PopCult

This week STUFF TO DO is attempting to tell you about cool things happening all over this mountainous state and maybe a little bit beyond.

One reason for that is that, this weekend, your humble blogger and his lovely wife are heading to Wheeling, West Virginia for the second (official) KrugerFest, action figure and toy show, which will happen at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum.

Carrying on from 2024’s impromptu memorial show for Roberto Ligotti, and continuing in his memory, KrugerFest is, according to the private group page on Facebook, “A group of like-minded toy collector folks who buy/sell/trade vintage toys. A majority of us grew up with GI Joe (Hasbro), Worlds Greatest Superheroes (Mego), and Star Wars (Kenner). There’s a niche of these folks who’ve been action figure customizers for decades. This is an intimate event – not a huge convention. Please be prepared to gain friendships, not a college tuition yielded from sales.” You can read about the Friends of ‘Berto show HERE and HERE.

This is going to be a bit of a bittersweet show for us, because last year was the last time we got to spend a decent amount of time with Lee Harrah, who sadly passed away last Thanksgiving. It’s not going to be the same without Lee, but I’m sure there will be lots of memories of Lee brought up. It’ll be like a memorial service for him at times. Last year I attended the show as a civilian, so I didn’t shoot photos or video. We wanted to spend as much time with Lee as possible.

This is going to be a fun, small, toy show, with several short-run exclusive MEGO-scale action figures and lots of folks who were part of the original MEGO MEET shows, which were held at Kruger Street for the first ten years, before becoming a nomadic show that moves around the country.  KrugerFest happens July 11 from 8 AM to 4 PM.  It’s a toy show open to public. Adult admission is $15.  Dealer events actually start today, but we won’t be there until Saturday when it’s open to the public.

And that is our feature event this week…

Here’s info about some of the figures…

Most weeks I try to tell you in detail about a few cool events all around the state and if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky, Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. I do ask that you send a graphic that includes the date, time and location, of the event, as well as the cost to attend. Also, I have limited space, and if I have to bump something, graphics using AI will likely be the first to go.

I should also mention that CharCon happens this weekend. While I have been neck-deep in nerd and geek culture my entire life, I have never managed even the slightest bit of interest in the associated gaming, so all I can do is give you THIS LINK and run a graphic…

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.

I also need to point out that Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

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. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

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.

Here’s a few select suggestions for STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston this weekend…

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Twenty years ago in PopCult, I ran the following post under the headline, “The Writer’s Best Friend”:

Two years ago, when I was hunkered down in my office bunker working on a particularly grueling deadline and being the main caregiver to my bedridden mother, I had a steady stream of folks knocking on my front door in a two-hour period. There were two kids selling fundraising crap, a seedy-looking guy asking if I wanted my lawn mowed, a hippy chick selling candles and incense, a Jehovah’s Witness, two ladies from a Baptist Church from Nitro (poaching potential parishioners from the Baptist Church two blocks away, I guess), and a young lady selling magazine subscriptions for Jesus who seemed frightened by the rabbit in my yard (the young lady, that is, Jesus fears no rabbits, or so I’m told).

“Does the bunny bite?” she asked me, her voice quivering. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the vicious attack bunny would scare off any other unwanted visitors, and the constant interruptions were driving me nuts, so I did something drastic. I composed a little note and posted it on my front door. I haven’t been bothered since.

Who know those people could read? The bit about not changing our beliefs because a stranger comes to our door was lifted from Mark Evanier, who writes a blog that I visit every day right here. Mark cracked me up yesterday with this suduko post. The solution is here.

Two years of peace, all because of one little piece of paper taped inside my screen door. Sometimes curmudgeonliness pays off.

*************

It’s been twenty years, and I have an update.

I still have this sign on my door. It’s not the original sign. I have to reprint it every few years because normal wear and tear obscures the printing, as does exposure to sunlight and the elements.

Plus, at least once somebody stole it.

I’m going to have to print a new copy of it soon, because aside from political candidates and churches who feel the need to leave their litter on my porch, it really works. With one exception.

