Month: January 2024 (Page 2 of 4)

Above you see a music video showcasing the sights of last year’s Kentuckiana’s GI Joe Winterfest.  This year’s show takes place January 27 in Louisville, Kentucky (with a preview night on the 26th). You can find my photo essays devoted to last year’s show  HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

As always at a Kentuckiana GI Joe event, we had a great time, and it was a wonderful toy show. I turned Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, loose with the video camera, and for reasons I can’t quite explain, I decided to edit what she shot to Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2.

Your PopCulteer and his lovely wife will be heading West (it’s really a pleasant drive) to just South of Louisville, Kentucky for the GI Joe Winterfest, a toy show produced by the fine folks being The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo (which happens at the end of July). Check out the Facebook Event Page for full details and preview photos. Reportedly, the snow will be gone by the time we head down there, so it should be pleasant all around.

This will be our second Winterfest, and it’s back at the new home of The Kentuckiana show.  GI Joe Winterfest happens at the Paroquet Springs Conference Centre, at 395 Paroquet Springs Drive, in Shepherdsville, KY.  It’s not far at all from the South Louisville Antique Toy Mall, so most toy collectors ought to have an easy time finding it. Check out how cool it looks…

Kick off the new year with a a celebration of 60 years of GI Joe. Find old and new 12 inch and 3 3/4 inch GI Joes, plus Star Wars, Super Hero figures, Marx, TMNT, Transformers and much more. In addition, There will be dozens of vendors  and the show promises lots of old and new Megos, Big Jim, Pop Culture items and much more.

GI Joe Winterfest is Saturday, with a Friday preview. Here’s the hours and details:

Saturday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Admission Just $8.00
Early Bird Admission at 9:00 AM for $15.00

Friday Night Preview (5:00 PM-8:00 PM) for $30.00
(Preview includes Early Bird admission on Saturday)

All admissions payable at the doors.

From March, 2009, Radio Free Charleston 63 is “Bauhaus Shirt.” This was yet another music-packed episode, featuring then-new tunes from Stephen Beckner, The Buttonflies, and returning for a second week in a row Tofujitsu. We also have a five-second appearance from Pat McAfee–back in the days before he became a pro-football star and then went on to host a popular sports talk show that platforms the poster child for CTE, Aaron Rogers–and by popular demand we also have the return of vintage beer commercial animation.

Host segments were shot in an undisclosed location in the hills surrounding Charleston. There are reports that this undisclosed location bears an uncanny resemblance to the deck behind the house where Sean and Karen from Tofujitsu lived, but we are sworn to secrecy. Also, it was raining that day.

This episode picks up my major SNAFU from the previous week, where I ran the wrong song by Tofujitsu. This episode really does have “Clap On, Clap Off” in it, and we milked the situation for some humor. Original production notes are here.

The PopCulteer
January 19, 2024

Once again your Charleston, West Virginia based blogger has travelled to a big city to see a limited engagement of a theatrical production, only to find that, due to unfortunate timing, his review will be posted a day or two before that show ends.

But…here we are.

In fact, the show in question is Here We Are, the final work of the late Stephen Sondheim, with a book by David Ives. It’s based on two films by the surrealist master Luis Buñuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel.

The draw here is the curiosity over what Sondheim’s final work would be like. He’d been working on it for years, and the subject matter, true to form for Sondheim, is challenging, to say the least.

Buñuel is not exactly a household name, unless your household is into avant-garde surrealism and cool weird stuff, and taking two of his unrelated movies (they’re not even filmed in the same language) and weaving them into a stage-worthy narrative is quite a feat.

Ives and Sondheim mostly succeed here. Here We Are has a bit of an unfinished quality to it, which could be the result of Sondheim’s passing before the show was complete, or it may have been intentional, adding to the surrealism of the story. By avoiding cliche and conventional story resolution, Ives and Sondheim may be providing the most meta of commentary on the Bourgeoisie.

People expecting a happy Sondheim musical with memorable songs and an easy to understand story don’t get those here. It’s almost like the work is a mirror held up to lampoon those people who are most likely to attend a performance of the show, although that may just be a remanant of Buñuel’s now-quaint attempts at social commentary in his original films.

The first act is based on 1972’s French-language Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, wherein a group of friends travel around in a surreal landscape attempting to have dinner, only to be thwarted at every attempt. While the play retains much of the movie, it also jettisons quite a bit of the more bizarre imagery and situations, and completely changes the ending, which makes the second act possible.

The Second act, based on 1962’s Spanish-language The Exterminating Angel, takes the characters from the the first act, and inserts them into the plot from this film, where guests, following a dinner party, find themselves unable to leave, and trapped in a room together, descend into chaos.

