Month: September 2021 (Page 3 of 4)

This week we go back to September, 2015, for the second RFC MINI SHOW to feature Sheldon Vance. This show captured Sheldon performing at two locations, The Empty Glass and The Cartref. You’ll hear his songs, “Strength To Let It Go,” “Turn It Back Around” and “Play On.”

It’s some great Appalachian Punk, by an unsung talent. I hope we get some new music from Sheldon soon.

The PopCulteer
September 10, 2021

Friday afternoon we offer up eminently danceable 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 regional and club hits which may be lesser-known that the top ten hits of the Disco era, but which are impressively groove-tastic anyway. Check out this playlist…

MIRRORBALL 032

Deodato “Keep On Movin'”
Goody Goody “It Looks Like Love”
Five Special “Why Leave Us Alone”
Foxy “Let’s Love”
Peter Brown “Do You Want To Get Funky”
Kleeer “Tonight’s The Night”
Faze Action “Turn The Point”
Miami “Disco Weekend”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat turned out to be the fourth Big Electric Cat mixtape of New Wave 12″ extended remixes.  This time Sydney decided to , um…mix…things up a bit and this show includes some recent dance remixes of New Wave classics, alongside classic 12″ sides from the 1980s.  Also, Sydney wanted it to be known that, while some of these songs may have appeared on earlier dance mix episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, the versions included here are all different.  Peruse this here playlist for a preview…

BEC 076

Scritti Politti “Wood Beez”
Kim Wilde “Kids In America”
ABC “How To Be A Zillionaire”
Dead Or Alive “Something In My House”
Heaven 17 “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thing”
Simple Minds “Waterfront”
Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus”
Spandau Ballet “Everybody’s Laughing”
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams”
OMD “Joan of Arc”
Fun Boy Three “The Telephone Always Rings”
DEVO “Peek A Boo”
Sniff ‘n’ the Tears “Drivers Seat”
Yazoo “Don’t Go”
Duran Duran “Wild Boys”
Kate Bush “Cloudbusting”
Aha “The Sun Always Shines On TV”
Talk Talk “Today”
Bronski Beat “Smalltown Boy”

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.

STUFF TO DO

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but aside from what I’m posting below, there are tons of things in and around Charleston to keep you busy this late-summer weekend.  I am still considering suspending this feature during the surge in the pandemic. I have really mixed feelings about this. At the moment, I do not feel safe going out anywhere. That’s just me. I’m immunocompromised, and I’ve been pushing my luck recently, so I’m personally going back into hermit mode for the time being.

However, there are some really cool things happening in Charleston. Foremost is the Charleston Ghost Tour, which is a wonderful thing to have in the city, even if I can’t even consider doing a walking tour until the temps drop about twenty degrees around here. That doesn’t mean that those of you who are made of heartier stock shouldn’t partake, so check out their website, or look them up on social media for more details than you get in this neat graphic…

If you are interested in The Charleston Ghost Tour, check with them quick. The available spots are filling up very fast.

As for the rest of the weekend, you should know the drill by now. The pandemic is still not over.  In fact, it’s beengetting  way worse again. If you are fully vaccinated and ready to do your best to stay safe, you should go check this stuff out. Outdoor shows might be okay for vaccinated folks to go maskless, but maybe not at the moment. Indoor shows leave you at the mercy of your fellow patrons, and with the Delta variant surging, why risk any exposure? I know there are folks who hate the idea of wearing masks, even if they’re not vaccinated. Those people are why you should wear a mask.

If anybody gives you grief over wearing a mask…get the hell out of there. It’s not safe. Nobody wants to be the last person to die of COVID.

So use your common sense and stay safe…and support the local scene. Here are a few select shows happening in Charleston this weekend…

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a brand-new episode of 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 3 PM on Curtain Call, Mel Larch offers up an early Halloween present. It’s a special concert performance of songs from The Rocky Horror Show by Dallas-based choral symphonic pop band, Polyphonic Spree. This was recorded in London, back in 2012, (you can download it on Bandcamp), and we decided to slip it into the schedule a month early so that we could take the opportunity to plug the second weekend of  Mountain Root Company’s production of The Rocky Horror Show, which you can catch Friday and Saturday at their theater in Belle.

Details are in the graphic below, and you can find more information at their website.

Since the Polyphonic Spree concert didn’t flll up the whole hour, the rest of this week’s Curtain Call treats you to a couple of perfomances from the recent PBS presentation of Wicked, in Concert. You will hear “The Wizard and I,” performed by Rita Morena and Arianna DeBose, and after that Mario Cantone, performs The Wizard’s song, “Wonderful.”

 Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday afternoon 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 wrap up our marathon of  Radio Free Charleston Volume 5 with a brand-new three hour episode filled with tons of great music, local and otherwise.   You simply have to point 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 our new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This will be surrounded by the remaining episodes of RFC V5 to fill out the marathon of shows that’s been pouring out all over The AIR for the last week.  This new show is a full-three-hour blast of great music, with a few throwbacks to the early days of RFC, back in 1989, and a lot of new stuff to prove that we’re still going strong.

Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s music pages)…

RFCV5 060

hour one
The Lickerish Quartet “Do You Feel Better”
Hasil Adkins “Big Red Satellite”
Brian Setzer “Smash Up On Highway One”
Frank Zappa “You Are What You Is”
Mother Nang “Knee Deep In Wine”
Toyah “Thunder In The Mountains”
Static Fur “Take My Ashes”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You”
The Rolling Stones “Heart of Stone”
Joe Valiina “Suzy Said So”
Marcie Bullock “Maybe Just Crazy”
The Turtles “She’s My Girl”
Bernie Marsden “Key To The Highway”
Whitechapel District “How Heavy Is Thy Crown”
Ovada “The Church of Paranoia

hour two
Tautologic “Fat, Dumb and Happy”
Guitarmy of One “Coronets for Clouseau and Columbo”
The Renfields “Transylvania Fight Song”
Velvet Insane “Riding The Skyways”
Stiff Little Fingers “Barbed Wire Love (live)”
The Big Bad “The Signal”
Kick The Cat “Ow, My Eye”
Time And Distance “Little Disaster”
Stupid Einstein “My Friend”
Psychic Hit “Left For Dead”
Farnsworth “Let’s Play Nice”
Joe Strummer “Trash City”
Cheap Trick “Quit Waking Me Up”
Three Bodies “The Trax”
Chuck Biel “A Line of Fools”

hour three
Emmalea Deal “Rosie”
Swivel Rockers “Fall”
Josh Homme “Lavatory Lil”
Rude City Riot “World Weighs A Ton”
69 Fingers “Faster and stronger”
Ringo Starr “Monkey See, Monkey Do”
Ann Magnuson “I Met An Astronaut”
Red Audio “Money Tree”
Oingo Boingo “Grey Matter”
Mad Scientist Club “Save The Whales”
John Lennon “God”
Joseph Hale “Time”

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. You can hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, starting Wednesday, and all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

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.

We kick off this week with a piece of art that finds your humble blogger mixing a few different styles. What you see up there started out as a Sharpie doodle on copy paper, which I then painted over using a light box. My weapons of choice were watercolor brushes, and a few colored pencils and markers.

Basically, I did a sloppy, Picasso-esque line drawing of a reclining female figure and painted over it in an impressionistic manner. This was not a piece that was conceived as a clear vision. This was basically just improv. I was happy with it, although I did crop the image and tweak the colors a little after I scanned it.

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

Meanwhile, Monday on The AIR, our week-long marathon of Radio Free Charleston enters the home stretch. The plan is to cruise into tomorrow, where we will present a new episode at 10 AM and 10 PM, and finish up the rest of the marathon in style.  Wednesday we are adjusting the schedule so that you’ll be able to hear one full episode of RFC every afternoon at 5 PM.   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.

I don’t like to repeat the videos I post here in Sunday Evening Video very often, but this year I had so many requests to post what I did last year, that I decided to make this a tradition, for at least another year.

If you are of a certain age, Labor Day seems synonymous with The Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon, which the famed comedian hosted for almost sixty years.

The telethon is gone, as is Jerry, but MDA (the Muscular Dystrophy Association) maintains a YouTube page where they still post highlights from the vaults.

Above you see a playlist with 104 videos of musical legends like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Toni Basil and many others. Best of all, you can watch these clips without sitting through four hours of corporate spokespeople droning on in a monotone about how much they care about the kids. I mean, no offense to the guy from 7 11, but I’m pretty sure they play those parts on an endless loop in hell. Above you see the good stuff, the cream of the crop.

Seriously, there are some gems in there like Duran Duran, MC Hammer and Charo. There’s lots of Charo. Lots of MC Hammer, too, now that I think about it.

Enjoy!

This week we go back six years to a special show intended to promote the 2015 ShockaCon, which was due to happen a couple of weeks later.

This show starred The Renfields, Transylvania’s hottest punk band. We captured the band in a bit of a state of flux, as they were in the process of changing around their line-up. Barging in on them performing at The Empty Glass, we managed to capture three songs, “Burning Revenge,” “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” and “The Invisible Man.”

The PopCulteer
September 3, 2021

We have very sad news to kick off this week’s PopCulteer.

