Month: July 2014 (Page 4 of 4)

Here in the middle of the week we’re going to take a few minutes to shine the PopCult spotlight on a couple of cool local crowdfunding campaigns.

First we have local Acoustic Punk Rock star and Radio Free Charleston guest Sheldon Vance, and his efforts to raise money to record a new CD. I’ll let him tell you about it…

“My name is Sheldon Vance, I am a 33 year old punk rocker/singer-songwriter living in Charleston, WV. The reason I’ve started this campaign is to fund the recording of my New CD “Hills, Pills, and Unpaid Bills.” I know the title may be humorous to some, confusing to others, but in reality the title was meant to reflect the poverty and desperation of the area I grew up in, Logan, WV. The songs as well are reflections of my experiences, and the experiences I’ve seen with others. It’s about trying to escape the poverty, hopelessness, depression, and drug addiction rampant in my home town.”

Sheldon is hoping to raise a modest $700 for recording. This is a guy that I’ve called “a cross between Hank Williams and Joe Strummer,” so you know I like his music. You can hear a sample of him on this episode of The RFC MINI SHOW…

Sheldon has some great incentives, ranging from stickers to CDs to custom songs and house shows. Check out his campaign here…

Our second project is Dracula: The Audio Drama. This is a high-quality audio production of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, brought to life by local talent and directed by Lawrence Burgess with assistant director Adam Stover. We shall quote from their IndieGoGo page…

“We recorded Dracula over a period of seven weeks at DigiSo in Charleston, WV.  We paid for studio time, food and refreshments for our talent and crew, and the financial requirements to set up our business.  We also seek to reimburse our talent for their invaluable time.

• 47% of the budget serves to reimburse the talent.
• 53% of the budget goes directly into production expenses.

We want you to rally around our team so we can continue to produce high quality entertainment.”

If you want to support this dramatized audio presentation, visit their campaign page.”

Your PopCulteer was prepared to bring you exciting news about a brand-new toy today, but literally at the last minute, the manufacturer called and ask us to delay our story because they’ve hit some snags and won’t be delivering their product to stores anytime soon. So today we’re bringing you a compilation of vintage toy commercials.

Which is a pretty cool substitution.

This week we wind up going to the Dr. Sketchy’s trunk one more time for a digital oil of Bella Rosa from the June session, this one was done with some new combinations of filters and an abstract background dropped in. The next edition of Dr. Sketchy’s will in in August, and it will be dedicated to The Fifth Element. As usual, click the image to see a bigger version. The RFC MINI SHOW is taking a week off, but we did post some bonus bellydancing from FestivALL in our Sunday Evening Video yesterday.

Jenna

This week’s Sunday Evening Video takes us back to last weekend at FestivALL, as we bring you just under fourteen minutes of dance from Capitol Street. We were on hand to record a chunk of the dance presented at The Riggs Corporation Stage in front of Taylor Books at 1 PM.

Lacy

We were treated to Cabaret Bellydance by Jenna Brooke Swanson and Susan Angela Hughart (you saw part of Susan’s performance on RFC 199), and “Pachuca,” a type of Latin Swing Dance by Lacy Hughes.

Susan

Since we had these performances left over from our big FestivALL wrap-up show, we wanted to bring them to you as a PopCult Video, rather than let them sit in the RFC vault. The RFC MINI SHOW will return next week.

Radio Free Charleston’s 23rd episode was a major departure. Delayed more than a month from its intended debut due to the death of my aunt, this episode featured the reunion of The Feast Of Stephen, who hadn’t played together in 14 years when we managed to corral them all in the studio on May 12, 2007. It was a magic night as Bob Miller, Joey Fabulous, John Radcliff, Dan Jordan, Tommy Medvick and Fred Tyler came together to play music for the sheer joy of it. The energy at LiveMix Studio that night was amazing, and I still rank this show among my best work.

This was a four-camera shoot, with Jerry Fugate joining me on handheld, in addition to our two stationary cameras. Melanie was busy with tech week for the WVSO production of “Carmen.” There were good times.Original production notes are HERE.

