Month: August 2019 (Page 3 of 4)

The weekend is rapidly approaching. ArtWalk happens in Charleston tonight, while Summerfest kicks off in South Charleston. Your PopCulteer will be chained to the computer all day so he can finish a magazine article, so that means you get to look at some colorful graphics of Stuff To Do around town this weekend. I know Glenville is not really “around town,” but it’s an all-ages show, and I really liked the graphic. Which reminds me…if you’d like to see your event plugged in this blog, make a graphic with the date, time, place and if there’s a cover charge. When I put together a post like this because I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline for a paying gig, it’ll almost guarantee that you make the cut. Check The PopCulteer tomorrow for details about how you can contact me on social media.

Tom Heaton of The Vintage Toy Room has a new Module in his series of books devoted to the 12″ action figures made by The Marx Toy Company, and even though I don’t have one in my hands yet, I am going to whole-heartedly recommend it based on the excellence of Tom’s other works on the topic.

Tom wrote the great Enclyclopedia of Marx Action Figures back in 1999, but he had to limit his scope to the available page count, and since so much more information is always coming to light he decided to create expansion modules to cover diferent elements of Johnny West and his friends. A couple of years ago I included the whole set (at the time) in the PopCult Gift Guide, and I’m happy to say that long-awaited fifth module is now available for order.

The original Marx Action Figure Encyclopedia and all the modules can be ordered directly from Tom’s website, The Vintage Toy Room. Tom will even sign and personalize these for you, if you wish. Now, in the eagerly-awaited Module 5, we’ll get the lowdown on Stony Smith, The All American Fighters and the Marx Military Action Figures.  These are low-print-run,  full-color books, crammed with vital information for the hobby, and are worth every penny. You can build an instant library of Marx Action Figure knowledge for your giftee, all in one fell swoop.

Let’s go to the press release:

The Vintage Toy Room has completed Module #5, The Military and Secret Agent Spy Era! This is the book many of you have been waiting for! The Marx Military and Secret Agent Spy Era! This book includes many new items not included in the Encyclopedia! Stony Smith Paratrooper variations, All American Fighters, Buddy Charlies, Canadian Buddy, Mike Hazard, Girl from UNCLE, Rat Patrol, Marx Factory visits, Artists, Likeness reviews of characters and celebrities they were based on, deep dives on The Girl from UNCLE original molds, Prototypes, Trade catalog slicks, store displays, test shots, color variations from other countries, Copper Head and Jane Blonde, and many more! I will also be including an 11×17 full color poster on the Military and Secret agent figures poster!

Thanks to all the folks that contributed to the book with pictures , editing, and preorder support to make this book a reality. This module far exceeds what the Encyclopedia delivered adding prototypes, test shots, retail catalogs, Sears combos, and so much more! This is by far our best produced book to date!

In this book you’ll learn all about Stony Smith, the variations and configurations of him and the transition to the All American Fighters. Plus you’ll find out about Mike Hazard and April Dancer and more. Each figures is shown complete with their packaging and all their accessories.

The best way to get this book is to visit The Vintage Toy Room.  It’s now in stock with a laminated cover and freedeluxe 11×17 poster. While you’re there, if you don’t already have them, pick up Tom’s earlier modules. If you like cool vintage action figures, or have a fondness for Johnny West and his friends and foes, this is exactly what you need in your life.

No, we have not converted The AIR into an auditory temple to Bob Dobbs (not that it wouldn’t be really cool to do that), but in the spirit of Slack and The Church of the Subgenius, this week we’re all in reruns. Luckily our shows are so fantastic that they hold up to repeated listenings. You can tune in to The AIR website, or listen in on this little virtual doohickey…

The reason for the reruns is simple. It’s my birthday. I produce most of the shows on The AIR, and I don’t wanna work that much this week. I have some long-gestating PopCult posts I need to write, plus a magazine article to finish, and I plan to take my birthday off and just relax.

So, Tuesday, instead of a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, we’re going to bring you all of our most recent shows all day long, with a break at 3 PM to bring you recent episodes of The Swing Shift, one of the other shows I host on The AIR.

But back to Radio Free Charleston, you may have noticed that, for the last month or so, I’ve made the new episodes available as downloads. It was a good idea, but apparently was still too complicated a concept for many people to grasp. It hit me over the weekend that I could upload the shows to YouTube, with just a still frame on the screen while the audio plays. Everybody knows how to use YouTube.

