Month: February 2019 (Page 3 of 4)

This week’s Monday Morning Art is a digital painting of trees. Sometimes an artist just has to paint some trees, so he doesn’t forget how.

Click the image to see bigger trees.

Mondayr on The AIR,  The Monday Marathon remains shrunken from 24 hours to 8. It still kicks off at 7 AM, every Monday, and it still showcases one of our popular music programs, but now it wraps up at 3 PM, to make way for two weekly marathon presentations of the best of two of our regular shows.  At 3 PM you can settle in for eight hours of great New Wave music with Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. Then at 11 PM you can spend you overnights with eight hours of the best Progressive Rock of the last half-century on Prognosis. Today’s Monday Marathon features Curtain Call, as Mel Larch brings you the best of musical theater until 3 PM.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

The annual toy extravaganza now known as ToyLanta happens in Atlanta, Georgia, next month. March 8-10 will see thousands of toy and pop culture collectors descend on the Marriott Century Center to buy toys and collectibles, attend panels, see artsts, special guests, cosplayers and Pop Culture cars, and indulge in the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of the toy fanatic.

Originally called “JoeLanta,” and dedicated to the original 12″ GI Joe, the convention has grown to include all toys and more. Folks who purchase the Commander’s Package get an exclusive limited edition action figure and can attend special events like the Film Festival, the Saturday night concert by Radio Cult, the State of the Hobby address, the Parachute Drop and more.  All proceeds from ToyLanta go to benefit the Cody Lane Memorial Toy & Diorama Museum, which will hopefully find a permanent location very soon.

I will be telling you much more about ToyLanta here in PopCult over the next few weeks, as we gear up to head South for our annual meeting of the minds with fellow collectors. In the meantime, I present two short promo videos I just put together. The very short one is up top, and down below is the not-quite-as-short-but-not-terribly-long version.

This week we head back to the first day of October, 2012, for Radio Free Charleston 170, “Regular Show Shirt.”

This episode is a valentine to Budget Tapes and Records, the legendary music and lifestyle emporium that was just then celebrating forty years of serving area music fans from their Kanawha City location, and is still going strong.

Our host segments originated from Budget, and we even have two songs by Farnsworth, recorded on location at the release party for their first EP at the legendary store.

RFC 170 also brought viewers a song from the Contemporary Youth Arts Company production of the Dan Kehde/Mark Scarpelli original, The Legend of Ginger and Billy Joe: The Stock Car Musical, as well as animation and a found film compilation by Frank Panucci.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
February 8, 2019

Next weekend the toys hit the fan in New York City as the International Toy Fair kicks off, giving us a look at what toymakers hope will be the next big thing in 2019.

Several companies have already leaked images of some of their offerings, and others have let the news leak out ahead of time, so we’re going to take a quick look at what we already know.

MEGO

Marty Abram’s Presents MEGO will show product at Toy Fair for the first time in over 35 years, and I’ve already told you about their next wave of figures. There is also news, perhaps a little underwhelming, of two new developments.

MEGO has announced a deal with POW Entertainment to produce figures based on never-before-seen concepts “created” by the late Stan Lee. Lee was the editor and later publisher of Marvel Comics, and is considered by some to be the co-creator of their leading characters, like Spider-man, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers. I wrote about Lee’s true legacy HERE.

It’s a risky proposition, producing figures of superheroes that nobody’s heard of before, and hoping they sell based on Stan Lee’s name alone. Lee has been creating characters for POW since 2001, and none of them have been very successful. I hope MEGO doesn’t invest too heavily in this line. It has potential, but Stan Lee’s track record of creating characters without Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko is pretty unremarkable. At least we know they’ll look great.

A better bet is that MEGO will start producing Star Trek figures in their new 14″ size, which has previously been used only for their DC Comics figures. This is less risky. It’s still asking collectors to move to a new scale, but it worked for the DC Comics figures, and could be a huge success if they keep the quality high, don’t flood the market, and continue to make the 8″ figures as well.

It’s entirely possible that MEGO might have another surprise announcement or two at Toy Fair. Meanwhile, we’ll review one of the Wave 4 figures next week.

Mattel

Mattel unexpectedly turned a profit in the last quarter of 2018, due largely to the success of their plan to boost the sales of Barbie by flushing all their other fashion doll lines down the toilet. Hot Wheels sales also surged, and this is a huge turnaround for the company, which was on shaky ground just a year ago.

