Month: May 2023 (Page 3 of 4)

The PopCulteer
May 12, 2023

We don’t have any new radio today, so join me for a few short items and one STUFF TO DO graphic that showed up too late for inclusion in yesterday’s post.

Cookies Vs. Beer

Crumbl Cookie showed up in Charleston a couple of weeks ago, and the initial response was very strong. There were lines out the door and down the strip mall where they’re located, and at its peak, there was more than a two-hour wait to get in.

Much of this is due to the clever marketing and designed “event” of Crumbl Cookie, and much of it is because the cookies are really good and word of mouth is strong.

Mel and I had tried them earlier this year on a trip to Lexington, and if you get the right cookie for you, they definitely live up to the hype. Your PopCulteer is on a diet, so I haven’t indulged much, but what I’ve tried has definitely been great (but not “stand in line for two hours” great).

Part of the hype is that they only offer six different cookies a week, and they rotate them, so that if you find what you consider to be the best cookie you’ve ever had in your life, you have one week to buy it before they replace it with something that you might barely consider food.

This has built up a mystique and a cult-like following, and it’s also created a backlash. Recently the NY Times (paywalled) wrote about online groups that actively hate and despise Crumbl Cookie.

I guess it takes all kinds. Some folks get their kicks out of hating cookies. Go figure.

More puzzling to me, however, was the reaction of local food blogger, Steven J. Keith.

Keith is “The Food Guy,” and his work is informative and entertaining, and it’s a great way to keep up with the local restaurant scene, especially for those of us who have yet to return to dining out because of the pandemic. You can read Keith’s blog HERE.

When Crumbl Cookie opened, Keith wrote the following: “I’ll definitely check it out once the crowds die down, but I honestly don’t get the hype. I mean, there are lots of places around town – including a handful of locally owned businesses – that have been baking incredible cookies for years. I get that there’s a shiny new place in town that many folks can’t wait to try, but I don’t get waiting in long lines for … cookies.”

Taken out of context there, Keith’s statement seems perfectly reasonable. However, if you read his work regularly, you know that Keith instantly vaults into orgasmic cartwheels any time somebody opens a “shiny new” micro-brewery in Charleston (which seems to happen two or three times a week).

Half the country doesn’t drink beer at all, but I’ll bet way more than half the county eats cookies. We get one national cookie chain in Charleston, and Keith goes out of his way to diminish it, but he never seems to go for a single column without raving about some new beer place, or the beer selection at a new restaurant.

Charleston doesn’t need any more freaking breweries. We’re in a boom period for beer now, but there’s going to be an inevitable bust, and then we’ll have empty storefronts all over town…again.

Crumbl Cookie is the first national cookie chain to locate in Charleston since Great American Cookie deserted the Charleston Town Center many years ago. I agree that we have lots of great local bakeries, but none of them make the kind of atomic calorie bombs that roll out of Crumbl Cookie’s factories six days a week.

Count me firmly in the “More cookies, less beer” camp. For the record, I’m not a beer drinker…in case you couldn’t tell. You guys can divvy up my share. I’ll be over here enjoying my one-fourth of a cookie.

News About News

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the WCHS/Fox-11 News programs.

I like the people who work there. I have friends on the crew, and the on-air talent, especially on their morning show, is a collection of very likable, competent, hard-working people. It’s a nice mix of experienced veteran newscasters and promising young talents who will likely be snapped up by a station in a larger market once they get a little more airtime under their belt.

But the stations are owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, a far, far right propaganda media organization that makes FOX News look like MSNBC in comparison.

Sinclair is so extreme that, years ago when ABC aired the Steven Speilberg movie, Saving Private Ryan, Sinclair forbade their ABC stations from running it, because they felt it was too “anti-war.”

So while it’s nice to have the Eyewitness News morning crew covering the weather, giving the traffic reports and talking about local stories, they devote an inordinate amount of time to highly-slanted and questionable coverage of national stories. They either get these stories from FOX News, or from Sinclair’s own “The National Desk.”

For instance, every day this week the lead story on our local newscast was about the “crisis at the border” because Title 42 was expiring. This is a manufactured non-story that will evaporate just like all the imaginary caravans of migrants that never showed up in previous years.

