Month: November 2013 (Page 2 of 4)

This is an edited version of Radio Free Charleston’s 14th episode, “Spider-man Shirt.” At this time, we cannot find the original version of this show. If we did, we would restore the “Pentagram Flowerbox” cartoon, but we still couldn’t present the show in an unedited form. I’ll tell you more about that in a moment.

As it is, this show includes a terrific vintage music video for Go Van Gogh’s “Shut Up, I Love You,” the most-requested song on the radio incarnation of RFC, and Joe Justice’s hilarious short film, “Marvel Jackass.” There’s also a LAX cartoon by Frank Panucci, which took the place of Pentagram Flowerbox. Despite all the edits, it’s still a very strong show. If you want the details on our controversy with Pentagram Flowebox, you can read about it here. Since that post, however, the Third Mind Incarnation has shuffled off this plane of existence, and on the way out, asked us to restore his cartoon to the show.

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The PopCulteer
November 22, 2013

While your PopCulteer is gearing up for next week’s big PopCult Gift Guide (coming your way on Black Friday), this week we will bring you an expanded list of Stuff To Do this weekend. Folks here in Charleston and the surrounding areas should really be thankful that we have so much quality art, music, theater and comedy performed live for our amusement. So eat some turkey in its honor or something.

Friday

Free music this night includes Julie Adams and Steve Hill at Taylor Books starting at 7:30 PM and Cousin Larry performing at Bruno’s on Leon Sullivan Way, beginning at 9 PM. Also cover-free at Timothy’s, below the Quarrier Diner, Team Trivia starts at 7:30 PM, followed by Jim Snyder and The Castaways.

Our music with a cover charge begins with The Floorboards, a touring band from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The show starts at 9 or 10 PM with a seven-dollar cover charge. The band marries rock & roll and country roots with the sights and sounds of southern mountain towns. Jake and George shake the leaves from the trees. Bob wails like a steam whistle cutting through the pines. Patrick coaxes stringed cries from the hills and hollers. Matt tells the story.

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The PopCult Bookshelf

Nemesis The Warlock
Deviant Edition
by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill
with Jesus Redondo
Rebellion Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-78108-171-6
$35.99

This book is a collection of a wonderfully-twisted comic book series that originated in the legendary British weekly comic, “2000 A.D.” You may know that “2000 A.D.” was also the home of Judge Dredd as well as a variety of other cool sci-fi comic strips.

“Nemesis The Warlock” always stood out a bit from the rest of the 2000 A.D. strips. First of all, there’s the art. This is the early work of Kevin O’Neill, who went on to do “Marshall Law” with Pat Mills, and “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” with Alan Moore. O’Neill’s style has been called “grotesque,” but I don’t think that’s a fair label. This is some beautiful work. It’s definitely unconventional. I suppose one might see artwork like this if the legendary Phillipino comics artist Alex Nino had ever been inked by the even more legendary American cartoonist Basil Wolverton.

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Thursday night we have plenty to do in town. If you are in the mood for an evening of cabaret, you can start at Third Eye Cabaret at the Cellar on Capitol Street. It kicks off at 8 PM and you can see highlights of last week’s 3EC on this week’s episode of Radio Free Charleston…

Frenchy

The Punk

Then you can ramp it up by heading to The Empty Glass at 9 PM for the return of Frenchy and The Punk, who you may remember from their appearance on episode 143 of RFC, where we heard three songs from the band, or their many times on the show since then. Check out RFC 143…

Joining Frenchy and The Punk will be none other than Andrew Hellblinki, of long-time RFC guests, The Hellblinki Sextet. The cover should be seven dollars or so for an evening of wild musical explosions and dancing skeletons.

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This week in The PopCult Toybox we are going back to the well once more for part three of our photo essay devoted to Where The Toys Are, a very cool antique toy shop in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania that we visited week before last. Today it’s all about robots, space toys, aliens, superheroes, planes and trucks.

You can see part one of our photo essay, which focused on Captain Action and Major Matt Mason, here. Part two looked at Barbie, Western-themed toys and girl’s toys. I want to thank Phil McEntee once again for letting us loiter in his store and take pictures. Just about everything in these photo essays is for sale, and you can contact Phil through his website.

Next week’s PopCult Toybox will venture into the world of knockoff toys.

A classic Marx space playset

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This edition of Radio Free Charleston, “Snowshoe Shirt” comes to us from Third Eye Cabaret, a cool weekly night of label-defying performers who bring a daring Bohemian spirit to Charleston every Thursday night at The Cellar, 8 Capitol Street. Our music this week is by The BrotherSisters, Jamie Skeen, Louis Argento and Snakebox, and we kick things off with animation by Jacob Fertig.

We’ve taken a very cool night of performance and condensed it down to a less-than-thirty-minute sampler, and we hope it entices you to come check out one of Charleston’s most interesting and eclectic musical scenes.

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This week’s art is a stand-in. Something came up and I couldn’t make it to Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School last night, so here’s a digital painting of the sun setting over a lake. It took eight minutes to paint this. And it looks it. Click it if you think you want to see it larger for some reason.

On a brighter note, RFC 193, which takes you to the Third Eye Cabaret, will be posted here in PopCult later Monday morning.

Above you see the very first animated cartoon starring Popeye from 1933. This is technically a Betty Boop cartoon with Popeye as a guest, but Betty Boop is only onscreen for a short, but memorable, hula dance with the Sailor Man. This is a classic from the Max Fleischer Studio, directed by Dave Fleischer.

You might also notice that Olive Oyl’s voice is different than what we’re used to hearing. In this cartoon they had to do something to make her sound diffferent than Betty, since eventually both characters were voiced by Mae Questal.  You may also notice that Bluto seems a bit more rapey than in later appearances.

This week we take you back to 2007, via 2010. Radio Free Charleston’s 13th episode, “World Without Fear Shirt” was sort of unlucky. It had great music and animation in it, but the episode was lost in a hard drive crash and couldn’t be recovered from back-up discs. In 2010, I discovered a file that contained all the elements of the show and was able to reconstruct it with a new introduction. This show feaures Martyranny’s Collective Pulse, The Concept and animation and a short film from Frank Panucci.

The main reason for the new intro was to explain what had happened, but also to correct the horrible mispronounciation of Martyranny’s Collective Pulse, which I butchered throughout the original episode. “Marty-Ranny” remains to this day the worst botched intro in the history of Radio Free Charleston.

You can read the original production notes here, and the reassembled notes here.

Earlier in the week we told you about Tigeriss, the cool Kingston, New York-based band that played last night at The Empty Glass. It seems that they have decided to stick around the area for an extra day, and tonight at 9 PM they are performing at Dunbar Lanes. It’s only four bucks to hear this great touring band, and for seven dollars more you can bowl all night. Check ’em out.