Month: November 2024 (Page 6 of 6)

Our first music pick for The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a new vinyl pressing (also available on CD in a deluxe boxed set) of King Crimson’s 1974 masterpiece, RED. This one’s for the more daring music lover on your holiday shopping list.

This is a double 200gm vinyl LP pressing housed in gatefold jacket. This 50th anniversary 2LP edition takes the music to new levels of clarity & power. RED was one of the earliest mixes undertaken by Steven Wilson in 2009 & King Crimson was the first of a number of classic bands & artists to be mixed by Steven so it’s entirely appropriate that he return, some 15 years later, to take the album into the Dolby Atmos era.

While mixing the album for Dolby Atmos, Steven also prepared new stereo & 5.1 mixes. Those new stereo mixes appear on LP1 of this 2LP set.

LP2 consists of a complete album’s worth of Elemental Mixes by long-time King Crimson producer (& band manager) David Singleton – using the original multi-track recordings to present a very different audio picture of the album, with greater separation of instruments & utilising many elements recorded for, but not included in, the original mixes.

This LP features a unique insight into Bruford’s percussion overdubs in place of “Providence” and an extended intro to “Starless.” This version of “Starless” is so striking that I played the entire 14-minute song on Radio Free Charleston in episode 200 last week.

As King Crimson biographer Sid Smith puts it in his new notes for the album: “David Singleton’s elemental mixes pull the veil aside on the original sessions and act as a kind of alternative account, a Red that could have been, revealing the different passes and takes that the band undertook as well as those of Collins, Charig and McDonald as they engaged with the material”.

RED, the final album by the 1970s incarnation of King Crimson was quite the departure.  The band’s strong leader, Robert Fripp, stepped back and let vocalist/bassist John Wetton (pre-ASIA) and drummer, Bill Bruford (formerly of YES and a mainstay of the 1980’s Crimson) run the show.  For the first time the band was something of a Democracy, and it worked wonders for this swansong that closed the first chapter of King Crimson. Epic numbers such as the title track and “Starless” stand among the greatest works of Progressive Rock. Some folks have suggest that RED is ground zero for what became Prog-Metal.

You should be able to order this 2 LP Anniversary edition of RED from any local record shop, or you could take the easy way out and get it online  from Amazon (it’s actually cheaper at Walmart).

If you want a whole hell of a lot more for about the same price, I recommend the Deluxe boxed set that includes two CDs + two Blu-Rays. This box has the contents of the 2 LPs on CD, but also features those completely new Dolby Atmos, 5. 1 DTS-HD Master Audio Surround & Stereo mixes by Steven Wilson in full Blu Ray glory along with a generous bonus. RED was recorded immediately after King Crimson’s final US tour of 1974 & the anniversary edition reflects that by including all three Hi-Res Stereo mixes of the live album USA in it’s full concert versions. Also included are a quintet of audio restored bootlegs being issued on disc for the first time, alongside a bootleg of the band’s final US concert in New York in 1974 which Robert Fripp claimed was: “the first gig since the 1969 Crimson where the bottom of my spine registered ‘out of this world’ to the same degree.”

Either anniversary edition of RED is highly recommended as a gift for the fan of Crimson, Prog-rock or just adventurous music in general. As a bonus, fans of ASIA might be thrilled to hear Wetton taking on more challenging material.

On this election day, we have an all-new three-hour show. You’d be surprised how much you can cram into a three-hour show, when you’re hoping for the best, but also hiding in your home bunker because you voted early and just wish it was all over (and the good guys win).

Tuesday means a new RFC on The AIR.  And this week  Radio Free Charleston presents three fresh hours of listenting enjoyment for you. 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 boatloads of replays throughout the week.

This week we offer up two hours of new local, independent and alternative music for you, and then we bring you a special mixtape third hour devoted to some unorthodox covers.

The show opens with a brand-new song from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, one of the Mountain States most exciting artists.  We follow that up with new music from Huntington’s Living Room, as well as The Fleshtones, The Cure and Tears for Fears (for those of you stuck in the 80s) and also new releases from Corduroy Brown, Beth Hart, Rat Ship, Rhoda Dakar, The Surfrajettes, Matt Berry and Lin Manuel Miranda. We spice that up with some more cool local music and some great indie stuff.

