Month: May 2021 (Page 2 of 4)

The PopCulteer
May 21, 2021

{Updated Special Note: Due to technical issues that disrupted the broadcasts of the shows listed below, they will be re-run Friday at 7 PM for Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, and at 9 PM for MIRRORBALL. They will also air in their regular encore timeslots and will be repeated next Friday in their regular spots. We apologize for the inconvenience}

Your PopCulteer is still playing catch up after a bunch of doctors appointments (all of which went reasonably well) this week. We did manage to deliver a full slate of our AIR music specialty programming this week, and that means that Friday afternoon we offer up new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents a collection of the Disco hits of Earth, Wind and Fire, one of the funkiest and most musically accomplished of the Disco-era dancefloor hitmakers. Check out this assortment of EWF gold…

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Earth Wind and Fire
“Boogie Wonderland”
“Getaway”
“September”
“Let Your Feelings Show”
“Can’t Let Go”
“Runnin'”
“Fantasy”
“And Love Goes On”
“I’ve Had Enough”
“Got To Get You Into My Life”
“Let’s Groove”
“Let Me Talk”
“Shining Star”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  Midnight and 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, Tuesday at 1 PM and Wednesday at 7 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a mixtape treasure trove of the hits of Stiff Records, probably the most important New Wave record label. Sydney brings you a complete collection of all the Stiff Records stalwarts, from Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello to The Damned and the Pink Fairies to Tracy Ullman and The Pogues. Stiff Records was all over the map, stylistically, but they somehow made all this diverse music come together and change the face of pop music. You’ll hear pub rock, punk, pure New Wave, Ska, folk, and even a little Jazz…and it all managed to shove its way into the elevator known as New Wave Music in the 1980s.

Check out this playlist…

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Nick Lowe “And So It Goes”
Ian Dury and the Blockheads “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”
Elvis Costello “Watching The Detectives”
Lene Lovich “Lucky Number”
Madness “One Step Beyond”
Ten Pole Tudor “Three Bells In A Row”
Rachel Sweet “B-A-B-Y”
Members “Solitary Confinement”
Theatre of Hate “The Hop”
Pink Fairies “Between The Lines”
Richard Hell “Blank Generation”
The Adverts “One Chord Wonders”
Jill Read “Maybe”
Wreckless Eric “Whole Wide World”
Yachts “Suffice To Say”
Larry Wallis “Police Car”
Jane Aire & The Belvederes “Yankee Wheels”
Graham Parker “Back To Schooldays”
DEVO “Jocko Homo”
Kirsty MacColl “They Don’t Know”
Jona Lewie “I’ll Get By In Pittsburgh”
Desmond Dekker “Israelites”
Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin “It’s My Party”
John Otway “Green Green Grass of Home”
Department S “Is Vic There”
Billy Bremner “Loud Music In Cars”
Tracy Ullman “You Broke My Heart In 17 Places”
The Equators “If You Need Me”
The Pogues “Dark Streets of London”
The Bele Stars “Sign of the Times”
The Untouchables “Wild Child”
Jamie Rae “Pretty One”
Dr. Feelgood “Don’t Wait Up”
Furniture “Shake It Like Judy Says”
Jakko “Dangerous Dreams”
Tyla Gang “Styrofoam”
Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias “Kill”
The Damned “New Rose”

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, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back because we have a fresh post every day and if all goes well, next week I’ll be posting reviews of graphic novels, toys and more.

You should know the drill by now. Here are a few cool events happening in or around Charleston this weekend. If you are fully vaccinated and ready to do your best to stay safe, you should go check this stuff out. Outdoor shows are okay for reasonable and vaccinated people to go maskless. Indoor shows leave you at the mercy of your fellow patrons, and be honest…you don’t know where they’ve been. So use your common sense and stay safe.

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you special brand-new episodes of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call!  You can tune in at the website, or or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking over in the right-hand column of this blog.

