Month: January 2020 (Page 3 of 4)

What better way to start off a new year than by bringing you a live concert by one of my favorite musical combos, the band DEVO, recorded…oh my god…almost FORTY YEARS AGO.

GAH!

Making things worse, this concert was released complete on vinyl for the first time last year on the Black Friday Record Store Day, and I wasn’t able to track down a copy

Well, now I just feel bad.

Enjoy the music.

The sixteenth episode of The RFC MINI SHOW was our April Fool’s Day show. The joke was that we would play our usual two songs from the band, in this case, Project Biscotti, and then after the credits rolled and we ran our General Substances tag the picture would fade back up, and we’d show an additional 47 minutes of the band performing.

What I didn’t know at the time was that we had recorded what turned out to be one of the last, if not the absolute final performance by the band.

Project Biscotti was one of Charleston’s most intriguing bands. With a sound that blended cabaret, raw punk and high-energy rock, they were unlike any other artists in town. I thought they were the closest thing we had to Captain Beefheart.

The band was recorded in March, 2014 at the Rock N Roll Theater at the old Kanawha Players Theater.  That series of concerts was also their brainchild, under the “Scarred Art” banner. The band offered up their own disclaimer, “Project Biscotti was formed by front man Cardiac Jones and began as a 2 member group that has since taken on 2 more members making us a full, four piece act. With each member bringing their own style, sound, and weirdo flavor to the mix, Project Biscotti is an act like none other you’re likely to see in this or any other area.”

They added the following, “WARNING!! Project Biscotti is a very vulgar band with themes ranging to everything from masturbation to rampant drug abuse and sexual misconduct. Also, we have songs about movies & TV shows we like. Whatever we think is fun, we do…NO LIMITS!”

So in other words, this show might just be a little NSFW. It is also something pretty damned special, and I’m glad I was able to preserve some of their act on video.

The PopCulteer
January 10, 2020

The second weekend of the year, especially one where it’s supposed to be unseasonably warm, is a good time to get out and take in some great entertainment or other local events.

People promoting local events on social media should remember that, taking five or ten minutes to prepare a graphic that includes the date, time and location of an event, along with other pertinent details will likely be the deciding factor on whether or not it gets included in a roundup like this. These days I only tend to compile this kind of post when I don’t have five or ten minutes to make graphics for every event I know about. Hence a few of the slapdash graphics below.

So, since this is what I post about here when paying work takes me away from my PopCulteering duties, let’s see what’s going on in and around Charleston this weekend, shall we?

FRIDAY

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The PopCult Toybox

Over the weekend, Hisstank.com, one of the best sources for information about the 3 3/4″ “Real American Hero” version of GI Joe reported that they’d confirmed that Hasbro had granted a license to another toy company, JazWares, for GI Joe, presumably the RAH incarnation. ”

They don’t claim to have any details as to what the license entails, but they did do a follow-up report showing that JazWares has GI Joe listed among the many licensed properties that they’ll be showing in a couple of weeks at The International Toy Fair in Nuremburg.

This has generated quite a bit of speculation among the online toy press, and I don’t want to miss out on all the fun, so I’m going to jump in with even more.

First, a little background is in order: Hasbro is one of the world’s largest toymakers. After decades of major success with their own toys, along with many mergers and acquistions, Hasbro currently owns the rights to several of the most recognizable toy brands in the world, including GI Joe, which has been one of their most lucrative original creations since the introduction of the original 12″ figure back in 1964.

Hasbro has gotten so big that they tend to only focus their energies on toy lines that bring in massive amounts of money, like the toys they make under license from Disney, Marvel and Star Wars, and their own Transformers line.

However, Hasbro owns so many properties that still have name value that they license out some of what they consider their less-valuable lines to other, smaller toy companies. That way, Hasbro acts much like Disney does with their properties—all they do is collect an upfront fee and royalties, but they don’t have to risk any of their own money developing, manufacturing and distributing the toys.

In recent years Hasbro has farmed out the rights to toys and brands that they own like Tonka (which is switching from Funrise to Basic Fun this year), Micro Machines (coming soon from Wicked Cool Toys), Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toy (sold by K’Nex) and several others.

Internationally, Hasbro has leased out the rights to Action Man, the UK version of the original GI Joe, first to Alan Hall for 40th Anniversary sets, and more recently to Art + Science for well-made 50th Anniversary sets, and more disappointing mass-market figures (reviewed here).

It’s not unheard of for Hasbro license out major brands to other toymakers, but there are some other facts that are casting doubt on just exactly what form the deal with JazWares will take.