Keep in mind that the border is over a thousand miles away from West Virginia, and we have the lowest immigrant population of any state in the union. Alaska and Hawaii get more immigrants than we do.

While shoving that non-story down their viewers throats every half-hour, news about the former president being found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation and a Republican Congressman being charged with over a dozen criminal counts was relegated to a crawl at the bottom of the screen.

So it was interesting to learn this week that Sinclair Broadcasting is having severe financial issues stemming from their purchase of the former Fox Regional Sports Network. Reportedly they lost billions of dollars on it last year before filing chapter 11 bankruptcy for the newly-named “Diamond Sports Group” just a couple of months ago. These are the cable and satellite stations currently operating under the name, “Bally’s.”

This has put Sinclair in serious cost-cutting mode, and they have eliminated local newrooms entirely in five cities, WNWO Toledo, Ohio; KTVL Medford, Ore.; KPTM Omaha, Neb.; WGFL Gainesville, Fla.; and KPTH Sioux City, Iowa. All of these stations had all their local news replaced by The National Desk, which Sinclair launched a few years ago in an attempt to create a FOX News-like channel for their over-the-air digital subchannels.

The entire news departments at those stations were laid off. At five additional stations, the local newscasts in mornings and at noon were replaced with The National Desk, with many staffers losing their jobs.

I fear that, if Sinclair continues tightening their belts, we may lose our local Charleston news. WSAZ and WOWK do decent enough jobs, but their coverage includes huge swaths of stuff about Ohio and Kentucky, and that isn’t quite as useful when you just want to know how bad traffic is in the capital city.

My fear may be unfounded. We do have a few things going for us locally. West Virginia has legalized online sports betting, and as annoying as those commercials are, they seem to be subsidizing all our local news programs. We’re also a state that has lots of dark money from Super PACs flowing into it, and we have as many TV commercial lawyers as Charleston has new breweries opening next month.

If Sinclair drops the local news here, the ratings will plummet and those advertisers will flee. The fact that we have three vibrant local TV news organizations probably means that Sinclair couldn’t afford to desert this market. If they put the zombie-like anchors of The National Desk on instead of local news, people will just flip the channel.

But, if Sinclair is forced to cut costs further…say if their bankruptcy plan doesn’t fix their nearly nine billion dollar debt, they may decide to lay off a lot of dedicated broadcasters in an effort to stay afloat.

And that is one more reason why media consolidation sucks, and the FCC should reinstate the ownership limits that were abolished in 1981.

For more on Sinclair Broadcasting, watch this…

One More Show

This graphic didn’t show up until late Thursday. Here’s another cool show with some folks I’ve played on RFC…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every damn day.

It’s that time of the week when we tell you that there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves tearing through 2023 at the speed of light. Despite it being Mother’s Day this Sunday, there don’t seem to be too many themed events for us to suggest. But we still have a lot of good things to tell you about.

We start with a reminder about the latest show by Charleston’s most prolific playwright.

Charleston’s Contemporary Youth Arts Company opened a new gothic horror drama by playwright, Dan Kehde, “The Good Ship Barnacle” last week. This show will still be running it May  12 and 13 at 7 PM.

To say it’s a different kind of play is an understatement. It’s the story of a young woman’s apparent battle with her dark past as she is furloughed by her brother from a mental institution and taken to the isolated cabin of her childhood. Haunted by the voice of a kidnapped and murdered childhood playmate, Allie Burroughs, with the often unwilling aid of her older brother, relives the darker moments of her troubled life as she unravels the truth among twenty five years of lies and delusions.

The play features the extraordinary talents of local veteran actors Amanda Skidmore, Matty Connelly and Abby Connett. Not recommended for anyone under the age of twelve, this intense drama would probably be considered “PG 14” for adult language, situations and implied violence.

$15 Adult. $10 Student/Senior. Tickets are available at the door or online.

The New River Gorge Festival is back May 12 to 14 at ACE Adventure Resort in West Virginia. Folks can celebrate one of Earth’s oldest rivers that outdoorsy peoples all love to paddle, hike, bike, and explore.  Or you can take part in a film festival, shop vendors, enjoy live music and experience ACE’s Adventure Zones. Plus there is a rolling rodeo and race for whitewater paddlers on the New River and a river cleanup Sunday with New River Conservancy. There will be live music featuring Litz on Friday night, while Saturday it’s Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Magnolia Boulevard, Shawn Benfield & The Resolution, Moonlight Mile and Ranford Almond.  Ticket info can be found HERE.