At 2 PM, your truly returns to host a colorful  Beatles Blast mixtape. Stealing my own idea from this week’s episode of The Swing Shift, I decided to put together a show of Beatles’ tunes with colors mentioned in the title. Sure, it’s a gimmick, but it’s a fun one. We have music from The Fab Four, together and solo, plus some unusual cover versions plucked from the rainbow of Beatles songs. Check out the playlist…

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The Beatles “Baby’s In Black”
Ringo Starr “Red and Black Blues”
George Harrison “Going Down To Golder’s Green”
Wings “Bluebird”
John Lennon “Out The Blue”
Harry Nilsson and John Lennon “Black Sails”
The Beatles “Red Sails In The Sunset”
Dee Long “Blue Jay Way”
Desmond Dekker “Blackbird”
Paul McCartney “For You Blue”
The Beatles “Watching Rainbows”
Paul McCartney “Ebony and Ivory”
George Harrison “Old Brown Shoe”
Wings “Morris Moose and the Grey Goose”
The Dirty Mac “Yer Blues”
Ringo Starr “Yellow Submarine”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM on Curtain Call, Mel Larch salutes the 50th anniversary of Godspell, the Jesus-y rock opera/musical that boasted a number of legendary performers among its many casts around the world.

This week Curtain Call brings you the audio from Broadway HD‘s recent concert special presentation of Godspell.

The Godspell 50th Anniversary Concert features unmissable performances from theatrical legend Ruthie Henshall (Chicago; Billy Elliot) and Darren Day (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) – reprising their roles from the 1993 cast recording – alongside Sam Tutty(Dear Evan Hansen), Ria Jones (Sunset Boulevard; High Society), Jenna Russell (The Bridges of Madison County; Fun Home), and other popular West End performers.

“Godspell has always been a show that brings joy and hope to audiences.  It seems to me this year, we need it more than ever!  I hope this beautiful concert of Godspell helps to lift everyone’s spirits this holiday season,”  Stephen Schwartz.

Godspell is the acclaimed work conceived and originally directed by John-Michael Telebak with music and new lyrics by renowned composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked; Pippin; The Prince of Egypt) which tells a series of parables leading up to the Passion of Christ. Directed by award-winning Michael Strassen (Billy; Assassins), the concert was recorded from the cast’s homes and edited together. This is a revival revamped for the modern age. With a driving message of hope and community, Godspell is the tonic that we need after a year of divisiveness and chaos.

Celebrating this iconic piece of musical theatre on its 50^th anniversary, the production also stars leading West End talents: Jodie Steele (SIX; Heathers), Danyl Johnson (The X Factor finalist), Jenny Fitzpatrick(Tina, The Musical; Our House), Natalie Green (The Prince of Egypt; Hair), John Barr (The Story of Bart; Tommy), Sally Ann Triplett (Mamma Mia!; Viva Forever), Matthew Croke (Aladdin), Alison Jiear (Jerry Springer: The Opera), Shekinah McFarlane (Six; Hair), Lucy Williamson (The Fix; Judy & Liza), Ronald Brian(Beautiful, The Carole King Musical; Newsies), Jerome Bell (The Voice USA; Hairspray) and supported by an ensemble from Italia Conti. 

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 9 PM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Tuesday on The AIR  we deliver brand-new episodes of Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift. It’s a block of programs that let you support the local scene and indulge your dancing desires. 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 the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.

We have a newish Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with the new singles from The Settlement, and bring you one all-new hour of RFC, and one encore of an early RFC Volume Three episode from over six years ago that originally aired on Voices of Appalachia. Your PopCulteer is planning to come up with some excuse for slacking off again and insert it into this place-holder paragraph, eventually.  We do manage to bring you some killer new and vintage local and independent music in our first hour, plus some really great stuff in hours two and three.

After the first hour of RFC, stick around because the second hour revives an old Radio Free Charleston from 2015, which hasn’t been heard by human ears in almost six years. This was the show I recorded right after my first visit to Toy Fair in New York, and my voice is shot, but the all-localish music is pure ear candy.

