PopCult

Normally we strive to bring you a new episode of Radio Free Charleston on Tuesdays on The AIR.  However, this week and next, we’re resorting to reruns.  This week your radio host is beset by time-consuming, but routine, medical tests.  Next week I will be enjoying a mini-vacation, which you will be able to read about in PopCult later next week.  The good news is that these are both great episodes, and each one includes an hour of cool surf music…and if that weren’t enough, when we return in two weeks, we will bring you ANOTHER hour of cool surf tunes to close out the show. 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.

This week’s encore RFC kicks off with two hours of our usual mix of local, independent and free-format music, and then our third hour presents a mixtape of Surf Rock. This little gem is from October, 2024.

We open with a tune from Sgt. Van, and we continue with then-new music from Brian Diller, Matt Mullins & The Bringdowns, Emmaline, The Cure, Mega Ran, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates and more.

We also have a track from Maxx McGathey, icourtesy of our Chicago pipeline.

Our third hour is something I’d been planning to do for some time, but just did get around to doing. It’s a mixtape of Surf Rock. We feature new Surf bands, classic bands and a few ringers who are surfing in disguise. You’ll our second surf showcase next week, and an all-new surf showcase in our third hour the week after that.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show where possible…

RFC V5 197

hour one
Sgt. Van and The Highway Dogs “Flies On Mars”
Brian Diller “Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “Rust”
Emmaline ‘Indiana Skies”
Corduroy Brown “Watercolors”
The Cure “Alone”
Maxx McGathey “The Veil Is Thinnest”
Mega Ran “They Don’t Make Em Like They Used To”
Rat Ship “Heads & Houses”
Kanga  “Rehab”
David Synn “Purple Eclipse”
Brian Tyler “More Than Meets The Eye”
Pallas “The Executioner (rough mix)”

hour two
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Manic (live)”
Alison Moyet “Such Small Ale”
Billy Strings “Stratosphere Blues/I Believe In You”
John Radcliff “We All Want To Shout”
John Lennon “Out The Blue (outtake)”
Ginger Wixx “Arcade”
Andy Prieboy“Anyone But You”
Mediogres “Diet of Worms”
Government Cheese “Just The Beginning of the Day”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “Love You”
Bottle and Bride “Brighter”
Nixon Black “The Devil (live)”
The Settlement “Midnight Train”

hour three
Surf Rock Mixtape
The Surfrajettes “Easy As Pie”
Guitarmy of One “Sea Legs Diamond”
Test Subject 17 “Operation x5000”
The Wipeouters “Ravin’ Surf”
The Tentakills “Dog-Days”
The Shadows “Apache”
Gary Hoey “Shake & Stomp Pt II”
The Marketts “Out of Limits”
The Madeira “Witch Doctor”
The Routes  “Tour De France”
The Ventures “Walk, Don’t Run”
The Fellows “Riding Cossack”
The Humans “Pipeline”
The Esquires “Black Night”
The Challengers “K-39”
The Lively Ones “Surf Rider”
Dick Dale “Miserlou”
Duane Eddy & Ravi Shankar “The Trembler”
The Chantays “Crystal T”

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.

No, it’s not a sports painting. This is not about the NFL.  This week’s art is the third week in a row where I did a detailed pencil sketch, smudged it with tissue, then went back over it with markers.

This time, instead of a city scene, I applied this technique to depict a view of a wildlife statue that’s outside of the Cabela’s in Wheeling.

Or at least it was fifteen years ago, when I took the photo that inspired this piece. I omitted the cars and power lines, and just focused on the shapes of the animals involved in the bronze fracas.

This was an alternate angle of the statue, which was the subject of a digital painting way back when. This one, I think, didn’t come out as good as the drawings of buildings that appeared in this space over the last two weeks, so I may go back to color paints next time. Some weeks the fingers just don’t cooperate as much as they do on a good day.

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.