Former WCW and TNA wrestler, Daffney Unger (real name Shannon Spruill), took her own life Wednesday night after years of physical ailments and concussion-related depression.

Back in 2008, at one of Gary Damron’s ASW Wrestling shows, we met Daffney and she agreed to appear on episode 42 of Radio Free Charleston. She did our animation intro. It only took a minute to record, and was only on the show for a few seconds, but she took the time to email me later and thank me for having her on the show.  She later sent nice emails about subsequent episodes of RFC, and was very positive and supportive of what we were doing.

It was a simple, kind gesture, but it’s more than most of the bands we’ve had on the show have done, and it meant a lot to me, and showed me what a sweet, caring person Daffney was.

I was alarmed Thursday morning when I saw the drama unfolding on Twitter.  Daffney had posted several disturbing and obviously suicidal videos on Instagram Live, and her family and authorities had been notified. Thursday afternoon it was confirmed that they did not get to her in time, and she was gone. This was just tragic and so sad. I wanted to share my brief connection with Daffney because I know that she treated everyone in such a kind and generous manner, and I think that is how we should remember her.

PopCult offers our condolences to her family, friends, loved ones and many fans.

If you’re in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or use the Crisis Text Line by texting “NAMI” to 741471

STUFF TO DO

Aside from what I’m posting below, there are tons of things in and around Charleston to keep you busy this late-summer weekend.  To be honest, I am seriously considering suspending this feature during the surge in the pandemic. I have really mixed feelings about this. At the moment, I do not feel safe going out anywhere. That’s just me. I’m immunocompromised, and I’ve been pushing my luck recently, so I’m personally going back into hermit mode for the time being.

However, there are some cool things happening in and near Charleston. So since it’s Labor Day Weekend, I’m going to do a rundown of Stuff To Do this week.

You should know the drill by now. The pandemic is still not over.  In fact, it’s getting  way worse again. If you are fully vaccinated and ready to do your best to stay safe, you should go check this stuff out. Outdoor shows were okay for vaccinated folks to go maskless, but maybe not at the moment. Indoor shows leave you at the mercy of your fellow patrons, and with the Delta variant surging, why risk any exposure? I know there are folks who hate the idea of wearing masks, even if they’re not vaccinated. Those people are why you should wear a mask.

If anybody gives you grief over wearing a mask…get the hell out of there. It’s not safe. Nobody wants to be the last person to die of COVID.

So use your common sense and stay safe…and support the local scene.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Stay safe, be good to one another, check this blog for fresh content every day, and don’t set off fireworks this weekend. Only careless, self-centered idiots do that.

The PopCult Bookshelf

Queen of the Ring: Wrestling Drawings by Jaime Hernandez 1980-2020
by Jaime Hernandez
edited by Katie Skelly
Fantagraphics
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1683964452
$24.99

I have been a fan of Jaime Hernandez (and his brother, Gilbert) for well over 40 years. I first saw his spot illustrations in The Comics Journal, and I’ve been reading Love and Rockets since its first issue in 1982.

Queen of the Ring is a very different book, but it is spectacular in its own right.

Queen of the Ring is a collection of drawings of Women Wrestlers of the 1960s and 70s that Hernandez has done over the course of forty years. These drawings were done for his own amusement, and were not intended for publication. He drew them on copy paper, with cheap markers and colored pencil, and are a body of work that is more personal and more intimate than his comic book work.

Interspersed throughout this collection of drawings are Hernandez’s own words, taken from an interview (with the book’s editor, Katie Skelly), and these quotes, set alongside the drawings, give a real insight into the creative process of Jaime Hernandez.

Hernandez has always been a master of drawing the female form in a realistic and appealing manner, and he he does this throughout this book, showing the beauty, rage, glory, dispair and power of women who look like truck stop waitresses who could kick your ass.

Queen of the Ring is not a graphic novel. There is no narrative here, aside from the story of Hernandez and his fascination with drawing strong women with a variety of realistic body types. Hernandez has told stories with characters like these women in the graphic novella, Whoa, Nelly!, which really ought to be re-issued soon as a tie-in with this book.

Queen of the Ring, however, stands alone as an impressive artistic statement.

His linework, as always, is pure eye candy, while his composition and emotional punch are sharp as ever. The editing brings it all together with a near-perfect juxtaposition of Henandez’s art and words.

Reading this book, you will learn about Women’s wrestling in a bygone era, but you’ll also learn about the thought process and technique behind the work of Jaime Hernandez, and that is a very good thing, indeed.

Queen of the Ring is a gem of a book, a must-have for any fan of Love and Rockets, but with a lot of mainstream appeal, too. You should be able to order it from any bookseller, using the ISBN code, or find it discounted at Amazon.