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

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hour one
The Settlement “Opening Remarks Volumes One and Two”
Novelty Island “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”
Guitarmy of One “Nonesuch Napoleon Solo”
The Swivel Rockers “Lost Without Your Love”
David Synn “Walrus and the Carpenter”
All Torches Lit “Swim”
Jim Lange “Coming ‘Round Again”
Al Stewart “Paint By Numbers (demo)”
Juliana Hatfield “The Shame of Love”

hour two
Timothy Price “Kashmir”
Byzantine “Purity”
Burt Reynolds Death Metal Experiment “Finding Emo”
Science of the Mind “Taste My Fist”
The Renfields “Mars Attacks”
Under The Radar “Mothman Prophecy #1”
Radio Cult “Man Made Monster”
Linnfinity “Martian’s Bloom”
Sheldon Vance “No Reason To Ask Why”
Stone Ka-Tet “Here It Comes Again”
Stark Raven “It Never Goes Away”
Wolfgang Parker “Blood Red Water”
Pepper Fandango “Make-out Bandit”
Crack The Sky “Still Be There”

hour three
Timothy Price “Classical Gas”
Spencer Elliott “Some Forgotten Color”
Josh Buskirk “Neck Ties”
Punk Jazz “?”
Doctor Curmudgeon “?”
Underdog Blues Revue “Crescent City Stroll”
Trielement “Nut Butter”
John Lancaster “A Penchant for Hell on Earth part two”
The Jasons “Church Hymn”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM.

After a few weeks off from fresh episodes of our Tuesday music specialty show, The Swing Shift returns with today’s all-new episode at 3 PM. This week our show is a bit blue. It’s not sad or anything, but while I was putting the show together, I noticed that the first several songs all had the word “blue” in their title or the band’s name, so I decided to run with it. Check out the playlist, in case you want to feel blue…

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Maria Muldaur and Tuba Skinny “Big City Blues”
Stan Kenton “I’ve Got A Right To Sing The Blues”
Louis Prima “Alice Blue Gown”
Buck Clayton and the Marlowe Morris Trio “Blue Moon”
The Rusties Blues Band “Sweet Home Chicago”
Peggy Lee “Blues In The Night”
The Swing Shift Big Band “Blue Five Jive”
The Mighty Blue Kings “I Can’t Stop It”
Woody Herman “Blues For Red”
Royal Crown Revue “The Walkin’ Blues”
Frank Sinatra “The Birth of the Blues”
Louis Jordan “Blue Light Boogie”
Glenn Miller “Rhapsody in Blue”
Indgo Swing “Red Door Blues”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “’49 Mercury Blues”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 2 PM,  and Saturday afternoon only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

It had never occured to me to paint a catfish before. What happened was, Sunday afternoon Mrs. PopCulteer wanted to run out to check out the new soap store opening out at Southridge (or Dudley Farms or Trace Fork–I just call all that stuff “Southridge”) and I was at home, downloading and scheduling our Haversham Recording Institute programs for The AIR this week, and also slacking off and looking at old photos from my first trip to Cabela’s in Wheeling ten years ago.

I took tons of photos in their giant aquarium, most of which didn’t come out well because of glare, or fast-moving blurred fish. However, I did get enough partial images of a large catfish to use as reference for a quick oil pastel painting. And so I did just that. It’s been scanned, lightly color-corrected and cropped.

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

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a new edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

At 2 PM, Nigel Pye’s new Psychedelic Shack includes the following songs:

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Jefferson Airplane “White Rabbit”
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Am I In Heaven”
The 13th Floor Elevators “Slip Inside This House”
Iron Butterfly “It Must Be Love”
Brian Wilson “Good Vibrations”
Fijid Pink “Pain In My Heart”
Janis Joplin “Oh Sweet Mary”
Klaatu “Sub Rosa Speedway”
Small Faces “Here Comes The Nice”
Julian Lennon “Crucified”
Sean Lennon “Part One of the Cowboy Trilogy”
The Monkees “Porpoise Song”

Psychedelic Shack can now be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

At 3 PM, Herman Linte offers up a new Prognosis, which is a two-hour mixtape dedicated to spanning the career of Camel, one of the lesser-known, but no less amazing bands of the original prog-rock era. Here’s this week’s playlist…

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Camel
“Never Let Go”
“Arubaluba”
“Lady Fantasy”
“Freefall”
“Rhayadar Goes To Town”
“Dunkirk”
“Lunar Sea”
“Chord Change”
“Another Night”
“Unevensong”
“One of These Days I’ll Get An Early Night”
“Who Are We”
“Ice”
“City Life”
“Lies The Laser Farewell”
“You Are The One”
“Refugee”
“Rose of Sharon”

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 7 PM, stick around for a 12-hour marathon of The Comedy Vault, because we plan to start compiling new episodes soon.