Joe Mantello, working with an impressive cast, has crafted a theatrical world that seems minimalistic, but isn’t really as the world on stage expands as the world the characters inhabit shrinks. There are visual callbacks to the movies (more to Discreet Charm than Exterminating Angel) and the stagecraft is amazing. We begin with a stark white stage, but eventually have a full-blown set of a library/drawing room with water effects and open flames.

The end result is more parody than homage to Buñuel’s films (which are not without humor). The idea of violent revolutionaries being left-wingers instead of right-wingers seems a little naive these days. Rather than heavy social commentary, Here We Are is loaded with absurdity and downright slapstick. At one point in the first act, I was reminded of Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” sketch.

It works largely due to a very talented cast. Every cast memeber excels, so I’m just going to list them all here before I single out a couple of them: Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, and Jeremy Shamos.

Bobby Cannavale seems to be channelling Eugene Levy’s SCTV character, “Bobby Bittman” and is priceless in the role of Leo Brink. Rachel Bay-Jones gets her fair share of laughs as Brink’s ditzy trophy wife, Marianne. Dennis O’Hare is a standout in multiple roles.

Here We Are is not likely to be considered “primo” Sondheim. There are hardly any songs in the second act and only one from the first act (“Superficial”) really stuck with me, but the same can be said of most of Sondheim’s works since the mid-1980s. The man had accomplished so much that he wanted to explore new ways of telling stories on the stage, even if that meant they were less commercial.

I found some of Here We Are a bit unsatisfying. I felt that the end of the first act, which diverts from the movie it’s based on, was vague and confusing. And I felt that the end of the second act was a bit muddled. I couldn’t tell if they tacked on a happy ending, or meant to imply that the characters were doomed to repeat the whole process over and over again.

I also felt that the second act maybe went on a bit too long, but it really could have used more of the dancing bear.

Still, Here We Are is a quiet artistic triumph. A fitting finale for Stephen Sondheim’s career, which saw him refusing to take the easy way out. I’m hoping that they recorded this, because I don’t know if they’ll attempt to transfer this to Broadway any time soon. This production is playing at The Shed at Hudson Yards in New York until Sunday, if you’re interested in seeing it and somehow haven’t heard of it until this review.

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

Frigid nasty weather has arrived, and we have a new batch of STUFF TO DO in and around the Charleston/Huntington WV area (and beyond) this weekend, if you’re very careful and stay safe.

As I have been copying and pasting 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 & Joey Laffery take the stage. Saturday Minor Swing brings their Djangoesque music to the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

Saturday sees The Carpenter Ants at The ROQ, underneath the old Quarrier Diner, at 8 PM.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about. Thursday at 5:30 PM it’s the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin.  Thursday at 10 PM the Glass is promising Shred Night, hosted by Kenny Booth, interrupted so that they can have a watch party for Sierra Ferrell appearing on Jimmy Kimmel. . Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday Evie Schaffer makes her debut at the Glass.  Saturday singer/songwriter Grace Campbell comes to The Glass.  you can check below for the graphics for this and other weekend shows.

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, “Red Alert” winter storm warnings, Jack Frost nosing at your nipples, injsufferable local commercial actors running for office 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…

As astute readers who picked up on the subtle and not-so-subtle hints over the last week may already know, your PopCulteer was in The Big Apple for a few days last week.

What you may not know is that I came back, finished up a pressing outside assignment, and then promptly found myself under the weather with a narsty non-Covid respiratory crud.

So today, I’m going to take it easy and just share a few photos from the trip. Then I’ll crawl back into bed and resume coughing.

Our main reason for going was that Mel really wanted to see two shows that are having limited runs. One of them was the hilarious “Guttenberg” starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells, from the original cast of “The Book of Mormon.”

The show is presented as two wannabee playwrights from New Jersey, who have booked a Broadway theater to hold a “backers audition,” hoping to attract investors for their musical about the inventor of the printing press, Johan Guttenberg.

The humor comes from the fact that the playwrights perform all the parts themselves, with the aid of ballcaps printed with the character names, and also, since their Google search didn’t turn up much about Guttenberg, they made up most of the story.

Our first hotel (we hotel hopped to take advantage of Hilton Honors points), had this view of The Palace Theater, where we saw The SpongeBob Musical more than five years ago. Since then, they have shut down the theater so they could raise it 30 feet. It’s due to reopen soon, fully restored, but no longer at street level.

I had a weird thing happen during Guttenberg. My eyes uncrossed. So for much of the rest of the trip I didn’t need glassses. Times Square is a cool place to be when you have perfect vision all of a sudden.

We didn’t get a chance to see this show on this trip.

