Month: December 2023 (Page 2 of 4)

The PopCulteer
December 22, 2023

It seems a little odd to review a musical running in Chicago just two days before its final performance, but I wanted to go on record about BOOP! The Musical. I got to see it back on December 5, but didn’t have a chance to write this until now.

It is, as you may have guessed, a stage musical featuring the iconic Fleischer animation heroine, Betty Boop. Melanie and I got to see the World Premiere, out-of-town run before the show moves to Broadway, sometime next year.

Producers do out-of-town runs so they can sort of workshop a new musical and make changes based on a live audience reaction. By the time BOOP! moves to Broadway, it might be substantially different.

However, I’m thinking it’s not going to be that much different because, as it is, BOOP! is nearly perfect. The songs are catchy as hell. The story is fun. The stagecraft is amazing. And Jasmine Amy Rogers (seen left), who plays Betty Boop, will likely come out of this role as a major star. She really IS Betty Boop, come to life.

The show is about 90% perfect. I’m sure the producers will tinker with the pacing and I hear that the composer, David Foster, has two new songs ready to plug into the production. At this point, it seems that this show just needs minor tweaks to become a major hit. I felt that one song we hear as a false climax would pack more punch if it were foreshadowed with a less-orchestrated verse much earlier in the show, but that’s a minor note.

So much of BOOP! is simply stellar. Bob Martin contributes a clever book that weaves romance, spectacle and interdimensional travel into a thrilling and delightful story. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics and David Foster’s music manage the difficult feat of capturing the Golden Age Jazz sound of the original Betty Boop cartoons while still projecting a contemporary vibe.

Jerry Mitchell, who directed and choreographed this show has conducted a symphony of pop culture visuals and dance numbers that pay tribute to the original cartoons as well as remaining strikingly original.

Speaking of strikingly original, the scenic design by David Rockwell and the projection design by Finn Ross help immerse the audience in a world based on classic Fleischer animation in the beginning, and then a full-color astonishingly surreal New York City in the “real world.”

Grampy, Betty and Pudgy, before her trip to the real world.

The cast is amazing, and we have to once again note that Jasmine Amy Rogers shines brightly in what should be a career-defining role. She has the look, the voice, and the attitude of Betty Boop, and she also has the acting chops and emotional range to bring her into the real world.

DeRosa and Prince, with a sweet, second love story.

Stephen DeRosa is equally amazing as the real-life embodiment of Grampy. Pudgy the dog is onstage via the puppeteer, Philip Huber, and after his first appearance, you forget that there’s a man pulling the strings visible on stage.

Broadway vet, Faith Prince is a hoot as Grampy’s love interest, Valentina, and Ainsley Anthony Melham is great as Betty’s real-world love interest, Dwayne, although he could stand to work on his fake trumpet playing a little.

The story opens with Betty hard at work making the cartoons that we all know and love today. The set and costuming are monochromatic, looking like a Fleischer cartoon come to life.  After a long day on the set, Betty expresses her desire to take a vacation “Where nobody knows me.” Grampy tells her about the real world, and shows her a machine he’s made out of an overstuffed chair that can take her there. But he warns her not to use it because the real world is so dangerous and scary.

Of course, after Grampy dozes off, Betty uses the machine and arrives…at the 2023 New York Comic Con. Suddenly, everything is in bright, vibrant color. Betty encounters cosplayers dressed as DC Comics, Marvel and Hanna Barbera characters (and more), and experiences colors for the first time with the showstopper tune, “In Color.”

Now, I have to admit that, being a comic book nerd for over 55 years, a musical that includes interdimensional travel, classic animation references, Easter Eggs buried in the animated sets AND cameos by Superman, Cyclops, Velma Dinkley, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Chewbacca and more has pretty much punched all my buttons.

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the plot. Let’s just say that we get a couple of love stories, a city politics subplot, a little sexual harrassment, some inspiring feminism, plus a potentially world-ending crisis, all set to impeccably crafted tunes that will stick in your head for months.

I will be shocked if BOOP! The Musical does not go on to have a major run on Broadway (possibly as the first show in the raised and refurbished Palace Theater). I can see BOOP! very easily becoming a hot-ticket show like Book of Mormon or Hamilton. It’s that good.

I also see multiple Tony Awards in its future.

The Chicago run at the CIBC Theater ends December 24, so it might be difficult to see it before it makes the big move, but trust me, you’ll have plenty of chances to see it once it moves to New York. I have a feeling BOOP! will be around for a long time.

