Month: November 2017 (Page 6 of 7)

We kick off this week with an example of yours truly trying to create an organic-looking texture by using a series of geometric shapes and patterns, coupled with distortions and filters and a splash of color. I like it, even if it does sort of look like an extreme close-up from an autopsy. As always, click the image to enlarge it.

Remember that, later today, we kick off the 2017 PopCult Gift Guide. Be sure to check out all our unique gift suggestions.

Also remember that you can tune in and hear cool stuff on our internet radio station, The AIR.

You can listen at the website, or on this familiar little embedded player…

We’re still making a few changes to the schedule this week, and your PopCulteer is a little preoccupied with the 2018 PopCult Gift Guide, so rather than talk you to death about them every day (which we have been known to do)  we’re just going to post an absolutely swell embedded schedule right here, where you can reference it all week long…

Flip Wilson doesn’t get enough credit for breaking down racial barriers in this country. He was the first African American to host a top-rated variety show. He was popular both with the Black community and with the mainstream White American audience. He managed to hang out with underground comedians and play golf with former presidents without losing credibility with either.

His influence on comedy in the 1970s is immense. He rescued both Richard Pryor and George Carlin from the depths of failure and hired them to write for his variety show, jump-starting both careers. He even co-owned the record label that released Carlin’s most cutting-edge material.

Yet, he was loved and accepted by TV audiences. Last year I reviewed a terrific book about his life, which was one full of triumphs and many tragedies, but tonight I’m just going to bring you one episode of his show, with his guests, Joe Nameth, George Carlin and Miss Black America, Joyce Warner. He brought all this into American households and made it seem like no big deal. This was really a major breakthrough for its time.

Radio Free Charleston’s 76th episode, “Peace Sign Shirt,” was the last episode of the show hosted on the Charleston Gazette servers, and it features cool videos of  two particularly long songs by Option 22 and Suburban Graffiti. Those are punctuated by a Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie, and a couple of important announcements. I get all serious and stuff over what was essentially no big deal. It seemed huge at the time.

After this episode of RFC, we began posting the show directly to MySpace, which eventually turned out to be a disaster when they unceremoniously dumped all their video uploads, then brought them back, then disabled a ton of them again.  That’s why we find ourselves remastering and re-uploading the older episodes of the show to YouTube to this day.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
November 10, 2017

Thing are a bit introspective this week, as we devote the PopCulteer to happenings on The AIR, our own radio station, and talk about stuff coming up in this very blog in the near future.

The Third Shift Hits 50

Friday on The AIR it’s a very special evening as The Third Shift, our “man’s man” show hosted by Jay and Jarod, marks their fiftieth episode with a one-hour extravaganza.  You can listen to The Third Shift Friday at 9 PM with a special replay this Sunday at 7 PM at The AIR website, or on this particularly swell embedded radio player…

The boys have something very special planned this week, so make sure you tune in to find out what it is. Fifty episodes is a pretty huge milestone, and I imagine the occasion will require a rather intensive, double-length, bender.

Every Friday at 9 PM you can tune in to The AIR and catch up on booze, sports, babes, gadgets and general weekend tomfoolery with our resident “regular guys.”

Swing All Day On Veteran’s Day

Normally we replay The Third Shift Saturday evenings at 8:30 PM, but this week that timeslot is taken over by a very special marathon.

Regular readers of PopCult may be aware that I host a weekly program on The AIR devoted to Swing Music, called The Swing Shift. It can normally be heard Tuesday at 3 PM, with overnight marathons on Sundays and Thursdays. The marathons are very popular in Europe (reaching a worldwide audience is one of the more fun perks of internet broadcasting).

However, I was recently contacted through The AIR’s Facebook page and discovered that I have two loyal listeners here in the States who happen to be veterans of World War II. Their caregiver wrote to tell me that they really enjoy the way I mix new Swing revival music with the songs that they remember from their youth by the likes of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and other greats of the Big Band era. She takes her laptop with her and lets them listen to the show during her shift.

The caregiver went on to tell me that neither gentleman was well enough to attend any Veteran’s Day activities this year and wondered if I could possibly run an extra episode of The Swing Shift this Saturday so that they could have something to listen to and enjoy. She’s working most of the day and would make sure they wouldn’t miss it.