Our third hour is a mixtape collection of cover songs that may very well leave you scratching your heads. We open with a new Willie Nelson track, where he covers a song by The Flaming Lips. After that it gets really weird. I’m not even going to warn you about it. Just listen and enjoy the alternate realities.

Check out the playlist below. Where possible in the first two hours, live links will take you to the artist’s pages.

RFC V5 201

hour one
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Lie To Me”
Living Room “Chasing Ghosts”
The Brogues “I Ain’t No Miracle Worker”
The Fleshtones “Empty Sky”
Orville Rex “Silvertone Jaguar”
Rat Ship “Coffin Meringue”
Devon Townsend “PowerNerd”
Corduroy Brown “Doin’ My Best (live at Blenko)”
Famous Groupies “The Traveller”
Rosalie Cunningham “To Shoot Another Day”
John Radcliff “It’s Not A Dream”
Beth Hart “Machine Gun Vibrato”
Novo Combo “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”
Rhoda Dakar “Private Eye”

hour two
The Surfrajettes “Double Reverb”
Matt Berry “I Gotta Limit (featuring Kitty Luv)”
Bad Keys of the Mountain “Free Ride”
Wolfgang Parker “The Father/The Son”
Ann Magnuson “Man With No Face”
Ryan Hardiman & Moonage Daydream “Ashes To Ashes”
The Cure “Endsong”
Tears For Fears “Goodbye Mum And Dad”
Unmanned “Aliens”
Lin Manuel Mirandas Warriors “Going Down”
Chuck Biel “Mach Turtle”
The Dollyrots “The Vow”
Nu Mutants “Undertaker”
Lords of Atlantis “Temple of Poseidon/Sands of Mauritania”

hour three
Willie Nelson “Do You Realize”
Paramore “Burning Down The House”
Government Cheese “The KKK Took My Baby Away”
The Anchoress “Bizarre Love Triangle”
The Feelies “I’m Waiting For The Man”
Daniel Glass “Smoke On The Water”
St. Vincent “Funkytown”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Born To Run”
Max Tundra “This Woman’s Work”
Puddles Pity Party “Paranoid/Driven To Tears”
No Doubt “It’s My Life”
Triggerfinger “Need You Tonight”
Erasure “Heart of Glass”
The Dickies “Sounds of Silence”
Waxx & Pénélope Bagieu “Just Can’t Get Enough”
Gene “Town Called Malice”

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, Sunday at 8 PM 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 bring you an encore of a special episode of The Swing Shift devoted to Quincy Jones’ Big Band, in honor of his passing.

 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.

Today’s second entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a collection of items inspired by the carpet pattern from The Overlook Hotel, as seen in Stanley Kubrick’s adaption of Stephen King’s The Shining. 

Any devout fan of the movie will get a kick out of these cool things that let you bring a little piece of the horror and madness home with you.  These are all courtesy of Pop Kulture Vulture, a nifty online emporium of cult coolness that also sells stuff based on Ken Russell, Tor Johnson, The Exorcist and more high-quality terror inducements. But this entry will point you to the Overlook.

I actually have the button-up shirt, which is in low supply. I saw folks wearing this shirt with the distinctive pattern at WonderFest USA in June, and it didn’t hit me where it was from until I got to Anthony Taylor’s table (he’s the guy behind Pop Kulture Vulture and the organizer of Monsterama, which we may go to next year) and saw the hotel keychains.  When the circuits in my brain all connected, I bought one on the spot (and a keychain, too).

The cool part about this shirt (which is heavy duty and high quality) is that not everybody recognizes it. Many folks will just think that it’s a particularly striking pattern…but when somebody does recognize it, it’s like an instant secret handshake.