At Toy Fair, we can expect lots of Barbie and Hot Wheels and Imaginext. We’ll also see new offerings for their very successful WWE Action Figure line, and some sort of continuation of their Jurassic World line. Their Hot Wheels displays are always impressive, and it’ll be cool to see what they do this year.

A major question mark is whether they’ll bother showing any DC Comics action figures at Toy Fair. Mattel never really shows their entire lines at Toy Fair. They meet with toy buyers on a regular basis all year round, so for Mattel, Toy Fair is mainly about showing off stuff for the press. I do know that they have a few remaining DC Comics toys in the pipeline, including a new Batman line and a new Justice League line that are starting to turn up in stores now, plus action figures based on the Shazam movie, and possibly more Aquaman toys, for when that movie hits Blu-Ray next month. However, they may choose to downplay those toy lines i favor of properties that they’ll still be handling beyond 2019.

Hasbro

Hasbro has leaked some early photos of Transformers and Nerf, but they’re sure to show tons of cool stuff for collectors a week from Saturday morning, when they have their huge off-site press conference (Hasbro keeps a separate showroom in NYC, and doesn’t display at the actual Toy Fair event).

What we can expect at the press conference will be details on all the Marvel Universe figures, as well as the Star Wars action figure line, which will tie-in with the new movie, and probably won’t all be available to photograph, and also all the figures due out that are based on upcoming Marvel movies, like Avengers: Endgame. Hasbro will also unveil their take on the newly-acquired Power Rangers. They’ve already leaked images of the role-playing toys, but the figures are what everyone wants to see. As we prepare this post, images have surfaced of the Power Rangers Beast Morphers Beast-X Ultrazord Figure and the Playskool Heroes Power Morphin Megazord Playset (seen above).

The four Tranformers that Hasbro has shown are: SIEGE TITAN OMEGA SUPREME (seen above), due out in August with a retail price of $159.99; SIEGE DELUXE IMPACTOR, available in October with a price of $19.99; SIEGE DELUXE MIRAGE, also available in October, with a price of $19.99; and SIEGE COMMANDER JETFIRE (seen at the head of this post), a $79.99 figure due out in August.

Super 7

Speaking of Transformers, Super 7 has licensed the brand from Hasbro to produce Deluxe –Transformers Super Cyborg figures. Each 11” tall Super Cyborg figure is fully articulated and features a transparent removable chest, revealing the robotic guts within. The heroic Optimus Prime and evil Megatron are the first screen-accurate action figures of the original Generation One cartoon designs.

Super 7 has also anounced that Rocky 4 will be joining their ReAction line and Supersports by Super7, a collection of licensed sports product, which will kick off with a ReAction figure of Jackie Robinson, released in time for his 100th birthday.

We’ll try to bring you more Toy Fair news leading up to next weekend, and during the actual Toy Fair itself.

Radio Free Charleston International New Friday

Friday at 1 PM and 10 PM on The AIR, it’s a special episode of Radio Free Charleston International, with guest co-host Mel Larch. You can listen at the AIR website, or on this embedded radio player…

Since we’re nearing Valentine’s Day, and it’s been a while since my lovely wife and I have shared a microphone, I decided to have Mel co-host RFC International with me this week, and tailored the playlist to include some of her favorites. You can see for yourself…

RFC International 063

SpongeBob Squarepants “Sweet Victory”
Joe Jackson “Alchemy”
Sarah Brightman “Follow Me”
Paul Weller “Wishing Well”
Keith Emerson “For Kevin”
Toy Matinee “There Was A Little Boy”
Matt Berry “Take My Hand”
Pink Floyd “Comfortably Numb (Live 8)”
Robert Berry “Brain Damage”
Gowan “A Criminal Mind”
Joanna Newsome “81”
Paul McCartney “Nothing For Free”
Roy Orbison “I Drove All Night”
Hazel O’Connor “That’s Life”
Pet Shop Boys “Fugitive”
Pretenders “Light Of The Moon”
The Stranglers ‘I Hate You”
ELO “Mr. Blue Sky”
Hooverphonic “Inhaler”
Prince “Pop Life”
The Dresden Dolls “Pretty In Pink”
The Puppini Sisters “Rapper’s Delight/Chadelier”
Korn “Word Up”
Eurythmics “Who’s That Girl”

Radio Free Charleston International can be heard Fridays at 1 PM and 10 PM, with replays Saturday at Noon, Sunday at 1 AM and 2 PM, Tuesday at 10 PM and Thursday at Noon, exclusively on The AIR.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular features and fresh content every day.

