Month: October 2017 (Page 4 of 4)

The rest of the week looks incredible on The AIR as we bring you new episodes of Life Speaks with Michele Zirkle, Beatles Blast, Curtain Call, Word Association with Lee & Rudy, The Comedy Vault, Radio Free Charleston International, The New Music Show, Radio Coolsville, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and The Third Shift.  Listen in at the website, or on this cool embedded player…

Wednesday we offer up new episodes of Life Speaks To Michele Zirkle, Beatles Blast, Curtain Call, Word Association with Lee & Rudy and The Comedy Vault, plus we have other special coolness awaiting you.

The morning brings you replays of The Swing Shift and three hours of great local music in the AIR MUSIC MIX.

At 11 AM it’s a special presentation of The Mystery Hour.

Noon sees 90 minutes of Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, first hosting a replay of last week’s Curtain Call, and then also hosting a classic episode of On The Road with Mel.

At 1:30 PM it’s time for an all-new edition of Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle.  This week Michele sings the praises of boredom, and how it can pave the way for creativity.  You can hear a replay of Life Speaks at 7 PM.

At 2 PM music takes over with a brand-new Beatles Blast, hosted by yours truly, as we pay tribute to Tom Petty with an hour of music that he made with The Traveling Wilburys.

At 3 PM a brand-new Curtain Call presents part two of our two-part salute to the Bernstein/Sondheim classic, West Side Story, on the occasion of the 6oth anniversary of its debut.  The show is recreated using performances from different productions and some wild cover versions of tunes from the legendary musical take on Romeo and Juliet. Following the finale, the remainder of the hour is filled with offbeat WSS covers by a surprising array of artists.

The AIR Audio Playhouse brings you part two of a Jules Verne classic at 5 PM and our weekdaydouble-shot of The New Music Show and The (BS) Crazy Show follow that.

Following a replay of today’s new episode of Life Speaks, we have a new episode of Word Association with Lee & Rudy at 7:30 PM. This week your pop culture pontificators take on the subject of great rock albums.

8 PM sees a replay of Monday’s new episode of Prognosis, as Herman Linte brings you the music of Triumverat. At 10 PM we present Marking Out with BelVillain and Betty, and at 11 PM it’s time for The Comedy Vault, new this week with a classic episode of The National Lampoon Radio Hour.

Thursday, Radio Free Charleston International is two hours of unpredictable musical mayhem, which means that it hasn’t been recorded yet as we write this. Likewise, Friday offers up a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that we have not yet heard. We can tell you that Radio Coolsville really lives up to its name. There will also be a brand-new edition of The Third Shift Friday evening.

Just gawk at our lovely schedule graphics to get all giddy with anticipation.

It looks like we have a huge hole in our text here because of the double strips of graphics. This is not good. I don’t really feel like writing this much right now. I’d rather be in the living room watching wrestling.

See, I’ve been knocking myself out producing these radio shows for The AIR for the last two years, and we’ve built up a decent following. Several thousand people tune in to listen to our shows each week.

The odd thing is that hardly any of our listeners are local. My analytics tell me that we don’t have many listeners here in West Virginia, except on Tuesday when we debut a new episode of Radio Free Charleston.

Even stranger is that we have a decent European following for our over night marathons of The Swing Shift. Go figure.

In a couple of weeks we’re going to go full-bore on Halloween programming, and after that we’re looking at adding some exciting new programs to our line-up and moving some of our older shows around a little bit on the schedule.

It’d be great to get some feedback, but we’re not the bright, shiny new object in town, and the folks here in Charleston just can’t seem to be bothered to tune in and support a cool, internet-based radio station. I mean, we don’t have a street team or advertising, and we don’t want to beg for money, so we’re content being West Virginia’s best-kept secret.

For those of you who are listening, thank you, and stay tuned. We’re stubborn enough to keep doing this.

Okay, I think I filled up the rest of the blank space in this post.

For the third week in a row we are giving you BRAND-NEW episodes of all of our afternoon music programs! Once again we’re bringing you Monday and Tuesday’s schedule together this week so that you can have plenty of time to prepare meals with which you can enjoy the fine programming on our internet radio station, The AIR. You can listen at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

We have our usual excellent line up of shows on Monday, headlined by a brand-new editions of Harrah’s Hard & Heavy at 2 PM and the triumphant return of Herman Linte on Prognosis at 3 PM. Then after that we expect a new episode of Marking Out with Betty Rock and Matt BelVillain discussing professional wrestling. Marking Out can be heard at 5 PM Monday, with replays Wednesday and Sunday.

Monday Harrah’s Hard & Heavy brings you a full hour of legendary band, Motorheard, covering songs made famous by other artists.

Immediately following that, Herman Linte and Prognosis present two hours of Triumverat, a German prog band from the 1970s that should give any fan of ELP the warm and fuzzies.

Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM we offer up a brand new episode of Radio Free Charleston. This week it’s all about reviving classic local tracks from our massive RFC Archives as we go back to one of the original episodes of Radio Free Charleston from November, 1989, and bring you an in-studio performance by The Blind Blue Leper Society, along with other highlights of that show. The BBLS was none other than our old pals, Joe Vallina (currently of The Heavy Editors) and Charleston icon, Washboard Dave.

The morning airing is followed by three more hours of fantastic local music as we bring you three recent episodes of Radio Free Charleston. The night-time airing is followed by last week’s brand-new Radio Free Charleston International.

Tuesday at 2 PM Dexter Checkers checks in from London with a special episode of Ska Madness dedicated to The Toasters, a band that bridges the gap between British Two-Tone and American Third Wave Ska.

At 3 PM your PopCulteer hosts The Swing Shift. This new episode will bring you classic examples of Big Band Swing, mixed with Swing Revival music from the 1990s and brand-new Swing tunes from Maureen and the Mercury 5, The Swing Shift Big Band, Louis Prima Jr., Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Lady J and her Bada Bing Band and more.

Check out the neato-keen schedule graphic for The AIR which I sort of recycled from last week.

We begin this week with a digital painting that is based on elements from several different photos that I took in the Loop region of Chicago back in August. It’s not really a grand statement or anything. I wanted to see if I could combine the most mundane parts of several different images to create a routine freeze-frame of everyday city life. The most exciting thing in the painting is the Fed Ex truck.

Readers are invited to create their own narrative. Click the image to see it larger.

The annual Rod Run Doo Wop car show and Kanawha Boulevard-closing spectacular starts this coming Wednesday, with a cruise-in at Cabela’s. Thursday is when Charleston’s besieged main drag becomes a parking lot for several days as thousands of the coolest-looking cars in the country converge to draw the masses in a huge orgy of automotive car-lust.

It can be lots of fun, despite the crowd, especially if the weather cooperates. This year looks pretty good. The last two years were diminished by rainy days that kept the cars and crowds away. That’s why our videos for tonight are from 2013 and 2014. Those were both great years for attending the show and your PopCulteer took his handy cameras out to document the excessive automotive madness.

This year is a bit of a question mark for video. I’ve stepped away from obsessively shooting and posting video of everything that happens in town, and we’re not sure if we’re even going to brave downtown Charleston now that it’s been over-run with panhanders and other cities’ problem citizens. We may go, and if we do, I’ll at least post some photos. However, if you love cool cars, there’s no place else to be next weekend. Above is the 2013 video. Below is 2014.