Month: September 2016 (Page 1 of 4)

The AIR, in case you didn’t know (in which case, welcome to your first ever visit to PopCult, please take the time to check out our many other fascinating posts and stories), is our nifty little internet radio station, broadcasting a unique and innovative collection of talk, comedy, and music, music, music. You can listen at The AIR website or on this marvelous and confounding little internet embedded doo-hickey thing…

Today on The AIR, we have a brand new episode of Laugh Appalachia at 9 AM and 9 PM. Following Laugh Appalachia, you can hear encore presentations of On The Road With Mel (ShockaCon), Radio Free Charleston (also about ShockaCon), Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum and The Best of The Real with Mark Wolfe (with RJ Haddy) and the special ShockaCon edition of Word Association with Lee & Rudy. At 1 PM you can listen to an encore of this week’s Radio Free Charleston International, about which you may read HERE.

3 PM sees a brand-new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, which will include, in its second hour, the entire Live Stiffs Live album from the first Stiff Records tour in 1978, featuring Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Wreckless Eric and more. Check out the playlist:

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The The  “Infected”
Fun Boy Three  “The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum”
The Specials  “Friday Night, Saturday Morning”
Sigue Sigue Sputnik  “Love Missle F1 11”
Pretenders  “Talk of the Town”
Sparks  “Angst In My Pants”
Human League  “Being Boiled”
Public Image Limited  “Death Disco”
The Flying Lizards  “The Move On Up”
Blondie  “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear”
The Vapors  “News At Ten”
Celia and the Mutations  “Mony Mony”
The Stranglers  “5 Minutes”
New Model Army  “No Rest”
Rich Kids  “Ghosts of Princes In Towers”
Holly and the Italians  “Tell That Girl To Shut Up”

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The PopCulteer
September 30, 2016

If you’ve been reading PopCult at all this week, you know that ShockaCon happens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Beni Kedem Shrine Center. ShockaCon is West Virginia’s only horror/sci-fi convention and they’ve got some great guests lined up.

Zach Galligan, star of the Gremlins movies, will be on hand Saturday and Sunday. Women of Horror will be represented by Camille Keaton, star of the movie I Spit On Your Grave and Geretta Geretta, star of the movie, Demons. Oliver Robbins, who appeared in the first two Poltergiest movies, will be on hand and you can read Bill Lynch’s profile of him HERE

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The PopCult Bookshelf

There are several authors, graphic novelists, and artists on hand at ShockaCon. ShockaCon happens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Beni Kedem Shrine Center. Just follow THIS LINK for more details and check out the impressive literary and artisitic lineup below.

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The PopCult Toybox

This is a bit of a skimpy PopCult Toybox, but I wanted to let my readers know that I will be part of a panel discussing fifty years of Star Trek toys at ShockaCon. Joining me will be Tim Arnott of Third Floor Comics and Collectibles in Nitro, Lee Harrah, Ghostbuster and master of all things MEGO, and Mark Wolfe, a lifelong Star Trek afficianado who will show off just a little of his massive collection and also talk about his time as a Klingon.

This all happens at ShockaCon and you will want to get there early. ShockaCon takes place at the Beni Kedem Shrine Center on Quarrier Street and it opens to the public Friday at 4 PM. Our panel takes place at 5 PM. We are the first official panel of ShockaCon 2016.

Fifty Years of Star Trek Toys is not the only toy panel at ShockaCon this year. Sunday at 1:30 PM, my lovely wife Mel Larch will present the Welcome To Monster High panel, which will also include face painting and coloring.

Many of the vendors at ShockaCon will have cool collectible toys based on various ghoulies, monsters, and the occasional maniacal killer.  Plus, Tim Arnott will have tons of collectible toys and comics at his booth. Fans of cool stuff in the Charleston area will want to check out ShockaCon this weekend. I’ve been telling you about it all week in PopCult and will continue to do so, so get used to it.

It’s time to once again plug the cool programming on The AIR. Listen in at the website, or on this swank little radio player…

Thursday afternoon now means Radio Free Charleston on The AIR! At 3 PM you can tune in for the premiere of a new episode of Radio Free Charleston International, where your host (and PopCulteer) Rudy Panucci brings you two hours of whatever he feels like playing.

At 5 PM check out a replay of this week’s Radio Free Charleston, one hour of great local music, this week focusing on the bands playing at this weekend’s ShockaCon Horror/Sci-Fi convention here in town. You can read about that show HERE.

Here’s the playlist for this week’s Radio Free Charleston International, with new music from Green Day, Kansas, Macy Gray, The Sword, Vangelis, Regina Spektor, Marillion, Sting and way the heck more…

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Green Day  “Revolution Radio”
The Pixies  “Um Chagga Lagga”
The Monkees  “The Porpoise Song”
Kansas  “Summer”
Macy Gray  “Redemption Song”
The Sword  “High Country (acoustic)”
Vangelis  “Mission Accomplished”
Regina Spektor  “Older and Taller”
Manfred Mann  “I Put A Spell On You”
The Isley Brothers  “Shout”
Freddie Mercury  “The Great Pretender”
John Lennon  “Stand By Me”
The Who  “Batman”
Marillion  “Living In Fear”
Frank Zappa  “Cosmic Debris”
Elvis Costello  “…and in every home”
No Doubt  “Open The Gate”
Sting  “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You”
The Screaming Jets  “Cash In Your Ticket”
Miss Behaviour  “Savage Heart”
Neil Young  “We R In Control”
Starpilot  “Blazor”
Mi Sex  “Computer Games”
New Order  “Bizarre Love Triangle”
M  “Doubletalk”
Kate Bush  “Pull Out The Pin”
Peter Gabriel  “Intruder”
Adrian Belew  “Standing In The Shadows”

ShockaCon week continues on The AIR and in PopCult. We have a full day of great programming, with special ShockaCon previews along with brand-new episodes of Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle Marcum and Curtain Call with Mel Larch. Our ShockaCon shows include On The Road with Mel, a special Word Association, Radio Free Charleston and this evening, The Action-Packed Thrill Ride podcast with Razor Sharp Production’s Eamon Hardiman and Scott Gregg.