Today’s post is a refurbished version of a post from more than fifteen years ago. Due to coding changes and glitches from porting the blog to a new location and YouTube messing with stuff that worked perfectly well, the original post is sorta useless. So here it is again, all fixed and working and shined up a bit. 

Dinosaurs are pretty freakin’ cool.  Dinsoaurs fighting other dinosaurs, people or even giant monkeys are even more cool.  This world needs way more cool stuff right now, so here’s a collection of video clips of dinosaurs in combat. That’s it above.  Click to watch it, then sit back and bask in the coolness that is dinosaur fights!

This week in our chronological presentation of our video episodes of Radio Free Charleston, we shockingly come across an episode that has NEVER BEEN FEATURED AS AN RFC FLASHBACK!

And it’s a killer episode, too.

From June, 2013, we have episode 185 of Radio Free Charleston, “Neverending Fight Shirt.”  This show is an absolute gem, with music from North Carolina’s Crystal Bright & The Silver Hands and Canada’s Volt 9000. We recorded Crystal at The Empty Glass, while Volt 9000 appear via an animated music video produced by my brother, and RFC Big Shot, Frank Panucci.

Frank also provides an additional animated short, as well as the short film, Cyclops Dance Party.

This was our first show off after a minor-explosion-induced production break, and it is, I think, one of our finest episodes.

My mind is a little blown by the fact that I’ve never re-run this episode of the video show before. It’s been almost thirteen years, and we run The RFC Flashback every Saturday.  I’m wondering how many more of our video shows have been languishing in the archives. I guess we’ll find out, every Saturday, going forward.

If you want to see the detailed production notes for the original publication of this show, go HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 1, 2026

Time flies when you’re having fun! It’s a big day for fans of Disco Music today on The AIR.

Mel’s show, MIRRORBALL, has now lasted pretty much as long as the classic era of Disco music did. Six years ago today, my wife, Mel Larch’s showcase of Disco Music, MIRRORBALL, made its debut on The AIR (PopCult’s sister internet radio station), and our listeners have been dancing like crazy ever since.

It’s been an amazing journey getting here with what we thought was just a throwaway music special that nobody would listen to. We were wrong, and here we are celebrating with thousands of listeners and a worldwide audience. It was during the late summer of 2019 when Mr. and Mrs. PopCulteer were careening through Eastern Pennsylvania eating chocolate and listening to The Rialto Report podcast about Andrea True, that my lovely wife, Mel, remarked on how much she loved classic Disco music, and we began to talk about doing a Disco show for The AIR. The show didn’t happen until the pandemic shut everything down and gave us more free time, and the first MIRRORBALL debuted as an AIR Music Special on May 1, 2020.

This is the first time that the anniversary also landed on Friday, so we’re doing it up big.  To mark the occasion of this sixth anniverary, The AIR will run a marathon of Mel’s hand-picked favorite episodes beginning Friday at 3 PM.  That’s right after a very “special” episode of the show premiere’s in the show’s regular timeslot.  The marathon will run until Midnight, Saturday night, and our normal Saturday marathon of the week’s new music specialty shows on The AIR will move to Sunday, for one week only.

You can celebrate May Day with a bang Friday afternoon as our radio station brings you classic Disco perofrmed live in concert on The AIR. Tune in as we serve up a new episode of MIRRORBALL right before we launch into a 33-hour marathon.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these 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 major Disco artists performing live on Burt Sugarman’s late-night NBC program, The Midnight Special. While the Midnight Special was not soley devoted to Disco Music, they certainly had more than their fair share. In fact, while assembling this show, I noticed that could easily revisit this topic again in the future.

You will hear unique performances by The Ohio Players, The Bee Gees, KC & The Sunshine Band, Thelma Houston, Labelle, Barry White and more.  The show wraps up with an epic, nine-minute live performance by Donna Summer, with a wild arrangement of “Love To Love You Baby.” If you were around in the 1970s, this will punch a lot of nostalgia buttons. If you won’t, well kids, this is how things were back when the entire entertainment industry was doing cocaine.