JazWares currently makes most of the action figures based on the videogame, Fortnite. At the moment, this is about as close as you can get to printing money. Last month JazWares unveiled a new line of Fortnite figures in the 3 3/4″ scale that Hasbro used for the Real American Hero GI Joe line beginning in 1982 (seen left).

JazWares is cash-rich and has been buying up other toy companies. Just a few months ago they bought Wicked Cool Toys. Wicked Cool Toys had already licensed Micro Machines from Hasbro. Suddenly, JazWares found themselves working hand-in-hand with Hasbro. JazWares was already sub-licensing Fortnite to Hasbro’s Nerf division and producing Nerf accessories, plus JazWares makes Peppa Pig toys, a property which Hasbro just acquired last month in a deal that also gave the venerable toy company ownership of Death Row Records, the infamous rap label.

So we know that the two companies have a good working relationship, and that Hasbro may be more open than ever to thinking outside the box.

This is where the speculation gets a little iffy. The deal between Hasbro and JazWares could simply be for GI Joe vehicles to show up as Micro Machines. Or it could be a deal for role-play toys or something else. JazWares makes Domez, a line of blind-bag collectible mini-figures, and they make Ro Blox and Rocket League collectibles, so those are also possible places where a GI Joe license might fit in. They might even find a way to insert GI Joe into their Fortnite line, although I think that’s pretty unlikely.

It is worth noting that a lot of GI Joe collectors have been snapping up Fortnite sets like the one below to add to their collections.

The big rumor and wishful thinking on the part of many collectors is that JazWares will produce a full line of 3 3/4″ GI Joe action figures, vehicles and accessories. They’ve shown that they’re capable of doing this with Fortnite, and since Hasbro has shown no interest in doing anything with GI Joe since they just had a disastrous time with the last GI Joe movie in 2013 it seems at least palusible that Hasbro might be willing to farm out such a line.

This would make all the sense in the world. That movie was yanked from distribution at the last minute so that it could retroactively be turned into a 3-D film. Unfortunately Hasbro had already shipped toys to retailers, and with no movie in theaters, sales were abysmal. The following year Hasbro released a smattering of toys to mark GI Joe’s 50th Anniversary, but since then it’s been all quiet on the Joe front at mass market retail. The time is ripe for Hasbro to simply lease out GI Joe to a company that could treat it as more of a priority.

Except for one thing.

Paramount has a new GI Joe movie coming out later this year. It’s a solo movie, starring Snake-Eyes, the most popular figure in the RAH line, but it is a GI Joe movie coming out from a major studio, and you have to believe that Hasbro is contractually obligated to support it with a full line of toys, including action figures. (I think the image at right is from a previous GI Joe movie, but the character wears a black suit and facemask, so you at least get the idea)

Snake-Eyes, due out in October, is a prequel, telling the story of the mute Ninja before he joined the GI Joe team. I can’t see Hasbro passing up the chance to make figures from this movie that would be compatible, size-wise, with their Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black Series action figures. I’d expect 12″ figures, too.

However, it’s possible that Hasbro will cherry-pick the most popular action figure sizes for themselves, while letting JazWares produce a 3 3/4″ line, which will make the collectors happy, and give Hasbro an additional revenue stream.

It’s also possible that Hasbro will focus on the movie-based figures, while letting JazWares develop an “evergreen” line of Real American Hero GI Joes (maybe without Snake Eyes), to run as an adjunct to their own line.

Again, this seems like a win-win for Hasbro and for collectors. Hasbro would reap the benefits of the movie publicity for their line, while collectors would get something more akin to the toys they grew up with. Plus it’d simplify the book-keeping a little, since, although Hasbro owns GI Joe outright, they have agreed to pay Paramount a royalty fee for toys based on the movies they make based on Hasbro properties.

Licensing the non-movie toys to another company might lessen the confusion a bit.

And it’s also worth pointing out that someone at JazWares has an obvious affection for the RAH Joes. This new line of Fortnite Figures is practically a valentine to the Joe Team.

Of course, this could also be a case of Hasbro granting JazWares the license for GI Joe outside of North America, possibly marketing the “evergreen” line overseas that Hasbro has been rumored to be developing for months, while Hasbro handles the US distribution. Stranger things have happened.

And it might turn out to be disappointing, like a line of blind-bag Domez toys based on the Snake-Eyes movie.

Rumors like this will start flying like crazy as we approach Toy Fair season. We won’t know all the details until the big show in New York next month.

Until then, speculating is half the battle!