There are many reasons I haven’t tried this before. And some of them may cause me to quit doing this after I try it for a few weeks, but for the time being I plan to embed a YouTube clip of each week’s show here in PopCult, in the same post where I beg people to listen to it at The AIR.

And that is the first reason that I haven’t done this before: I don’t want to cannibalize my audience for The AIR. However, I also want as many people to listen to RFC as possible, so both of those concerns sort of balances this decision out.

Also, Radio Free Charleston is NOT a podcast. It’s a radio program. We pay a (fairly hefty) rights fee so that we can stream music programs on The AIR, but those rights to not extend to posting those shows on YouTube. In the event that a record label files a copyright claim against one of our shows on YouTube (which happens more than you’d think on the RFC video show), then ads may appear before or during our clip. CDBaby is a real jerk about this. In some cases rights owners can order the video clip taken down or muted.

The music rights issue is why we won’t be doing this with our other programs. With RFC most of the music is owned by the artists, and they appreciate the extra exposure. In the case of a show like Beatles Blast, I think that band is pretty happy with the level of exposure that they’ve already received and don’t really need our help.

I also don’t want people to think I’ve thrown in the towel on every doing Radio Free Charleston as a video program again. That will happen, and probably sooner than you expect.

Like I said, we’ll do this for the time being. If nobody bothers listening to the YouTube version of the show, then it won’t be worth the effort of rendering it and uploading it. But if it finds an audience and doesn’t turn into a hassle, then we’ll keep doing it.

Let’s try this out with last week’s episode, right here…

Not to be confused with April Dancer, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., this is actually a tiny drawing, done on the back of an index card, with grease pencil, colored pencil and semi-rancid decaying old oil pastel crayons. It’s inspired by a pose from a 1925 photograph of a nude dancer by Nikolas Muray. If you’re looking at it on a computer monitor you’re probably seeing it larger than it was drawn. This was a twenty-minute sketch, quickly-scanned (with a little digital color adjustment) and posted here so I could go watch TV.

If you wish, you can click this image to see it bigger.

Over in radio-land, Monday on The AIR, this week we bring you a Monday Marathon featuring eight episodes of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack. This will begin a week of slack, as everyone producing shows for The AIR takes the week off from making new episodes. I want to enjoy some free time during my birthday week, while our partners at Haversham Recording Institute in London want some extra time to work on their big “milestone” shows. We will have a new Beatles Blast on Wednesday, because I knocked out three of those in a row the other week.

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

At 3 PM Herman Linte’s show, Prognosis, re-presents another classic episode, as the Haversham shows take this additional week off to prepare for the big 50th episode specials of Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, which will now air next week.

Prognosis will be followed by an extra classic episode at 5 PM, and then by replays of last week’s Psychedelic Shack at 7 PM, Radio Free Charleston at 8 PM and RFC International at 9 PM. Then at 11 PM we kick it back over to Prognosis, with an extra eight hour marathon of great progressive rock.

Above you see a short clip showing the climactic moments of the classic version of the Rube-Goldbergian board game, Mouse Trap…slowed down so you can follow all the action. Mouse Trap (originally “Mouse Trap Game”) was created by Marvin Glass Associates and was first introduced in 1963 by Ideal Toys. Over the years the game has changed hands a few times, first to Milton Bradley, and now is a product of Hasbro Gaming. The origin of the game is a bit of a sordid story itself, as you can see in this video…

From 1963, here’s the very first commercial…

Over the years elements of the game were redesigned, and at some point the rules were changed so that building the mouse trap was no longer part of the game at all. In the 2000s, a new version of Mouse Trap was introduced, which hardly anybody likes, except for this kid, apparently…

Some British folks love to make videos about Mousetrap, and here a guy and his kids compare the version from the early 2000s to the original…

Hasbro Gaming has recently switched to a redesigned edition to the game that’s somewhat closer to the original design (the stubborn crank has been replaced with a rubber band), and here’s their official video showing how to build it…

This week we go back to early November, 2013 for an RFC MINI SHOW starring HARRAH. The fifth RFC MINI SHOW also marked the fifth week that we brought you music recorded at Shocka-Con in September, 2013. Our music this week comes from RFC buddies, HARRAH.

The band  performs “Bloodmoon” and “Sawney Beane,” live from the stage on Beauregard Street outside the Haunted Barn. The correct title of the second song is “Sawney Beane,” the tale of a Scottish patriarch of a cannibal family. It’s misspelled on screen in the show. If you read PopCult regularly, you know that I have mastered the fine art of typos in all forms of media.

