Month: May 2021 (Page 3 of 4)

Hey folks, it’s one of those weeks.

Longtime readers of PopCult probably remember that your humble blogger has Myasthenia Gravis, an auto-immune disorder that you can learn all about by copying those two words and pasting them in the search window of this blog over in the right column, or elsewhere on the page if you’re reading this on your phone.

This week I have some MG-related tests scheduled, and some other medical stuff to which to tend, and that has intruded on my blogging and radio-ing time. So I’m not exactly feeling all poppity-culture-y this week, and didn’t have time to record new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift or Beatles Blast.

To make up for that, I have cooked and shaped some reruns into a fancy new casserole of internet radio goodness for you.  Go to The AIR for the next three days for your daily recommended requirement of recycled radio shows.  Tuesday, Radio Free Charleston will start at 10 AM and will bring you the best music from Charleston and around the world for 21 hours. In addition, ever time we have a replay scheduled for RFC this week, it will be a different episode, so you can catch up with a bunch of them, in case you missed any.

Wednesday, Beatles Blast will kick off at 2 PM, and run until Midnight.

Thursday The Swing Shift will start early, at 7 AM, and run for a full 24 hours, because if we didn’t, our loyal European Swing Music fans would riot.

The plan next week is to return with new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift, Beatles Blast, and maybe Curtain Call.  The plan is for our Haversham programs to return after a week off, as well.

But this week it’s almost all reruns, so you can tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in the right-hand column to relive our recent past. Be advised that we do plan to drop a new episode of Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL Friday afternoon.

As for PopCult, well this is the only post you’ll get today. The rest of the week may be skimpy, or photo essays, or shorter posts. It all depends on how your PopCulteer feels. I am going to try to bring you something fresh every day, which I’ve been doing for almost eight of our fifteen-plus years now.

This week’s art is, to be honest, a bit unfinished. I wanted to try out some  pastel crayons on a new textured paper, and I was also missing Chicago a bit, so using several photographs I took in Millenium Park over the past few years as reference, I sat down on a very blustery Sunday and tried to create a scene of The Bean.

You may notice that I put a lot of effort into the detail on the buildings. I wasn’t planning to go for an ultra-detailed painting, but I did want the buildings to look realistic.  However my fingers ran out of gas as I worked my way to the lower half of the paper. By the time I got to the Cloud Gate sculpture itself, I was struggling, and you may notice that the people aren’t exactly very well delineated at all. The end result is more abstract than I planned, but I think I actually like it more this way. It lends a bit of an air of creeping surrealism to the image.

The pastel drawing was scanned and color-corrected and cropped a bit, digitally, for posting here.

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

Meanwhile, Monday at beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of recent episodes of  Psychedelic Shack and 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.

The folks at The Haversham Recording Institute are a bit tied up with what we in the business call “paying work” and will be taking the week off from their AIR Music Specialty programs. They tell me they should be back at their labors of love next week.

At 7 PM, The Monday Marathon brings you four episodes of Radio Free Charleston that are probably going to be taking a sabbatical from our servers soon.

Today is Mothers Day, and to celebrate the artificial holiday, born right here in West “By God” Virginia, we bring you a concert by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Recorded in 1973 for the Swedish program Opopoppa, above is rare video of Frank Zappa with a later incarnation of The Mothers of Invention that included  Jean-Luc Ponty, George Duke, Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Ruth Underwood, Ian Underwood and Bruce Fowler.

In this nearly hour-long performance, the band presents three tunes, “Montana,” “Dupree’s Paradise” and “Farther O’blivion,” showing off the more experimental, instrumental side of The Mothers of Invention.

Now isn’t that a better way to observe the day than a cheesy Hallmark card and some flowers?

I posted this video on this day four years ago, and because the world needs more Frank Zappa, and I’m sure that mothers everywhere appreciate the joke, I’m running it here again.

This week we go back to an episode of THE RFC MINI SHOW recorded in March, 2015 that featured a band that plays tonight at Sam’s Uptown Cafe…Speedsuit.

Speedsuit is Stephen Beckner, Thom Walker, Tim Dorsey and Dave Roberts. Steve is a mainstay of Radio Free Charleston who was featured on our orignal broadcast radio show with his band, Go Van Gogh, and performed as a solo artist on our second video episode back in 2006.

You will hear Beckner’s songs, “Riddle” (mis-identified as “One Half Loser, Second Half Winner” in the show) and “Why Don’t You Leave Me.”

The PopCulteer
May 7, 2021

So yesterday I recommended a couple of weekend shows here in Charleston. I am ready to start doing that again, but only one or two each week, and I’m going to badger you about getting vaccinated before you go to any live indoor shows. Get used to it. I’m still a little uneasy about it, but I also want to see the local music scene survive the pandemic. I’m still a few weeks away from being able to go out safely because I have to make sure my vaccinations work with the MG meds I have to take.

I do have another health note: Of late, I have been limiting my time spent on social media…primarily Facebook. This has been a mental-health preservation move on my part. I have a lot of friends across a wide political spectrum, and it’s not good for me to see proof that a large number of them, leaning a bit in one direction of that particular spectrum, are pretty freaking stupid.