This Wednesday afternoon The AIR, presents a special memorial episodes of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call.  You can listen at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

At 2 PM Beatles Blast brings you a full hour of music by The Rutles. Neil Innes passed away in the last week of 2019, and as the host of Beatles Blast, I had to take a week to pay tribute to him. If it weren’t for The Rutles, I may have never become the rabid Beatles fan that I am today.

I was a comedy nerd who ate up everything that was related to Monty Python and Saturday Night Live when NBC aired a cross-country collaboration in 1978 that sent up the entire Beatles mythos. Neil Innes, who created The Rutles’s music and co-created the concept with Eric Idle, captured the sound of The Beatles’ music so well that it clicked with me, and sent me down the rabbit hole to learn all I could about The Fab Four so that I could get all the jokes in All You Need Is Cash, The Rutles mockumentary.

Innes started out as a co-leader of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who had ties to both The Beatles (they appear in Magical Mystery Tour and had a single produced by Paul McCartney) and Monty Python (The Bonzos were on the pre-Python show, Do Not Adjust Your Set with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam’s animation, and Innes was a credited writer on the final season of the Monty Python TV show and was essentially a member of the troupe for Monty Python and The Holy Grail). Innes also had a solo career (and had one of his songs plagarized by Beatle imitators, Oasis), and was a beloved host of radio programs and children’s shows in the UK.

Because of the role he played in my personal Beatles story, I had to devote this week’s Beatles Blast to the music of The Rutles.

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 an hour of the music of Jerry Herman, the famed Broadway composer who passed away the day after Christmas.

Herman created two of the most popular and tuneful musicals of the 1960’s with Hello, Dolly! and Mame, and also adapted the French play, La Cage aux Folles into a highly successful musical in the 1980’s. In addition to those three highly successful shows his work also includes the musicals Milk and Honey, Mack and Mabel, Dear World, and The Grand Tour. His work has also been the subject of two musical revues–Jerry’s Girls (in which Curtain Call host, Mel Larch has performed) and Showtune, which had an off-Broadway run in 2003.

Many songs from his shows have gone on to become pop standards, such as the title song from Hello, Dolly!, and “If He Walked Into My Life,” from Mame. And “I Am What I Am,” the Act I closing number from La Cage, was more than a mere pop hit for Gloria Gaynor. With its message of living openly and honestly–at a time when openly gay men were often ostracized–it became a popular gay pride anthem.

This week’s Curtain Call presents an hour that samples the highlights of Jerry Herman’s remarkable career.

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 5 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..

On the seventh day of our new year, The AIR is back in fighting trim with exciting new episodes of Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift. We also bring you an encore of the first episode of Steven Allen Adams’ NOISE BRIGADE.

Tuesday begins a new era of  Radio Free Charleston as we go back to our roots and expand RFC into a three-hour format that will combine the best local music with new and exciting music from around the world, blending Alternative, New Wave, Classic Rock, Progressive Rock and more into a free-form radio showcase that will demonstrate that our local musicians can hold their own alongside the finest in the world.

We also have an exciting new artist on The Swing Shift, who contacted us through PopCult, and proved that he can bend genres with the best of them as he brings psychedelic guitar into the world of Swing, and comes up with something new and exciting. I’ll tell you more about Tyler Pederson below.

It’s an exciting time to be a fan of The AIR. Soon you’ll be hearing about a new series of music specials that cover many different types of music that we haven’t played before.

To hear these fine specialty music programs, you may point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this embedded radio player…

It all kicks off at 10 AM (with a replay at 10 PM– all times EDT) with a brand-new direction for Radio Free Charleston.

Starting this week, RFC expands to three hours, mixing local music in with all sorts of cool stuff, and starts over as RFC Volume Five, Number One.

In case you’re wondering, RFC Volume One was broadcast on WVNS Radio starting in 1989. RFC Volume Two is the video version of the show, which shines the spotlight on local music. RFC Volume Two is still an ongoing concern, although I produce it much less frequently than I did from 2006 to 20016, when I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis.

In 2014 I began RFC Volume Three as a weekly two-hour local showcase for Voices of Appalachia Radio.  When VOA mutated into The AIR a couple of years later, I re-christened it RFC Volume Four, and cut the running time to one hour per week. That was also when I began doing RFC International, which was where I played whatever I wanted for two hours a week.

Now, I’ve basically combined Radio Free Charleston and RFC International into one three-hour show, which oddly enough makes it almost exactly like the show I did for broadcast radio back three decades ago. The plan is to remaster all the episodes of RFC Volume Four and RFC International and make them available for download…for free.