For those of us who prefer indoorsy stuff, 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 Arthur Deras entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery (details in the graphic below).

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit or worthy cause.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Saturday Fatetteville’s Aura Rising plays at 10 PM. Sunday the post-Mountain Stage Jam happens around 10 PM.  Next week they’ll have an open mic hosted by Unmanned on Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Plus there are shows listed below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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 a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

Continue reading

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a mixtape with an admittedly stupid premise. “A Day With The Beatles” is a collection of songs by The Beatles (and solo) with the word “day” in the title.

The exception to that rule is the opening cut, which does not have “day” in the title, but which does mention six of the seven days in its lyrics.

Instead of just using the original versions of the songs, I’ve tossed a few covers into the mix, and one song, “A Hard Day’s Night” turns up twice, with vastly different versions by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Goldie Hawn. There’s also a healthy dose of obscure solo album cuts by the boys, since I severely over-estimated how many songs the band had with “Day” in the title.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 093

The Beatles “Lady Madonna”
Paul McCartney “Another Day”
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “A Hard Day’s Night”
Jimi Hendrix “Day Tripper”
Procol Harum “Eight Days A Week”
John Lennon “One Day At A Time”
Ringo Starr “Gone Are The Days”
George Harrison “The Day The World Gets Round”
Paul McCartney “A Fine Day”
Dave McClean “Yesterday”
Ringo Starr “Night And Day”
Goldie Hawn “A Hard Days Night”
The Beatles “That’ll Be The Day”
John Lennon “News Of The Day”
Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello “That Day Is Done”
The Beatles “Good Day Sunshine”
Wings “Daytime/Nighttime Suffering”
The Beatles “A Day In The Life”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch presents a  collection of performances from new musicals, with one 72-year-old ringer thrown in for good measure.

The show opens with the preview single from the new Josh Groban led revival of Sweeny Todd.

Following that, Mel tells you about three interesting new musicals, My Heart Says Go, KPOP and Standing At The Sky’s End.

My Heart Says Go follows the powerful story of a first-generation college student, Indigo. In hopes to become a singer-songwriter, he defies his father and drops out of medical school.  KPOP was a Broadway Musical that, sadly, did not make it out of 2022. The show was presented as a group of Korean music executives pitching a new batch of stars to America.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an Olivier Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Richard Hawley and a book by Chris Bush. Hawley is a one-time member of the band, Pulp, and is a highly-respected singer/songwriter/producer in the UK. The musical (named after Hawley’s 2012 album of the same name) begins in 1961 and tells the story of three families over sixty years living in Park Hill, a council housing estate in Sheffield and features both new and existing songs by Hawley.

Mel wraps up the show with  trio of short tunes from Top Banana, a musical with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft. It premiered on Broadway in 1951 and was written as a star vehicle for comedian Phil Silvers, who played the host of a television variety show program. Silvers won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical in 1952. Top Banana is a classic farce, set in the world of early television, with lots of comedy potshots taken at the then-new medium. It’s a hilarious romp and a true star vehicle for Phil Silvers.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, 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.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault  presents a new episode that I  haven’t produced yet, so there’s no telling what it’ll have in it. .

We are Tuesdaying it up again on The AIR  and that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston. 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 found elsewhere on this page.  

Due to looming magazine deadlines we have one new hour and two hours of RFC International from 2019 today on Radio Free Charleston this week. Our first hour is loaded with new releases from West Virginia artists, plus lotsa other cool stuff from indie artists and more.