We did get to sit on Father Duffy’s Steps and watch the famous and annoying Times Square mascots. King Kong was impressive, but I took the photos from a distance so that I didn’t get hassled by Spider-man, who I think was acting as Kong’s mascot pimp.

Crap! I think he saw me!

Advertising is everywhere in Times Square. I think these were promoting a Broadway adaptation of the Monkees’ movie.

Finally, we had a view of The Empire State Building from our second hotel. Tomorrow PopCult will bring you STUFF TO DO, as your humble blogger attempts to recover.

Tuesday finds a partly-new Radio Free Charleston on The AIR.  Our all-new mixtape first hour of  Radio Free Charleston is accompanied by classic two-hour episode of RFC International.

To listen to The AIR, 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.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.

Our first hour is a mixtape because I actually recorded this show the weekend before last when my voice was mostly shot. The reason for doing that was because Mel and I had a quick trip to New York scheduled, I also had a big magazine deadline the day after we got back, so I was going to be tied up with that on what is probably “yesterday” to my faithful readers. I wasn’t going to have time to record a new show, or write a post about it.

So the only option (besides miss a week) was to record the show the same time as last week’s, on Sunday, January 7, then write the post about it (which you are now reading) on Tuesday, January 9, so that I can hop on the train on January 10, and return on January 14.

So…by the time you’re reading this I’m already back home. I wonder how the trip went?

The first hour mixtape is loaded with treats, and kicks off with the RFC debut of Velez Manifesto, who were a big deal in Morgantown about forty years ago. The lader of the group has passed away, and his bandmates have digitized their albums and put them up on Bandcamp for free.

Our second and third hours are a special double-shot episode of RFC International, where I play two songs in a row from a collection of artists that seems somewhat random.

Because of the deadline pressures, I’m skipping the links this week. Sorry, but your humble blogger is only hooman and something had to give.

RFC V5 159

hour one
Velez Manifesto “Such A Pretty Eye”
Johnny Compton “Until We Meet Again”
Zeroking “Back Off”
All Torches Lit “Crown of Ash”
The Carpenter Ants “Shakin’ Hands with Charlie Tee”
Joi “Dark Eyed Lady”
Corduroy Brown “Who Am I For Now”
Hello June “Sometimes”
Sean Richardson “Magentle”
Rasta Rafiki “Dr. Herb”
The Tom McGees “Enemy Spy Plane Inbound”
Buni Muni “Stay”
Jerks “O High Yo”
63 Eyes “They’re All You”
Miniature Giant “Jale Dunior”

hour two
Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Jimmy Page “Rock and Roll”
Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Buddy Guy “Hadacol Boogie”
Save Ferris “Anything”
Save Ferris “Do I Even Like You”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “Amputation”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “The Two of Us”
Thin Lizzy “Jailbreak”
Thin Lizzy “Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed”
Syd Straw “CBGBs”
Syd Straw “A Million Miles”
Depeche Mode “Where’s The Revolution”
Depeche Mode “Cover Me”
Steve Hackett “Behind The Smoke”
Steve Hackett “50 Miles From The North Pole”

hour three
Mel C “Something for The Fire”
Mel C “Numb”
Koffin Kats “Party Time In The End Times”
Koffin Kats “Black Knight Satellite”
Marc Almond “Bad To Me”
Marc Almond “The Idol (pt one)”
Redbone “Custer Had It Coming”
Redbone “Dancing Bones”
Navarone “Chrome”
Navarone “Snake”
True Sounds of Liberty “Why Can’t We Do It Again”
True Sounds of Libery “Nothing Ever Lasts”
Chuck Berry “Liverpool Drive”
Chuck Berry “Hey Pedro”

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 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 classic 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 offer up a classic episode of The Swing Shift.

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.

Our art this week had more complicated origins that you might initially think.

This is a scene of the Belmont platform on Chicago’s L Train system.  I liked the way things looked there, but rather than snap a photo, I whipped out my phone and stylus (yours truly has a very hard time operating a touch screen due to Myasthenia Gravis) and did a very quick and sloppy sketch in Notes, and then made color notations for future reference.

After I got home, I transferred the file to the computer and printed it out in light gray on paper for pens. Then I worked it over with watercolor pens, pastel crayon and acrylic paints until it looks like what you see above. It’s smaller and more abstract that much of my recent work. This style is not exactly new for me, but it’s a tad different. I don’t know if I’m going to try to do more work like this in the future or not. I’m happy with the way this came out, but I don’t know if the world needs any more like it.

Maybe later I’ll redo it, but with ultra-high realistic detail.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of 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 the stand-up of Patton Oswalt on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents the first ten hours of a twenty-episode mixtape series of The Lost Beatles on Beatles Blast. We’ll run the second ten of these next week.