We are rapidly approaching the point in our run of The RFC MINI SHOW where I screwed up the numbering and got everything confused. Check back every Saturday to see how I sort that mess out in this space.

The PopCulteer
August 9, 2019

Almost fourteen years ago, I first wrote about Captain Action in PopCult. Captain Action was one of my favorite toys when I was a kid. He was a 12″ action figure, created by Stan Weston (the real father of GI Joe), that could dress up as a variety of different comic book and comic strip heroes with the use of special costume sets (sold separately).

Captain Action was extremely cool, coming out at the height of the 1960s superhero craze, and I have lots of great childhood memories of playing with the good Captain, and with his outfits, Superman, Spider-man and Captain America. I always wanted his nemesis, Dr. Evil, but it took thirty years for that to happen, and that was what I wrote about way back in September, 2005.

Since that first post, I’ve told you about the revival of Captain Action in comics, pulp novels, vinyl figures, card games and once more as a full-fledged 12″ action figure. The fine folks at Captain Action Enterprises are still plugging away in service to the good Captain, and we have a lot of updates.

The big and most immediate news is that IDW Publishing will finally collect the 1960s DC Comics that introduced Captain Action to comics readers. Over the course of five issues of Captain Action we learned his real name (Clive Arno), his backstory, and met his son, Action Boy and his enemy, Dr. Evil.

These comics featured top-notch work by some industry legends. The first couple of issues were written by a then-teenaged Jim Shooter. Wally Wood pencilled and inked the first issue, then inked three of the remaining four issues over Gil Kane. Kane took over writing with the third issue and issue four saw him write, pencil and ink for the first (but not the last) time in his career. These are great silver age superhero stories, and it’ll be wonderful to have them all in one collection.

At the moment, the book is still being compiled, and is expected to be published in 2020. Mark Waid is on board to write the introduction, and in addition to the 110 or so pages of the DC Comics Captain Action title, the book is expected to include at least a sampling of the packaging artwork by Murphy Anderson, the comic book ads by Kurt Schaffenberger and the mini-comics that were included with the toys, which were drawn by Chic Stone. They’re still working on the book and determining the page count, so it’s not clear how complete that sampling may be, but I’m hoping they find a way to cram all of those goodies in there. The book is expected to be hardback, and given the high quality of IDW’s previous comics collections, is bound to be one impressive publication.

We will keep you posted on The Captain Action Archive here in PopCult.

That’s not all that’s happening with Captain Action though. ZICA Toys, which has been hard at work on creating a 4″ version of Captain Action finally has a light at the end of the tunnel. Originally Kickstarted in 2016, The Adventure People featuring Captain Action has fought its way through quite the adventure indeed with different Chinese factories, and this line is now in production with a firm delivery date. Below you see the good Captain, complete with interchangeable hands and his blaster rifle.

I’ll tell you the whole story of Captain Action’s Chinese adventures when I review my set of these figures later this year, but if you are interested in this new scale of Captain Action (along with several friends and enemies), you can pre-order them HERE. After almost a three-year delay, it looks like these figures are going to be well worth the wait and you won’t want to miss out.

You can also still order the Captain Action card game. I wrote about it HERE, and you can order it HERE.

There is also a new television concept in the works, but we don’t have any new developments on that, so until we do we’ll just wait patiently for the news.

And if you recall, last year Captain Action Enterprises announced that new uniform sets are in the works for Captain Action, like the one at right. Those are still in the works, and in a big way, but until all the details are worked out, the CAE folks have to remain tight-lipped. We hope to have some exciting news on that front soon.

Over all, things are looking up for Captain Action, and 2020 might just turn out to be a very exciting year for fans of the original super hero action figure.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular PopCult features. Let’s take one last peek at a page of uncolored original Kane/Wood art from Captain Action #2…

It’s time for our quickie round up of cool stuff happening in and around Charleston this week. We’ve got book signings, wrestling, music and more. Remember that there’s way more than this going on. These are just the folks who bothered to make easy to swipe graphics.

