Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

Month: July 2020 (Page 2 of 4)

Make Your Butt Dance Tuesday Afternoon On The AIR

Tuesday on The AIR we deliver a brand-new episode of The Swing Shift, along with some great encore programming.  In order to hear these gems, you simply have to move your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this excitable little embedded radio player…

At 1 PM we have a replay of las week’s MIRRORBALL, wherein Mel Larch makes your butt dance the Disco way for one full hour!. Then at 2 PM an encore of Steven Allen Adams’ NOISE BRIGADE makes your butt dance the Ska/Punk way for the next hour.

At 3 PM a new hour of The Swing Shift takes Butt-dancing to a whole new level with a brand-new episode, which is followed by two more hours of classic Swing Shift episodes. Our first new edition of The Swing Shift in almost a month brings you some laid-back mellow Swing, as well as some high-energy dance Swing, and even a little Electro-Swing. Check out this playlist:

The Swing Shift 096

Jack’s Cats “Chasin’ The Rabbit”
Louis Armstrong “St. James Infirmary”
Samoa Wilson & Jim Kweskin Band “I Just Wanna Be Horizontal”
Tyler Pedersen “Swinging Beyond”
Marcella Puppini “Everything Is Beautiful”
Dany Brilliant “La Vie est Belle”
Megan & Her Goody Goodies “Tuxedo Junction”
Andrew Sisters and Jojo Effect “Well All Right”
Bryan Ferry “Sweet And Lovely”
Vicki Christina Barcelona “Tango Till They’re Sore”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “West of Zanzibar”
Mariska Veres “Radar”
The Gentleman’s Anti-Temperance League “The Count of Cagliotstro”
Royal Crown Revue “The Rise and Fall of The Great Mondello”
Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive “Nobody Wants You When You’re Down and Out”

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.

An Exceptionally Random RFC Starts With New Music From David Synn

Tuesday on The AIR we deliver a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, that’s loaded with new music from David Synn, Jerks!, Jay Parade, and more. Plus we have classic tracks, rare cuts and a particularly random selection of fine musical requisitessss.  In order to hear the show, you simply have to find your way over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this shiny, happy radio player…

We have yet another three-hour Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week it’s yet another all-new show jam-packed with great music from Charleston and the whole world.  This week we open with new music from David Synn, plus tracks from Jay Parade, Paul McCartney, Dukes of Stratosphear, Andy Prieboy, Jerry Lee Lewis and much more. It’s all part of another three-hour epic collection of cool music. We sort of went a little crazy on the randomizer this week, but the show still has a great flow to it.

Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we bring you this week…

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hour one
David Synn “Hostage”
Seth Allen Holmes “Loser”
Anderson Stoldt “Chase and Harmony”
Emily Kinney “Molly”
Paul McCartney “Jenny Wren”
The Shelters “The Ghost is Gone”
Roy F. Bush “Nest”
Jay Parade “Headache”
Ultravox “Some of Them”
Jerry Lee Lewis “Lewis Boogie”
The Incorruptibles “Lowdown and Dirty”
Laura Mvula “Show Me Love”
Jerks! “Anywhere To Go”
Steve Vai “Bop”
Doctor Curmudgeon “Unnamed Number Five”

hour two
4OHM MONO “Crisis Actor”
Fletcher’s Grove “Masterbeast”
Roger Daltry and Wilco Johnson “Ice on the Motorway”
Paul Weller “Instant Karma”
Product of Piracy “In The Land of the Dead, the Living Man is King”
The Last Shadow Puppets “Sweet Dreams TN”
Sky Technology “Crazy Machines”
Holden Caulfield “Open For Business”
The Strokes “Drag Queen”
Leland Sundries “Apocalypse Love Song”
Tim Nielson “Dark Age Dancin'”
Link Wray and the Raymen “Jack The Ripper”
Farnsworth “Better Days”

hour three
Cannon Sodaro Band “Good Times”
The Avett Brothers “Satan Pulls The Strings”
ABC “I Believe In Love”
The Shift “Moon Boots”
Volbeat “Marie Laveau”
Blame The Day “Breathe”
Boldly Go “First Contact”
The Empty Hearts “Run and Hide”
TC&I “Kenny”
The Monkees “You Bring Me Summer”
Paul Simon “Cool Papa Bell”
Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals “Pink Balloon”
Viv Stanshall “The Young Ones”
Jo-Ann Campbell “Let Me Do My Twist”
Andy Prieboy “How Would I Know Love Now”
Dukes of Stratosphear “Black Jeweled Serpent of Sound”

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 8 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

Look for another post here in PopCult about the rest of our new programs later today.