Sort of. Former WVU Football star and longtime Indianapolis Colts kicker, Pat McAfee, who, before the NFL draft defied his agent’s wishes and wrestled in an IWA East Coast match in South Charleston, has signed a contract to be an announcer, interviewer, and possibly more in WWE. I should also point out that Pat also appeared on Radio Free Charleston number 63, back in 2009.

I got to meet Pat briefly, and he was a great guy and a good sport, and you could tell that professional wrestling is his real passion. Football was a fun way to make some money, but he really wanted to be in the squared circle. He defeated the unstoppable monster, War Pig, and then went on to fame and fortune in the NFL. I don’t know if his agent ever did find out.

You can see a short photo essay of Pat’s career as a thus-undefeated wrestler HERE.

This morning McAfee tweeted a slickly-produced video, likely produced by WWE, that features footage of McAfee in the ring with Dr. Graves, and wrestling Warpig. You’ll also see the South Charleston Community Center (shortly before they banned wrestling in the building) and hear the voices of Frank Larnerd and Kevin Pauley.

You can see the video at this link.

Good morning beautiful people.. today's a pretty massive day for me. I can officially say I'm a @WWE employee. A real lifelong dream coming true thanks to @MichaelCole and @TripleH.. This opportunity means the world to me. Let's. Go. pic.twitter.com/H33H8GqwTY

— Pat McAFLEET (@PatMcAfeeShow) February 7, 2019

The PopCult Comix Bookshelf

DC Primal Age 100 Page Comic Giant
written by Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson
drawn by Scott Koblish, Jerry Ordway, Brent Anderson, Phil Winslade, Scott Eaton, Chuck Patton & Tom Derenick, Keith Pollard
cover by Jon Bogdonove pin up by Michael Kaluta
DC Comics
Sold exclusively at Target stores
$9.99

Sometimes you just want a good, dumb, fun comic book, and DC Primal Age fills the bill nicely. The premise is, well, sort of silly. This is based on a line of toys made by Funko that reimagines the top DC Comics superheroes as fantasy warriors in the style of He Man and The Masters of the Universe. The toys, in which I have no interest, being a bit too old to have fond memories of He Man, are sold at Target, and this comic book is a nice tie-in that can only be found at the land of the Tar-jay.

Imagine being given the assignment to create a 100 page comic book based on this remarkably asinine premise.

Luckily DC hired some of their greatest writers and artists, who unfortunately can’t get regular work due to rampant ageism in the comics industry, and turned them loose. The writing team, headed by Marv Wolfman (New Teen Titans, Crisis On Infinite Earths), has taken this premise, which could have come across as moronic in lesser hands, and turned it into a pure fun action adventure romp.

Set in a primal land of sword and sorcery, we meet versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and their arch enemies, The Joker, Killer Shark and others. There’s a quest to gather orbs to rule the world, and all sort of sword and sorcery tropes to give us some conflict. We even get Solomon Grundy reimagined as some sort of ersatz Catcher In The Rye.

The surprising thing is, due to the talent involved, they make it work. This is a fun comic book. It’s basically in the same format as the Walmart 100 Page comics, only with far fewer ads, all-new material and a price twice that of the Walmart Giants. Aside from the lead story by Wolfman, the stories are short, action-packed and easy to digest.

It’s a real kick to have Wolfman, Louise Simonson and Jerry Ordway writing comics again. These seasoned veterans can still write circles around today’s “hot” writers, and they do it without taking nine months to tell a story that can be told in ten pages. The art is also by veterans who seem to have fallen out of favor, but still have their chops. Ordway illustrates one of the stories he writes. Brent Anderson offers up his first non-Astro City art in a while. And it’s fantastic to see Keith Pollard back in print with new work again.

The stories are not Earth-shattering, or revolutionary. They are fun comic book adventures. Kids can enjoy them, and the young at heart will also get a kick out of seeing new work by much of the crew that made the Superman titles the best superhero comics running in the early 1990s.  The book has six stories and over 90 pages of story and art. It’s a pretty good value for ten bucks, if you like what is essentially an all-new “Elseworlds” universe.

This is also great for any fans of the DC Primal Age toys, however, I’d imagine that no kids are actually going to get to play with these toys, as they seem to be aimed at the adult collector market. DC Primal Age is fun for fans of the creators, and for folks who are not crazy about the current direction of mainstream comics.