Anyway, the reason for all this naval-gazing and self-explaining is to let you know why I decided to combine the two shows (RFC International will be replaced by a repeat airing of RFC Volume Five on Thursdays at 3 PM).  Frankly, I was getting bored. Not with local music, but with having to segregate all the local music into a one-hour ghetto each week, while at the same time trying to curate a really cool free-form radio show with RFC International. One of the great joys I got back during the original run of the broadcast version of the show was when I’d play a tune by a local band next to a song by one of their favorite bands…and they’d be so thrilled with the association that their exuberance was priceless.

When you have people calling you up, raving about the way you played their music at 3 AM, you know you’re doing something right.

Now I can do that again. I can match up the music better, too. Instead of cramming five kinds of music into one hour, I can spread the local artists out over three hours, and build a nice musical flow where the transitions aren’t so jarrring. It should be more interesting for our listeners, and more fun for the artists.

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This week we kick off things with a piece of physical art. Using a composite of six or seven photos from a trip to The Big Apple last spring as my guide, I did an ink drawing of a New York street scene, and using real watercolors for the first time since I was in high school, I created this piece. It’s another step in regaining the use of my hands, and it’s a bit of a new direction. Had I created this piece digitally, I probably would have gone for a hyper-detailed look. Instead, this is more of a surreal combination of detailed cartooning and slightly impressionistic shadows and colors.

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

Meanwhile, over in radio-land, Monday on The AIR, our Monday Marathon runs from 7 AM to 7 AM Tuesday, and brings you all of 2019’s episodes of Herman Linte’s Prognosis.   At 3 PM, instead of one of last year’s shows, Herman will bring you the first Prognosis of 2020, which is a two-hour collection of music by the neo-Prog group, Pallas.  The plan is to have new episodes of most of our specialty music shows this week, including the debut of the three-hour version of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday.

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

Earlier this week we brought you a new edition of The RFC MINI SHOW starring country mega-star, Tyler Childers. Today we’re going to treat you to a bonus song from Tyler, courtesy of the fine folks at the CBS Morning News. It’s Tyler performing “All Your’n” from early December of last year. That it at the head of this post.

Below you can revisit our RFC MINI SHOW, which was recorded at The Dunbar Lanes back in November, 2014…

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Just days after we premiered the first new RFC MINI SHOW in almost four years, we tke you back to March, 2014, for another RFC MINI SHOW, starring Donnie Smith.  Donnie had entertained audiences for years in various productions at CYAC, and he’d been hosting the open mic at The Empty Glass when we caught up to him.

We recorded Donnie at the Rock N Roll Theater at the old location of Kanawha Players. In this show he brings you his renditions of Prince’s “Purple Rain” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

Donnie’s still in the area, and we hope to hear him making music again soon.

You can find the original production notes for this show HERE.

The PopCulteer
January 3, 2020

The International Toy Fair in New York is still about six weeks in our future, but with other Toy Fairs taking place in Hong Kong, Nuremburg and London before then, we ought to be able to piece together lots of cool information about what to expect from the toy industry in the coming year. This is the first post in an ongoing series to keep you up to date.

2020 is shaping up to be an interesting year. Frozen 2 is expected to dominate the girl’s toys catagory (and despite efforts to get rid of such gender identifications in the industry, there’s not much reason to think that such distinctions won’t persist). Star Wars might see a rebound from it’s recent doldrums, due not to the final movie in the last trilogy, but to the success of The Mandalorian. McFarlane Toys revealed their first offerings from their DC Comics license yesterday, while Spin Master had quietly leaked their DC Comic action figure line details through online retailers the day before (more on that below).

The news this morning that the mega-hit top-selling toy of the last few years, LOL Surprise, may finally be running out of steam is being greeted with premature elation from competing toymakers. It’s a very intriguing sign for the industry, since LOL Surprise has been so dominant that other toy makers complained that it was tying up manufacturing capacity and crowding them out of retailer’s shelves. MGA Entertainment, who make LOL Surprise, deny the reports, but they come from a company that specializes in liquidating overstock, so it’s a bit hard to discredit. Plus there are reports of prices being slashed in the UK.

The theory is that retailers over-ordered LOL Surprise, not that the toy suddenly stopped selling. When a flood of LOL Surprise hits deep-disount retailers, we’ll have to see if it hurts the sales of their newer product this spring. It might just wind up crowding other companies’ toys off of deep-discount retailer shelves.

Manufacturing capacity is a big issue. For years there’s been a push by the major (and minor) toymakers to move their production out of China. The main impetus for this has been that China has a growing middle class and wages have been going up sharply as the factory workers try to improve their quality of life. The cost of making toys in China has been increasing steadily.