It doesn’t take a lot to get me to run a marathon of The Swing Shift. The show is one of my favorite to produce for The AIR. I decided to thank these men for their service by scheduling a 24-hour marathon of the very best episodes of The Swing Shift that will begin Friday at Midnight. It’ll run all day long Saturday, so if you tune in, you can get hep to the jive along with a couple of American heroes.

That’s Swing All Day on Veteran’s Day on The AIR. You can listen at the embedded player above or at the website.

PopCult Gift Guide

Monday we begin The 2017 PopCult Gift Guide. The plan is to run three gift ideas every day for nearly three weeks, and then we’ll do one or two last-minute gift ideas a day the week after that. We will tell you about toys, music, books, DVDs, gadgets, and other cool things that you probably won’t see mentioned in other gift guides. Check PopCult Monday for our first three entries.

More PopCult Notes

During most of the time we run The 2017 PopCult Gift Guide the PopCulteer will be taking a hiatus. Our weekly Friday essay can be quite labor-intensive to write while I’m also juggling Gift Guide entires, a radio station and all our other regular PopCult features. I’ve only missed one or two weeks of The PopCulteer since I started it as part of this blog in April, 2009, but something had to give. The PopCulteer will return on December 8 with the Master List for The 2017 PopCult Gift Guide, and it’ll be back to normal the week after that.

But we will bring you our other regularly-scheduled posts, Monday Morning Art, Sunday Evening Video and The RFC Flashback, along with three posts on most days of the PopCult Gift Guide. You’ll have plenty of stuff to read. Check back here to see.

If you are into Chili and Beer, then Saturday you need to be in Nitro. The fourth annual Wagging Tails Chili Challenge sees this chili cookoff move to a new location, and partner up with the Nitro Ales Craft Beer Festival for a full day of gastric adventures at Nitro’s Living Memorial Park on the corner of Second Avenue and 21st Street in Nitro. It all happens Saturday, November 11, from 9 AM to 5 PM. The public is invited to sample the chili and craft beer beginning at noon. For more details visit their Facebook page.

I don’t normally write about beer events here in PopCult. Your PopCulteer is beer-illiterate and can’t understand the appeal of such stuff, but I am in a distinct minority there and this is for a really good cause. Besides, you can indulge in the chili and other goodies without partaking in the brew.  All proceeds from the event go to Dog Bless, a local volunteer animal rescue group that has fostered, transported, provided medical care and found new homes for more than 3,000 dogs since 2012.

This is an International Chili Society sanctioned event, and the winner will go on to represent Wagging Tails at the World Chili Cookoff next year. What impresses me the most about this event is that it’s happening at a time of the year when sane people would actually want to eat chili. I keep seeing chili cookoffs in the middle of Summer, in 90-degree-plus weather, and for the life of me I can’t understand why anybody in their right mind would want to make or eat chili then. But now it’s perfect chili weather, so this event couldn’t be timed any better.

It’s not just chili and beer. You will find local food trucks, Island Teriyaki, Jonesy’s and Old School Concessions, so if chili is not your cup of tea, you can chow down on barbecue, hot dogs, corn dogs, and a variety of fine examples of food-truck cuisine.

Plus local favorites, Hurl Brickbat, will be providing music and there will be inflatables to keep the kids occupied.

Chili sampling tickets will set you back 50 cents each and general admission to the Nitro Ales Brew Festival is a measly ten bucks. That gets you entry and two craft brews, with additional beers costing $2 each. For more information on entering the Wagging Tails Chili Challenge, call 304-382-3305, email waggingtailschili@gmail.com or visit the event’s Facebook page. For info about the Nitro Ales Craft Beer Festival, contact Tim Arnott at 304-545-5845 or Donna Boggs at 304-549-8823. Tickets can be purchased in advance HERE.

I’m giving you advance notice, and there will be plenty of reminders here in PopCult. On the first weekend in December (1-3) The Charleston Music and Arts Collective is having a 3 day series of fundraiser shows to help continue the funding of the Bakery, the all-ages venue being built in the old Purity Bread Factory at 1007 Bigley Avenue in Charleston.