Check out the short teaser video and a preview song (“Where I Wanna Be,” heard on the most recent episode of Mel Larch’s Curtan Call, on The AIR)…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content, even on Christmas.

‘Twas STUFF TO DO before Christmas, and all through the blog, not a creature was stirring, not even a frog. 

The presents are bought and the monies all spents, and THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.

There are lots you can see and lots you can hear. It’s better than sitting at home on your rear. 

Holiday cheer is here, wall to wall. Let’s not drink too much, for fear that you fall. 

This shtick is too hard for me to continue, so here’s what’s going on, in select local venues…

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday That High Country Revival takes the stage. Saturday Ronald and The RayGunz perform at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend  to tell you about. Thursday Andrew Pauley brings his roots-infused Blues to the state at 9 PM. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Sunday Bo McMillion celebrates Christmas Eve from 9:00 to 11:30 PM. We have graphics below for the rest of the weekend shows at The Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, Dasher, Donner and Blitzen all coked up and running amok, petulant elves complaining endlessly about kids wanting iPhones instead of toys, giant media conglomerates copulating in the streets and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order, right below the jump…

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This was not the post that was supposed to be here today.  With any luck, that post will show up tomorrow or Friday. One of the problems of having Myasthenia Gravis is that, when you get on a roll doing something, you don’t want to stop for anything for fear that you won’t be able to start again.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re writing a long review of something, and you get over 800 words into it before you realize that you haven’t backed it up yet. Then let’s say that you hear an explosion, and your power cuts out…before you saved the 800 words that you’d written.

So when the power does come back on…way ahead of the promised restoration time, I might add…maybe you just decide to do something else instead of sinking that deep into trying to remember what you wrote while you’re in an agitated state.

That’s my way of saying, Now it’s time for the annual look at The PopCult Christmas Tree! We have a lot of new ornaments this year, and several from previous years are on hiatus because we’ve got such a huge collection that displaying the whole thing will require multiple trees.

Maybe next year.  But here’s a look at the tree…

Here’s the full-frontal shot of the tree, using the flash, which sort of cancels out all the lights.

The tree-topper, which is something we need to work on every year. I have this great spire, but it just doesn’t sit well on this particular tree, so this year we went with a four-dollar star, surrounded by billiard balls (in honor of my father), with a peacock in front.

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It’s been more than a week since your humble blogger returned from the Windy City, but since we took our trip in the middle of the holiday season, it meant that I had to jump back into the thick of things as soon as I got back, producing new radio shows and writing PopCult.

However, since this week our radio is all spoken for, and I’ve had time to rest up from the trip (and take another short one-in fact), this week we’ll be playing catch-up and with a couple of posts devoted to our Chicago hijinks.

Today that means a quick photo essay about our trip to the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza. It’s a cool thing that many other cities try to copy, but nobody does it like Chicago. Not every city has a 40-foot tall Picasso sculpture to watch over the dozens of vendors.

Without any further ado, and with long captions to describe each photo, let’s just dive in, shall we?

This is the main entrance. Pro-tip: Don’t wait in line for them to open this one. There are three other entrances and if you get there right when they open, it’s way quicker to go to one of those.

This is Bob’s Belgian, which was, until we discovered Lavazza at Eataly, the best hot chocolate I’d ever tasted. It’s still a very close second.

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Once again, your humble blogger was in Chicago the week before last to celebrate my beautiful wife’s birthday, and that’s the real reason we did Marathon Week on The AIR and last week’s posts might’ve seemed off a bit, since they’d been written by an exhausted PopCulteer who was hobbling around on a bum knee (doing much better now,by the way).

Just as with last year,  I took a few photos of the Christmas Tree in Union Station in Chicago, and just like last year, I knocked out a quick, tiny acrylic painting, this time on cheap canvas board.  If you’re looking at this on a computer monitor, you’re probably seeing it at the actual size it was painted, if not a little larger. I photographed it rather than scan it because the paint wasn’t dry. Had to do a little color correction in the computer because of this. I also couldn’t get rid of the highlights and reflections on this one due to me using sunlight. That always annoys me.