Monday Morning Art: Pencils Over Chicago

 

This week we bring you a high-detail pencil sketch of a chunk of the Chicago Skyline. Since we can’t really travel at the moment, I decided to let my trusty Blackwing Palamino take us to the Windy City. Despite the heat, combined with my Myasthenia Gravis leaving me somewhat finger-impaired, I decided to try to pace myself and crank out this pencil drawing while watching WWE Sunday night. There was a lot of ruler use, along with some digital de-smudging once I got the drawing scanned. This was based on half a dozen photos from a 2017 trip up North.

If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday on The AIR, just like last week we have a special marathon of Six Degrees of Separation from 7 AM to 3 PM. You can hear four more in-depth interviews with local musicians, conducted by Tim Dorsey and Jason “Roadblock” Robinson at The Empty Glass. Today you can hear Lee Harrah, Sean Richardson, David Dunkley and John Inghram interviewed about four years ago. I’d love to have newer episodes of this show, but it’s tricky to bring all the parties together, especially with the pandemic.

At 3 PM on Prognosis, Herman Linte brings us a show devoted to the new Prog of 2020. That’s followed by a classic Prognosis and an evening of NOISE BRIGADE and Radio Free Charleston.

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

Sunday Evening Video: The Starlost Returns

Don’t panic! Nobody tried to revive this 1970’s sci-fi misfire. However, I first posted this video five-and-a-half years ago, and it has since been struck down by the Gods of YouTube. However, it has been re-uploaded, with a slightly better print, so we’re going to try this one again. The bonus is that I don’t have to write a full post today.

Imagine a television show, produced in the early 1970s–the darkest time for science fiction on television, with an amazing pedigree. Let’s say it boasted special effects and was produced by Douglas Trumbull, a veterarn of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Andromeda Strain” and “Silent Running.” Add in Keir Dullea, the star of “2001” as your lead actor. Wrap it all up with the fact that the show was created and written by the legendary Harlan Ellison, and it sounds like a surefire winner that would have changed the face of science fiction on television.

gallery5starlostHowever, if you throw in some complications, it turns out a bit differently. In this case, the complications included the series being rejected by The BBC, and winding up, with a fraction of the budget, on Canadian TV. Other complications included a writer’s strike that kept Ellison from writing anything more than the show’s bible and story outlines, Trumbull’s failed attempt at creating a new special effects system, the Canadian government forcing producers to use Canadian writers to finish Ellison’s scripts, and finally, before even the pilot episode was completed, Ellison invoked a clause in his contract forcing the producers to use his alternative registered writer’s pen-name of “Cordwainer Bird” in the credits.

And that’s why hardly anyone remembers The Starlost, at least not fondly. This was a show that was broadcast in Canada and in the US in syndication in 1973, and rerun only a couple of times. You can find every episode on YouTube, or you can look them up on a Roku Channel devoted to airing the 16 episodes. To quote the Wikipedia description, “The show’s setting is a huge generational colony spacecraft called Earthship Ark, which has gone off course. Many of the descendants of the original crew and colonists are unaware, however, that they are aboard a ship. “

By the way, it’s not very good. That’s the first episode at the top of this post. It’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, but the series went downhill after this one. It’s not so bad that it’s good, it’s simply bad enough to escape having any entertainment value.

The RFC Flashback: Episode 3

This week we flash back to August, 2006, almost 14 years ago, for the third video episode of Radio Free Charleston.

“Mother Nang Shirt,” which was named after a shirt featuring the then-disbanded, since-reunited legendary band. This early edition of RFC features a solo performance by Eduardo Canelon, of Duo Divertido and Comparsa fame, plus a vintage video from Charleston legends, Three Bodies. Also in this show, is the first installment of “Pentagram Flowerbox” by Third Mind Incarnation (restored to the show after being excised from 2007 to 2015) and the short film, “The Alien Threat” by Frank Panucci.

More elaborate notes on the production and restoration of this episode can be found HERE.

Giving Stonewall The Boot, Plus More Disco On The AIR

The PopCulteer
July 17, 2020

The Kanawha County Board of Education finally decided to remove Stonewall Jackson’s name from the Middle School (formerly a High School) on Charleston’s West Side.