We pay tribute to Hal Prince, the legendary Broadway producer/director Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, with a new episode of Curtain Call.  You can listen at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

Befopre our tribute to Mr. Prince, at 2 PM on Beatles Blast, yours truly hosts the ninth part of our look at rare and unreleased music by The Beatles. For most of the summer, Beatles Blast will follow this format and bring you The Lost Beatles Project. This will be a treat for the die-hard fans as we mine the best of the recently-released archive projects by the band, and mix in rare releases and wild remixes from their band and solo years. We won’t be posting playlists for these shows because the whole point is that each of these programs will be a revelatory surprise.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 9 PM, Friday at 11 AM, Sunday at 5 PM and Tuesdays at 9 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call.  This week Mel pays tribute to Hal Prince with highlights of the cast album of his final show, Prince of Broadway. The world of musical theatre lost a titan last week, with the passing of legendary director and producer Harold “Hal” Prince. Widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative figures in 20th Century musical theatre, his career spanned more than five decades and included such shows as Cabaret, Candide, On The Twentieth Century, Evita, and The Phantom of The Opera. He was best known for his longtime collaboration with composer/lyricst, Stephen Sondheim on such groundbreaking shows as Company, Follies, and Sweeney Todd. Over the course of his career, he received a total of 21 Tony Awards, more than any other individual to date.

His last show, Prince of Broadway–which he also directed–was a musical retrospective of his career. The show premiered in Japan in 2015 and opened on Broadway in August, 2017.  This week’s Curtain Call presents highlights of this show as small sample of his impressive legacy.

After the new hour of Curtain Call, stick around for two additional episodes from the Curtain Call archives. Curtain Call can be heard Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 8 PM, Friday at 10 AM and Saturday at 6 PM. An all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight, and an additional marathon can be heard Sunday evenings from 6 PM to midnight..

Radio Free Charleston presents new music from The Bounty, the Columbus band that was a mainstay of the original broadcast incarnation of the show back in 1990. This is their first new music since 1991.

Tuesday on The AIR we deliver new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, and The Swing Shift to our loyal listeners. You may tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this happy little embedded radio player…

It all kicks off at 10 AM (with a replay at 10 PM– all times EDT) with a brand-new edition of Radio Free Charleston. This week’s show opens with a brand-new song from The Bounty. This Columbus-based band was a regular visitier to Charleston back in the late 1980s and early 90s, and includes former Charlestonian, John (Sham Voodoo) Estep, of Defectors and Clownhole and RFC theme song fame. The new song is “Big Love” and is from the upcoming 10-song album Everybody Loves a Second Act.

In addition to John, who handles Guitar, Mandolin and Backing Vocals, the band includes: Lennie Blodgett on Drums; Jamey Ball – Bass Guitar; Guitar; Lap Steel; amd the band’s founder and leader, Jim Kozelek on Vocals.Additional contributions come from Jim Viers and Maria Kozelek.

You can follow the band on Facebook, and stay tuned to PopCult because I’ll give you all the details on when it’ll be ready for release (which should be real soon–maybe with a different coverdesign than the one at right). It’s a kick to have The Bounty making new music again. Back in the day they were one of the RFC favorites.

The rest of this week’s show ain’t too shabby, either, with great local music from Emmalea Deal, John Radcliff, Spencer Elliott, The Mediogres and more, Our deep archive tracks this week are two previously-unheard tunes from Corporate Orange and Dog Soldier, both recorded in late summer, 2008 for the RFC video program.

You should be able to click on the episode number above the playlist that follows, and go to a page where you can download a low-res version of this week’s show.

Check out the playlist:

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The Bounty “Big Love”
Mediogres “Cream Hole”
John Radcliff “Dreaming”
Dead For Decades “Mr. Mouth”
The Big Bad “Bat Repellant”
Fletcher’s Grove “Virgil Burgess”
Emmalea Deal “Everything I’m Not”
Spencer Elliott “Folding Space”
Beggars Clan “Turn It Around”
Rasta Rafiki “Today’s Slop”
The Heavy Editors “Alien Lover”
Kevin Scrabrough “Middle School”
Speedsuit “Roller Coaster of Booze”
Dog Soldier “Blanket Number One”
Corporate Orange “Stay Listening”

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at 11 AM and Midnight, Sunday at 1 PM and the next Monday at 8PM, exclusively on The AIR.

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 bring you highlights of Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony for the full hour. This recording captures the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis joining forces with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson in performances of Swing Symphony in front of the sold-out crowds at Powell Hall in St. Louis in May, 2018.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 7 PM and Saturday at 5 PM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

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 for details on our new episodes.