Month: June 2017 (Page 4 of 5)

For the first time in a month, Thursday is when we drop a new Radio Free Charleston International on an unsuspecting public at 3 PM on The AIR. Tune in at the website, or on this handy embedded radio player…

Back from having his Thursdays filled with such trivial matters as eye surgery and paying work, your PopCulteer has finally resumed the RFC International grind, with a show that is just full of an eclectic assortment of music.

After another morning and afternoon filled with great new music plus special replays of Curtain Call and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, we drop an atomic bomb of mostly-new music on Radio Free Charleston International at 3 PM with another show that harkens back to the glory days of free-format radio.

Listeners will get to hear brand-new music by Chuck Berry, The Foo Fighters, Ray Davies, Todd Rundgren and Donald Fagan, Erasure and more. It’s another of our trademark hodge-podge episodes that should work, but on RFC International, we somehow find a way to make it all flow into a cohesive musical experience. Even when we segue from Frank Sinatra to The Stranglers. Just check out the playlist below.

You can hear Radio Free Charleston International on The AIR Thursday at 3 PM, with replays Friday at 9 AM and 10 PM, Saturday at 11 AM and Sunday at 1 AM and 10 PM.

Following RFC International on Thursday,you can listen to this week’s new Radio Free Charleston, with all-new music from The Weedhaven Laughing Academy, Pale Nova and more at 5 PM, and The New Music Show at 6 PM , The Crazy Show at 6:30 PM. In prime-time, it’s this week’s episodes of The Swing Shift and Curtain Call, followed at 10 PM by Live From The Empty Glass (this week with Spurgie Hankins Band, Tyler Chidlers and more). All night long after that, it’s a marathon of The Swing Shift.

Here is your RFC International playlist:

Desmond Dekker  “It Mek”
Chuck Berry  “Jamaica Moon”
Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello  “My Brave Face (demo)”
Hank Marvin  “Peter Gunn/Baby Elephant Walk”
Foo Fighters  “Detroit Rock City”
Steven Universe  “We Are The Crystal Gems”
James McCartney  “Peyote Coyote”
Todd Rundgren and Donald Fagan  “Tin Foil Hat”
Andy James  “From The Dark”
Mainhorse  “Such A Beautiful Day”
Duncan McKay and George Voros  “Let Go”
Frank Sinatra  “She Says”
The Stranglers  “European Female”
Thunderclap Newman  “Something In The AIR”
Gentle Giant  “Dog’s Life”
Rancid  “Telegraph Avenue”
Marillion  “Man Of A Thousand Faces (live)”
Imagine Dragons  “Blank Space/Stand By Me”
George Harrison  “Got My Mind Set On You (extended mix)”
Julian Lennon  “Lucy”
Cheap Trick  “Everything Works (If You Let It)”
Erasure  “Love You To The Sky”
The Paladins  “New World”
The New Triumvirat  “Party Life”
Ray Davies  “Wings of Fantasy”
Blondie  “Fragments”

We are dicing up the photo essays from WonderFest USA into tiny, bite-sized pieces because the new blogging software here at PopCult does not like those huge 100-image essays I used to post.

Today it’s our first look at the Monsters of WonderFest USA. To refresh your memory, you can see an earlier photo essay that has links to other photo essays from last weekend’s show HERE. We’re gonna have a lot of these over the next few days, so get used to them.

Some of the kits you’ll see are traditional model kits, some are resin kits and some are scratch-built. I have no idea which are which because I didn’t take notes. All of them are impressive as hell, so just scroll through and let your eyes pop out.

We’ll be posting a bunch more, so keep checking PopCult for the further photographic adventures of Rudy at WonderFest.

Everybody’s favorite mutant, from Metaluna.

“Mummy, Mummy! Why I an running in circles?”

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A stompy new episode of Life Speaks To Michele Zirkle a timely episode of  Curtain Call and the second episode of our new show about Professional Wrestling headline your day of programming on The AIR. You can tune in at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

In “Stomp Those Divots of Frustrationm” this week’s brand-new episode of Life Speaks To Michele Zirkle, Michele addresses the idea of a more primal approach to anger management. In her words, “What are you waiting for? Stomp those divots of frustration. Throw your TEMPER TANTRUM and get what you want. It’s okay. Kids do it. So can you!” Tune in Wednesday at 1:30 PM on The AIR, with a replay at 7 PM. Don’t forget you can learn more about Michele’s views on life and how the spiritual and physical worlds coexist at her website, where you can also find out about her book, Rain No Evil.