As is always the case, you can tune in at The AIR website or on this special little embedded radio player widget…

At 1 PM we re-present the ShockaCon episode of On The Road with Mel where Mel chats with Penny Maple, ShockaCon’s second-in-command. At 1:30 PM Michele Zirkle Marcum brings us a new episode of Life Speaks. At 2 PM we re-present Mark Wolfe’s interview with RJ Haddy, horror make-up artist extraordinaire on The Best of The Real with Mark Wolfe.

At 3 PM we depart from the eerie side of things for one hour so we can bring you an installment of Curtain Call made up entirely of show-stopping showtunes from Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Fun Home, Evita, Camelot and more.

At 4 PM tune in as Radio Free Charleston offers up a musical preview of ShockaCon today on The AIR, with tunes from Charlie Ant Eater, Orvill Rex, Weird Paul Petroskey, The Renfields, Miniature Giant and Hurl Brickbat. Take this chance to sample the ShockaCon after-hours musical acts.

At 5 PM we premiere a special episode of Word Association with Lee & Rudy that’s all about ShockaCon. At 5:30 PM we bring you On The Road with Mel once more, then at 6 PM get ready for three hours of Razor Sharp intensity on the Action-Packed Thrill Ride podcast.

Insomniacs can listen in at midnight, as we replay the ShockaCon shows all night long.

Radio Free Charleston offers up a musical preview of ShockaCon today on The AIR, with music from Charlie Ant Eater, Orvill Rex, Weird Paul Petroskey, The Renfileds, Miniature Giant and Hurl Brickbat. This is in anticipation of ShockaCon 5, whjich happens THIS WEEKEND at the Beni Kedem Shrine Center, nestled on Quarrier Street between the Charleston Town Center and The Charleston Civic Center.

As is always the case, you can tune in at The AIR website or on this special little embedded radio player widget…

You can hear RFCf at 10 AM and 10 PM with a brand new episode dedicated to ShockaCon. The show opens with The Mark Beckner Group (Mark performed at the first two editions of ShockaCon as a member of The Nanker Phelge) and continues on with music from all the bands who will perform at the after-hours portion of ShockaCon on Friday and Saturday nights.

Check out the full schedule for ShockaCon below, and check PopCult all week for more info on what you can expect at West Virginia’s only horror/sci-fi convention.

Since this is ShockaCon week here at PopCult, I decided to present a drawing of a monster for Monday Morning Art. Only I didn’t have one laying around. So Sunday afternoon I sat down and did a quick pencil sketch of a werewolf. The notable thing is that this is the first time I’ve put pencil to paper since my pencil art tribute to Ray Harryhausen when he passed away in 2013. The truth is, that was the only pencil drawing I’d done in the last six or eight years due to my then-undiagnosed Myasthenia Gravis.

Now, after a few months of treatment, I am able to handle a pencil again, and this quick pencil sketch is the first result. Not bad for a quickie ten-minute doodle, if I do say so myself. Click to enlarge.

ShockaCon, West Virginia’s only horror/sci-fi convention, begins Friday at The Beni Kedem Shrine Center on Quarrier Street in Charleston. Look for a full schedule here in PopCult on Tuesday. In fact, we will have special ShockaCon content every day here in PopCult, and all week long on our internet radio station, The AIR.

This year they have a stellar line-up of guests and vendors, including stars from Poltergiest, Gremlins, I Spit On Your Grave and Demons, plus loads of great panels, vendors and after-hours entertainment. I will be telling you about ShockaCon all week long here in PopCult, and to kick it off, we’re going to look at videos from previous years of this cool event.

We begin with some of our coverage of last year’s ShockaCon. It’s our clip for the 2015 ShockaCon Costume Parade, which started at the Beni Kedem Shrine Center and wound around the first floor of The Charleston Town Center Mall.

One of the many highlights of ShockaCon 2015 was the Saturday night performance by Hurl Brickbat.  Hurl Brickbat is: Daniel Ferrell (Drums/Vocals), Chuck Keyser (Guitar), Caleb Moore (Bass) and Christopher Carter (Vocals/Acoustic Guitar).

It was really cool to capture one of the early performances by this very young band. Hurl Brickbat is recording their first ablum now, and will appear as part of the after-hours entertainment at ShockaCon.

Below you see the 2014 Costume Parade. This year the costume parade happens again. It’ll start in front of The Beni Kedem Shrine Center at noon, Saturday, and proceed into The Charleston Town Center Mall. If you want to be in the parade, come in costume and be there fifteen miuutes early.

Our last video tonight features The Renfields, who will return for their fifth ShockaCon with a special performance as part of the after-hours festivities.

Be sure to check PopCult all week long for all the latest info on ShockaCon 2016!