Month: June 2014 (Page 2 of 5)

Monday night at 7 PM Park Place Stadium Cinemas plays host to a reunion screening of Danny Boyd’s sci-fi epic, “Strangest Dreams: Invasion of The Space Preachers.” This is to mark the imminent re-release of the movie on DVD combined with Boyd’s first movie, “Chillers.”

Much of the cast will be there, and you’ll also have a chance to purchase mini posters of the movie, and Boyd’s graphic novels “Chillers” volumes one and two and his most recent, “Carbon.”

This flick tells the epic adventures of evangilistic alien invaders terrorizing the backwoods areas of West Virginia. That’s Monday night at Park Place Stadium Cinemas. Regular movie rates apply.

The gentleman you see above and at right is Freekbass, and he is quite the amazing musician. His bass playing has been proven by science to actually alter the course of rivers and change the positions of the stars in the sky. His music has been classified as a Class F (for Funk) force of nature. Freekbass is a mystical shaman who operates on an inter-dimensional lower-frequency vibratory plane.

Friday night, June 27, in a harmonic convergence of epic proportions, You can witness the life-changing experience that is  Freekbass & The Bump Assembly at The Empty Glass for the release of the new album, “Everybody’s Feelin’ Real”. Freek & the band will be performing songs from the new album, and hard copies will be available at the show. Plus, the first 50 tickets will receive a FREE digital download of the new album.You can order them HERE,

You have been warned.

In one of the cooler FestivAll offerings in recent years, Charleston native Johnny Puke and legendary rock journalist, Legs McNeil will speak at “Punk and Pancakes,” at Bluegrass Kitchen, Sunday, June 22, at 7 PM. The FestivAll listing promises, “An evening of debaucherous stories from a couple of infamous curmudgeons, each offering up a differing perspective on punk and literature. Legs McNeil and Johnny Puke take us down a road with antidotes of Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Blondie and others who helped shape punk music. ADULTS ONLY.”

You know you want to go.

It’s one of the area’s annual “can’t miss” shows. The music is incredible. It’s free. Donations will be accepted for a terrific cause. It pays tribute to a beloved musician who was taken too soon. What else do you need to know?

Last year, we skipped FestivAll. Competing events out of town, combined with genuine fatigue and a FestivAll that was smooshed in with West Virginia’s 150th birthday made it easy for us to decide to take a year off from covering the time when Charleston becomes a work of art. We will be back this year. In fact, we’re gearing up to record the Art Parade (weather permitting) as I write this. To help get you in the FestivAll mood, we’re going to go back to our last epic FestivAll two-parter from 2012.

Over almost two hours of exclusive video, you will see Bob Thompson Unit, West Virginia Dance Company, The Boatmen, Raqs Shakti, Jenna Brooke Swanson, The Snake and the Pot, Alasha Al Qudwah, Richie Collins Three-O, Ian Bode, Todd, Sophie and Will Burge, Albans Arts production of “Proof”, Duo Divertido, Jude Binder, Dizzy Doc’s Balloon Sculpture, Bob Shank and Sam Morgan, Carli Mareneck and Friends, Katzendrummers, “Meta” a film by David Smith, Bare Bones, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, The Leon Waters Blues Band, Red Audio, Andy Park, Emily Burdette, The Kanawha Kordsmen and Sweet Adelides and Paul Calicoat.

We are also treated to an Effects Makeup demonstration by Rob “RJ” Haddy, our local star FX makeup artist in the first show.  Much of the first show is devoted to the FestivAll Art Parade, while it concludes with scenes of The East End Main Street Streetworks Art Auction and Celebration, and auctioneer Ted Brightwell. The second show focuses on the second weekend of FestivAll.

Superheroes will invade Charleston’s Buffalo Wild Wings (at Southridge) this Saturday, but it’s all for a good cause. Ghostbusters WV, Spider-man and other heroes will join Children’s Home Society and Buffalo Wild Wings in Charleston for Superhero Saturday.

