Month: November 2014 (Page 1 of 4)

Haley Lambert, the 2014 Mary

Above you see a huge mega-clip of highlights of the 2014 production of MARY A Rock Opera by Dan Kehde and Mark Scarpelli. This clip brings you over thirty-five minutes recorded last Tuesday at a dress rehearsal of the show.

You have a few more chances to see this cast in MARY. The remaining performances are Sunday, NOVEMBER 30 at 2 PM, and DECEMBER 4,5 and 6 at at 8 PM at The WVSU Capitol Center Theater, 123 Summers Street.

Rowan Maher, the 2013 Mary

This year’s cast does a wonderful job with the show, which, if you’ve been reading PopCult for the past month, you may know is a Charleston holiday tradition.

Below, as a bonus, we’re bringing you the RFC MINI SHOW we did featuring last year’s cast.

Above you see “West Virginia Shirt,” our Christmas, 2007 episode. This show features Mountain Laurel Ensemble, 69 Fingers, The Android Family and animation by Brian Young and Rudy Panucci.  It’s hosted from Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor and it’s part of the Christmas that almost wasn’t. This show hasn’t been seen since early 2008, so it’s nice to have it back online.

Your loyal host and blogger got really sick while editing this show, and never quite got around to writing any production notes. I shot the host segments myself while putting up my Christmas tree later than I ever had before. It was a ridiculously busy time and exhaustion and a sinus infection caught up with me. In fact, that year I was so sick over the holidays that I went eight days without posting to PopCult, my longest gap ever.

If I can recall correctly, I recorded Mountain Laurel Ensemble at St. Matthews Episcopal Church in South Hills. It was a solo shoot using tripods because they rehearsed in the daytime while camera two was at work. 69 Fingers was recorded the previous summer at the La Belle Theater in South Charleston.

This show also includes The Android Family Christmas Special, the magnum opus of our favorite family of psychotic robots. To date, this is the most recent installment of The Android Family, but I’m looking to change that in the new year. Our animation is a collaboration between yours truly and Brian Young, and depicts the life of Christmas trees.

The PopCulteer
November 28, 2014

PopCult Note: This week The PopCult Toybox was delayed, and next week it will be a special PopCult Gift Guide installment, so rather than push this piece back two weeks, today the Toybox invades The PopCulteer.

In many ways, the rise of the Internet has made being a toy collector a lot easier. One of those ways is by spreading the news of new product and how and where you can find it.

As a recent example of this, just last week in the Adventure Team HQ Yahoo! mailing list, GI Joe collector Jerry Gonzalez posted a discovery he made while poking around on the Target.com website. Though they were not yet listed as being in stock, Target had listings for five new 1/6 scale action figures. Actually, Target listed them as being 1/10 scale, but I could tell from the listed size of the package that these guys were in scale with the original GI Joe.

From the ATHQ mailing list, the news quickly spread on Facebook and other message boards and as soon as these items were listed as being in stock, I was able to order a complete set. In today’s PopCulteer, we’re shifting gears a bit and bringing you a special Black Friday PopCult Toybox. It was a bit of a gamble ordering these with the questions of scale, but it was a gamble that paid off. These are 1/6 scale figures.

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Here at Charleston’s original Pop Culture blog we want to pause for a moment and thank all our readers for supporting what we do. This week, due to holiday goings-on, we have not posted our regular features. Over the coming days we we will bring you a special PopCult Toybox, and tomorrow you can expect a new PopCulteer (in fact, they may even wind up being the same thing). The PopCult Bookshelf will return next week with a special PopCult Gift Guide installment.

Until then, PopCult wishes a happy and peaceful holiday to everyone.