When I print the new copy, I’m going to have to put a special notice at the bottom:

IF YOU’RE THAT MORON WHO RIDES AROUND ON A SCOOTER, ACTS REALLY HIGH, AND TRIES TO PULL THE SCAM WHERE YOU SAY YOU’RE FROM DIRECTV, PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK ON THIS DOOR…AGAIN.  I REALIZE YOU PROBABLY DO A LOT OF DRUGS AND DONT KEEP TRACK OF THINGS, BUT YOU SHOW UP EVERY FEW MONTHS AND DON’T SEEM TO REMEMBER THAT YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN HERE BEFORE. 

YOU HAVE. WE WON’T FALL FOR IT, AND THE COPS ARE ALREADY ON THE WAY.

Even when your humble blogger is out of town, Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  and today we prove it again with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston AND a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!

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. That’s particularly significant this week because we are wrapping up our week-long celebration of ten years since The AIR officially became the internet radio station of PopCult!

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

I have to admit to feeling a little bit of anniversary overload. Today wraps up our week-long celebration of ten years of The AIR being part of PopCult, but smack dab in the middle of all that, the video version of Radio Free Charleston officially hit its twentieth anniversary.

Radio Free Charleston Volume Two officially debuted at TheGazz.com on July 4, 2006.  I did not do anything specific to celebrate it on the Fourth for several reasons. First, it fell on a Saturday, when readership of this blog drops a bit. Second, as I mentioned, we’re also celebrating ten years of The AIR. Third…it seems there was some kind of other significant anniversary being celebrated on the Fourth this year.

But the main reason is that, while the offical date of the debut of our video show was July 4, 2006…it had actually been online for several days at that point. Fuzzy memories suggest that it went live somewhere between June 27 and June 30.

Still, the video version of our show is the only reason that the radio version exists today. Without Brian Young prodding me to bring back RFC the way we did, I probably would’ve given up on ever seeing my baby revived.

We are going to do some proper observations of the 20th anniversary of RFC in video form in the coming weeks and months. I’m working on a tribute to Brian, whom we lost last December, and I’m putting together a video retrospective plus an all-new episode…but these will come out when I have the time to do them right. This will be the first year since 2015 that I’ve produced more than one video episode of the show in a year. My health issues severly cut into my ability to shoot video late at night, so I turned my focus to the radio version of the show, where we are actually thriving.

But to pay tribute to our video program, this week’s show is entirely made up of music recorded for Radio Free Charleston Volume Two.  We will likely do this two or three more times over the course of the next year, because I didn’t realize how much incredible music I’d featured. In just under ten years, I produced over 200 video episodes of Radio Free Charleston, plus over 75 episodes of The RFC MINI SHOW, which featured two songs by a single artist in each episode.

That means I have nearly a thousand songs by hundreds of musical acts to consider.

This week’s show focuses heavily on our early days, but in our third hour we jump around a bit, and bring you performances as recent as 2023.

This is all my attempt to support the local scene. Several years ago, I traded a series of messages with Brian Young, trying to figure out how much money, counting the value of my labor as well as the equipment purchased, that I’d spent producing the video version of RFC.  We stopped counting when it got to be over a quarter-million dollars. I have to say…it was worth every penny. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I wish I had the time and energy to do the video show more often these days.

I hope you enjoy this collection of music by the guests on our video show.

Check out this playlist, with no links to the artist’s page this week…

RFC V5 267

hour one
Whistlepunk “Spy Song”
Stephen Beckner “Falling Star”
Eduardo Canelon “Eduardo’s Song”
Raymond Wallace “Champange Charlie”
Under the Radar “Me, The Boys and Jack”
The Concept “Guitar Pick In My Kool Aid”
Mel Larch in IWA East Coast
John Radcliff “Something’s Gotta Give”
The Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
Whistlepunk 2.0 “Satellite”
Feast of Stephen “Tired of Sinking”
InFormation “Memories”
Seven Minutes To Midnight “The One In Two”
Stpehanie Deskins “When You Come Around”
Comparsa “La Buena Comparsa”