It’s long overdue, and I have to wonder what took so long.

To be honest, I have ALWAYS wondered why we had a school and a monument that honored the memory of a terrorist and traitor to this country.

I remember when I was a kid, somewhere between the age of seven and ten. Even at that young age I had been taught the truth about the Civil War–that The South wanted to keep Black people as slaves, and launched an attack against our country in order to try and do so. I don’t know whether I learned this from my parents or my first-grade teacher, or if I had just picked it up from watching cartoons on TV or reading comics, but I did know that The South were the bad guys in the Civil War, and we soundly defeated them.

Before that one fateful moment when my older brother explained it to me, I thought that Stonewall Jackson must have been a Union General. My mind could not comprehend that we would name schools after a traitor…a villain.

At first, I thought my brother was joking. He would make jokes like that. It just didn’t make any sense. So at the first chance I looked it up and I was shocked.

My thought was, “How the HELL did this happen?”

That may be what started me on my life-long fascination with propaganda, misinformation and how evil people will twist the truth to suit their needs. It definitely left me with an impression that sticks with me to this day.

I later learned that an entire false narrative that Jackson was a brilliant military tactician who would have won the war had he not been killed had been ingrained in history books and was even being taught at the college level.

Which is pretty amazing. The truth is that Jackson was a middling general who got lucky a few times and was promoted beyond his abilities. He was shot by his own troops after raiding a Union Army camp that one of his scouts found by accident. I repeat, the man was shot by his own troops at what should have been the triumph of his greatest piece of dumb luck yet.

To me, that seems less like the end of a military genius, and more like the final act of a dumbass.

He was the Douglas C. Neidermyer of the Civil War.

The only reason schools were named after him and statues erected of him was to intimidate Black People. The fundraising for these efforts was spearheaded by a group unofficially known as the women’s auxillary of the Ku Klux Klan. This was part of a nationwide campaign to spread lies about the Civil War. These statues and monuments and school names were an organized and well-funded effort to rewrite history so that the South could play the victim. They were a reminder that white supremacy was still the order of the land.

So it’s time we strip the names of confederate leaders from schools and forts and take down monuments to their memory. They never should have been there in the first place.

As for what’s next, as I write this I have just learned that the Kanawha County School Board voted to go with the blandest of bland names, and the Middle School will now be named “West Side Middle School.”

So there go all my jokes about what to call the sports teams if they named the school after Katherine Johnson or Booker T. Washington (that would be “The Battling Johnsons” and “The MGs,” respectively).

Any change is good, but it would have been nice if they’d decided to give the school a name that might inspire girls and Black kids. So I guess the teams will be “The West Siders” and maybe their mascot will be a mayonnaise sandwich on white bread.

Anyway, now that we have that done, can we do something about that creepy statue of Stonewall Jackson with a huge boner that is still on our state capitol grounds? I mean, seriously, can’t we put a Big Boy or Gumby or anything more appropriate than a monument to an apparently aroused inept terrorist in that space? Look at that thing. I’m afraid to turn my back on that monstrosity.

More, More, More MIRRORBALL

We offer up our sixth edition of MIRRORBALL  Friday afternoon on The AIR. and that’s followed by two great encore epsodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  You can hear all this good stuff on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

MIRRORBALL returns as Mel Larch brings you another great collection of vintage disco, to which you may indeed boogie till your butt falls off. Check out the playlist…

KC & The Sunshine Band “Get Down Tonight”
Karen Young “Hot Shot”
The Isley Brothers “It’s A Disco Night”
The Nolans “I’m In The Mood For Dancing”
Average White Band “Let’s Go Round Again”
The O’Jays “I Love Music”
Archie Bell and the Drells “Soul City Walking”
Cerrone “Supernature”
Melba Moore “Pick Me Up, I’ll Dance”
Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip “I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper”
Frantique “Strut Your Funky Stuff”
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes “The Love I Lost”
Herbie Hancock “You Bet Your Love”
The Drifters “You’re More Than A Number”
Andrea True Connection “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number”

You can tune in at 2 PM and hear the latest edition of MIRRORBALL. The plan is to drop a new episode roughly every other Friday afternoon, until Mel gets tired of doing it, or people stop listening. Later today, it will go up in the Podcast section of The AIR website, so you can listen on demand.  MIRRORBALL will also be replayed Friday night at 10 PM, Saturday at 6 PM (part of a marathon), Sunday at 11 PM and Tuesday at 1 PM. We’ll probably sneak in a few more airings during the week.