Our second and third hours revive an old Radio Free Charleston International from February 2019, and it’s a great mix of stuff from all over with the added bonus of being co-hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch.  Since Mel joined me for Valentine’s week, I loaded it up with some of her favorite musics.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links for the first hour will take you to the artist’s pages so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 130

hour one
Jerks “Taillights”
Jim Lange“My (Slightly Used) Buick Submarine”
The Anchoress “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Shake The Dead “Memory”
ASIA (Not The Famous One) “Thunder Rider”
Model Citizens “Animal Instincts”
Payback’s a Bitch “I’m Just A Boy”
Verdeant (Chloe Florence) “Don’t Tell Him”
Novelty Island “Funny Little Rhythm”
Robert Fripp with Peter Gabriel “Here Comes The Flood”
Weedhaven Laughing Academy “Porland, Maine”
Massing “Onto”
Andy Prieboy “Everything But Goodbye”
Golden “I Want To Run”
Dave Strong “It’s Alright”
Softeeth “Color Bars”
Save Ferris “Goodbye”

hour two
SpongeBob Squarepants “Sweet Victory”
Joe Jackson “Alchemy”
Sarah Brightman “Follow Me”
Paul Weller “Wishing Well”
Keith Emerson “For Kevin”
Toy Matinee “There Was A Little Boy”
Matt Berry “Take My Hand”
Pink Floyd “Comfortably Numb (Live 8)”
Robert Berry “Brain Damage”
Gowan “A Criminal Mind”
Joanna Newsome “81”

hour three
Paul McCartney “Nothing For Free”
Roy Orbison “I Drove All Night”
Hazel O’Connor “That’s Life”
Pet Shop Boys “Fugitive”
Pretenders “Light Of The Moon”
The Stranglers ‘I Hate You”
ELO “Mr. Blue Sky”
Hooverphonic “Inhaler”
Prince “Pop Life”
The Dresden Dolls “Pretty In Pink”
The Puppini Sisters “Rapper’s Delight/Chadelier”
Korn “Word Up”
Eurythmics “Who’s That Girl”

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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.  At 3 PM we’re going to bring you the second two parts of the History of Swing, which ran from episode 99 to episode 103 on The Swing Shift. We’ll plan to return with new episodes of The Swing Shift next week.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 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 finds your blogger/artist still working with pastel crayons.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently dealing with a weird evolution of my Myasthenia Gravis, where the control of my fingers is not consistent. Pastel crayons are easier for me to handle than a brush, pencil or pen at the moment, so I’m sticking with them again this week.

This week’s piece started out as just a casual doodle of the female form. Then I decided to play with colors and go in an abstract direction with it before changing my mind and making a rough drawing of an alien-skinned lady at the beach.  It’s not one that I put a lot of prior planning into. More like a collection of happy accidents.

To see it bigger and uncropped, try clicking HERE. If you’re looking at it on a desktop or laptop, that version is probably bigger than the size at which it was drawn.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a classic 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. 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 8 PM you can hear an hour of comical songs from The Simpsons on an encore episode of Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of Mel Larch’s Curtain Call shows devoted to The Tony Awards. You’ll hear the annual nominations shows (starting with this year’s) and also a few programs devoted to the winners of Best New Musical from years past.

On May 7, 2015, a German torpedo sinks the British Ocean liner Lusitania off the Irish coast, killing nearly 1,200 people. This remains one of the most horrific acts of violence against civilians from World War One.

The Sinking of the Lusitania is an American silent animated short film made by cartoonist Winsor McCay in 1918. It is a ground-breaking piece of animation re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania. At twelve minutes it has been called the longest work of animation at the time of its release. The film is the earliest surviving animated documentary and serious, dramatic work of animation. McCay, the creator of Little Nemo In Slumberland among many other comic strips from the early 20th century, and the man who basically invented animation as we know it today.

In February, 2010 I created a special music video by The Scrap Iron Pickers (Johnny Sizemore, Jason “Roadblock” Robinson and Matt Wolfe) for Radio Free Charleston. Using the song “Swamp Thing” from their debut double-EP,  I set the music to the vintage animation of the famed maritime disaster by McCay.

You see the end result above: A music video for the song “Swamp Thing” by The Scrap Iron Pickers (featuring guests John Chickogee, Bud Carroll and Jeff Ellis) from their double EP Reedeeming Metal/Union. This video was edited by yours truly, using McKay’s original animation and adding tinting via video. With today being May 7, it seemed like a good idea to share it again.

This week he head back to August, 2007 for “Las Vegas Shirt.” This is a special episode of Radio Free Charleston for a couple of reasons. We feature fantastic music by Seven Minutes Til Midnight and an early line-up of InFormation, and we have a really cool piece of animation by Frank Panucci.  But what makes this show so notable is that it is the only episode of Radio Free Charleston to be rejected and censored by The Charleston Gazette, and it is one of only two shows in which your host, Rudy Panucci, does not wear a hat.