Just check out this playlist…

MIRRORBALL 126

The Midnight Special Special

The Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster”
KC & The Sunshine Band “Get Down Tonight”
Thelma Houston “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
The Bee Gees “Jive Talkin'”
Kool and the Gang “Spirit of the Boogie”
George McCrae “Rock Your Baby”
ABBA “Dancing Queen”
Earth Wind and Fire “Shining Star”
Labelle “Lady Marmalade”
Barry White “You Are The First, The Last, My Everything”
Disco Tex and the Sex O Lettes “Get Dancin'”
Donna Summer “Love To Love You Baby”

My Melanie

When we launched MIRRORBALL, Mel was concerned that we’d run out of classic Disco-era music, but the truth is, after digging in the club vaults for five years, there is no end to the countless grooves that we can bring you. For a show that was inspired by a podcast about vintage porn and was never intended to be an ongoing series, to be still going strong after six years is quite an achievement.

You will still be able to tune in to The AIR for new episodes of MIRRORBALL, Fridays at 2 PM for the foreseeable future.

The really wild, or ironic, or just remarkably amusing, thing about MIRRORBALL is that I’m producing the show.  It’s Mel’s baby, and she directs the themes and tone, but I’m the one who has to pick the music, handle the segues and write Mel’s script. She’s got some kind of day job or something that gets in the way.

Had you told me in the late 1970s that I would realize my dream of being a radio deejay, I would have been thrilled. But if you informed me that among my duties I’d be producing a Disco music show, and producing and hosting a Swing Music show, I would’ve thought you were high.

That was right when I was just getting into music, and my musical tastes were in their infancy. I was devouring a steady diet of Beatles, Zappa, Prog and New Wave, and held Jazz and Disco in utter contempt. It took a few years for my ears to mature and my tastes to evolve to the point where, by the mid 1980s I was a Big Band Music nerd, and a few years after that, working as an oldies deejay at WVNS, I realized how well-crafted a lot of the Disco hits were.

I’m sort of proof that you can have room in your musical diet for John Lennon, Keith Emerson and Mark Motherbaugh, and also appreciate Nigel Rodgers, Arif Mardin and Jellybean Benetiz.

Six years in, and The MIRRORBALL is still spinning.

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a four-hour mini-marathon on Friday nights most weeks.

And that is our very danceable PopCulteer for this week. Check back for fresh content every day, plus all our regular features. Don’t forget, you can listen to MIRRORBALL all night Friday and all day Saturday this week.

As we plummet headlong into the month of May, let us take pause momentarily as 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.  We’re going to have a short list this week thanks to some technical issues here at PopCult, and also my lack of willingness to promote animal cruelty.

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 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 Isiac McAllister on Friday and Monty & Fede on Saturday. Sunday afternoon Jordan Dyer performs.

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

Wednesday afternoon, The AIR brings you new installments of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, and they are both fine gems of expertly-crafted internet radio.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you an hour of great Beatles music, with new  tracks from Paul and Ringo, solo rarities from George, John and the group, plus a mini-mixtape of great covers of Bealtes classics by some major artists.

Paul’s new song is the lead single from his upcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, while Ringo graces us with a cut from his just-released new album, Long, Long Road.

From George we get the rare cut, “Going Down To Golder’s Green, while John gives us the demo recording of “Now and Then.”  We then reconvene the boys for the unedited version of “It’s All Too Much” before diving into the covers.

Just check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 131

Paul McCartney “Days We Left Behind”
Ringo Starr “My Baby Don’t Want Nothing”
George Harrison “Going Down To Golder’s Green”
John Lennon “Now And Then (demo)”
The Beatles “It’s All Too Much”
Bruce Springsteen and Axl Rose “Come Together”
Billy Preston “I’ve Got A Feeling”
Vanilla Fudge “Eleanor Rigby”
The Sunshine Company “Rain”
Ted Neely “Mother”
Peter Frampton “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
The Mirage “Tomorrow Never Knows”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon. A two-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes runs every Monday evening, starting at 11 PM.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch celebrates Spring with a mixtape of showtunes devoted to the time after the Vernal Equinox.

