Month: June 2009 (Page 4 of 4)

Today we jump ahead in the chronological order and present the fourteenth episode of Radio Free Charleston, “Spider-man Shirt.” This show features music from Go Van Gogh, and the short film “Marvel Jackass” by Dunbar’s Joe Justice.

Some of the shows we bring you are not exactly as they were when we first posted them. There are a couple of reasons for that, and we’re going to spill the beans about them now.

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The PopCulteer
June 5, 2009

Montani Semper Cable (Mountaineers Always Have Cable)

I saw (most of) The Charleston Stage Company’s show “West Virginia:Words and Music” last week, and it was a great experience, one which left me thinking about my own relationship to the state where I have lived all my life.

My mini-review: “West Virginia: Words and Music” was a wonderful collection of songs and short sketches and monologues that celebrates the Mountain State and challenges the negative stereotypes with which our state seems unduly burdened. A terrific cast, notably Rebecca Kimmons, Joe Miller, Tara Phares-Pauley and Micah Atkinson, delivers short vignettes of West Virginia life that range from hilarious to deeply moving. The music, from Larry Groce, John Lilly, Jeff Ellis and Douglas Imbrogno, is a great sampling of the original songwriting that we have sprouting up all over our state.

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Today we bring you Radio Free Charleston: Episode Four (mislabelled as number three in the archive title card), featuring Raymond Wallace and Under The Radar. This was the very first time that RFC Big Shot Melanie Larch ran camera on the host segments. Since then, she’s shot the vast majority of the host segments for our shows.

Our animation is “Zachery Bop,” by my brother Frank. You can read the original production notes here.

Tomorrow the “Drive To 75” RFC re-post will be part of “The PopCulteer.” Be sure to check it out. It’ll be episode five, with Kevin Duffer and The Appalachian Celtic Consort.

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Today we bring you Episode Three of Radio Free Charleston, “Mother Nang Shirt,” which originally aired in August 2006. This show features music from Eduardo Canelon and Three Bodies, plus “The Alien Threat” and part two of “The Mascot.” You can read the original production notes here.

This is the first episode that has been edited since its initial appearance. At the request of the filmmaker, we have excised “Pentagram Flowerbox” from all episodes of the show where it appeared. In this show, we’ve replaced it with “The Mascot” by Wladislaw Starewicz, the master of Polish stop-motion animation. We’ll post the full story of the edited RFC programs in a future edition of The PopCulteer (posted every Friday, here at PopCult, in case you didn’t know). “Pentagram Flowerbox” ran on a few episodes of RFC until our twentieth show. You can see the original cartoons here.
Remember, every day in June, we’re bringing you a classic episode of Radio Free Charleston, embedded right here in PopCult, the way God intended.

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Stephen Beckner and The Sleeping Dons (Sean Richardson, Jay Lukens and Deron Sodaro) are the musical guests on “RVD Shirt,” the second edition of our humble little webcast from July 2006. You’ll also get to see “Ribbon Driving,” an animated short by my brother, Frank, and what was then an exclusive sneak peek at the trailer for “The Dark Knight,” really!

The original production notes can be found here.

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July 1 will see episode 75 of Radio free Charleston, the only online webcast featuring West Virginia’s finest music, film, animation, art and weirdness. One of the less satisfying things about doing RFC is that we haven’t been able to keep all of our previous episodes available for viewing.

Until now.

Using technology recently recovered from a downed UFO found in Clay County, we are now able to revive our older shows and post them directly into PopCult. In fact, we’re going to do that every day in June! Starting with our first episode, as seen above, we are going to bring you 30 episodes of RFC in 30 days. The first five will be in order. After that we’re going to jump around a bit. We have 70 shows to choose from, you know.  Eventually all of the shows will be re-posted here in PopCult, even the ones that sort of suck. Continue reading

Today’s art is a digital pastel based on a quick and sloppy sketch I did a couple of weekends ago at The Velvet Brothers Saturday Night Lounge party at LiveMix Studio. It’s an imagined view of the ocean from a Tiki Bar. The Carribean riddums inspired me, man. Click the images to enlarge. You’ll find the original sketch on the other side of the “Read More.” Continue reading