Those two matters, by the way, are unrelated. It’s not like the sight of my un-hatted head is so hideous as to border on obscene, at least I hope not..

The problem content in this episode is a segment called “Cooking With The Atrocity,” a comedy cooking segment brought to us by the fine folks at IWA East Coast Wrestling and the 108 Dragons. The humor in the original piece was that it turned into a disaster, with much unexpurgated cursing along the way. In these early days, Radio Free Charleston was hosted on the Gazette servers and as such, we didn’t want to push the envelope too far for fear that it would be returned containing a pink slip. A running theme of the early days of PopCult and RFC was that we needed to fly under the radar, so as not to attact the attention of the potentially-offended Widder Chilton.

So when I included “Cooking With The Atrocity” in the show, I bleeped the crap out of it. The odd thing was that the bleeping made the already hilarious bit even funnier. Unfortunately, my editor, Douglas Imbrogno, felt that too many remnants of cursing remained, so for the only time, I withdrew the show for further editing.

It turned out that adding even more bleeps made the bit even funnier, so it all worked out well in the end. Sadly, the official, heavily-bleeped version is one of my “missing” shows, so we are bringing you the original cut, which has a bit less bleeping of the words that lip-readers could have figured out anyway.

As for me not wearing a hat…people were asking, so I complied. I have no excuse for the silver shirt, though. The original production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 5, 2023

Your PopCulteer is celebrating Cinco de Mayo by writing this column on Thursday afternoon so he can not worry about writing it when he’ll be resting up to go see The Velvet Brothers at The Red Carpet.

Also, before we go any further, remember that the first Friday of the month is “Bandcamp Friday,” which means that Bandcamp does not take a cut from any sales at their website. All the money goes to the artist. So if you want to support local and independent music, this is the day to do it.

Meanwhile, 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! This is the one that we presented as a sneak preview last monday.  For those of you who missed it, it’s the third anniversary show for MIRRORBALL, and it’s the 75th episode, so Mel decided to present classic Disco songs that came out in 1975.

We told you all about that HERE, but if you’re too lazy to click, here’s the playlist again…

MIRRORBALL 075

Van McCoy “The Hustle”
Brass Construction “Movin’”
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Gloria Gaynor “Never Can Say Goodbye”
KC & The Sunshine Band “That’s The Way (I Like It)”
Barry White “What Am I Gonna Do With You”
The Blackbyrds “Walking In Rhythm”
Gary Tom’s Empire “7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Blow Your Whistle”
Tavares “It Only Takes A Minute”
Salsoul Orchestra “Tangerine”
Silver Convention “Save Me”
MFSB “Sexy”
Hot Chocolate “You Sexy Thing”
The Bee Gees “Jive Talkin’”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney once again salutes the proud women who infiltrated New Wave music and made sure that it didn’t turn into yet another old boy’s club. Every song in this week’s show is spearheaded by feminine creativity, and it kicks off with newly-minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Kate Bush.

As Sydney explains in the show, the artists making up this show are a mix of huge mega-stars and New Wave Women whose stars did not get to shine quite so brightly. Sydney also explains that our friends at Haversham Recording Institute have been tied up doing international media support for some kind of big shindig happening over London way, and that’s why we didn’t have any new programs from them in April.

Check out the playlist…

BEC 103

Kate Bush “Sat In Your Lap”
Pretenders “Mystery Achievement”
Plasmatics “Monkey Suit”
The Selecter “They Make Me Mad”
The Creatures “A Strutting Rooster”
Debbie Harry “Chrome”
Go-Gos “Lust To Love”
Angela Werner “Ausgeflippt”
Mobiles “Long Time”
Renaissance “Camera, Camera”
28th Day “Pages Turn”
RAF “Stop Her On Sight”
Threshold “Believe In Me”
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
Joan Jett “Crimson and Clover”
Unit 5 “Mental State”
Laurie Anderson “From The AIR”
Kim Wilde “Tuning In, Tuning Out”
Toyah “War Boys”
Rachel Sweet “Who Does Lisa Like”
Tracey Ullman “Breakaway”
Berlin “Sex”
Missing Persons “It Ain’t None Of Your Business”
Marianne Faithfull “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”
Inker & Hamilton “Innocent”
Kirsty MacColl “A New England”
Hazel O’Connor “Top of The Wheel”
Velvet Monkey “You’re Not There”
Lene Lovich “Joan”

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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day. I’m gonna go see The Velvets tonight!