And that is our odd couple of items in The PopCulteer this week. Check back for fresh content every day and all our regular features.

3 Colored Vinyl LPs of The Who Live

The PopCult Music Review

The Who Live In Hyde Park
Eagle Rock/Universal Music Group

This is a review of the recent colored-vinyl reissue of a live concert by The Who from 2015. Originally issued on CD and Blu Ray as part of the band’s fiftieth anniversary year, this recording captures the band performing their greatest hits live in London’s Hyde Park in front of a crowd of over 50,000 fans.

The recording itself is a fascinating document of the current state of The Who, with founding members Keith Moon and John Entwistle no longer among the living, but Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend having managed to not die before they got old.

With Zak Starkey on drums and Nino Palladino (Nine Inch Nails) on bass, and augmented with several additional musicians (including Townshend’s brother, Simon), the band does a fine job of recreating the sound of the original records, albiet with some transpositional adjustments to account for the aging of Roger Daltry’s still-amazing voice.

The recording quality is outstanding for a live, outdoor venue. The vocals are not buried, and all the instruments can be heard clearly in a crisp and bright mix. The song selection runs from the early days of The Who, through highlights of “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia,” and even touches on their early 1980s hits before coming to a close with “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from their “Who’s Next” album.

True die-hard Who fans may want to find a copy of the CD/Blu Ray release, because much of the band’s performance is visual, including several tributes to Moon and Entwistle, but for vinyl collectors, this delayed release is a real treat.

The Who Live In Hyde Park packs three colored vinyl LPs (white, red and blue) into a deluxe gatefold sleeve. The experience of cracking open a new LP from The Who and getting lost amid the packaging and rich-sounding virgin vinyl is an absolute joy.

This is not The Who at their peak. Daltry was 71 and Townshend 70 when this show was recorded, and it’s pretty much what you’d get if you saw the band in the last five years. It’s still a damned good time, and it’s interesting to hear the band with a different rhythm section.

If you are a collector of vinyl and a fan of The Who, you’ll want this special package. If you’re a real fan of the band, then chances are you already have the CD/Blu Ray version.

This should be available where ever you buy vinyl, or you might want to try Burning Shed, because even with the exchange rate and overseas shipping, it still costs a bit less than ordering in from Amazon.

Big Green Army Men

The PopCult Toybox

Sometimes, as a toy collector, you see a new toy, and you know you just have to have it. It might hit a nostalgic trigger, or it might just look really cool, or it might be a new take on an old favorite.

Epic Army Men, by ToySmith, checks off all three of those boxes.

I saw these at Cotswold Collectibles, and when they got them in stock, I decided to order a set. These are Green Army Men, like most of us had when we were kids, but there is a bit of a twist…these Green Army Men are seven times the size of most Green Army Men.

These are 14 and 1/2 inch-tall Green Army Men. Jolly Green Giant Army Men, if you will. They are huge, taller than an original GI Joe (see the photo), and are pretty much little Green Army Men blown up to a giant scale.

These are not action figures. They do not pose. While they are not molded as one big, solid piece of plastic (that would make them much heavier and more fragile) they are tightly glued together and you have to look at them close up to spot the seams. These are a giant-sized representation of the little green plastic soldiers that damn near everybody had to play with as a kid.

They are quite sturdy, made with a slightly more flexible rubberized plastic, and with no long, thin pieces that could snap off. They are absolutely child safe. However, at this size and price (roughly twenty bucks each) they are more like decor than playthings.

There are three styles of figures in this series of Epic Army Men: An Infantryman is giving a salute. A Radioman is holding his Walkie-Talkie. A Bazookaman is preparing to fire his shoulder-mounted weapon.

 

 

Like I said, the figures are not articulated. They are static and situated on a steady base, just like little Green Army Men.

They look great. ToySmith resisted the urge to make these figures hyper-detailed to take advantage of the larger size. As such, these are instantly recognizable as gigantic versions of the original Green Army Men. This is a case where less is more because an ultra-detailed figure would lose the charm of the classic two-inch-tall soldiers.

Kids can have lots of fun with these, either on their own, or as super-soldiers grown to enormous size to do battle with Godzilla. Big toys are fun for big imaginations.