The recent trade wars and threats of tariffs have hastened this move dramatically. Toy makers who had a ten-year plan to move production out of China found themselves rushing to try to do so in two years. They intend to stay in the region, moving to factories in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and other Asian countries, but many of those factories are not yet fully-equpped to meet their demands.

It’s caused some changes that you may not immediately notice. At Chinese factories, Mattel had 150 shades of red paint at their disposal to use on their toys. At the newer factories they have three shades of red. Some Chinese factories had satellite communications set up so that they could hold live conferences with some of the toy makers and make instant changes in production. At the new factories they have to rely on cellphone photos being sent when the person taking them can get within reach of a cell tower.

A lot of toys intended for release in time for Christmas last year will actually show up in the first or second quarter of this year. Not only are the manufacturing capabilities in other Asian countries less advanced than in the established Chinese factories, their shipping facilities are not as large or efficient, so that even if a toy comes out of the factory on schedule, it might face an extra month or more before it winds up on our shores.

Hasbro moved Heaven and Earth (and called on Disney’s Ike Perlmutter to lobby his buddy in the White House to delay tariffs on toys until after the holidays) to make sure that toys based on Frozen 2 and Star Wars made it into stores in time for the Christmas shopping season, but that had the ripple effect of delaying much of their other product lines, as well as affecting other manufacturers.

Several Kickstarter projects have run into horrible delays dealing with Chinese factories who seem as eager to leave toys behind as the toy industry is to get out of their country. Factories can make a lot more money making tablets and smartphones than they can making toys. There are dozens of horror stories of well-intentioned folks who thought they could produce a cool toy for dedicated fans, only to discover that they’ve fallen into a years-long ordeal trying to get their action figures or other toys produced.

And if that isn’t enough doom and gloom and uncertainty…the New York Times Science Blog recently reported on projections of regions of the world that will be under water by 2050, due to climate change. What isn’t mentioned in this alarming report is that these changes will wipe out the land where 70% of the non-Chinese toy factories are.

With all that uncertainty, it’s no wonder that the people who make up the toy industry contribute so greatly to the profits of the ulcer medicine industry.

Still, with all that hanging over their heads, toymakers will do everything they can to make Toy Fair a fun event. I will not be going this year. I wanted to, but with some recent medical adjustments, combined with the expense involved, I decided to sit out this year. I didn’t want to pay to stay in New York for the better part of a week, only to not be well enough to attend Toy Fair every day. It’s a blast to go there, but it’s also an exhausting experience, and I want to go when I know that I’m up for all four days of the marathon coverage of the event. By the last day, its like the Bataan Death March, only with cool toys to look at.

I’ll be covering Toy Fair from here, but that gives me the advantage of being able to report on it for the next six weeks leading up to it. In recent years toy companies have started leaking their biggest announcements days, or even weeks, before Toy Fair. Just this week, because their licenses began on January 1, McFarlane Toys and Spin Master unveiled their DC Comics figures, which could turn up in stores before the end of the month. There’s also news that leaks out in the other international toy fairs that precede New York, although much of the cool stuff they show there never makes it to America.

So stay tuned to PopCult for tons of toy coverage, as well as a beefed-up selection of book, comics, music and toy reviews and our usual cool offerings at The AIR. 2020 is coming into a clear view.

About Those Spin Master DC Comics Action Figures…

With information leaked out via a few online retailers, we now know that Spin Master will release DC Comics action figures in 4″ and 12″ sizes, with a blind-box series of 2″ figures, and they should be in stores in a week or three. We have a few images.

These are figures aimed at kids, but early photos show plenty of collector appeal as well. The 4″ line, a size that hasn’t been used for DC figures for years, shows a decent amount of articulation and accessories, plus it gives them the option of making affordable vehicles. The initial 4″ line will focus on Batman, and each figure will come with three mystery accessories. The assortment will include two versions of Batman (plus one chase figure, in gold), Robin, The Joker, Nightwing and Man-Bat (with detachable wings). Retail price will be $7.99, with higher price points on multi-figure and vehicle sets.

The 12″ figures look to be as well-articulated as Mattel’s, which is great news because the fear was that Spin Master would downgrade these figures and make them as lame as Marvel’s Titan Hero figures, with a mere five points of articulation. The price point will be $9.99, and it looks like the first wave will have three versions of Batman, Superman in his New 52 gear, Harley Quinn, The Joker, The Flash and Shazam (looking somewhat less goofy than the movie version Mattel released last year).

The blind-box (capsule) figures look to be well-thought-out, beginning with a line based on Batman. The five-dollar price point will give you a blind bag containing one of 20 two-inch Batman-related figures, including metalic, surprise and chase figures.

As soon as we get our hands on these, we’ll offer up detailed reviews.

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