Then at 2 PM The Best of The Real with Mark Wolfe sees Mark talk to some obscure pop culture blogger.

At 3 PM  Mel Larch brings you a a preview of the musicals nominated for the 2017 Tony Awards, including work by Josh Groban and Tim Minchin.  In this week’s Curtain Call, you will hear: “If I Had My Time Here Again” and “Day One” from Groundhog Day; “Pierre” and “Letters” from Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812; “Welcome To The Rock,” “Prayer” and “Something’s Missing” from Come From Away; and “Waving Through A Window,” Requiem” and “Only Us” from Dear Even Hansen.

The Tony Awards air this Sunday, June 11 on CBS. 

At 5 PM, It’s a new Beatles Blast, presenting the first part of a show dedicated to the soundtrack to All This And World War II, one of the most messed-up projects to ever involved music by the Beatles. This week you will hear Beatle tunes covered by the likes of Elton John, Ambrosia, Leo Sayer, Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood, Keith Moon and others, all backed up by The London Symphony Orchestra. This was recorded to accompany stock footage from the second World War. It’s goofier than it sounds, and next week we bring you part two, which is even more bizarre.

6 PM sees The NEW MUSIC SHOW, followed at 6:30 PM by the now-daily Crazy Show. At 7 PM we have a replay of Life Speaks, followed at 7:30 PM by Word Association with Lee & Rudy. Prognosis airs at 8 PM.

Then at 10 PM it’s the second edition of Marking Out, our new hour-long show devoted to Professional Wrestling, which comes to us from WMUL radio in Huntington. Hosted by Matt BelVillain and Betty Rock, this weekly show will fill you in on everything you need to know about WWE, NXT, ROH, Impact Wrestling and even the local indy scene.

That’s followed by The Comedy Vault at 11 PM. Then at midnight listeners can settle in for an all-night marathon of mind-hurting weirdness.  All part of the unique programming on The AIR.

Your PopCulteer is back home, settled in, caught up with radio work and ready to resume posting photos from WonderFest USA, which took place last weekend in Louisville. We’ve given you a few short tastes of what we saw in this mass of overwhelming coolness (HERE and HERE), so now we’re going to get specific.

The model-builders who showed their work at WonderFest built their creations devoted to many different things. In this post we’re going to take a look at Spacecraft. You’ll recognize some of these from some of the most iconic movies and TV shows in science fiction history.

In fact, you’ll have to recognize them, because I was too busy taking photos to take notes, so that cool spaceship in our lead and second images, which looks really familiar to me and was an amazing work of art, has not quite made its way into my frontal lobes for identification purposes. Please feel free to comment and let me know what it is. It’s driving me nuts.

The models at WonderFest ranged from just an inch or two long to several feet long, so I tried to get a few shots with people in them for scale.

Here is our first look at the Spacecraft at WonderFest. Stay tuned for more creativity unleashed.

A closer look at this intricate model. If I’d gotten the hang of using reading glasses, I would’ve been able to tell you what this is. It was impressive as hell, I can tell you that.

A cool landing module of some sort.

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All-new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift and Ska Madness debut Tuesday at 10 AM, 3 PM and 5 PM on The AIR.Listners will be able to hear a huge load of new local music, Broadway Swings part two and a tribute to the late King of Ska, Prince Buster.

You can tune in at The AIR Website, or just settle down right here on this embedded radio player…

We’re trying an experiment this week. If you want, you can listen to Radio Free Charleston on this widget, whenever you like…

At 10 AM and 10 PM Radio Free Charleston opens with a fresh-outta-the-oven track from Columbus’s Weedhaven Laughing Academy. The show continues with new music from Pale Nova, Scarlet Revolt and closes with a never-before heard new studio cut from Membrane Cell. See the playlist below.

At 3 PM The Swing Shift delivers the second part of Broadway Swings, which began last week on Curtain Call. You can hear that episode of Curtain Call at 2 PM, in a special replay. The playlist can be found at the bottom of this post.

At 5 PM Dexter Checkers checks in from London with Ska Madness, this week presenting an hour of the music of Prince Buster, the Ska pioneer who left this world last September.