Adults will get the nostalgic glee of having giant versions of their old toys, and these would look pretty cool on a bookshelf or just sitting around your living room.

You can order the set of three Epic Army Men from Cotswold Collectibles for just under sixty bucks (plus shipping). They can also be ordered directly from ToySmith, but you don’t get your pick of which figure you want (all three designs have the same item number), so you might not wind up with a full set.

I’m hoping these do well enough that we get more figures, like the Minesweeper, the guy crawling and a Rifleman. For now, these three are an impressive start, and a giant leap for fans of Green Army Men.

William Matheny Kicks Off An All-New Three-Hour RFC!

Tuesday on The AIR we deliver a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, that’s loaded with new music from William Matheny, The Rolling Stones, Jerks!, Jay Parade, and more. Plus we have classic tracks, rare cuts and high-grade obscurities.  In order to hear the show, you simply have to navigate over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this efficient and well-thought-of embedded radio player…

We have yet another three-hour Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week it’s yet another all-new show jam-packed with great music from Charleston and the whole world.  This week we open with new music from William Matheny (available from all online music sources), plus tracks from Jay Parade, Mark Beckner Group and new music from The Rolling Stones. It’s all part of another three-hour epic collection of cool music.We even work in some classic and new super-long songs for your listening-to and zoning-out pleasure.

Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we bring you this week…

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William Matheny “Mind For Leaving”
Mark Beckner Group “No Ordinary Love”
Wren Allen Band “Skate”
Beck “Up All Night”
Magic Bus “Inca Trail”
Hollis Brown “Do Me Right”
Ann Magnuson “Cat In The Sun”
The Rolling Stones “Criss Cross”
The Big Bad “Christine”
Jerks ! “I Don’t Care”
Bon Air “1986”
The Heavy Editors “Time”
Jay Parade “I Know That It’s Real”
Depeche Mode “Everything Counts (Live)”
Ultravox “Vienna (Live)”

hour two
Apes Of The State “Piles”
Farnsworth “Free Me”
Rosalie Cunningham “A Yarn From The Wheel”
A Different Scene “Music Retention”
PRVIS “Old Wounds”
Seth Allen Holmes “Stranded In Space”
Ennio Morricone “The Thing”
Rubber Tea “In Weeping Waters”
The BrotherSisters “Paradise Bar”

hour three
Release Early, Release Often “Subdoer”
Beggars Clan “We Sleep”
Spencer Elliott “7-4-20”
Abel Ganz “The Life of the Honey Bee and Other Moments of Clarity”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Frenchy and the Punk “Batgirl”
Todd Burge “My Wasted Youth”

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 8 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

Tuesday at 2 PM brings another edition of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack, this one opening with early Pink Floyd. At 3 PM we re-present a couple of recent episodes of The Swing Shift, hosted by yours truly. Yours truly plans to start cranking out new episodes of our Swing extravaganza soon, but it’s been a particularly cruel summer for Myasthenia Gravis, and the energy levels just around there right now. Luckily, our encores are better than most other radio station’s brand-new programming.  Tune in to The AIR for the best alternative radio on the internet.

Monday Morning Art: The Orb

 

Our art this week is a digital painting called “The Orb.” I suppose I should have chosen a different name so that it wouldn’t be confused with the electronic music group. I could have called it “An Orb,” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. And what good is an orb that doesn’t roll well?

Anyway this is a digital painting because the heat does a number on my Myasthenia Gravis, and my attempts to wield a pencil these last couple of weeks have been entertaining only in the comedic sense.  So I did this from scratch, rolled it in a ball and then piled on illumination effects to give it some depth.

If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday on The AIR, we have a special marathon of Six Degrees of Separation from 7 AM to 3 PM. You can hear four in-depth interviews with local musicians, conducted by Tim Dorsey and Jason “Roadblock” Robinson at The Empty Glass. Today you can hear Johnny Compton, Chris Ojeda, Aaron Fisher and The Horse Traders interviewed about four years ago. I’d love to have newer episodes of this show, but it’s tricky to bring all the parties together, especially with the pandemic. We will bring you four more episodes next Monday, and you can hear these classic interviews once in a while on our Saturday evening Live and Local program.

At 3 PM on Prognosis, Herman Linte brings us a show devoted to the music of Gong That’s followed by a classic Prognosis and an evening of NOISE BRIGADE and Radio Free Charleston.

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

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