This is officially a soft opening because renovations are still in progress, but everything will be in place for a killer three-day show featuring a ridiculous number of top local, regional and even international bands. Byzantine headlines the third day, on Sunday, but the first two days are also loaded with incredible bands and musicians.

A one-day ticket is $10 in advance, or $15 on the day of the show. A two-day pass is $15 in advance, and you can get a 3 day pass, to see every day of this great benefit for a mere twenty bucks. Those ticket prices for this all-ages show are for those aged 13 and up. Kids 12 and under get in free. You can purchase advance tickets HERE.

Check out the graphics below for a list of the bands, and for more info about the shows and the project follow their Facebook page.

Last Summer we told you about how Mike and Frank from the History Channel series, American Pickers, had made a trip to see Francis Turner at the now-closed Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville. We can now tell you that the episode in which they go to this toy Valhalla will air Monday, November 13m at 9 PM, EST.

The description provided for the episode titled “Frank’s Big Day,” reads: “Frank jumps for joy as he and Mike pick a recently closed toy museum ready to sell their collection of treasure.”  Of course, this is a reality-TV program, so there’s bound to be lots of staging, and some of the information is going to be a little bit off.  That’s all part of the game. The huge plus is that we’ll get to see inside the Marx Toy Museum again.

The museum closed its doors on June 30, 2016, but has still been in use to store part of Francis Turner’s massive toy collection. The Turner family will still open the museum for special sales on occasion. While I’m sure that Francis set Frank and Mike up with a few really good deals, when I was at the museum back in June, all of the really valuable stuff was still there.

Francis Turner (seen left) is an avid toy collector who years ago found himself on a mission. He wanted to amass a collection of every toy produced by The Marx Toy Company. The Marx Toy Company was at one time the largest toy company in the world. Following the retirement of company founder, Louis Marx and the sale of the company to Quaker Oats, the fortunes of the Marx Toy Empire fell, and the company closed its last factory and ceased operations in 1980.

Once Turner came close to achieving his goal, he decided that he needed to share his collection with the public, so he opened a museum in Moundsville. Located just a few miles from the site of one of the largest Marx Toy Factories in Glendale. The Marx Toy Museum was open to the public for more than fifteen years, to the delight of kids and kids at heart, before closing it’s doors in 2016. It still continues as a virtual online museum, but the Turner family is still trying to chart a course for its future, continuing its mission of preserving the legacy of Louis Marx and The Marx Toy Company.

On June 23, 2017, the museum opened its doors again for one night only, as Francis Turner held a massive sale. Everything from common Marx Toys to one-of-a-kind prototypes were sold to die-hard collectors.

Francis, who personally priced every item, was swamped all night long and tens of thousands of dollars traded hands.

It was great seeing Francis and The Turner family again, and it was wonderful to see that the museum location is still filled to the brim with terrific Marx Toys.The sale was where it was announced that Mike and Frank from American Pickers, had visited the museum in May to film this episode which will air next week. There was a bit of secrecy involved. They didn’t want to spoil the episode for anyone who wants to watch it, so aside from saying that the American Pickers crew had been there, The Turner family was tight-lipped about what they bought.

It should be a fun show, and it might be unintentionally hilarious for the die-hard toy experts who tune in. Mike and Frank are experts in many areas of antiques, but both are woefully under-informed when it comes to toys of a certain vintage. It’ll be fun to see if they get away with some real gems, or if, as they have done before, they leave behind the cream of the crop and get really excited about stuff that isn’t particularly rare or valuable.

I’m sure the program will present them as getting a great deal from Francis, then selling it for a huge profit, but knowing Francis, I’m sure that he knew exactly what he was doing, and getting some national exposure for the Marx Toy Museum will be worth way more than any deals he may given up.

Let’s hope that the added exposure leads to a major announcement about the future of the museum.

We’ve just left the season of black cats, so today I’m bringing you a digital painting of a white cat. Remarkably enough, this may be the first-ever picture of a cat posted on the internet.

It’s a digital painting of my brother’s cat, based on a photo I found in an old folder taken with my primitive camera phone about four years ago. Click to enlarge, as always, because, aaaawwwwww, it’s a kitty!