hour two
Doctor Senator “Jesus Fish”
Lady D “Go Higher”
Spurgy Hankins Band “Bullets and Fire”
Quick N Dirty “Jack Daniels and Razor Blades”
T.J. King “Bad Things, Good People”
dog soldier “The Christmas Song”
Casi Null “Blue Haze”
The Diablo Blues Band “The Price Of A Broken Heart”
The Hellblinki Sextet “Bella Ciao”
Joseph Henry (Hale) “Work/Transportation Blues”
The Bible Beaters “Praise Jesus”
The Button Flies “Butch Bottom”
The Limbs “Razor Game”

hour three
Jeff Ellis “Fade”
Dr. Curmudgeon “Lucabration”
Whitechapel District “Revolution”
Mother Nang “Bully”
The Nanker Phelge “Walk Away”
Trielement “Solar Flare”
Karma To Burn “19” and “33”
Mel Larch and the WVSU All Star Band “Summertime”
Tyler Childers “Harlan Road”
The Velvet Brothers “Secret Agent Man”
Brian Diller “Home” “Heartbeat”

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 the second of two patriotic episodes of The Swing Shift brings you rare V Disc recordings by Captain Glenn Miller and The Army Air Forces Training Command Orchestra, along with a few other military big band ensembles.

 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.

Since you nice people read all the way to the bottom, we have a little bonus.

Since last weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the debut of the video version of Radio Free Charleston, there is that pilot episode right above this. Man, was that screen bug gigantic or what?  I remember the days when a fella could stand in the sun in the middle of June where a suit jacket and a fedora and not die of heatstroke.  Fun times.

This video pilot episode from 2006 featured the alterna-bombastic rock of Whistlepunk and the comedy stylings of the No Pants Players.  It’s hard to believe that this was the beginning of more than 200 (and counting) episodes of Radio Free Charleston as a video show, and we even had a spin-off, The RFC MINI SHOW. All that led to the current, three-hour, weekly radio version of our show, which is what this post is all about.

For the third week in a row, this week’s art is a geometric abstract. This time it’s acrylic on canvas board, but as with the last two weeks, I conceived it digitally, then gridded it and transferred it to canvas.

So…I’m calling it a mixed media piece.

This time I took two old digital pieces, distorted them, set them against a primary-color background, and then painted them.  I needed a break from attempting realism for a while.

And I slapped a title on it that seemed like a good idea at the time, but the reasons for that escape me. I might’ve been dreaming about supherheroes in Kandor or something.

I think it came out better than it had any right to.

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

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR,  we contiinue celebrating ten years of our internet radio station by bringing you new episodes of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM, Prognosis, Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM, Nigel Pye plays with the concept of ten years of The AIR by presenting an hour of music by the band, Ten Years After, recorded at Woodstock. 

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 BRAND NEW Progressive Rock, all released in the last few months, on Prognosis.  It’s a wild mix of veteran acts and new and barely-known artists.

Check out this cool playlist…

Prognosis 139

YES “Countermovement”
Devin Townsend “Covered By Causes”
Harmony Bytes “Shadows of Proxy”
Elder “Strata”
Daniel Lanois “Advent”
Crushed Peanuts “Orion’s Belt”
Khadavra “Vita Algen”
Claypool Lennon Delirium “Meat Machines”
Magma ” Mëkanïk Zaïn (Live)”
The Dear Hunter “The Glass Desert II – Cliffs and Stormlands”
Adrian Sherwood “Wicked Kingdom Of This Earth”
The Protomen “Light’s Last Stand”
Planetoid “Parasite”
Soft Machine “Open Road”

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 Mel Black on a NEW 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.

As promised, here is raw footage shot for PopCult at the 2026 Marx Toy Show at Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia. This is so that the folks who only want to look at the toys can see every frame that I shot.

If you want to see the edited highlights, with narration and video of the group photo, go HERE.

The Marx Toy & Train Show, a great collector’s convention held every year at the The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia, has become a tradition for PopCult for more than fifteen years.

Videography is by your humble blogger, along with Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, really did the bulk of the work.

In addition to the highlights video, you can see nearly fifty pictures from the show in our posts from Thursday and Friday week before last.

What better way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country than by bringing you some Christmas Cheer?

This week we take you back to our 2013 Christmas episode of Radio Free Charleston.  It’s our way of literally bringing you Christmas inJuly.

I can’t help it.  It came up chonologically.

