in August, 2009, it was posted directly to MySpace. Unfortunately, posting video to MySpace turned out to be a more temporary situation than anybody thought, and so this episode was MIA for a few years until I could remaster it and upload it to YouTube about ten years ago.

This RFC extravaganza features music by two bands who are no longer with us, Universes and OVADA. We captured both bands at The Empty Glass, and we also toss in a snippet of The Contemporary Youth Arts Company’s 2008 production, Jack The Ripper, featuring Ryan Hardiman, Tanya Dillon-Page and Alicia Lewis.

Our title shirt was from the band, Joy Division. Our location was on the East End of Charleston, and our “Fake Rudy” at the end was the one I was asked not to use when the show was hosted on the Gazette servers. The original production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 19, 2024

Bring your dancing shoes! The AIR is going four decades in the past for a dance party on our music specialty shows Friday afternoon.

When the world looks bleak, that’s when it’s time to dance, so this week’s PopCulteer will fire up the lighted dancefloor as we bring you the playlists for today’s beat-filled new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, 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.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour to intricately curated classics of the late Disco era, post-1980.

Every song on this week’s show is making its MIRRORBALL debut, which is getting really tricky to pull off as Mel prepares to hit her 100th episode, which will coincide with her fourth anniversary in just a couple of weeks. The show this week revisits the big club hits from the very early 1980s, when Disco had hit it’s commercial peak, but still had way more life in it than anybody seems to remember.Rumors of its demise had been greatly exagerrated.

It’s a cool collection of dance classics from the end of the Golden Age of Disco, and it’s part of three hours of 1980s Dance music debuting on The AIR Friday

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 098

Richie Havens “Going Back To My Roots”
Rose Royce “R.R Express”
Womack & Womack “Love Wars”
Hot Chocolate “Are You Getting Enough of What Makes You Happy”
Mass Production “Shanté”
Dee Dee Bridgewater “Lonely Disco Dancer”
Kleer “Get Tough”
Al Jarreau “Boogie Down”
Slave “Feel My Love”
Chic “Rebels Are We”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that coincidentally turned out to be the seventh Big Electric Cat mixtape of New Wave 12″ extended remixes.

Combined with MIRRORBALL, that makes three solid hours of 1980s dance music, so if you see folks approaching retirement age getting their boogie down, you know why.

This time Sydney decided to dig out some more bizarre mixes from some of the bigger names in New Wave, so you might recognize some of the songs, but not the way you’ll hear them here.

Check out the playlist (all extended remixes)…

BEC 115

Billy Idol “Cradle of Love”
Pretenders “Room Full of Mirrors”
The Alarm “Strength”
Timelords “Doctorin’ The Tardis”
Simple Minds “Sanctify Yourself”
Cyndi Lauper “Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”
Killing Joke “Wardance”
Big Audio Dynamite “Medicine Show”
The The “Infected”
The Vapors “Turning Japanese”
The Ramones “I Wanna Be Sedated”
Elvis Costello & The Attractions “Pump It Up”
Go-Go’s “Head Over Heels”
Fun Boy Three “Our Lips Are Sealed”
Style Council “My Ever Changing Moods”
Pete Shelley “Homosapien”
The Police “Walking On The Moon”

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,  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day.

Early this year we lost a legendary Charleston musician, Kai Haynes.

Kai musical accomplishments, from being a key part of the early Mountain Stage band to performing with too many local musical acts to list here, as well as his expertise in audiophile sound systems and his partnership in LiveMix Studio are only part of a life well-lived.

Kai was a great friend, a devoted father, a man who was extraordinarily kind and generous with his knowledge and just an overall quality human being. Kai was one of the three partners in LiveMix Studio, without whom the 2006 revival of Radio Free Charleston never would have happened. Kai appeared on several episodes, and ran camera on several early episodes of the video show.

Kai’s family is hosting a Celebration of Life memorial concert for Kai Haynes, on Friday April 19th at the Embassy Suites Ballroom in Charleston WV. They will celebrate  his life with one of his favorite passions, music.  Performing will be Bob Thompson Unit, Voodoo Katz and The New Old Souls…all bands that Kai performed with. This will be followed by an all-star jam.  Doors open at 7 PM. There will be snacks and a cash bar. There is a $15 suggested donation (proceeds to help with final expenses and music scholarship in Kai’s name).

Thanks to WTSQ for the graphic below. Mel and I are planning to attend, but I may not last too long into the evening. This week’s heat has caused a Mysthenia Gravis flare up. You can listen to Radio Free Charleston‘s tribute to Kai HERE.

Record store Day is happening this Saturday, and I’m sure that Sullivan’s Records and Orbits will be packed.  Keep those things in mind as launch into this week’s list of STUFF TO DO.  There’s plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State as we try to figure out what the weather will be for the next fifteen minutes.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you 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.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Sequoia Rose. Saturday That High Country Revival takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery, possibly all at once.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Thursday at 5:30 PM the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin makes the world a better place with music(details below).   Friday, Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Friday at 10 PM, The Great Indoors bring their pop/rock to the glass, with support from The Band Light.  Saturday at 10 PM its Outlaw Counry time with The Zakk Grandahl Band.

Please remember that the pandemic is still not entirely over yet. It’s a going concern with the ‘rona still lurking about. And now there are nasty seasonal allergies, falling shares of Truth Social stock, totally unhinged primary campaign ads, angry ballerinas in steel-toed boots and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

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

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order…