Month: September 2022 (Page 2 of 3)

It’s Tuesday on The AIR  and that means it’s Radio Free Charleston time, and we’re back on track with another new three-hour episode of Radio Free Charleston. 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 found elsewhere on this page.

We have three full hours of music, much of it new, local and not, at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.   This week our latest Radio Free Charleston has killer new tunes from Nice Moter, The Leather Pockets, Sheyna Gee, J.Marinelli, David Synn, The Paranoid Style, The Proclaimers, The Godfathers, Ringo Starr and more.  Most of the entire first hour of the show is newly-released music, and the classic cuts sprinkled througout the other two hours are absolute gems.

Plus my voice was rapidly failing as I was announcing the show. See if you can tell!

Throughout the show we continue our mix of local, independent and major-label artists, just to keep you on your toes.  This week we have sets that veer a little proggy, a little ska, a little metal. All kinds of music are welcome here on RFC.

We also have new tunes from some Chicago friends, and our second hour opens with a track from the drummer for an obscure musical combo from the North of England.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links for local and indie artists will take you to the artist’s page…

RFC V5 103

hour one
Nice Motor “Dino DNA”
The Leather Pockets “Come To The Kingdom”
Sheyna Gee “Lost and Found”
Audrey Smiley “Love Leaves A Scar”
J Marinelli “Dinosaur Dan”
The Vices “Thousand Faces”
The Murlocs “Compos Mentis”
David Synn “Dali’s Kaleidescope”
Blood Orange “Wish”
The Paranoid Style “Seven Year Ache”
The Proclaimers “Dentures Out”
Black Jesus Experience “E105”
The Godfathers “Dead In Los Angeles”
Nixon Black “Nigh (Thank God For Lillie Langtry)”

hour two
Ringo Starr “World Go Round”
Stark Raven “One Hundred Million Reasons”
Three’s Company Blues “In The Pocket”
El Escapado “Downtown”
Flying Raccoon Suit “Run Away”
Ozzy Osbourne “Evil Shuffle”
All Torches Lit “Gods and Gats”
Muse “Kill or Be Killed”
Six by Six “The Upside of Down”
Static Fur “Connection”
Kate Bush “Hammer Horror”
The Settlement “Stars”

hour three
Yoko Ono & Plastic Ono Super Band “Move On Fast”
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros “Mondo Bongo”
Jim Lange “Can’t Let Go (Acoustic)”
The Mars Volta “Graveyard Love”
The Braids “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Tim Bowness “Glitter Fades”
Julian Lennon “Round and Round Again”
Tyler Pedersen “Intro/The Jupiter Dog”
Adrian Belew “A Car I Can Talk To”
Daniel Glass Trio “Ladybug”
Lady D “Times Like This”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon 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.

After RFC, stick around for encores of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.  At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

This week’s art started life as a pencil doodle while I was on the phone. It’s based on a pose I saw on Twitter. I started out with the trusty Blackwing Palamino but then switched over to a wax pencil and greyscale pastel crayons because I didn’t feel like going all high-detail. The flesh was willing, but the spirit just wasn’t into it.

After scanning, I cropped it a bit and digitally erased a few smudges. This was just a bit of a finger workout while I was taking an easy weekend after a very busy week.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent 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 elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can 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.

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.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of Richard Pryor and folks talking about his life on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Six Degrees of Separation, the interview program featuring Charleston area mainstays recorded at The Empty Glass between 2015 and 2017.

This past week marked 70 years since the incident in Braxton County that spawned the legend of The Braxton County Monster (or The Flatwoods Monster, if you prefer.

Back in 1995, my friend, Matt Mullins, and my brother, Frank Panucci teamed up to produce a pilot for a proposed television series devoted to the paranormal in West Virginia. This first episode of Weird Wonderful was all about The Braxton County Monster.

Nothing came of it, and the project was scrapped while the second episode, devoted to Mothman, was still in the early research phase.

After I revived Radio Free Charleston as a web video show in 2006, I started asking Frank what had happened with the footage. He had no idea, as he had moved on to other jobs and never really had that precise of a memory to begin with.

Digging around in a closet one day, looking for old footage of Charleston bands, I found a VHS cassette labelled “Braxton County” and it turned out that Frank wasn’t the only one with a faulty memory. Apparently I had not only narrated, but also edited the show into a workable finished package, and then managed to completely forget that I’d done either of those things.

I was able to digitize it and burn it to a DVD, and it was shown in public once, at the Radio Free Charleston Halloween event in 2008 at the Labelle Theater in South Charleston, thirteen years after it was produced.