RFC 194, “Hasa Diga Shirt,” is our Christmas spectacular, with music from The Bob Thompson Unit and Frenchy and The Punk, plus a message from Santa, and new animation from Jake Fertig, which opens our show with a commercial for The Bearded Axe.

On this Christmassy Fourth of July, we ask that you get in the spirit of the season and go to Frenchy and The Punk’s website and buy something, or just make a donation, to help Samantha (that’s Frenchy, if you’re nasty) in her battle with cancer.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
July 3, 2026

The AIR Celebrates Ten Years All Week Long

It’s been a decade since The AIR became the internet radio station of PopCult, and to celebrate, we’re in the middle of a week of all-new episodes of our music specialty shows.  Friday afternoon our radio station brings you classic Disco and mainstream New Wave Music on The AIR. Tune in as we serve up new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat! 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.

Every Saturday we play catch-up and bring you a marathon of the previous week’s featured programming.  This Sunday, beginning at 9 AM, we proudly re-present the debut episodes of our music and comedy programming from July, 2016.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour of her classic Disco program to songs intended to take your minds off of how unbearably hot it is now.

Fifty years ago, back before global warming was proven to be a real thing, after all, the summers still got hot enough to cause dogs to make people go on killing sprees. To cool things down, folks flocked to Discos…some of which were air-conditioned.

We never promised that our themes for this should would always be more than just an excuse to play classic Disco.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 127

The Silver Connection “No No Joe”
Barry White “What Am I Gonna Do With You”
Donna summer “I Feel Love (Mega Edit)
Van McCoy “The Hustle”
Diana Ross “I’m Coming Out”
Moments & Whatnauts “Girls”
Johnnie Taylor “Disco Lady”
Shirley & Company “Disco Shirley”
Ohio Players “Fire”
Penny McLean” “1-2-3-4 Fire”
Sister Sledge “The Best Disco In Town”
Boney M “Daddy Cool”
The Commodores “Hold On”
Dooley Silverspoon “Bump Me Baby Pt One”
Harpo “Horroscope”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays most weeks  Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a four-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes Friday nights at 8 PM.

NOW That’s What I Call New Wave on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 

Friday at 3 PM, for the tenth anniversary of her show, Sydney Fileen mines the fertile soil of the first three volumes of the legendary British music hits compilation, NOW That’s What I Call Music, for an all-star mixtape of top New Wave hits that proves how big New Wave was, and how diverse the music charts used to be.

It’s remarkable that so much fresh, new music was actually commercially successful at the same time. It’s equally remarkable that, four decades later, only a handful of the artists in this show have passed away.

It must be something about the music.

Check out the playlist…

BEC 139

Duran Duran “Is There Something I Should Know”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Malcolm McLaren “Double Dutch”
Men Without Hats “The Safety Dance”
Men At Work “Down Under”
Kajagoogoo “Big Apple”
The Human League “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”
Howard Jones “New Song”
The Cure “The Lovecats”
Simple Minds “Waterfront”
Madness “The Sun And The Rain”
Culture Club “Victims”
Thomspon Twins “Hold Me Now”
Carmel “More More More”
Nena “99 Red Balloons”
Cyndi Lauper “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”
Tracey Ullman “My Guy”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Relax”
Eurythmics “Here Comes The Rain Again”
The Smiths “What Difference Does It Make”
Fiction Factory “Feels Like Heaven”
Re-Flex “The Politics of Dancing”
Thomas Dolby “Hyperactive”
China Crisis “Wishful Thinking”
Big Country “Wonderland”
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark “Locomotion”
Ultravox “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”
The Flying Pickets “When You’re Young And In Love”
Blancmange “Don’t Tell Me”
The Special AKA “Nelson Mandela”
Bronski Beat “Small Town Boy”

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 as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon Tuesday mornings at 1 AM. .

That’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular features, with fresh content, every day.

It’s time for our weekly half-assed list of STUFF TO DO, around the Mountain State, and this week it’s halfder-asseder than usual. Basically, I’m just going to run an edited version of the boilerplate with no extra graphics.

