Month: March 2015 (Page 3 of 5)

RFCv3 #19

We have a very different episode of Radio Free Charleston streaming on New Appalachian Radio today. All of the music you hear in this show is pulled from The RFC MINI SHOW, including almost every episode of that program from 2015, and a few older classics.

You can hear this episode now in the Voices of Appalachia Archives HERE.

Because your loyal host is away covering JoeLanta for PopCult, there was a deadline crunch to prepare this episode ahead of time. With a short window of opportunity, your host took the easy way out. This episode features the audio–introductions and all–ripped directly from The RFC MINI SHOW. There are only two new announcing segments. It took about half as long as normal to put this show together, but it’s a nice reminder of how cool The RFC MINI SHOW has been of late.

You can listen to Radio Free Charleston’s streaming radio incarnation at 10 AM and 10 PM on Tuesdays (and again at midnight Thursday) at New Appalachian Radio, part of Voices of Appalachia. If you miss it, check our the archives for previously-aired shows. You can also listen to Radio Free Charleston Saturday at Midnight. Saturday, RFC airs for six hours, starting at The Witching Hour!

Billy Matheny, one of the many artists you’ll hear on this week’s show

You will hear the five most recent episodes of The RFC MINI SHOW, including the show with GypsyRhythm that just debuted in PopCult yesterday. You’ll also hear great live music from Billy Matheny, Todd Burge, The Company Stores, Three Bodies, Go Van Gogh, Anthony Hoey and more. Instead of listing each song in the playlist, this week we’re listing the artists below the jump with links to the original production notes for that episode of The RFC MINI SHOW.

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This week The RFC MINI SHOW presents a new act that combines music with dance and comes up with a unique look and sound. GypsyRythm puts on a show like no other band in town. Drummer Vincent Bielski teams up with multi-instrumentalist dancers Serafina Sol and Misty Dawn Lomas and together they create a sound that runs the gamut from World Music to Swamp Blues with lots of Gypsy mysticism thrown in for good measure.

The RFC crew has wanted them on the show since we first started hearing about them weeks ago. Everyone from Lee Harrah to Kitty Killton was raving about the band, so we jumped at the chance to record them during Pepper Fandango’s annual “Anti-Valentine’s” show at The Empty Glass last month.

Of themselves, the band says, “We are a band of belly dancing bass babies and a drum daddy with a 5-string, bringing gypsy punk to West Virginia.” We hope you enjoy this very special band, and keep watching RFC because we’re going to record them again some night when Rudy is not so shaky running camera.

This Sunday Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School returns with their first show of 2015. The theme is “The Old West” and the star model is new to Dr. Sketchy’s, Jasmine Star. Jasmine will make her debut Sunday, March 22 at at Uncork and Create on 1031 Quarrier Street. The event is 18+ and you bring your own art supplies. If you’re 21+ you can BYOB, too. $10 at the door gets you in. All art mediums are accepted as long as they don’t disturb anyone else. Artists of any skill level from the novice to the pro are invited to come create in this relaxed environment.

Today’s art is a digitally-assaulted photo of Jasmine Star from an appearance she made on Radio Free Charleston years ago. Click to see it bigger and check PopCult later Monday morning for The RFC MINI SHOW starring GypsyRhythm.

The PopCult Toybox

This morning we’re giving you a sneak peek at the awesome dioramas on display at JoeLanta/The Great Atlanta Toy Show. In case you’ve not been reading any of the other entries in this blog for the past few days, your PopCulteer is in Atlanta documenting one of the fastest-growing toy shows in the country.

We’re having a blast down here, and you will see and hear plenty about it once we get home. You can expect way more photos of these and the other excellent action figure dioramas later in the week.

Inside GIJoeGuy’s Surplus

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Joelanta, the really cool GI Joe convention that I try to go to every year now has wrapped up. Your PopCulteer is still in Atlanta because tomorrow he and Mrs. PopCulteer are going to go explore Senoia, the town where they film much of The Walking Dead. Since I’m still basking in the glow of 12″ action figure wonderfulness, we’re going to relive our first JoeLanta, two years ago.