This collection of tunes runs the gamut from obscure off-Broadway shows to timeless classics to ancient tunes from the last 100 years of musical theatre.

Just check out the playlist…

Curtain Call 166

“After All, It’s Spring” from Seventeen
“Spring” from Bare
“I Hate The Spring” from One For The Money
“True Spring” from Bonanza Bound
“I Feel So Much Spring” from A New Brain
“Younger Than Springtime” from South Pacific
“It Might As Well Be Spring” from State Fair
“Beer and Flowers” from Wildflowers
“Flowers” from Hadestown
“Six Months Out Of Every Year” from Damn Yankees
“Spring Is Here” from I Married An angel
“Spring, Spring, Spring: from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
“Spring In My Heart” from First Love
“Suddenly It’s Spring” from Lady In the Dark
“Spread A Little Sunshine” from Pippin
“Springtime For Hitler” from The Producers

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A two-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes can be heard Monday evening starting at 9 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  and today we prove it with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston AND a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!  Both of these shows were recorded very late Monday/Early Tuesday because the leaf blower fairy decided to grace my neighborhood with its presence. 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.

 This week we open with a full hour of the best local aind independent music that we can get our grubby little fingers on, and then we present two nearly ten-year-old episodes of Radio Free Charleston Voume Four that are filled to the brim with killer local and regional artists.

But back to that first hour…we open with a new release that was recorded back in the 1980s by The Tunesmiths, one of the favored bands from the original broadcast incarnation of RFC. Mark Beckner and Mark Mingrone have remastered the original 4-track recordings and you can find them on Bandcamp. This is like finding lost treasure that had been buried for decades.

The rest of our first hour is loaded with new tunes from GRPPLING (a band that includes the wrestlers, The Motor City Machine Guns), Cricketman, Thee Levianthans, Jim Lange, Samuel S.C., The Holler Hounds and Ghoulbox.

Hours two and three, both from July, 2016, bring you local and regional music back from when we were all-local, and only an hour long.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 268

hour one
The Tunesmiths “Baby Can’t Be Trusted”
GRPPLNG “Hovering”
Cricketman “We Get Bigh”
Thee Leviathans “Enter the Spy Magician”
Jim Lange “Roger Zero G (And I Feel Fine)”
The Paranoid Style“DFL”
Samuel S.C. “Celestial”
The Settlement “Keeping Score”
The Moon My Twin “Tie Score”
David Synn “Sea of Tranquility”
Catherine Campbell “In My Room”
A Different Scene “Sounds”
Frenchy & The Punk “War On War”
The Holler Hounds “Cry Revolution”
Ghoulbox “Juju Bag”

hour two
Superfetch “Popcorn Time (Live)”
Jeff Ellis and 40 Days “South Charleston City Beat Blues”
Jonathan Mason “Ohio Is Killing Me”
Hybrid Soul Project “Hate On Me”
Radarhill & Nick Weckman “Spider Respects Nothing”
HARRAH “Pay The Piper”
Farnsworth “Everything Must Go”
Under Surveillance “99 Reasons”
Todd Burge “Jesus Night Light (Live)”
Michael Cerveris “Tenth Grade”
Larry Groce “When The Mist Clears Away”
The Company Stores “Dear Universe”
Mark Wolfe “A Kinda Blues”

hour three
Jonathan Mason “We Can’t Fix This”
Jeff Ellis and 40 Days “Nightshift”
Todd Burge “The Longer”
Radarhill and Nick Weckman “Petitions”
Mother Nang “Land of the Free”
Radio Cult “Hungry Like The Wolf”
Billy Matheny “Don’t Feel Guilty”
Crack The Sky “Animal Skins”
Scooter Scudieri “Mother of God”
The Renfields “Last Man On Earth”
The Big Bad “Possession”
The Jasons “Stalk and Slash Summer”
The Nanker Phelge “Scream”
Qiet “Brush Brush”

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 a new edition of The Swing Shift. This special episode is devoted to the music of Tommy Dorsey and I don’t have a playlist because I’m typing this at 2 AM.