Now, if button-up shirts aren’t your thing, you can also get this pattern on a wallet, handkerchief, shower curtains, throw blankets, face masks, aprons, socks, license plates, scarves, arm sleeves, neck ties, and more. The rabid fan of The Shining can be decked out nearly head-to-toe in Overlook Hotel swag. And as the person giving the gift, you can enable the obsession, and possibly be spared if they snap and start chasing people around with an axe.

What better way is there to celebrate the big Winter holiday than by celebrating the big Winter movie?

Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy: Bearclaw’s World Presents Vol 1 Plates 1 – 52
by Brion Woods (Author), Janice Wagoner (Editor)
Independently published
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8332906152
$20 from Amazon

Our first pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide today is an exquiste art/coloring book by local creator, Brion Woods. Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy collects 52 of his drawings depicting his fantastic creations.

Brion’s intricate drawings bring to life scenes of warriors, monsters, fierce battles and adventures from a fantasy world that will challenge your imagination.  A longtime devotee of Dungeons and Dragons, Woods has created his of characters that just hint at the tales yet to unfold.

We go to the Amazon description:

The first in a series of coloring books, photo arrays, gaming modules and stories from the adventures and imagination of Brion “Bearclaw” Woods. This coloring book contains 52 impressive drawings meant for an adult audience. They are extremely detailed to keep the user entertained as they find themselves being pulled into Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy

Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy is a perfect gift for any fan of Sword & Sorcery and D&D.  It works well as an art book, but is intended as a high-end adult coloring book, which will draw you even further into the worlds that Woods has imagined for you.  Plus you’re supporting a local creator.

Not only is this a special gift of art, it’s also the first of what is meant to be an entire universe of multi-media realizations of Brion Woods’ creative ambitions.  It’s your chance to get in on the ground floor of something…magic. Bearclaw’s Realms of Fantasy: Bearclaw’s World Presents Vol 1 Plates 1 – 52 can be ordered from Amazon, and you’ll have it in plenty of time for holiday gifting.

This week’s art is me revealing a bit of my process. Based on a few photos I took in Chicago, this is the beginning of a painting of a couple of distinctive buildings. For this small study on textured paper, I’d planned to lay down a rough ink wash sketch in one color, then build on that with a variety of media until I got it looking the way I wanted it.

This was supposed to be the first step, but when I got this far, I decided that I wanted to go with a different shade of blue for my base, instead of the mix of sky blue and emerald that I used here.  (There’s also some indigo and black in the mix for shading). I’ll be starting this one over, probably with a tweak to the composition as well.

However, this version wound up looking pretty good, despite not being what I wanted my final vision to resemble, so I’m sharing it here as a “happy accident.”

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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. 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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of conceptual random comedy a classic early episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Prognosis.  That hat Halloween is out of the way, we are back to alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat for the next several weeks, because we’re going to be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server soon to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus.

This week we are briging you most of a Sunday Evening Video that ran nearly four years ago.  The reason for this is that I think this is a really cool set of videos that you’ll enjoy seeing again, and more importantly, the video I had planned for this spot got yanked from YouTube right after I composed a long post to go alongside it. So…recycling was the path of least resistance. 

Admittedy, your PopCulteer is not exactly up-to-date as a gamer. I resent any controller that doesn’t have joystick. I still haven’t figured out how to watch Twitch. And to be honest, the last video game system I bought was a Colecovision.

That would be over forty years ago.

However, at the time, owning one made me a cutting-edge gamer.

Tonight we bring you a few brief histories of the Colecovision gaming system. Some of them contradict each other in places. Some of them are from the UK, so they may seem a bit off to US viewers.

This is a public service, so that when you read about videogames here in PopCult, you can see my immediate frame of reference.

From July, 2010, we have what was supposed to have been the sixth, and final installment of our coverage of FestivAll 2010.  In this episode you will see Option 22, Brian Diller, Bare Bones and The Velvet Gypsies. You’ll also get glimpses of Jude Binder, Kitty Killton and the Musical Easels project with Adrian DeQuiros. This might’ve been our first full HD edition of the show, too.