I don’t know if it’s the second installment of a new tradition here at PopCult, or just me being lazy and repititive. I have to say, last year’s came out much better, probably because I spent more time on it and my MG wasn’t flaring up.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have brand-new episodes of  Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack and at 3 PM,  Herman Linte’s Prognosis, and because, like Sydney did last week, they rushed to get these to us before heading out of London for an extended holiday, we do not have playlists,  However, Nigel tells me that his show is actually a Psychedelic Christmas show, while Herman devotes his entire program to an obscure 1970s Prog band from Indiananame “Ethos.” 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 next week 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 next week Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

At 5 PM the Christmas programming begins in earnest on The AIR, as we devote big chunks of the next eight days to celebrating the holidays with special episodes of our regular programs, plus huge comglomerations of holiday music, radio plays, weird Christmas stuff and more. That will start every weeknight this week at 5 PM EST, and then on Friday it will take over the entire station until Tuesday morning, so you can tune in at any time and join the party.

From 2006 to 2015, I produced ten Christmas episodes (or specials/treats) of the Radio Free Charleston video show. For some reason, until now, I have not compiled them all in a handy playlist to embed in this blog so you can watch them all together. One week out from Christmas Eve seemed like a good time to spring this on you.

We didn’t do a full-blown holiday episode every year. In 2008 I totaled my car on black ice early in December, and only managed to post a “half-episode” featuring music from the CYAC production of MARY: A Rock Opera from that year.  I don’t remember the exact reason, but in 2011 all we did was a short video of Johnny Compton’s Prank Monkey.

But that’s all in here, and in order.  The 2006 show features Clownhole and Mel Larch. In 2007 we had The Mountain Laurel Ensemble, 60 Fingers and The Android Family. 2009 saw an extra-long show with music from Molly Means, Joseph Hale, Todd Burge, and Melanie Larch with The Diablo Blues Band. In 2010 we presented the talented crew from The Contemporary Youth Arts Company singing Christmas Carols and songs from Mary: A Rock Opera.

2012 saw us back to full-length with a show that features music from the Charleston Gay Mens Chorale, a duet from Lee Harrah and Pepper Fandango, a special “double trio” from the cast of “MARY: A Rock Opera,” and Prank Monkey. Also in this episode, we have the Ghost of Animation Past, a holiday message from Razor Sharp Studios and Burt Flemming, and a quick musical tour of The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, WV.  “Hasa Diga Shirt,” was our 2013 Christmas spectacular, with music from The Bob Thompson Unit and Frenchy and The Punk, plus a message from Santa, and animation from Jake Fertig.

In 2014 it gets a little bittersweet as we had quite a bit of help from the late Mark Scarpelli. Melanie Larch and Mark performed “Christmas Time Is Here,” the classic tune from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” This was our “all female voices” Christmas show as the other musical acts include: Marium Bria performing the Jody Herndon song, “Naughty Christmas.” Lady D — aka Doris Fields — took on the Donny Hathaway classic, “This Christmas.” The Laser Beams wrapped up the show with a rendition of “Up on the Rooftop.”  Also in this episode is the short film “Incomprehensible Words From Santa Claus,” as well as “Death Train,” a charming holiday cartoon about the real War on Christmas, created and animated by Jacob Fertig.

The final show in this playlist is both our least and most Christmas-y one of the batch. Our Christmas show for 2015 captures songs from a benefit show put on at The Empty Glass on December 12 of that year. The Logan-area band, let The Guilty Hang, lost all their equipment, merchandise, instruments and equipment cases in a fire in October. To help raise money for the band, Jeff Ellis, Sheldon Vance, Aaron Fisher, Speedsuit and Farnsworth all performed, with all the proceeds going to help this band get back on their feet. This was the true spirit of the season. Musicians came together, giving their gift of music to help raise money for fellow musicians down on their luck. When I first heard about this concert, I felt that it would make for a Christmas show more appropriate for the season than anything that I could contrive with a holiday theme.

As longtime readers of PopCult know, a few months after this show I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, and cut way back on producing video.  RFC is basically an annual video show now (and I’m scrambling to figure out what to put in this year’s episode), so I haven’t really done any holiday-themed episodes since this last Christmas special. We still do radio specials (and you can hear a bunch of them on The AIR starting Monday), but these ten videos are the video version of our holiday legacy…for now.

The RFC Flashback continues our chronological presentation of classic episodes of the long-running local music video show. Hopefully this will hold you over while your PopCulteer works toward producing a new episode for you before the end of the year.

This classic from January 2009 featured music from Lonely Town and Marcie Bullock, icy animation from Frank Panucci and a quick look at the CYAC production of “Lincoln” an original opera, that opened the week after this show debuted.