I figure that, if you are interested in the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta, there’s not much I can add to what you know. If you go, stay hydrated and have fun.  The same holds for whatever the heck that giant Ferris wheel thing is for at the State Capital Grounds. If that’s your idea of fun, go knock yourself out and enjoy yourself.  It’s the Fourth of July and chances are good that you feel more like celebrating our country than I do at the moment.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t do well in the heat, and it’s going to be insanely hot here in Charleston this weekend. Please stay safe and use common sense when dealing with the heat.

As for me…I’m not going to be in town at all this weekend. Mel and I plan to hop a train to Chicago, where it’s just as hot, if not worse, and we plan to spend our time inside enjoying cool stuff and trying to avoid fireworks. As such, I am sprinting to get PopCult and The AIR covered while I’m gone, so that I don’t have to do any writing from the road on this trip.

Most weeks I try to tell you in detail about a few cool events all around the state, but this week, I’m slacking off.  Things will be back to normal next week.  If you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, even if your promotional graphic uses cruddy AI slop 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.

I also need to point out that Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

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. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

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.

Enjoy your holiday and be careful out there in the heat.

It’s hard to believe, even for someone like me who seems to have some kind of anniversary in this blog every week or two, but ten years ago today, The AIR became the internet radio station of PopCult.

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.

Our little internet radio friend began life as Voices of Appalachia, and was a project of WV EDC, which was known as Digiso, back in the day.  Voices of Appalachia was launched to fill a void in West Virginia’s community radio landscape, back in the days before WTSQ and WWSA were granted low-power FM licenses.  Eric Meadows headed the project, and in October, 2014 he invited me to bring Radio Free Charleston back to its radio roots as a show on the station.  Over the next year Eric had more and more duties at WV EDC heaped on his plate, and at one point technical issues took the station out of commission for a couple of months.  He decided to turn the station over to me, Jason “Roadblock” Robinson and Lynn Browder at the end of 2015.

We transformed it into “OnTheAIRadio,” which was a compromise choice after my suggestion, “The AIR,” was found not to have an available URL to use. After a few months, Jason and Lynn found that they had too many other things going on and I became the sole owner, and incorporated it into PopCult and reverted back to the name I came up with, The AIR.

When we relaunched the station, ten years ago today, we had several shows that carried over from the Voices of Appalachia days, and we also introduced several new shows. Remarkably, quite a few of those shows are still running on the station.

Radio Free Charleston, of course, is still our flagship show.  At the beginning of 2020, I revamped the format and combined the local-music-focus of the VOA version with the free-format concept of RFC International. This brought the show very close to my original concept for RFC back in 1989, when it was on broadcast radio.

With the launch of The AIR we also introduced Curtain Call, hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch. This is her show devoted to Musical Theatre.  Originally, Mel also hosted a travel show, On The Road With Mel, it was extremely popular, but writing that was too time-consuming, so we let it fall by the wayside. In May, 2020, Mel began her classic Disco show, MIRRORBALL on a lark, and it quickly became the second most popular show on The AIR.

I reached out to friends in London who were eager to produce “labor of love” programs for The AIR, provided they could do whatever they wanted and use fake names, since they weren’t getting paid. The Haversham Recording Institute originally provided five shows for us: Prognosis, Progressive rock, hosted by Herman Linte; Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, New Wave Music hosted by Sydney Fileen; Psychedleic Shack, Psychedelic Rock, hosted by Nigel Pye; SKA Madness, filled with Ska Music and hosted by Dexter Checkers; and The Punk Club, hosted by Humphrey Hubert. The last three of those shows were 30-minute components of a two-hour block of programming on Thursday afternoons, with the addition of a fourth program, Beatles Blast, hosted by yours truly.

Sadly, Dexter had to stop doing SKA Madness after suffering a series of health setbacks.  After four half-hour episodes of The Punk Club, Humprhey apparently vanished in Brazil during the Olympics. At least that’s what I was told.

Psychedelic Shack, SKA Madness and Beatles Blast returned after a short hiatus as hour-long shows, and Psychedelic Shack can now be heard every Monday at 2 PM, while Beatles Blast is on Wednesdays at 2 PM.

These days, our friends at Haversham only produce  roughly one new episode a month. This is due to a combination of their time being eaten up by paying work, and The AIR having limited server space available to store programming.