Last year I finally posted it to Vimeo and shared it here as a Halloween video, but because of the anniversary, I decided to dust it off again and serve it up to you as a Sunday Evening Video.

Written and researched by Matt Mullins, with camera work, animation and direction by Frank Panucci, and narrated and edited by yours truly, this project could have easily been lost to foggy memories and dusty closets.

Matt did a killer job on the research, lining up interviews with James Haught and Terry Marchal of The Charleston Gazette, and UFO experts Richard Taylor and Bob Teets. Frank shot the video and contributed some animation that looks way better than anything created on such a primitive computer has any right to. I have vague memories of recording my narration using a cheap microphone plugged directly into the back of a VCR, and I’m guessing I added the heavy reverb while editing it. I had no input on the script.

The special thanks to Steve Gilliland, Marc Porter and Jamie Cope tell me that I must’ve edited this at West Virginia State College, a few years before it blossomed into a University. The occasional use of negative video tells me that this was probably shot with my old camcorder, and I would imagine Jamie Cope loaned the microphones and lights used on location.

The irony that every piece of equipment used on this project is far less sophisticated that what most people carry around on their phone today is not lost on me.

This week we go all the way back to September, 2007, for a “Back to School” episode of Radio Free Charleston.  We have music from Whistlepunk and Sean Richardson, a short film by Stephen and Amee Beckner’s kids, a preview of a series we never got around to filming with Mad Man Pondo and animation from yours truly.

The show was hosted by then-12-year-old Cadence Young, the daughter of RFC Big Shot (and Whistlepunk drummer) Brian Young.  She took over as I was mysteriously attacked during the “Hello” segment. Fifteen years later I still have no idea who perpetrated this savage assault.

Most of this show was recorded in or around the much-missed LiveMix Studio on Quarrier Street, and you can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
September 16, 2022

Saturday, if you’re not doing any of the many things I told you about yesterday, you could take a leisurely day trip to Moundsville, West Virginia for Fossil Day!

Fossil Day, a family-oriented program held twice a year, will return to the Grave Creek Mound Archelogical Complex on Saturday, Sept. 17, from noon to 4 PM. The Mound is directly across the street from the famous West Virginia Penitentiary, which will also be open if you want to visit it Saturday, too.

Participants are invited to bring fossils for expert identification by Dr. Ronald McDowell, senior research geologist at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) in Morgantown.

Dr. McDowell will identify fossils from noon to 2 p.m. and 3 to 4 p.m. At 2 p.m., Ray Garton, curator of Prehistoric Planet, will present a program titled “Fossils of West Virginia: What You Didn’t Know.” Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) and Mr. Taylor McCoy, a vertebrate paleontology volunteer at the museum, are joining Fossil Day this year.

The Carnegie is world renowned for its fossil collections and will set up a “mini museum” with fossils and fossil replicas. McCoy has field experience prospecting for and excavating fossils in Montana and recently presented two lectures as part of the Ohio County Library’s People’s University lecture series on dinosaurs. He will exhibit and share fascinating facts about his personal “Tooth and Nail” collection of fossil replicas.

Other family-oriented activities include a fossil exhibit scavenger hunt, making fossil casts to take home, excavating a recreated fossil bed and viewing very small fossils through a microscope in the shadow of an enormous cast of a stegodon skeleton.

Visitors can also make a trilobite slap bracelet at the museum’s Discovery Table. Trilobites are sea creatures that lived during the Devonian Period (approximately 419.2 to 358.8 million years ago) and their fossils have been found in West Virginia. Some fossilized trilobites have been found rolled up like a pill bug, armadillo – or a slap bracelet.

This craft will be available during Fossil Day and throughout September during regular museum hours.

While you’re in Moundsville, in addition to the Penitentiary, you could check out a car show at Grand Vue Park, or the epic Jeffeson Avenue Sidewalk Sale. It’s a friendly place to visit, and they have lots of cool things to see, plus it gives me an excuse to post photos from our recent trip to the museum at the Achelogical complex…

It’s really cool to have a nice little museum filled with top-notch fossils tucked away in the Northern part of the state.

These are really quite remarkable, and may be just the treat for your budding paleontologist.

It’s that Dimetradon again. I sorta want one as a pet, but I don’t think there are any breeders around here.

The star of the fossil portion of the Grave Creek Archeological Complex is the Stegadon skeleton.

This big fella (or lady) is the centerpiece of the museum.

Thirty feet from tail to tusk, and thirteen feet high.

How can you nor take photos of this?