Above you see a feature-length animated movie made in 1941 by the legendary Max Fleischer studios, and not widely known. It was considered a huge flop. In fact, while the version posted here is called “Hoppity Goes To Town,” the original title was “Mr. Bug Goes To Town” and it was also retitled “Bugville.”

The movie was an epic flop. It’s the financial disaster that caused Paramount to foreclose on the Fleischer studios and shut down their new Miami production facility, moving them back to New York, and renamaing them “Famous Studios.”

Here’s the synopsis from IMDB (written by CPL Rixter):

In a vacant corner lot off Broadway (by about a yard) is a place called the Lowlands by the tiny community that lives there. Bugs and insects are neighbors and hang out at the Honey Shop of old Mr. Bumble the bee and his daughter Honey. Hoppity the grasshopper arrives to be with Honey, his sweetie. This bugs the crooked C. Bagley Beetle, so do his bunglers Smack the Mosquito and Swat the Fly. The Beetle wants Honey and the Lowlands for himself. But the Human Ones, with their littering and carelessness, pose a threat of destruction to every Lowland home of bug and beetle alike. Despite the doomsaying of Mr. Creeper, the snail, Hoppity finds hope of a new home behind the house of two Human Ones: Mary, who cares for a beautiful garden; and Dick, a struggling songwriter who puts his own hope on a Broadway hit to save his home.

As for why  the film flopped, there are many theories. Some folks think that audiences just didn’t want to spend that much time watching cartoon bugs. More conspiratorial minded folks think it was deliberate sabotage by Paramount, so they could seize Max Fleischer’s studio and boot him out.

The fact that the movie opened two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor probably didn’t help matters any.

Now you can watch for yourself and see if this second (and last) animated feature by The Max Fleischer Studio was justly or unjustly overlooked.

Above you see one of the episodes of Radio Free Charleston, the video show, of which I am most proud.

In April, 2015, a local jazz group, 4tet, added several members and took on a rather ambitious project. They learned the entire classic Miles Davis album, Bitches Brew, and performed it live at a few different venues.

The musicians involved were Thom Walker – bass; Jeffrey Thomasson – guitar; Nate Bohach – vibraphone; Dave Roberts – drums; Tyler Stewart – drums and percussion; Tim Smith – keyboards; Chris Mickel – saxophones; Chris Clark – saxophones and bass clarinet; Gabe Muncey – trumpet. It was an amazing line-up of musicians tackling a very difficult piece of music, and they nailed it.

This is a major departure episode for RFC. Usually I brought viewers three or four different bands, almost always rock or alternative and I rarely do interviews. For this show we focus on one group, sit in on a rehearsal and intersperse that with interviews to give viewers a better idea just how ambitious this undertaking was.  Considering that this episode was shot on a Sunday afternoon/evening, and was finished and online by the next Tuesday, I think I have reason to consider it one of my more impressive Radio Free Charleston programs.

You can read the full production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 14, 2021

A big “thank you” to my readers for putting up with a sparse week of stuff here at PopCult and on The AIR. This has been a long and grueling week that has seen your PopCulteer get his second Pfizer shot, among many other medical misadventures, and my blogging and radio time had to be sacrificed.

I want to stress, however, that I am not fully-vaccinated. Unlike most people I will have to wait two weeks after my second shot, and then get an antibody test to see if it worked. As an immuno-suppressed person, this is pretty standard. There is a chance that the vaccine won’t work on me. I’m very optimistic that it will, but I’m still not ready to rip off my mask and run naked in the world.

Apologies for putting that image in anyone’s mind.

I am a little concerned at how fast the penduluum of public perception seems to have swung. We should not villify people who err on the side of caution. I know the CDC issued new advice on mask-wearing Thursday, but I hope that we don’t go from shunning people who don’t wear masks to shunning those that still do. I hate the idea of vulnerable people being accosted by morons for the simple act of trying to stay alive. If you see someone still wearing a mask after mandates have been lifted, it means that they know something you don’t (about themselves, most likely) and you should respect that.

I know that there are toxic thought bubbles emanating from the cesspool of arrested-adolescent, narcissistic wing of pundritry disguised as journalism that express contempt for the economic shutdown and all the safety measures that kept the pandemic from killing millions more people than it did. As much as I hate to acknowledge those people, it’s an obligation of decent people to point out how full of crap these self-centered, self-appointed experts are, and how dangerous their crackpot theories can be.