The PopCulteer
July 4, 2014

Since it’s the 4th of July and hardly anybody reads blogs on holidays, we’re going to try and keep today’s PopCulteer a bit short. We’re going to look back at the very successful, just-concluded FestivALL 2014 and make a few suggestions, some constructive criticism that we hope can help FestivALL get even better in the future. I wrote an essay like this in 2007, and a lot of my suggestions that year did eventually get used (Although I’m sure it wasn’t just because of my blog post. A lot of this was just common sense).

FestivALL 2014 was a blast, and once again Radio Free Charleston is happy to present our take on it, with even more to come later.

But there’s always room for improvement.

First of all, there is just too much stuff crammed into a small period of time. It’s time for FestivALL to annex the weekend prior to its current running time. They may not need to extend fully through the week, but there are simply too many quality events happening at the same time. There’s plenty of cool stuff to fill up three weekends.

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The PopCult Bookshelf

DENVER
A Graphic Novel written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Artwork by Pier Brito
Published by PaperFilms
This edition only available to contributors to the Kickstarter campaign

Some of you may remember a few months ago when I plugged the Kickstarter campaign for this graphic novel in the PopCult Bookshelf. I kicked in for it myself and my copy arrived last week. What we have here is a solid science fiction procedural cop drama. This book is intended for mature audiences, with some language, violence and nudity, but what we really have here is a quality R-rated Action Movie, presented as a graphic novel.

“DENVER” is set in the future after an asteroid has hit the moon, causing first a week long shower of deadly debris and then, with the moon’s orbit disturbed, a tremendous change in the tidal forces of the planet which causes the water level to rise rapidly and engulf most of the land. Only a few areas of high elevation remain and the only one with a stable government is Denver, Colorado.

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This week’s PopCult Toybox takes a look at Loot Crate, a subscription grab bag service aimed at the “geek and gamer” crowd. Loot Crate promises to be a monthly grab-bag of cool toys and other knick-knacks aimed at the “geek and gamer” crowd. To start out, I have mixed feelings. To the right you see about as much stuff as you might get from Loot Crate in four or five months

I love grab bags and surprise packages. I always wanted to order them when I was a kid but could never persuade my parents that it was a good gamble for the money. Every year around Christmas time now, I order a big surprise package from Archie McPhee (a note to the guys at Archie McPhee: you can quit sending me Richard Wagner and Annie Oakley action figures any time now.) So I like the idea of a monthly surprise package.

I don’t particularly like the “geek and gamer” label. I freely admit that I grew up immersed in what is now unfortunately called “geek” culture. I also have to admit, I’m a little bothered by the fact that all the cool stuff I liked as a kid that made people think I was a nerd has finally become mainstream, but has brought the “geek” and “nerd” labels with it.

But that’s a minor bit of semantics. The question is, is Loot Crate worth the money?

The answer unfortunately is no. I have major issues with what I feel are their deceptive marketing and billing practices. But more importantly, it’s just not a very good value for the money.

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Despite some technical glitches, we are bringing you a half hour of coverage of Charleston’s just-concluded FestivALL 2014 in RFC 199. Radio Free Charleston looks at FestivALL with music from Todd Burge, The Bark O Loungers, QiET and The Company Stores, plus dance from Susan Angela Hughart and The Trillium Performance Arts Collective. Sprinkled throughout are many sights and sounds of FestivALL.

The show also includes a brief look back at Last Week’s IWA East Coast wrestling show, held at Skateland in Campbell’s Creek. That’s also where we got the limited-edition Mad Man Pondo Birthday Shirt, which gives this show its title.

Following the FestivALL format we’ve used in previous years, this show is a stream-of-conciousness collection of music and art. Along the way you’ll see The River Queen Sternwheeler, Jude Binder, The stilt-walkers, Ian Bode’s painting, the horse-drawn carriage, Apartment Earth’s “Pop Goes The Weasel” show, the FestivALl Catfish and more.

Someday we will bring you the boring and detailed technical story about why this episode of the show looks so blocky in places. For now, we sorta need to sleep. The PopCult Toybox may be delayed this week.