Tuesday and Wednesday bring some very special new programs to The AIR this week. Listen at ">the website, or on this embedded radio player…

First of all, our friends at Haversham Recording Institute are still battling various ailments, so our British shows are still in reruns this week, but our new stuff is top-notch, and you won’t want to miss it.  You can find an embedded widget at the bottom of this post so you can see what’s on anytime.

Tuesday

Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM we have a new Radio Free Charleston. This week we present the first of a two-part “Night at Livemix Studio.”  LiveMix Studio was our production partner when we revived RFC as a video program (AKA “RFC Volume 2) and for a time, the studio space also operated as a performance venue. This week and next we will take you back to February 13, 2009, about ten years ago, for a pre-Valentine’s concert featuring several LiveMix Studio bands. This week you will hear the Electro-fusion-funk of Electro Biscuit, featuring LiveMix partners Greg Wegmann, Kai Haynes and Brian Young, and Whistlepunk, which also featured Brian Young, along with Spencer Elliott and Dan Jordan (and Karen Allen singing on one song). Next week we’ll have even more from this evening. All this year we’re celebrating 30 years of Radio Free Charleston, and there was no way we could go without mentioning LiveMix. Without them, we never would have had an “Act II.”

Also of note: This week and next week’s shows are episodes 98 and 99 of “Volume Four” of Radio Free Charleston, and that means that two weeks from Tuesday, it will be time for episode 100. I’m hoping to cook up something extra special for that, but can’t tell you what it is yet.

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at noon and Midnight, and Sunday at 3 PM exclusively on The AIR.

At 2 PM Tuesday Nigel Pye checks in from Haversham Recording Institute with a 60-minute mixtape of groovy Psychedelic Rock. This week it’s a replay, as Nigel is still under the weather.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard Tuesday’s at 2 PM, with replays Wednesday at 11 AM, Thursday at 9 AM and 10 PM and Saturday at 7 AM and the following Tuesday at 9 AM.

Tuesday at 3 PM your PopCulteer returns to host a new hour of The Swing Shift as we continue to bring you the best Swing Music of the last century. This week we present an assortment of Swing that runs the gamut from current European revivalists to classics from the Golden Age to Elektro-Swing, 90’s revivalists and more.

Here’s the playlist:

The Swing Shift 063

Boa Brass Band “Experimental Pt. 2”
Steve Laffont Trio “Night In Corsica”
Group N’ Swing “Tour De Swing”
Indoio Swing “Memory of You”
Javier Botella and Cope Illustrada Big Band “Sunny”
Lester Young “Jumpin’ at Mesners”
Robbie Williams “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head”
Dean Martin and Helen O’Connell “How Do You Like Your Eggs In The Morning”
Fred A. Stare “Dancing Cheek To Cheek”
Teddy Wilson “I Got Rhythm”
Benko Dixieland “Doktor Jazz”
Stan Kenton “Limelight”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “The Ding Dong Daddy”
Swing Sisters with The Pasedena Roof Orchestra “In The Mood”
Glenn Miller “The Little Man Wasn’t There”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Go Daddy-0”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM, Thursday at 7 PM and Saturday at 9 AM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Wednesday

On Wednesday at 2 PM, Beatles Blast presents a one-hour mixtape of some of the Fab Four’s trippiest tunes, performed by the band, by the solo members of the band and all mixed in with covers.

Beatles Blast offers up a new episode every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursdays at 9 PM, Saturday mornings, and Sunday at 5 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

Wednesday at 3 PM Mel Larch brings us a very special episode of Curtain Call. This week’s new show presents a look at the musical treatment of Don Marquis’ beloved “archy and mehitabel.” Archy, a cockroach, and mehitabel, an alley cat, appeared in hundreds of humorous verses and short stories in Marquis’ daily column, “The Sun Dial”. Their exploits were first collected in the 1927 book archy and mehitabel, which remains in print today, and in two later volumes, archys life of mehitabel and archy does his part.  In case you’re wondering, archy was purportedly the author of these adventures, who wrote by jumping on the keys of a manual typewriter, which is why there is no capitalization, nad little punctuation.

The major story of archy’s unrequited love for mehitabel, a love which must not speak its name due to society’s attitude toward inter-species romance, was such a delight to so many people that, in 1953, an attempt was made to turn these stories into a musical for radio, which starred Eddie Bracken as archy, and Carol Conners as mehitabel. A few years later, the radio musical was expanded for the stage under the name, Shinbone Alley (with additional book and lyrics by a young Mel Brooks) and ran for a criminally brief time on Broadway. The stage version saw Eddie Bracken return as archy, but the role of mehitabel was taken over by Eartha Kitt.

