Month: December 2014 (Page 5 of 5)

Day three of the 2014 PopCult Gift Guide brings us music. Not the local music that I normally write about, but national and international artists who have released musical objects which a person such as yourself can wrap and place under a ceremonial tree. This is the cream of the crop among boxed sets and special projects from which you may well choose the perfect gift for the music-lover on on your Christmas list.

REM TV

Do you have an REM fan on your list? Well you can’t go wrong with REM TV, a six-DVD collection of every single television appearance by the band during their entire history. This collection ranges from REM on IRS’s Cutting Edge in the 1980s to entire televised concerts, their 2007 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to appearances on The Colbert Report.

It’s the perfect binge-watching experience for die-hard REM fans. Or you can give it to someone who hates the band for the perfect binge-and-purge viewing experience.

The Art of McCartney

Tribute albums can be quite a gamble. Some are loaded with unfamiliar artists. Some are devoted to musicians who don’t really deserve it.

The Art of McCartney falls into neither of those catagories. This collection of covers of Sir Paul McCartney’s songs includes artists like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Heart, The Cure, Steve Miller, Billy Joel, Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens), Willie Nelson and others. In many cases the performers are backed by McCartney’s back up band, which makes for tighter performances that may sin only in being too faithful.

A few of the songs are amazing simply in that they exist, like Bob Dylan singing the early Beatle tune “Things We Said Today.” Others are perfect matches of performer to material, like Roger Daltry singing “Helter Skelter” or Brian Wilson’s take on “Wanderlust.”

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We continue the 2014 PopCult Gift guide with eight toys that we recommend for kids of all ages. All but the first two are toys that we’ve reviewed here in the PopCult Toybox. We’re starting off with two new toys that get more detailed reviews over the next two weeks.

Tim Mee Toys Jumbo Galaxy Laser Team Space Figures

Back in July, 2013 I reviewed Tim Mee Toys’ Galaxy Laser Team figures. These were great little plastic Army Men-sized science fiction space warriors, and I thought they were terrific.

Now Tim Mee Toys has discovered the molds for Jumbo versions of six of those figures and they’ve reissued them in a bright green color. The new figures are more than twice the size of the originals, standing nearly five inches tall. Next week’s PopCult Toybox will present detailed reviews of all of the new reissues from Tim Mee Toys, but we wanted to clue you in on this set early. You can order these nifty space guys from Amazon.

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RFCv3 #4

Welcome to week four of Radio Free Charleston volume 4. You can hear this new radio version of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM every Tuesday at New Appalachian Radio from Voices of Appalachia. The show is replayed Thursday at midnight and early Sunday morning at 2 AM. Plus you can listen to old episodes in the VOA Archives.

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

This week the theme of our second hour is instrumental music. We’re not going into great detail because your PopCulteer is buried under other work at the moment (including The 2014 PopCult Gift Guide) so let’s just dive into the playlist for this week’s show:

First hour:

Kevin Scarborough “Birthright”
Anthony Hoey “So So”
Crazy Jane “Silver”
Since We Set Fire “The Stone I Was Cut From”

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It’s hard to believe, but this is the tenth annual PopCult gift guide, wherein your loyal bloggerly servant spends a few days devoting his blog to gift ideas for you to use to thrill, amaze and delight your loved ones, knowing full well that you won’t give him any credit for thinking up the perfect gift.

Yet, I do it anyway, because I care.

This year we’re doing six days of The PopCult Gift Guide. Day One is DVDs and Blu Rays. Tuesday you can expect cool toy suggestions. Wednesday we’re going to devote to music. Thursday it’s books and graphic novels. Friday’s PopCulteer will be the all-local edition of the Gift Guide. Saturday we wrap it up with the weird stuff.

Today, it’s all about the videos, so let’s kick it off.

Batman: The Complete Television Series

Well, of course this is at the top of the list. The once-reviled, now beloved 1966-68 Batman TV series comes to home video for the first time in any format! After years of legal stone-walling, all the interested parties have finally put aside their differences and the end result is this huge box set.

All 120 episodes of the show (with a few annoyingly unexplained edits), plus three hours of bonus features makes this a must-have set for any Bat-fan. The series is available in a variet of sets, ranging from single seasons on DVD to the mega-deluxe limited edition Blu-Ray, complete with a Hot Wheels Batmobile. You’ll be able to figure out how much money you want to sink into this treat.

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This week the RFC MINI SHOW features the acoustic Blues mastery of Raymond Wallace. Raymond has been a fixture on Charleston’s music scene for decades and is a longtime friend of Radio Free Charleston’s host and producer, Rudy Panucci.

Wallace first appeared on the fourth episode of Radio Free Charleston back in 2006, and it’s always a treat to hear this man perform. This week we present three songs by Raymond, recorded at The Third Eye Cabaret at Fireside Bar and Grille, located above Little India Restaurant in Charleston.

Sound engineering this week was by Eric Meadows of Voices of Appalachia. Third Eye Cabaret will be broadcast live, every other Thursday on New Appalachian Radio at Voices of Appalachia.

It’s bittersweet, but it’s time to put away the giant robots as Giant Robot Season ends later this week. We have to resign ourselves to the fact that Giant Robot Season only happens four times a year (fivc times during Leap Year), and get ready for the Winter edition.

To mark the end of Giant Robot Season, we present another digital painting of…you guessed it…a Giant Robot. Enjoy, click to enlarge and remember to say “hail” to our robot overlords.

Later today you should check back with PopCult as we bring you The RFC MINI SHOW starring Raymond Wallace, shot last month at Third Eye Cabaret. Even later than that, maybe in the evening, we will kick off the tenth annual POPCULT GIFT GUIDE! Day one will be our recommendations of DVD and Blu Ray gifts.