At 6 PM our daily New Music Show continues, while at 6:30 PM, still by Popular Demand, it’s The Crazy Show. At 7 PM we offer up a replay of last week’s Radio Coolsville, and at 8 PM it’s a replay of last week’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

10 PM is when Radio Free Charleston is heard again, followed at 11 PM by Radio Free Charleston International, and then that’s followed by an all-night marathon of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat at 1 AM.

The AIR is the place to go for interruption-free music. Below the jump you’ll find the playlists I promised you:

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This week we begin June, a month with no specific theme for Monday Morning Art. Today’s self-indulgent digital painting is “Up From The Abyss,” a semi-abstract look back, as you are sucked into nothingness.  I will refrain from making a political comment here.

As I said, there is no theme this month, so there’s no telling what might turn up in this space next week. As always, click the image to see a bigger version.

Also, be sure to tune in to The AIR today, even though we’re still in reruns due to outside concerns.It’s still the best radio you’ll find on the internet. Of note, at 10 PM we have a replay of Six Degrees of Separation with David Dunkley.  Just hit up the website or click this little virtual radio thingy…

If anyone wants to build an app for us for free, we’d point you to it, too. Hasn’t happened yet.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be posting shorter and more numerous photo essays of our trip this weekend to WonderFest USA at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Louisville. And also, as I mentioned earlier, your PopCulteer is working with his fifty dollar pawn shop laptop, so these pictures are fairly raw and will be captionless.

One of the biggest attractions to WonderFest is the collection of vendors selling model kits, modeling supplies, magazines, comic books, t-shirts, toys and other bits of related coolness. This post is a completely random assortment of images plucked from the camera card.

This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the cool stuff that can suck the money right out of your wallet at WonderFest. We will cover some of the vendors in more detail later in the week, like the guy in the first photo who was giving away really cool resin figurines absolutely free. Your PopCulteer only took three because he didn’t want to be greedy.

You can see the first mini-photo essay from WonderFest HERE. We’re gonna be posting a whole heck of a lot of these in PopCult over the next few days, so get used to it.

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If all goes according to plan, you should have seen a couple of short photo essays from your PopCulteer’s weekend trip to Louisville already. The plan was to head down there to WonderFest, take lots of pictures, shoot some video, meet up with some friends, and then head to our hotel and post some fresh PopCult for you.

If that didn’t happen, I would like to blame sunspots. I’m writing this on Friday afternoon so I don’t have to worry about posting it as soon as I get home.

Anyway, WonderFest USA is a huge gathering of model-builders, special effects wizards and other fine and talented peoples, and this will be our third trip. When we made our first trip, year before last, I cranked out a nifty video to show off the model contest room. That’s it up there. That ought to give you an idea why we keep going back.

Look for more WonderFest coverage over the next few days here in PopCult.

Your Popculteer is at WonderFest USA in Louisville and I promnised you photos this weekend. The convention is a blast and we’ve had fun running into old friends and seeing the sights.

And those sights include incredible models built by people from around the world. This photo essay is just a taste of what you can expect.

We will be presenting these without captions and with very little editing and processing since we’re working out of the PopCult mobil office, which is a laptop I got for fifty bucks at a pawn shop.

You can expect more photo essays all week, maybe even later tonight. However, these will be shorter essays with fewer photos. Since the last upgrade of blogging software here at the Gazette-Mail, posts with more than ten or so photos seem not to be welcome.

However, this should give you a quick idea of the fun and talent on display down here. There will definitely be more to come. Next up we’ll take a quick look at the vendors.

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From September, 2008, this episode features music from Jonathon Glen Wood and Civil State. We also have a promo video for “Jack The Ripper,” the musical by Mark Scarpelli and Dan Kehde, which opened the week this show was originally posted, and there’s some vintage campaign animation from 1960.

I went back to the original production notes, and was highly amused by what I wrote about one of our guests, so I’m excerpting it here:

“Our first musical guest is Jonathon Glen Wood, and I’m telling the truth. I really didn’t know he was a musician when we first met. I ran into him at Heathen’s bar in South Charleston where we both went to hear our mutual friends, Mark Bates and The Vacancies.  Jonathon was kind enough to let me hide behind him when a rather inebriated woman who looked like Ed Asner decided I was her new boyfriend.

When I found out Jonathon was a musican, I checked out his Myspace page, and was floored by the quality of his voice and his songwriting.  This was golden material, like Woody Guthrie and Hank Sr. had a kid (don’t try and imagine that, though).”

Jonathan is based in Louisville now, but he occasionally returns home to play at Kinship Goods, and is still making wonderful music.