Now, the fun part of this was that I’d shot so much material during FestivAll that, a mere three episodes later, I managed to squeeze out a seventh installment, and even had host segments that I’d shot back in June when I was filming everything else. You’ll see that in a few weeks in this space.

As has been tradition for more than the last decade, the first entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is this year’s HESS Toy Truck. And this year, their sixtieth year of producing a cool toy truck for the holidays, they’ve gone all-out with a triple-threat twist on a classic toy.

The 2024 Hess Fire Truck with Car and Motorcycle is packaged in a specially marked product box that commemorates their milestone anniversary as the official 60th Anniversary toy.

As has been the case every year, this new heroic emergency response trio is the most feature-packed holiday Hess Toy Truck team ever – loaded with a record number of animated lights, sounds, motors, and chrome detailing. It’s more than a fire engine. It’s three vehicles and a light show.

The classic red, cab-forward, aerial ladder Fire Truck is remarkably embellished with white body side striping, glistening chrome details, emergency light bar, searchlights, and a towering ladder. Each of the 4 cab-top buttons activate a unique realistic sound (truck horn, European emergency siren, traditional emergency siren, engine start/idle) synchronized with a different animated light pattern. A switch on the chassis underside enables the truck’s 43 brilliant red, white & blue emergency lights to operate in steady or flashing mode. The triple-tier aerial extension ladder, with click-turn 360˚ rotation and 60˚ elevation, extends to over 15”. The ladder is flanked by two super bright multi-directional searchlights, each with click-turn 180˚ vertical and 270˚ horizontal rotation for maximum search visibility. Two illuminated transport holds house the fire chief car (accessed through a button release rear lift gate and a pull-out ramp which triggers a motion-activated hydraulic sound) and the motorcycle (which can be accessed with a quick press of a button above the dual-purpose fold-down ramp doors on either side of the truck). As the official 60th Anniversary Hess Toy Truck, a special commemorative illuminated ‘60’ insignia is embedded into the front grille and embossed on each of the side ramp doors.

The red Fire Chief car sports ‘racing-style‘ white striping. Completing the sleek design is a rear spoiler, tinted windows, and chrome accessories – including emergency light bar, front and rear bumpers, and wheel covers. A switch on the underside of the chassis activates the 37 multicolor grille, bumper, emergency, and side running lights in steady mode. The speedy pull back motor propels the car for a quick response to any emergency!

The red rescue-style motorcycle carries a rider clad in a safety suit with contrasting white piping and chrome firefighting backpack. A turn of the rider’s helmet activates the 4 head and taillights in steady-on mode. The ‘rev-and-release’ friction motor propels the high-speed bike forward in flat or wheelie position!

The 2024 60th Anniversary Hess Fire Truck with Car and Motorcycle is sold exclusively at HessToyTruck.com for $45.99 plus tax with free standard shipping* and Energizer® batteries included.

It’s a killer toy fire engine, with loads of extras, and it’s a great collectible for kids of all ages.

The PopCulteer
November 1, 2024

It’s November first and that means it’s time to start the most anticipated series of posts in PopCult, our annual Gift Guide.

Because of some unusual circumstances (I have a magazine deadline falling in the middle of the month, and at the same time I’m aiding my lovely wife in her recovery from major surgery) we’re changing the ground rules this year.

Each weekday you can expect two posts.  One will offer up a single gift suggestion, while the second may contain multiple gift ideas (or it may not).  Since the readership for this blog fairly well plummets on weekends, I won’t be running the Gift Guide on those days. Our regular features will continue on their regular days, so we will still have fresh content every day.

The last day for The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide will be November 29. The master list will be in The PopCulteer on the following Friday.

As for what you can expect…look for one more post later today, our first day will be a toy, as always, and our second day will see two posts on Monday.  Beyond that you can expect the usual mix of comics, toys, music, video, trinketry, art and apparel. You’ll just have to check every day to see what pops up.

This is always a little overwhelming for your humble blogger, but it’s also something that people ask about all year long, so this first entry will serve as today’s PopCulteer column and then I’m off to write the first post.

Check PopCult often for new entries in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide and all our regular features and notes on our programming on The AIR.