15% of each sale goes towards CHS with a flyer or ticket. This goes on all day. Also you can learn how you can be a superhero for West Virginia Children. From 5:30 PM to 10 PM Children’s Home Society will have a booth were you can learn how you can be a superhero for West Virginia kids. You can pick up tickets at this booth and turn them in when you pay your bill. CHS will get 15% of what you spend, and you won’t have to pay any extra.

From 9 PM to 11 PM there will be a costume contest, judged by the heroes in attendance.

The Children’s Home Society of West Virginia is a private, non-profit child welfare organization founded in 1896. The Society is a participatory organization consisting of employees, foster families, adoptive families, volunteers, Board members, Directors Emeriti, advisory council members, donors, benefactors, supporters, and friends. We are governed by a volunteer Board of Directors that is representative of the communities we serve from around the state. They are licensed to provide child welfare and behavioral health services in West Virginia. A member agency of the West Virginia Alliance for Children and the Child Welfare League of America, CHS is fully accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Services for Families and Children. Their current programs are adoption, foster care, in-home and in-community services for children and families, emergency shelter care, respite, mediation, parent education training, prenatal and early childhood services, volunteer and mentoring, youth services, visitation and reunification, school based social work, day care and comprehensive assessment services.

Saturday Morning at 10 AM the freakiest parade in Charleston happens when the FestivAll Art Parade returns after being hijacked last year for some kind of boring traditional parade that marked the sasquatchtennial or something.

Come to gawk in amusement as the freaks, the geeks, the singers, the musicians, the outcasts, the hipsters and the bleeding hearts and artists all unfurl their freak flags and march to celebrate creativity. You can see footage of the 2011 Art Parade in the above episode of Radio Free Charleston. It’ll be like there was a fire drill at the circus, and all the performers spilled out onto the streets, only without all the animal cruelty.

If you are a theater lover in Charleston this weekend, you’ve got a problem. Everything’s happening at once. Charleston’s Light Opera Guild is putting on their big summer musical, “Catch Me If You Can.” CYAC, as I told you about yesterday, is presenting “The Blob.” The Alban Arts Center in Saint Albans brings us Neil Simon’s “Lost In Yonkers.” The Limelight Theater Company will treat the city to “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein” at Timothy’s Bar. The FestivAll Location plays return briefly. Kanawha Players is having their “Hail Mary” weekend of fundraising to stay afloat. And that’s not even taking visiting productions from out-of-town into account.

I get that everyone either wants to jump on the FestivAll bandwagon, or counter-program to it, or are forced by fate into bad timing, but there’s enough quality theater happening this weekend to fill up stages through the end of July. Hitting everything could be tricky.

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The PopCulteer
June 20, 2014

FestivAll is once again upon us, and as has been the case for the past five years, my big contribution to the City Becoming A Work Of Art is my entry in this year’s East End Main Street Public Art Initiative, AKA Streetworks 2014.

This is the sixth year for Streetworks, and it’s my fifth year participating. In the past Streetworks has brought banners, bricks and metal street signs to the Historic East End of Charleston, and it’s been an honor to have my work included alongside such great local artists as Mark Wolfe, Rob Cleland, Charlie Hamilton, Glen Brogan, Joe Bolyard, Ian Bode, Sharon Stackpole and so many others. The highlight of this project is the annual art auction. The original art works created for Streetworks are auctioned off in a fun-filled night of hilarity, hosted by Ted Brightwell.

The art this year is for a project that will see metal frameworks built around the East End, each of which will contain several works of art which will revolved to reveal a different work of art on the other side.

This year the Streetworks Art Auction takes place at the old Kyle Furniture Warehouse on Hansford Street, which will be transformed into a wonderful venue where, hopefully, deep-pocketed art connoisseurs will be so impressed with the art that they will back up truckloads of money to the joint, just so that they can take a piece home with them. Continue reading

The Contemporary Youth Arts Company’s new production of Dan Kehde and Mark Scarpelli’s musical take of the cheesy horror classic, “The Blob” opens tonight at the WVSU Capitol Center Theater.  This is a really fun musical, and this production promises lots of fresh new faces among the cast. Five years ago we produced a teaser video for a previus production of the show. You can use this as a sample, then check out the poster for all the details about this new production