Our live music was recorded at The Blue Parrot and at Sam’s Uptown Cafe, both Capitol Street institutions that are still open today. Lonely Town was a band that counted Mark Bates, Jonathan Glen Wood, Aaron Fisher, Frank Miller and Bill Dean among their ranks. It was a veritable supergroup. Marcie was backed by Steve Himes, another Charleston institution.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
December 15, 2023

We have some radio notes for you today as we drift dangerously close to the Christmas vortex.  Before we get sucked into that we also have a small batch of STUFF TO DO to get you in the holiday mood.

We have a special encore and a brand-new mixtape Friday on The AIR. This afternoon we serve up a classic episode of MIRRORBALL and a new episode of 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 found elsewhere on this page.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch observes a special anniversary one day late with a classic episode of MIRRORBALL devoted to the movie, Saturday Night Fever, which opened exactly forty-five years and one day ago.

In an episode that originally aired in 2021, The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music salutes the definitive Disco Movie, Saturday Night Fever. To observe 45 years of le danse boo-gee, Mel brings you an hour of highlights from one of the best-selling movie soundtracks in history. You’ll hear classic Disco tunes by The Bee Gees, Tavares, KC and The Sunshine Band, Yvonne Eliman, David Shire, Kool and The Gang, Walter Murphy and The Trammps.

The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever is a crash course in Disco history, and if you miss the days of polyester, danceable beats and unironic cheesiness, then you won’t want to miss MIRRORBALL Friday.

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays most weeks  Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Gets Into The Jam

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM (EDT), Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney devotes her entire program to The music of The Jam.

Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Butler formed The Jam  in 1972 at Sheerwater Secondary School in Woking, Surrey. They released an amazing 18 consecutive top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1982, including four number one hits.

The band mixed Punk and New Wave with 1960s Beat Music, Soul and R&B, playing up their Mod Revivalist image and paying tribute to The Who, who were a major inspiration. The band also cited The Beatles and The Kinks as major influences, and up to their dissolution in 1982, evolved their sound with every release, adding instruments and more complex arrangements and creating more challenging pop music than many of their contemporaries.

We do not have a playlist for this week’s show. Sydney was barely able to finish it and transmit it to us before we had to upload it to our servers. But Sydney assures me that this week’s show is packed with the band’s major hits, choice album cuts and even a few rarities.

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.

STUFF TO DO

Your humble blogger is back from Chicago and things are as back to normal as they can be with Christmas charging at us full-speed. With the holidays waiting just around the corner, we do have some STUFF TO DO to tell you about. As I have been doing of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday Steve Himes takes the stage. Saturday a mysterious masked individual performs at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend  to tell you about. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Sunday Bo McMillion will entertain from 9:00 to 11:30 PM. Next Monday it’s open mic with Eric Robbins at 9 PM. Tuesday Alondra Johnson takes the stage at 9 PM. Next Wednesday Andrew Pauley brings his singer/songwriter music to the Glass at 9 PM. We have graphics below for the rest of the weekend shows at The Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, Republican House members on holiday break running amok, flying reindeer moving their bowels overhead, billionaire governors pleading poverty in court and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order, right below the jump…

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I have to place the blame on FiestaWare.

I speak, of course of the beloved, multicolored dinnerware line, produced right here in West Virginia, and obsessively collected by Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch. That FiestaWare.  That’s how I wound up in Canton, Ohio last summer right after the Marx Toy Show in Wheeling.

A new FiestaWare outlet store opened at the Hartville Marketplace & Flea Market, just North of Canton, and we decided to go there after the Marx show, since we were already fairly close to it.

We went there and Mel got some new pieces and while we were there, we checked out a few other fine shopping destinations. I was on the fence about going to one of them. I saw “Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom” on the Google Maps, and having been burned many times while looking at toy stores in new cities, I was prepared to be disappointed. In fact, I almost didn’t even go.  We stopped on the way out of town because it was practically on the ramp to get back on I 77 South to come home.

Mel stayed in the car, and I went in expecting nothing more than plush, STEM toys and maybe some wooden trains or something.

I was not prepared for the sensory overload of a toy store, stocked with new stuff–not antiques, larger than any Toys R Us that I’d ever been in, and filled with almost any toy you can imagine. I was greeted by a five-foot motion-activated animatronic raptor, and it just got wilder from there.