 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 view pulling into Union Station in Chicago in the dead of Winter. It’s inspired by photos I took last December when taking Amtrak on our way to the city of wind.

With last week’s drawing, I started out doing  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, and this week I decided to do it again, on purpose this time.

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 new 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.

At 2 PM, Nigel Pye brings us a bit a departure as I suggested Mr. Pye put together a show made of psychedelic tunes from the last decade, and he topped my ida by assembling a show that, save for the opening track, is entirely comprised of trippy music released in the past six months. The opener is from 2019, but The Claypool Lennon Delirium have a new album coming out in a few weeks too. Check out this mind-expanding playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 110

The Claypool Lennon Delirium “Blood And Rockets”
Ringo Starr “Choose Love”
They Might Be Giants “What You Get”
Jope Jackson “Made God Laugh”
U2 “Easter parade”
Suzi Quatro “Choose Yourself”
Flea “A Plea”
Gorillaz “The Mountain”
Shardik “Into The Mouth of the Great Nothing”
The Protomen “The Good Doctor Pt. 2”
The Dream Machine “Night Owls”

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.

At 3 PM, Herman Linte brings you a two-hour mixtape of recordings by the band, YES, after the departure of their original lead singer, Jon Anderson. You will hear the voices of Jon Davison, Benoit David and Trever Horn, and the show kicks off with a track from the latest album by YES, which is due out in June.

PROGNOSIS 137

YES post-Anderson

“Aurora”
“Into The Storm”
“Fly From Here (complete, original)”
“One Second Is Enough”
“Subway Walls”
“The Gift Of Love”
“Hour of Need”
“Living Island”
“Sister Sleeping Soul”
“The Game”
“The Man You Always Wanted Me To Be (demo)”
“Words On A page”
“The Western Edge”
“Believe Again”
“All Connected”

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.

Our video tonight is a compilation of the first 38 entries in the skibidi toilet series.

Skibidi. It’s been one of the biggest things in pop culture the last couple of years.

If you haven’t seen Skibidi, you might be wondering, “What the hell is that?”

If you have seen Skibidi, chances are you might still be wondering, “What the hell is that?”

Well, skibidi toilet (they do it all in lower case) is a series of many, many very short video clips created by Alexey Gerasimov, a self-taught animator living in post-Soviet Georgia. He created these clips using videogame design software and unlicensed music and the end result is clunky and charming while also being hilarious and deeply disturbing. He started posting these to his YouTube channel a little over three years ago, and they have captured the imagination of the under-twenty crowd.

Basically, toilets roll into odd situations, a human head pops out doing some scat rapping (literally and figuratively) and mayhem ensues. Over time in the series, humans with cameras and speakers for heads show up to do battle with them. Eventually, society collapses amid the warfare.

On the surface, it’s just a new internet meme, a “Hamster Dance” for a sufficiently devolved generation. The shock is when you watch them in bulk.

While Gerasimov is amusingly inept as an animator, it turns out that he is a master storyteller. When viewed together, skibidi toilet is a wild geopolitical thriller that manages, with little in the way of dialogue, to raise questions and make startling observations about our current surveillance society and the implications of individuals vs. groupthink and governments. This is far more coherent than you might expect, and when you watch them all together, it’s hard to turn away. There are genuinely effective jump scares and horrific images buried among the sheer absurdity of the premise.  And the political themes parodied within are scarily astute.

Seriously, the deep stuff is a more subtle allegory than Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but just as striking. What seems to be a goofy meme about heads popping out of toilets and singing is actually a very strong political work

Of course, it’s the toilets with heads popping out that made it such a huge phenomenon, with major merchandising and toy deals, and talk of a feature film.

But now, watch the clip above, and stick your head in the skibidi toilet. You might be surprised what you fish out.