This week Curtain Call brings you all of archy and mehitabel: A Back Alley Opera, the original radio musical, as well as its sequel, echoes of archy, and selections from the Broadway musical, Shinbone Alley. Fourteen years after the musical closed on Broadway, an animated features based on it was released, with Carol Channing returning to take over the role of mehitabel once more. You will see that this weekend in PopCult’s Sunday Evening Video.

Curtain Call can be heard Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 7 AM and 8 PM and Saturday at 7 PM. An all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight and a six-hour marathon can be heard every Sunday evening at 6 PM.

Remember, you can tune in to The AIR at all hours of the day and night for a variety and quality of programming that you will not find anywhere else. Check PopCult regularly to see what our new schedule will bring. Or just scroll this handy widget…

Our art this week is an abstract watercolor I call “Dissonance.” I really wish I could remember why, but this is something I did a few years ago and forgot about, then found again last week. Not exactly sure what I was going for here, but I like the way it looks. There may even be a live model in there somewhere.

As always, click the image to see a bigger version.

Meanwhile, over on The AIR,  The Monday Marathon remains shrunken from 24 hours to 8. It still kicks off at 7 AM, every Monday, and it still showcases one of our popular music programs, but now it wraps up at 3 PM, to make way for two weekly marathon presentations of the best of two of our regular shows.  At 3 PM you can settle in for eight hours of great New Wave music with Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. Then at 11 PM you can spend you overnights with eight hours of the best Progressive Rock of the last half-century on Prognosis. Today’s Monday Marathon features The Swing Shift, extending beyond its normal Sunday overnight marathon bounds, and continuing with the Swing Music until 3 PM.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

Since hardly anybody is going to watch the most boring Super Bowl match up in decades, tonight we have an extra-special video for you. It’s a full episode of The Aquabats Super Show, from their little-seen third (ish) season. The Aquabats, of course, are the world’s greatest crime-fighting, superhero rock n’ roll band!

“Shark Fighter” is based on a classic Aquabats song, and this episode guest starts Rhys Darby, who you may recognize from The Flight of The Conchords and What We Do In The Shadows. A relaxing day at the beach turns south for The Aquabats, when frenzy of land sharks attack… all seems lost, until the Shark Fighter(Darby) shows up!

The Aquabats Super Show had a brief, but successful run on the short-lived HUB Network, back in 2012-2014, and the show will return on the web later this year, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign last summer. The show blends the humor of The Monkees with the music of DEVO and SKA, the action of the Batman TV Show, and a dash of the Kaiju-type monsters from The Power Rangers.

Members of the bard were the creative force behind Yo Gabba Gabba, and the end result of their efforts here was the perfect goofy action show that was appropriate for all ages.

In addition to new webisodes of The Aquabats Super Show, we can also expect new studio and live albums from the band this year, and who knows what else the future may hold?

We go back to late September, 2012 for Radio Free Charleston 169, “The Black Knight Rises,” which featured music from Emily Burdette, Godmode Broadway and The Nanker Phelge, plus two short films by Frank Panucci.

This episode ws hosted from The Mound in South Charleston as a bit of a preview of the very first ShockaCon.

This episode leads with the first of two shorts by Frank Panucci. “A Guide To International Road Signs” is a classic, award-winning educational short made by Frank way back in 1990, before the fall of the Berlin Refrigerator and the collapse of the Potrzebie regime in Eastern Europe. We also get a new LAX animation, which includes a subtle subliminal advertisement.

Our first musical guest this week was Emily Burdette, a talented singer/songwriter, and a filmmaker to boot. On this episode we were proud to bring you her debut music video, “Fall Air.” This video was directed by Curtis Baskerville, and shot in Lewisburg, West Virginia. A few weeks after this episode, RFC presented a music video by Amanda Brigette, directed by Emily.

Godmode Broadway made their debut on RFC earlier 2012, and burned brightly, if only for a short time, as one of the coolest bands in town. We recorded Godmode Broaday at The Blue Parrot, and they treat us to their song, “Origins.”

Our final guests on this episode of the show were our old friends, The Nanker Phelge, and they play us out with a song recorded on Christmas Eve, 2010 at The Empty Glass, “Killer Took a Holiday.”