This is not your average independent toy store.

Sir Troy is actually a longtime LEGO collector who had opened up a couple of shops in malls around the area, before deciding to go whole-hog and open a complete, full-service toy store in The Beldon Village shopping complex in Canton, right off of Insterstate 77.  This location is a 30,000 square-foot behemoth of a toy store, reportedly the largest brick and mortar store devoted to new toys in the country, and it’s a worthy day trip for any toy collector, kid, or adult pretending to have a kid because they love toys so much.

The store is loaded with the newest Hot Wheels, Barbies, Marvel Action Figures, GI Joe, action figures of all kinds, plush animals, model kits, model railroads, boardgames, children’s books, Schleich figures, Playmobil, outdoor toys, educational toys, slot cars…I could go on, but the videos might give you a better idea. Oh, and they have what is likely the largest collection of LEGO sets for sale in the country. This location just opened in November, 2022, and it’s already become a bit of an underground legend among toy collectors. We had to go back last month with the PopCult cameras, arriving just before they decorated for the holidays.  If something about the stores seems familiar, well, you’ll have to watch the videos to find out why.

Seriously, several of the “departments,” like Barbie, Hot Wheels, Breyer, Bruder, LEGO, Marvel Legends and more are bigger than entire other toy stores. There’s a candy and soda section (stocked by Grandpa Joe’s, from Pittsburgh) that’s probably twice the size of the average GameStop.

Above you see the “short” video, which runs nearly ten minutes. There was simply too much visual excitement to cram into a shorter clip. I should warn you that this is a very frenetic video and in places it looks like you’re watching The Blair Witch Project in fast motion. Below you’ll see the director’s cut, which is around twenty-five minutes, and includes a guided tour of the massive LEGO display that takes up one corner of the store (Thanks again, Jeff!).

Below that I have a photo essay, which is mostly made up of screen grabs from shots that I couldn’t fit into the videos. Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom is about a three-hour drive from Charleston, taking Insterstate 77 almost all the way there.

The Photos

This is a tiny slice of a massive Hot Wheels section, wherein each peg holds one style of car, so you don’t have to go digging like a heathen the way you have to everywhere else.

This is the 2023 holiday Breyer Horse, part of a gigantic section of nothing but Breyer’s.

Another cool Breyer horse.

I don’t know if you understand how big this thing is.

A small portion of the gigantic Cleveland-inspired LEGO diorama.

Are you into model airplanes? They have a few.

Holiday Star Wars figures, not to be confused with the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I hear people complaining about not being able to find GI Joe: Classified figures…

…maybe that’s because they’re all here.

And finally, we have The Village People, reunited as Playmobil figures.

We have hit Wednesday afternoon, and The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast that both focus on what’s new.  You can tune in at the website, or 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 one-hour mixtape of  that attempts to create “The Fantasy Final Album” by The Beatles. I put this together using the “new” tracks from 1995 and 2023, along with select solo tracks that sound Beatlesque, and I realize that millions of people have been doing mixtapes like this ever since The Beatles broke up, but this is my latest attempt. To make it more like an old-school LP, I take a short break in the middle so I can “turn it over” and play the B-side. Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 102

The Fantasy Final Album

“side one”

“Real Love”
“Return To Pepperland”
“When We Was Fab”
“English Garden”
“Now and Then”
“Same Love”
“Sat Singing”

“side two”

“Free As A Bird”
“This One”
“Tears Of The World”
“I Really Love Her”
“Grow Old Along With Me”
“Never Without You”
“Stop, You Don’t Know Where She Came From”
“Now and Then (Reprise)”

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 celebrates everything new on the musical theatre front, with a preview song of a musical for which we saw the world premiere in Chicago last week, and then shining the spotlight on three musicals currently running on Broadway.

Check out this playlist…

Curtain Call 138

“Where I Want To Be” from Boop!

From Harmony: “Harmony,” “Your Son Is Becoming A Singer,” “The Wedding” and “We’re Goin’ Loco.”

From How To Dance In Ohio: “Under Control,” “Getting Ready for The Dance,” “So Much In Common,” and “Building Momentum.”

From Merrily We Roll Along: “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Franklin Shepard Inc.,” “Now You Know,” and “Opening Doors” Also the backer’s audition version of a trunk song, “We’re Awfully Glad That You Came.”

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 brings you an hour of god only knows what because I haven’t put the show together yet.