To mark the tenth anniversary of The AIR joining PopCult, the plan is to have new episodes of our shows all this week, with bonus episodes later in the month.

That means that this afternoon you can tune in for new editions of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast celebrates both the anniversary of The AIR, and this weekend’s 250th anniversary of our country with an episode featuring The Beatles, as a group and solo, performing LIVE IN AMERICA!

It’s a mixtape that blends The Beatles at The Hollywood Bowl with recordings of John in NYC, George from The Concert for Bangla Desh, Ringo from MSG and the L.A. Auditorium and Paul from Bonnaroo, Los Angeles and Shea Stadium. It’s a full hour of a fantasy concert for Beatle fans of all stripes.

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  presents a mixtape version of the patriotic, historical musical, 1776, that combines demo recordings of the show with songs from the movie soundtrack and parts of the 1997 Revival album that features Brett Spiner and Pat Hingle. Many years ago Mel played the entire original Broadway cast album, but this is a whole new take on the musical that’s very popular this year.  In fact, acclaimed productions of 1776 have been mounted in both Charleston and Huntington in recent days.

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.

At 10 PM (EDT), a new episode of Comedy Vault, will present two episodes of the rarely-heard Mel Blanc radio show, from 1946.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been running The AIR for ten years. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.

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! 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. That’s particularly significant this week because, tomorrow marks ten years since The AIR officiall became the internet radio station of PopCult!

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 episodes of Radio Free Charleston Voume Four from exactly a decade ago.

But back to that first hour…we open with brand-new music from Samuel S.C. and continue with the exclusive premiere of “Body,” a new song by Bobby Miller and John Radcliff, formerly of the legendary band, Feast of Stephen. We also have a track from Hardy Mums, the new collaborative project of noted producer, Eddie Ashworth.  Not content with that, our first hour is loaded with new tunes from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Deep Purple, Stitch Jones & His Bionic Marines, The Pretty Reckless, J. Marinelli, Magic Sands and The Matt Berry Trio, along with a few gems and stylistic diversions.

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. We brought you these two shows several months ago, but I brought them back again because tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of The AIR, and these shows are exactly ten years old this week and next.

A special note: One of our Chicago pipeline bands, Kerosene Stars, is crowdfunding their next album. The campaign has 23 days left, but due to a technical SNAFU on my end, I didn’t have access to their songs in the RFC library to include one in this week’s show. I will open our show in two weeks with one of their tunes, but by that point, there will only be nine days left in the campaign, so…go check out their music now HERE, and if you like what you hear, go support the campaign HERE.  Next week’s RFC will be a special anniversary show, or else I’d include them in that show. Go give ’em a listen, they’re great!

In fact, you can here them twice in this great 2022 episode of RFC right here.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page (note that all the links work, even the ones with lines through them. WordPress is being a dick)…

RFC V5 275

hour one
Samuel S.C. “I Need A Moment”
John Radcliff and Bobby Miller “Body”
Hardy Mums “Green Boots”
Deep Purple “Guilt Trippin'”
The Pretty Reckless “Dear God”
GRPPLNG “Hovering”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Unraveling”
J. Marinelli “Cubby & The Argonauts”
Stitch Jones & His Bionic Marines “Van Man Band”
Magic Sands “Night In The Medina”
Matt Berry Trio “Everything’s Peachy Part 3”
The Charleston Rogues “Cooley’s Reel”
Logical Fleadh “Muirland Measure-Hoop Her and Gird Her”
The Paranoid Style “Tearing The Ticket”
Golden “Gotta Let It Go”

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”

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”
William  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 the first of two patriotic episodes of The Swing Shift brings you rare V Disc recordings of Sam Donahue and The Navy Dance Band. V Discs were special recordings made exclusively to be sent to our servicemen overseas during WWII.  The Musicians Unions banned studio recording in the early 1940s over royalty payments and the possibility of live musicians being replaced by recordings (sound familiar?). An exception was made for these recordings which were never intended to be sold domestically.

This week we bring you an hour of Sam Donahue and The Navy Dance Band. Next week will see a collection of V Disc recordings by Captain Glenn Miller and The Army Air Forces Training Command Orchestra.

 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.