I’ve seen some really poorly-thought-out articles online that suggest that people have become dependent on masks and that they’re clinging to them needlessly out of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome-type connection. That idea is irresponsible idiocy.

While the number of new cases of COVID and the number of deaths reported daily are dropping dramatically, they are still as high as they were in September of last year, and they’re way higher than they were a year ago. The trends are very encouraging, but we are not through this pandemic yet.

Dropping all the safety measures now makes as much sense as jumping out of an airplane as soon as you see the runway.  We have a lot of obstacles to overcome and a lot of goals to reach before we can begin to approach normal life again. Let’s land this plane and taxi to the terminal before we start acting like we’re already home.

I get what the CDC is doing. They’re using masklessness as the carrot on a stick to get some of the more stubborn among us to get vaccinated. That’s not a bad idea. We just maybe need to rein in the irrational exuberance a bit over here in smart people land. In a country where we had to put out an official statement telling people not to put gasoline in plastic bags, we can’t count on everyone to exercise sound judgement or use common sense.

I hope everyone realizes that we may see vaccination mandates this summer. You might just need to show your card to get on a plane, train or bus, or in a stadium or arena. If this becomes necessary, it’ll be because too many folks decided they could just ditch their masks without getting their shot.

If all goes well and my body starts producing antibodies, there’s a chance you might see me and my video camera out recording local bands in a month or two. You might see me still wearing a mask. That’s me being careful. I hope that everybody is careful and doesn’t take any unnecessary risks.

We made it this far. Do you really want to be one of the doofuses who dies from COVID the week before the pandemic ends?

AIR Marathons Continue

Meanwhile, over at our internet radio station, I’m taking advantage of my down time to bring you more marathons of our AIR Music Specialty programs. Friday from 7 AM to 1 AM you can listen to Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL, celebrating the Disco era. Then Saturday morning at 1 AM, shift gears into the New Wave era with Sydney Fileen, who will bring you Sydney’s Big Electric Cat until Saturday night at 9 PM. That’s when we kick into twelve hours of Radio Free Charleston before going back to our normal schedule Sunday morning.

Sure, it’s  all reruns, but they kick fifteen distinct kinds of butt so you ought to listen anyway.  You can tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in the right-hand column to binge-listen to the coolest music on the planet.

Live Music Saturday

If you are fully-vaccinated, you can go to The Empty Glass Saturday night for this show, featuring three great local punk bands that we’ve been playing the hell out of on Radio Free Charleston for the last year, Jay Parade, Jerks and Boldly Go…

Swiped From Twitter

A cute and funny fake ad, sent out by my favorite American Passenger train company to have a little fun with the gas situation…

And that’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, which I’m writing early Thursday evening, just in case I feel like a truck hit me Friday morning. Check back for all our regular features, including a very special RFC Flashback on Saturday, and cross your fingers for all-new shows on The AIR next week.

It seems like just yesterday when I told you about a Kickstarter campaign for Madman’s Ginchy Glider, from The Drawn Word.  Actually, it was early February, but the campaign was a huge success, met all its stretch goals, and just yesterday, I got a decent-sized surprise package filled with Madmaniverse goodies. Since I’ve been a fan of Mike Allred’s for more than thirty years, this was a real treat.

In addition to three Madman gliders, plus a couple of blanks, I also got seven sheets of stickers (so I can customize my gliders), four 3-D postcards (plus a set of 3-D glasses), a metal trading card, the second issue of the Madmania fanzine and…five Duncan Yo-Yos, imprinted with different designs from Madman and his creator, Mike Allred.

It was like Christmas in July…in May.

Here’s a group shot of the goodies (with only one glider shown) and below that, a look at the flip side of the Yo-Yos, which have different designs from the front.

The PopCulteer will return tomorrow, hopefully with a more substantial post. There’s been a lot of real-world intrusions this week, but getting the Madman Ginchy Glider’s certainly brightened up my week.

Folks who know their way to Dunbar or Saint Albans can come out Saturday for some free live music in a safe, outdoor setting. I still don’t recommend going out unless you’re fully vaccinated, but if you are, there are some great bands performing and you can hear live music and suppor the local scene. Check out these virtual flyers…