Month: May 2020 (Page 4 of 4)

This week we go back to June, 2007 for another early episode of Radio Free Charleston that hasn’t been online for over six years. This is another show that had unfortunately been archived at MySpace, before that service self-destructed and deleted all their videos.

This was an edition of the show that was produced while I was under a great deal of stress. I had recorded the famed reunion of Feast of Stephen the previous month, and mixing the audio and editing video from five cameras was taking longer than anticipated. Much of this was due to the fact that I had begun overseeing the care of my elderly aunt and uncle, and my aunt, Stella Warden, had been diagnosed with quickly-progressing lung cancer right in the middle of production of the FOS reunion special

So I decided that the best way to deal with things was to rush out a stopgap episode of RFC, just in case something forced me to delay the Feast of Stephen special, which was already way behind schedule at this point.

Which was a good move, since what happened was that my aunt’s cancer progressed quickly and took her life about a month after this show premiered. The FOS reunion eventually became episode 23 of RFC, after a gap of over a month between shows.

Which is not meant to demean this episode of the show. It’s a pretty great show. I had discovered Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen at a new talent showcase at the Labelle Theater (along with InFormation, Jordan Searls and Joe Slack) and rushed them into LiveMix Studio so fast that they hadn’t quite settled on their name yet. In this show they were called “Aurora.” Voices of Anatole were one of the top metal acts in the region, and I was offered the chance to include a music video for them by Screaming Butterfly Entertainment, which is helmed by Holly Mollohan, who has gone on to produce many great award-winning films and music videos for the likes of Byzantine and other bands.

This episode also features No Running, one of Frank Panucci’s most beloved contributions to RFC. We open the show with The No Pants Players Eat A Watermelon, which is either disgusting or erotic, depending on your point of view.

Host segments were shot on the banks of the Kanawha River in Dunbar, just a few blocks from my house, during a rare break of a couple of hours from providing end-of-life care to my aunt. Considering what all was happening at the time, this turned out to be a pretty incredible episode of the show. I was still learning my craft as a guerilla TV producer and host, but I think it came out pretty well, and it’s nice to have it back online.

The PopCulteer
May 1, 2020

It’s another Friday and another PopCulteer filled with radio notes because your humble blogger doesn’t want to go off on rants about current affairs.

So, with distraction as our goal, this afternoon The AIR becomes DANCE PARTY CENTRAL!

At 2 PM we present an AIR Music Special, the long-gestating MIRRORBALL, hosted by Mel Larch. We follow that with a special 12″ Dance MIx edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat at 3 PM. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on this ingenious little embedded player…

Last August, when your PopCulteer and his wife were driving around Pennsylvania looking for toys and chocolate for our anniversary, we were passing the driving time by listening to the porn-nostalgia podcast, The Rialto Report. In particular, we were listening to a two-part podcast about porn-star turned Disco Queen, Andrea True.

This got Mel (Mrs. PopCulteer) talking about her love of Disco music of the late 1970s, and we came up with the idea of doing a Disco Music special for The AIR, with the idea that it might turn into a series if enough people like it.  Life, as it is wont to do, kept getting in the way, and it wasn’t until the Coronavirus shutdown that we had time to pull the trigger on the show.

MIRRORBALL is Mel’s baby. While I hated Disco during its peak, I have come to appreciate the production and the musicianship and actually like the best of it now, but Mel knows this stuff inside and out, so I just follow her lead while producing the program.

You can tune in at 2 PM and hear how it turned out. Later today, it will go up in the Podcast section of The AIR website, so you can listen on demand. Let us know what you think. Mel would love to do more of these, and we plan to bring you more specials that focus on different types of music in the future.

Check out the playlist of this mixtape-style show…

MIRRORBALL PILOT

Chic “Le Freak”
Heatwave “Boogie Nights”
LaBelle “Lady Marmalade”
Earth Wind and Fire “Boogie Wonderland”
Andrea True Connection “More, More, More”
The MIracles “Love Machine”
Sister Sledge “We Are Family”
Van McCoy “The Hustle”
The Village People “YMCA”
Thelma Houston “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
K.C. and the Sunshine Band “That’s The Way”
The Trammps “Disco Inferno”
Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive”
Kool And The Gang “Get Down On It”
The Bee Gees “Night Fever”
Donna Summer “Last Dance”

You can hear MIRRORBALL Friday, May 1, at 2 PM and 10 PM, with replays Saturday at 7 PM and 11 PM, and Sunday at 9 AM and 5 PM.

Earlier in the week, when Sydney Fileen got word that her show would be preceded by a Disco special, she decided to delay her originally-planned show and produced a new episode made up entirely of 12″ Dance remixes of New Wave Tunes. You can hear the results at 3 PM Friday on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

This is the second time that Sydney has devoted an episode of her show to dance mixes, and as what I suspect is a bit of an in-joke, it’s the second time that she has opened the show with a dance remix of “I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls. I think she’s just showing off the fact that she has more than one different mix of the tune.

Check out the rest of what’s on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat this week…

BEC 057

A Flock of Seagulls “I Ran (So Far Away)”
Depeche Mode “Route 66”
Howard Jones “Like To Get To Know You Well”
Kim Wilde “Kids In America”
Joy Division “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Kate Bush “The Big Sky”
INXS “Need You Tonight”
New Order “Blue Monday”
Chris Spedding “Pogo Dancing”
Missing Persons “If Only For The Moment”
Climie Fisher “Rise To The Occasion”
808 State “In Yer Face”
The B 52s “Dance This Mess Around”
The Clash “Radio Clash”
The Cure “Hot Hot Hot”
The Thompson Twins “Love On Your Side”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Relax”
M “Pop Muzik”
Romeo Void “Never Say Never”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM and Thursday at Noon, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. As always, check back for fresh content every day, including all our regular features.