According to the Weatherpeoples we’re going to veer from unseasaonbly cold to unseasonably hot here as we enter the first weekend of May. But fear not, there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves rapidly barrelling through 2023.

We start with a new show by Charleston’s most prolific playwright.

Charleston’s Contemporary Youth Arts Company opens a new gothic horror drama by playwright, Dan Kehde, “The Good Ship Barnacle” at 7 PM this Friday, May 5th and will be running it May 5,6,12,13 at 7 PM and 2 PM on Sunday May 7.

To say it’s a different kind of play is an understatement. It’s the story of a young woman’s apparent battle with her dark past as she is furloughed by her brother from a mental institution and taken to the isolated cabin of her childhood. Haunted by the voice of a kidnapped and murdered childhood playmate, Allie Burroughs, with the often unwilling aid of her older brother, relives the darker moments of her troubled life as she unravels the truth among twenty five years of lies and delusions.

The play features the extraordinary talents of local veteran actors Amanda Skidmore, Matty Connelly and Abby Connett. Not recommended for anyone under the age of twelve, this intense drama would probably be considered “PG 14” for adult language, situations and implied violence.

$15 Adult. $10 Student/Senior. Tickets are available at the door or online.

Friday is Cinco de Mayo, but not too many places had graphics available for this big day. Yours truly will appear at the Red Carpet to see The Velvet Brothers, but if there’s smoking on the patio, I may not be able to stick around too long.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Steve Himes. Saturday Gary Hays entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery (details in the graphic below).

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour, then Static Fur and friends take over for Cinco De Mayo.  Saturday Kenny Booth hosts another SHRED NIGHT.  Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Plus there are shows listed below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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 a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

THEATRE

 THURSDAY

FRIDAY

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Every May Mel Larch brings her listeners a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to the Tony Award Nominees for Best Musical. Since they were just announced yesterday morning, it’s time for the tradition to continue.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear samples of the nominees for this year’s Tony Awards for Best Musical as Broadway is back to normal, ready to be saluted by Curtain Call.

You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player mere inches away from this text.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call. It’s our annual Tony Awards preview, with three songs each from the five nominated musicals,

Shucked is a countrified musical about corn in more way than one. With songs by the Nashville songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and a book by Robert Horn, Shucked traffics in a humor that’s been called “low but hard not to laugh at.” This homespun story of a marriage put on hold until the corn crop can be saved has come out of nowhere to become a contender for Broadway’s top prize.

The musical comedy Kimberly Akimbo stars the 63-year-old Victoria Clark as a teenage girl with a medical condition that causes rapid aging. Based on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, the show features music by Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of Fun Home; a book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Rabbit Hole; and direction by Jessica Stone, a longtime actress making her Broadway directing debut.

& Juliet is a jukebox musical inspired by the Shakespeare tragedy, and it features songs by the Swedish hitmaker Max Martin (Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and many others), a book by David West Read and direction by Luke Sheppard.  It doesn’t seem like a natural fit, but somehow they make it work.

Some Like It Hot is a tap-infused adaptation of the 1959 Billy Wilder film about two musicians on the run, and it’s this year’s breakout show, with 13 total nominations. The musical stars Christian Borle, J. Harrison Ghee and Adrianna Hicks, with songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who previously wrote the Tony-winning score for Hairspray. Casey Nicholaw, the Tony-winning director of The Book of Mormon, directs and choreographs.

New York, New York, is a new musical very loosely based on the 1977 Martin Scorsese film about performers making it in the big city. The show juxtaposes new songs John Kander wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda, like “Music, Money, Love,” with older ones set to lyrics by Fred Ebb. The show, which is directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman,has been praised by The New York Times for it’s tap number staged on high beams and “the visceral thrill of watching a big band rise up to the stage.”

The 2023 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Pluto TV and Paramount + on June, 11 (barring any delays caused by the WGA strike), so you can tune in and see who won this year’s prize.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evenings starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.