I have been saying for years that we have a mental health crisis in this country, and the mass delusion of a large group of people, who are showing definite signs of cognitive dissonance and cult-like behavior, is distressing. So basically, I get on Facebook, share my links to this blog, and get off before another of my friends is foolish enough to think that it’s a good idea to tell me…a professional writer…that I do not know what a “fact” is because I call the former president and his horde “terrorists.”

See, I watched that terror attack perpetuated by cult followers devoted to the Big Lie live on TV on January 6, and no amount of amateur gaslighting by morons is going to convince me that I didn’t.

I will not hesitate to point out to any member of the military, be they active, retired, abled, disabled, decorated or running for office that they are betraying their sacred oath to defend Democracy if they support the former president and his red hat brownshirt mob. That is not an opinion. It’s a fact.

So it’s easier to stay off of Facebook because it’s polluted with crap like that, and also idiots who think that Biden is both weak and feeble, but somehow strong enough to storm their house and take away their surrogate penis guns. I’ll spend more time there when those folks take a Valium and calm the hell down.  Right now it’s like sticking your head in a woodchipper.

I’m spending more time on Twitter, where I only follow a couple hundred people, mostly from the worlds of art, wrestling and comics, and just block anyone if they piss me off. I’m also more active on Instagram, because it’s fun to look at purty pitchers. Feel free to look me up in those places, if you don’t want to talk politics.

In More Pleasant News, Welcome to 1981!

We’ve got a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Friday afternoon on  The AIR , PopCult’s sister radio station.  It’s part of our afternoon music specialty programs.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 3 PM, Sydney Fileen treats us to another mixtape look at a specific year of the New Wave era. This time it’s 1981. This was the year that saw debut albums by The Go Gos, Soft Cell, The Human League, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, Men At Work and many others. 1981 also brought us memorable New Wave albums from Ultravox, The Stranglers, Souixsie and The Banshees,and more.

1981 was a big year for cool music. The birth of MTV didn’t hurt matters any either. Sydney has assembled a two-hour highlight reel of year New Wave burst onto the charts en masse.

Check out the playlist here…

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Adam & The Ants “Stand And Deliver”
Ultravox “Rage In Eden”
Siouxsie and the Banshees “Spellbound”
Oingo Boingo “Imposter”
Men At Work “Who Can It Be Now”
DEVO “Beautiful World”
Bow Wow Wow “Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!”
Depeche Mode “Photographic”
Debbie Harry “The Jam Was Moving”
Bill Nelson “Living In My Limousine”
Lene Lovich “Cat’s Away”
Soft Cell “Memorabilia”
Heaven 17 “Penthouse and Pavement”
Human League “Don’t You Want Me Baby (extended mix)”
The Stranglers “Let Me Introduce You To The Family”
The Jam “Absolute Beginners”
The Selector “Bristol and Miami”
Madness “Shut Up”
The Beat “The Limits We Set”
The Specials “Ghost Town”
The Go Gos “Our Lips Are Sealed”
The Clash “This Is Radio Clash”
Tom Tom Club “Genius Of Love”
Split Enz “One Step Ahead”
Polyrock “Love Song”
Klaus Nomi “Nomi Song”
Echo & The Bunnymen “Show of Strength”
Toyah “Marionette”

As Sydney says in her intro, “1981 was the year that New Wave began to exert it’s commercial muscle, as a wave of new artists stormed the charts and captured the imagination of mainstream music fans.”

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. You can also hear select  classic episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of a mini-marathon Sundays at 10 AM.

If you are fullly vaccinated, and observe all proper pandemic protocols, you can go out and enjoy live music this weekend. Your PopCulteer is not yet, but if he were, he’d be at these shows.

Friday it’s my old friends, The Swivel Rockers at Sam’s Uptown Cafe, and Saturday RFC faves, Unmanned, will support Building Rockets at The Empty Glass.

Wednesday afternoon The AIR flis the switch on a brand-new ” covers mixtape” episode of Beatles Blast!  This week, in a listener-suggested reverse of last week’s show, we bring you an hour of The Beatles (together and solo) playing songs written by other people. You can listen at The AIR Website, or on the nifty little player over in the right-hand column of this here blog.

At 2 PM, your humble blogger returns with a one-hour mixtape of songs that The Beatles sang, that other people wrote on Beatles Blast.  You’ll get to hear The Fab Four wearing their influences on their sleeves as they perform songs that shaped their musical evolution.  You get to thear the band, together and solo, performing classic tunes made famous by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, Hoagy Carmichael, Little Richard and more.

Check out the playlist.