This week PopCult brings you “Aisles of Doom,” an early short film by Alex Winter (with Tom Stern), who went on to co-write and direct and star in the Bill and Ted movies and the film, “Freaked.”

Longtime readers with incredible memories may recall that, just under ten years ago, I posted this same video in this spot. The reason for doing it again is that it’s really good; it’s something I first saw on Night Flight; and your PopCulteer is cranking out a ton of posts in advance because, as you read this, he’s on a train coming back from NYC.

But mostly, it’s really good.

From March, 2009, it’s Radio Free Charleston episode 62.  This installment featured music from Tofujitsu (that was Sean Richardson and Karen Allen) and The Bible Beaters. We also brought you a trailer for Butch Maier’s feature film The Bride & The Grooms, which debuted at Park Place Stadium Cinema in April 2009. Our animation is vintage stuff, with a cow rescuing two ducks from a racial stereotype.

Host segments were shot on an unseasonably hot Monday afternoon in March. This show is called “Action Comics Shirt,” and this episode is notable for me completely screwing up the title of Tofujitsu’s song–totally. I misidentified it even while editing and mixing and introducing it. The song in this show is “Pop Up,” and it is a lovely song, but it’s not “Clap On, Clap Off.” That was the song I was supposed to include in this episode.This is worth noting because it set up a very elaborate series of gags in the next episode, which we will bring back next week.

You can find the sort of original production notes (with a tacked-on apology) right here!

The PopCulteer
January 12, 2024

With your humble blogger coughing his way through a quick trip to New York City, all we have for you this week is notes on our Friday radio programming on The AIR.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch does a 180 from the previous episode of MIRRORBALL and devotes a full hour to intricately curated classics of the very early, some would say “prehistoric” Disco era, in 1975, when “Disco” was just beginning to become recognizable as a musical style.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Just like last time, every song on this week’s show is making its MIRROBALL debut, which is getting really tricky to pull off as Mel prepares to hit her 100th episode sometime in the new year. The focus this week is on the big club hits from very early in the Disco era, before Donna Summer, The Bee Gees or KC and the Sunshine Band had their first chart-toppers, when Disco was just another word for “danceclub” and nobody had time to be threatened by it yet.

It’s a cool collection of dance classics from the beginning of the Golden Age of Disco, when funk and soul mixed with Latin and techno and gelled into what became a dancefloor sensation. This is a big slab of fossilized funk that shows you just a hint of what was yet to come.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 088

Archie Bell & The Drells “Dance Your Troubles Away”
Astor & The Potentials “Give Me What I Want”
Black Stash “Mighty Love Man”
Brass Construction “Movin'”
Brooklyn People “Boogie Man (Parts One and Two)”
Citizen Samuel Cain “Burnin’ Cab”
Mahattan Express “Bad Girl”
Loleatta Holloway “Only A Fool”
Pino Presti “Smile”
The Duprees “Delicious”
Eddie drennon & B.B.S. “Let’s Do The Latin Hustle”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM we bring you an encore of a claasic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from 2017, loaded with crunchy New Wave Goodness.

Check out the playlist…

BEC 020
Oingo Boingo  “Private Life”
Missing Persons  “Hello, I Love You”
INXS  “Need You Tonight”
Vivabeat  “Man From China”
Go West  “We Close Our Eyes”
Fad Gadget  “Back To Nature”
Erasure  “The Circus”
The Clash  “Straight To Hell”
Toyah  “Blue Meaning”
Ultravox  “Rockwrock”
Fear  “Let’s Have A War”
Biizarre Leidenschnatt  “Plasticpuppen”
The Nerves  “TV Adverts”
Stiff Little Fingers  “Nobody’s Heroes (Live)”
Blitz  “Youth” Mi Sex  “21-20”
Yoko Ono  “Move On Fast”
The Cure  “10:15 Saturday Night”
The Distributors  “T.V. Me”
Kraftwerk  “Tour De France”
Simple Minds  “Someone Somewhere In Summertime”
Ian Dury and the Blockheads  “What A Waste”
The Saints  “Know Your Product”
Aerial  “Cold War Love”
Siouxsie and the Banshees  “Suburban Relapse”
Berlin  “Sex (I’m A)” (extended version)
Blue Me  “Berlin”
The Jam  “Going Underground”
Generation X  “King Rocker
Yellow Magic Orchestra  “Cosmic Surfin’”

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.

For New Year’s Eve this year, The AIR will play our usual overnight marathon of The Swing Shift, but rather than bring you our episodes in order, for this week we’ll cherry-pick the very best for youso you can dance into the new year in style. That begins Sunday at Midnight, immediately following an encore of today’s new MIRRORBALL!

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day, and try not to blow up Charleston while I’m out of town.