Also, while you’re looking at cat pictures on the web, why not listen to The AIR, our humble little internet radio station.

You can listen at the website, or on this familiar little embedded player…

We’re making a few changes to the schedule this week, so rather than talk you to death about them every day (which we have done occasionally in the past)  we’re just going to post an absolutely swell embedded schedule right here…

This is the weekend that we fall back from Daylight Savings Time, so your PopCulteer decided to fall way the hell back this week. Our Sunday video delight tonight is a sixty-one year old movie about Rock and Roll. Shake Rattle and Rock is a pop culture gold mine.

Shake, Rattle and Rock tells the story of a group of duddys of the fuddy variety who contrive to ban Rock and Roll, which is gaining a foothold in their town thanks to a local deejay who’s using it to turn kids away from juvenile deliquency and toward more productive endeavors. The main attractions are early rock icons Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner, who conveniently show up to perform during lulls in the plot, but the thing that makes this early Rock and Roll flick something special (aside from a decent plot) is the cast.

The Rock and Roll TV deejay (sort of a cross between Alan Freed and Dick Clark) is played by Touch Conners, who later dropped his basketball nickname and reverted to “Mike.” MST3K fans know all about his days as “Touch” from the movie, Swamp Diamonds, everyone else probably knows him as TV detective Mannix. His romantic interest in the movie is played by Lisa Gaye, hot off of her role in Rock Around The Clock, another early piece rock cinema that starred Bill Haley and The Comets, and was known for inciting a few riots in theaters that played it.

That’s not all the pop culture gold here, however. The supporting cast is where it really gets fun. “Axe,” The teenaged hipster is potrayed by then-fifty-one-year-old Sterling Holloway (later the voice of Winnie The Pooh among many other Disney characters). The prudes trying to shut down Rock and Roll are led by Margaret Dumont, most famous for her stuffy dowager roles in the classic Marx Brothers movies, and another veteran of Marx Brothers’ films, Douglass Dumbrille. Dumont’s henpecked husband is played by Raymond Hatton, a character actor with over 400 credits on IMDB.

We even get another classic character actor, the diminutive Percy Helton, as a comically creepy undertaker.

The plot is not stupid, which is a rarity in this type of film, and the performances by Domino, Turner, Annitta Ray and Tommy Charles are great examples of early Rock and Roll.We just lost Fats Domino a few days ago, and it’s nice to see him here in his prime.

This was an early American International Pictures “B” movie, but unlike most of those, it’s really quite well done, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s about as deep as an ABC Afterschool Special, but the music is great. The only thing that would make it better would have been if they’d worked in scene so that Sterling Holloway and Percy Helton could share the screen together. These two vocally-distinctive performers would have had audiences gasping for a throat lozenge.

Going back to July, 2009 for this week’s RFC Flashback, we revisit our 75th episode! “Unknown Hinson Shirt,” was our third-anniversary Rock And Roll Extravaganza.

This landmark edition of Radio Free Charleston featured music by The Pistol Whippers and Unknown Hinson, both legends of honky-tonk psycho-billy stage. We also have a snippet of Princeton’s Option 22 over the end credits.

With this being our third anniversary, we took it upon ourselves to corner a few really cool people with our camera to get them to say nice things about us.

Among those who weren’t quick enough to escape were Ann Magnuson, Necrobutcher (featured in the OSCAR-nominated movie “The Wrestler”), wrestling legends Bull Pain and the late Gypsy Joe. Plus we had GWAR’s front-man, Oderous Urungus. The really cool thing is that it looks like we recorded Necro and Gypsy Joe in the same place we recorded Ann (we didn’t).

Host segments were shot in and around the late and lamented LiveMix Studio during their Fourth Of July party. How could we not include our old friends and allies at LiveMix in the celebration?

One note about this show: When it was originally posted I was not happy with the audio during the Unknown Hinson song, “Peace, Love and Hard Liquor.” It was muddy and out of sync. While remastering this show, I took the opportunity to tinker with it further and while it’s far from perfect, it’s much better than it was.

The original production notes for RFC 75 can be found right here.