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The Beatles “Please Mr. Postman”
John Lennon “Stand By Me”
George Harrison “I Really Love You”
Ringo Starr “Don’t Be Cruel”
Paul McCartney “All Shook Up”
The Beatles “Roll Over Beethoven”
The Beatles “Hippy Hippy Shake”
The Beatles “Long Tall Sally”
John Lennon “Ain’t That A Shame”
The Beatles “Memphis, Tennessee”
Paul McCartney “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”
The Beatles “Matchbox”
Ringo Starr “Drift Away”
The Beatles “Twist and Shout”
The Beatles “Nothin’ Shakin”
George Harrison “Baltimore Oriole”
The Beatles “Sure To Fall”
Plastic Ono Band “Blue Suede Shoes”
The Beatles “Leave My Kitten Alone”
Ringo Starr “You’re Sixteen”
George Harrison “Got My Mind Set On You”
The Beatles “Kansas City”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM and Saturday Afternoon. Monday we’ll be plugging another Beatles Blast marathon into the schedule, so keep reading PopCult for the details.

Tuesday on The AIR  it’s a bittersweet Radio Free Charleston, as we devote much of our first hour to Will Mecum, who passed away after an accident last week.  Will was the lead guitarist, and last original member of Karma To Burn, a West Virginia band that had tremendous success and influence all around the world.

You can hear this edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. 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.

I only met Will once, at Mission Coalition, a two-day Metal Show organized by Jason “Roadblock” Robinson almost ten years ago. I got to hang out with Will and the rest of Karma To Burn backstage for a few minutes, and he struck me as an incredibly humble and down-to-Earth guy for someone who had the amount of international success that he’d achieved. In our first hour we bring you five tracks from Karma To Burn, and three from another of his bands, Treasure Cat.

You can see Will in action on our highlight video of Mission Coalition HERE, and in episode 151 of RFC Volume Two HERE. The header image for this post is a quick pencil sketch by me, based on a photo by Gary Cooper Photography.

After that we bring you our usual mix of local and not-local musicians, but for our third hour we revive an episode of RFC Volume Four, from 2017.

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

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Karma To Burn “Patty Hearst’s Closet Mantra”
Karma To Burn “49” “50” “36” “33”
Treasure Cat “Battle of Britain”
“Captain Smirk”
“Snake Pliskin (I Thought You Were Dead)”

The Settlement “Enter Mission”
Martin Gore “Vervet”
The Flying Lizards “Steam Away”

hour two
Boldly Go “Phasers On Kill”
Unmanned “Strike One”
Squeeze “Annie Get Your Gun (Live)”
Robin Trower, Maxi Priest, Livingstone Brown “Sunshine Revolution”
Lady D “Karma Is A Bitch”
Gary Moore “Tore Down”
The Swivels “Appalachian Debutante”
All Torches Lit “Occulation”
Sex Pistols “Submission”
Joe Strummer “Minstrel Boy”
Sheldon Vance “Tonight We Sing”
Esmerelda Strange “Love Bug”
The Style Council “It Just Came To Pieces In My Hands”

hour three
Membrane Cell “Insignificant Other”
The Stars Revolt “Goodnight, Goodnight”
Time And Distance “first time caller, long time listener”
A Story Told “Fall Back”
The Carpenter Ants “I Feel Like A Woman”
Pale Nova “How Long”
Kerry Hughes “End’s Never Been So Near”
Jeff Ellis “Is Something The Matter”
The Company Stores “Nightingale”
Scarlet Revolt “Slow Fade”
Flannel Shark “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”
Feast of Stephen “Ward 7”

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 11 AM and Midnight, Sunday at 11 AM and the next Monday at 8 PM, 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.

Our art is all-digital this week. Your humble artist/blogger went on a much-needed long drive with his wife, and didn’t attempt to make any real-world art this weekend. I did get some new cheap canvas board for future projects, but the fingers needed a rest, so I let the mouse do the arting.

This is a geometric semi-abstract, but there’s a bit of a narrative in there, if you stare long enough.

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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The Who “Armenia, City In The Sky”
Polyphonic Spree “She’s A Rainbow”
The Yardbirds “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”
Hawkwind “Seeing It As You Really Are”
Cream “Dance The Night Away”
Greta Van Fleet “Age of Machines”
Badfinger “We’re For The Dark”
Eric Burden and War “Tobacco Road”
The Rolling Stones “Tell Her Now It Is”
The Cyrkle “Nicole”
The Hollies “On A Carousel”
Redbone “Condition Your Condition”
Fanny “I Don’t Need Your Love”

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, withhighlights of recent live releases from Rennaissance and Kansas. Check out this line-up…

Prognosis 071

Renaissance
“Carpet of The Sun”
“Ocean Gypsy”
“Symphony of Light”
“Running Hard”
“Mystic and the Muse”
“Ashes Are Burning”

Kansas
“Intro”
“Carry On My Wayward Son”
“Icarus”
“The Wall”
“Keyboard Improv/Drum Solo/Magnum Opus”
“Lamplight Symphnony”
“Song For America”
“Violin Solo”
“What’s On My Mind”
“Belexes”

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 Six Degrees of Separation, featuring conversations with prominent local musicians, recorded at The Empty Glass.

A few days ago, Will Mecum, the lead guitarist and keeper of the flame of Karma To Burn was killed in an accident. I will have more about Will Tuesday in PopCult as we devote some of this week’s Radio Free Charleston to his music, but for now, here is Karma To Burn, live in concert at Rock In Bourlon 2018,  Recorded in Bourlon (North Of France) – June 30th 2018.