Hayley Lambert as Mary

MARY opens Friday Nov. 28, 8PM, at the WVSU Capitol Center Theater, Charleston. with performances Sat. Nov. 29, 8PM, Sunday Nov. 30, 2PM matinee, and Thurs Dec.4, Fri. Dec. 5 Sat. Dec 6, 8PM. Above you see a promo clip I put together today with footage shot at a dress rehearsal Tuesday night. This is the story of the nine months leading to the birth of Jesus, as seen through the eyes of the young girl destined to become Christianity’s most renown female figure. Brought to life by the artistry of Dan Kehde and Mark Scarpelli.

This is my eighth year shooting video of MARY, and it’s great to see how they tinker with the show and make minor changes as they go along. This year’s cast is especially strong. Kudos go out to newcomer Haley Lambert as Mary. The entire cast is spectacular and you should make it a point to see why MARY has become a Charleston Holiday Tradition.

This week you can tune in to Radio Free Charleston Volume Three at New Appalachia Radio and hear our new two-hour format! The show streams at 10 AM and 10 PM every Tuesday at New Appalachia Radio on the Voices of Appalachia site. Replays are Thursday nights at midnight and late Saturday night at 2 AM.

Update: You can listen to this show now in the Voices of Appalachia archive HERE.

You can listen to New Appalchia Radio HERE and look for our previous shows HERE.

Our expanded format will allow us to bring you a themed hour of music each week, and this week that theme is “Live at The Empty Glass.” All of the music in our second hour was recorded live at the legendary East End music venue. Much of it was provided by our friends at Empty Glass Records, but some of it was dredged up from the RFC Archives.

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Your host

This week Radio Free Charleston presents music from Anthony Hoey, Diablo Blues Band and The Company Stores, plus animation from the RFC vault and more. It’s time for “Hellblinki Doll Head Shirt.”

We begin with a look at the cutting-edge technology that allows us to pipe Radio Free Charleston into your homes.

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This week our artistic kick-start is a digital pastel of my imaginary daughter, Kitty Killton, clowning around during a pose last week at Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art school. The kid has been a friend for years and has been appearing in PopCult and on Radio Free Charleston for more than seven years, and she never disappoints. Click the image to enlarge.

Tune in later today for a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston. We have music from Anthony Hoey, Diablo Blues Band and The Company Stores, plus animation from Frank Panucci and Third Mind Incarnation.

I don’t often post videos that I know are in heavy circulation around the internet, but this week I’m making an exception. Live Talks Los Angeles hosted John Cleese and Eric Idle earlier this week. The video is now online so we can all enjoy watching two old friends chat for over an hour. This was done to promote Cleese’s new book, “So, Anyway…”

I’m posting it tonight because it is simply delightful. For more information about Live Talks Los Angeles, visit their website.

Following up on our three-week tour of episodes of Radio Free Charleston that feature music from Dan Kehde and Mark Scarpelli’s MARY:  Rock Opera, we go back to 2010 and 2012.

MARY opens Friday Nov. 28, 8PM, at the WVSU Capitol Center Theater, Charleston. with performances Sat. Nov. 29, 8PM, Sunday Nov. 30, 2PM matinee, and Thurs Dec.4, Fri. Dec. 5 Sat. Dec 6, 8PM. 

The above video from 2012 is a performance of the stirring “Trio” that ends the first act, with two sets of actresses portraying Elizabeth, The Archangel Gabriel and Mary combining to form a “Double Trio” of six wonderful voices. As Elizabeth we have Lo Mallory and Susanna Tucker. Singing the role of Gabriel are Maddy Gourevitch and Susanna Morris. In the tile role of Mary are Katie Shaver and Rowan Maher. That year CYAC tried having two casts who traded off the roles, so we took advantage and combined them.

Below you see both parts of our coverage of the 2010 production. Thas year the cast included CYAC veterans Maddy Gourevitch as Gabriel, Donnie Smith as Joseph, Craig Auge as Zechariaih, Katrina Scarpelli as Elizabeth, Jonathan Tucker as Herod, and Brynna Horswell as Mary. Other returning veterans included April Richardson Morgan, Nik Tidquist, and Austin Thomas.