We take one last look at the Adena Mound…

…and one last look at the museum. This really is a fun and educational trip, and you’re going to see more photos from here next week.

Stars On MIRRORBALL

You either love ’em or you hate ’em, but Friday at 2 PM you’re going to get a full hour of Stars On 45 on MIRRORBALL. Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL!  The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear this show on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found somewhere on this very page.

Friday afternoon The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents ventures into the 1980s when the folks holding down the Disco fort were a Dutch novelty band that never gave up on the Disco sound, even when they were putting together medleys of Beatles songs, or bizarre collections of songs that blend the theme from Star Wars with Ennio Morricone, The Who’s Tommy, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting.”

Disco might have ducked in the alley and out of the mainstream, but one group of artists kept the radio hopping with slick production, chorus vocals like the Bee Gees and the requisite 120 beats per minute.  Stars on 45 was led by a former member of Golden Earring and featured vocalists who could mimic everyone from The Beatles to Donna Summer. The “Stars On” group took hit songs by The Beatles and other pop groups, and strung them all together with a strong Disco beat. And they managed to top the charts all over the world at a time when the anti-Disco backlash was stronger than ever.

For one hour you can go back and hear this Disco-fied artifact of 1980s excess. Just check this odd playlist…

“Beatles Medley”
“Long Play Part Two”
“Sixties Medley”
“Bad Girls Medley (12″)”
“Get Ready”
“ABBA Medley”
“Star Wars Medley”

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.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check PopCult for all our regular features, with fresh content every day.

We have some suggestions for STUFF TO DO in Charleston, Huntington, Saint Albans and points all over WV for the next few days, so let’s just dive in.

Don’t forget that Charleston’s ArtWalk happens all over downtown Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM. Check out our preview of one artist’s ‘zine HERE.

There’s live music and other cool things happening at Dunbar’s Fall Festival and Point Pleasant’s Mothman Festival, and there’s a big show at The Pennsboro Speedway, halfway between Clarksburg and Parkersburg on Route 50.  The Alban Arts Center production of The Little Prince opens this weekend in Saint Albans, but there will be a free matinee Saturday afternoon at Charleston’s City Center at Slack Plaza.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Minor Swing. Saturday sees Khegan McLane at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

If you’re up for going out, here are some suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order. I’m going to try and cram in 12 graphics this week, so let’s hope the blog doesn’t explode.

Since we’re running this feature early this week, there’s bound to be more cool things pop up…

All Weekend

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

This Thursday during Charleston’s Art Walk, Stray Dog Antiques will present the work of Jake Fertig.  Jake has created a really fun ‘zine for the occasion, and I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Reboot.

{Full disclosure: I have been a friend and fan of Jake’s for years, and there is a one-page “ad” for PopCult in REBOOT, and Jake has contributed animation to Radio Free Charleston}

REBOOT, to get to the point, is a blast. It’s a short collection of Jake’s creations, including several illustrations, a spooky first-person short story, some poetry and even a production still from his upcoming movie, Rabidts. This debut issue is the “Spooky Season Special” so the contents are geared toward the anticipation of the Halloween season.

Also of note is a reprint of some of the coverage of The Braxton County Monster from The Charleston Daily Mail (from exactly 70 years ago today) and some offical Rabidts paper dolls.

You can buy your own copy of REBOOT at Stray Dog Antiques, at 219 Hale Street, this Thursday during ArtWalk.  ArtWalk, of course, is the monthly event where Charleston’s art galleries and other art-friendly establishments stay open late and host art openings, exhibits, special sales and all sort of other cool things to support Charleston’s art community.  Jake created REBOOT to tie in with ArtWalk this month.

That’s not all of Jake’s work that you’ll find at Stray Dog Antiques.  Jake will be on hand and will have buttons with his artwork as wll as some really cool wall hangings and sculptures, some of which you will see below.

Meanwhile, check out Jake’s website, to keep up with his latest cool creations.

The cover of REBOOT!

Cool little ghost dudes.

An illustration from REBOOT.

A very cool Yeti wall-hanging. You can pretend you hunted him yourself.

Some Braxxie-inspired critterations.

Pinback buttons!

We leave you with a work in progress…creepy clown heads. See the finished product at Stray Dog Antiques.

It’s all repeats today on The AIR  as your PopCulteer is too besieged by other work to make new episodes of The Swing Shift orRadio Free Charleston. However, we have some primo encores for you.  You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here and  listen to the cool embedded player elsewhere on this page.

As I warned you last Thursday, we are running last week’s delayed Radio Free Charleston again Tuesday and you can hear it at 10 AM and 10 PM . If you want to know what’s in this episode go to THIS POST and read all about it. You can even listen to it on demand.