When we get back in a few days you can expect a ton of photos and videos, plus we’re far from done covering last month’s Toy Fair in New York, so if you like reading about cool toys, PopCult is where you want to point your browser.

This music-packed show from April, 2008, features A Place Of Solace, Holden Caulfield, and from Nashville, special guests The Coal Men.

We also have an announcement from The Concept, and a short burst of animation from my brother Frank. I host from Davis Park, using a real microphone for the first time, so that the giant Air Conditioner on Capitol Street doesn’t drown me out like it did back in episode four.

You can read the full production notes HERE.

The PopCult Toybox

It’s time for a mini-photo essay blogged from Atlanta, where your PopCulteer is enjoying the company of fellow Joeheads and celebrating 1/6 scale action figures.

Welcome to JoeLanta, and yes, that’s Terri Coop of Circle X Ranch in the background, coming around the banner!

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The PopCulteer
March 13, 2015

For this Friday the 13th edition of The PopCulteer, we’re going to look at a really cool Roku channel that streams horror, exploitation, and mind hurting weirdness twenty-four hours a day, Bizarre TV.

First, for the uninitiated, Roku is a little box that connects to your television and also connects to the internet via wi-fi. Using your Roku, you can watch Netflix, YouTube, WWE Network, and tons of other streaming services right on your television set. But the little extra that gives Roku a leg up on its competitors (there are several like Chromecast and Apple TV) is that Roku offers thousands of exclusive public and private streaming channels.

The latest model, The Roku 3

Many of these are niche, narrowcasting channels but others are more like Crackle or Hulu. Some are streaming channels, while others offer video on demand. The vast majority of them are free, but most of those have commercials of some sort.

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The PopCult Bookshelf

A couple of months back I told you about Pix-C, the new subscription webcomics produced by the folks behind Charlton Neo. And if you remember, I spent a big chunk of last year praising the Charlton Neo movement. In case you haven’t been keeping up, Charlton Neo is a revival of sorts of Charlton Comics, the lower-tier comic book company that published out of Derby Connecticut from the 1940s into the 1980s.

Charlton had some brief moments of glory during the superhero boom of the 1960s and the Science Fiction boom of the 1970s, but they were most notable for producing comic books in genres other than those that were most popular. When DC and Marvel were fighting it out in the Superhero world, Charlton was giving us Westerns, Romance, Mysteries, War, Humor and Hot Rod comics. When they went under in the mid 1980s they were the only mainstream publisher regular producing books of those types.

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The PopCult Toybox

Up above you see a really neat promo clip for JoeLanta/The Great Atlanta Toy Show. This is the work of Tim and Lisa Weedn of Studio Joe, and it’s particularly cool to see because they’re hosting the film festival part of this year’s annual convention for die-hard GI Joe collectors. We’re going to be treated to a new Studio Joe epic, as well.

Your PopCulteer will be making his third trip to JoeLanta this year, and in the coming weeks you will see tons of video and photos. We hope to bring you some great panel discussions, diorama footage and even cool musical guests, as we have in previous years.

Visit the JoeLanta website if you want to make a spur-of-the-moment trip down South for the fun. It’s a better vacation than Acapulco because there’s toys and last year they had a replica of the TV Batmobile–the real one, not some goofy-looking rocket car that was just painted to look almost like one. The pop culture car show returns this year!

If the tense in the posts you read here in PopCult seem a tad wonky over the next week, chalk it up to them mostly being written in advance. I will be able to update the blog from the road, but I don’t know for sure if I’ll have the time, so I’m cooking your meals in advance and leaving them in the fridge with instructions for how to re-heat them. Please don’t blow anything up or bring in a deluge of snow the way you did the last time I left town for a few days.

ONWARD to JOELANTA!