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Then at 1 PM we have an encore of a classic episode of MIRRORBALL. At 2 PM tune in for last week’s episode of Curtain Call. Both of those shows are hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch.

At 3 PM I’d planned to run a new episode of The Swing Shift, but there just weren’t enough hours in the day to record one. Instead check out these two classic shows from three years ago…

The Swing Shift 078

Duke Robilliard with Elizabeth McGovern “Me, Myself and I”
Mojo Juju And The Snake-Oil Merchants “Scat Song”
Glenn Miller “String of Pearls”
Jimmy Hamilton and his Orchestra “Blues For a Prince”
Bart & Baker and Kitten On The Keys “Whoopee”
Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Peter Muller, Dani Gugolz “Rhythm Boogie”
Benny Goodman Orchestra “Sing Sing Sing”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Axeman Jazz”
Tommy Dorsey “I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You”
Vaughn Monroe “Rum and Coca Cola”
Hetty and the Jazzato Band “Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano”
Chris Grant Company “Stop My Boogie Blues”
Kansas City Jazz Orchestra “Corner Pocket”
Helen O’Connell “Take A Tip From The Whippoorwill”

The Swing Shift 082

Sir Jay and his Orchestra “Everything I do Is Wrong”
Junco Shakers “She’s Red Hot”
Fred Astaire “Top Hat”
Queen Bee and the Honeylovers “Cornelia’s Masquerade”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Bigger Life”
The Speakeasies Swing Band “Cash Or Check”
Frank Crumit “Abdul Abulbul Amir”
Cab Calloway “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”
Megan and her Goody Goodies “Come’s Love”
Sassy Swingers “Ferry Man”
Geroge Formby “Leaning On A Lamp Post”
Marcella Puppini “Let’s Stay In Bed”
Louis Prima “Angelina”
Echoes of Swing “Disorder at the Border”
The Gentlemen’s Anti-temperance League “Tango of the Living Dead”
Swing Ninjas “Nancy”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 8 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.

This week’s art is a real-world small acrylic painting. I decided I wanted to try to replicate my “high detail” work as a physical piece, instead of as a digital painting, which is where I perfected my style. This was done with acrylics on heavy illustration board, and it took the better part of two months since I was only working on it when my fingers would co-operate.

It’s inspired by a series of photos I took in Chicago in 2018. I photographed it under very bright lights, cropped the sloppy borders and color-corrected it a bit once it was in the computer.

This isn’t much bigger than the small studies I’ve been doing for other paintings this year. I wanted to see if I could handle working in this style before I tried doing it on a real canvas. The summer was very rough with my Myasthenai Gravis, and I’m still trying to teach myself the basics again while also learning a few new tricks.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent 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 elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can 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.

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.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic stand up from George Carlin on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Ska Madness, as we bid farewell to Dexter Checkers’ showcase of Ska classics, for now.

Tonight for our Sunday Evening Videos we are going to take one more look at the music and video of one of the most popular of the original Radio Free Charleston bands, Go Van Gogh.

Go Van Gogh were: Johnny Rock, Tim Rock, Stephen Beckner and Mark Beckner. Occasionally the band is augmented by Mark Mingrone, Jason Ashworth and Bain Ashworth. The videos at the top of this post were directed by Tim Rock, Johnny Rock, Stephen Beckner, Melissa Beezley and yours truly.

A bit more than five years ago, we lost Johnny Rock, who was a true legend and a beloved character on the local scene. With the permission of the surviving band members I compiled and posted these videos in his memory. Tonight I thought it’d be nice to go back and take another look at a band that was this close to making it big.

Above you see a compilation of nearly two-and-a-half hours of primo Go Van Gogh. Included are:

“All Over The Road” A document of their tour to Morgantown, WV.
“The Sad Truth” (Excerpt) Part of their mockumentary.
“Live At The Levee: 1991” Half an hour of the band in concert at The Levee (later known as The Boulevard Tavern).
“Coalfinger” What happens with a Southern West Virginia community college Drama department makes a James Bond Movie?
“Live At WVSU” Performing the song, “Stripes with Stains” at West Virginia State University.
“Make The Money” A Comedic Short Film.
“Roll” Music Video.
“Planet of Psychotic Women.” Music Video

Below you’ll find the entire half-hour version of “Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth.” This mockumentary was the brainchild of Tim Rock, and you’ll see the band and friends (including yours truly) perpetrating a mythical history of the rise and fall of Go Van Gogh.

Enjoy the fun times with Go Van Gogh.