Month: May 2025 (Page 2 of 4)

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 a few days ago 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 Award for Best Musical as Broadway is back to be saluted once again 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 songs each from the five nominated musicals, but before that, Mel opens with a song from the musical, BOOP!, which was inexplicably snubbed, garnering only three nominations, for Costume Design, Choreography and for its star, Jasmine Amy Rogers as Best Actress in a Musical. Doing her part to right that wrong, Mel opens the show with Tony nominee, Jasmine Amy Rogers, showing why she should win the big award.

The nominees for Best Musical are…

Maybe Happy Ending A South Korean musical with lyrics written by Hue Park, music composed by Will Aronson, and book written by both Park and Aronson. This musical follows two life-like helper-bots, Oliver and Claire, who discover each other in Seoul later in the 21st century and develop a connection that challenges what they believe is possible for themselves, exploring relationships, love and mortality. It’s basically boy robot meets girl robot.

Death Becomes Her features a book by Marco Pennette and music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey. It’s based on the 1992 film of the same name directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. The show is basically a bitch-fight between two immortal, stuck-up frenemies. As such, it’s a laugh-riot.

Operation Mincemeat is a musical comedy with book, music and lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts (known as the musical comedy troupe SpitLip) This show is their first full-length production and it’s a doozy.
The plot is based on Operation Mincemeat, a real-life Second World War British deception operation centered around the invasion of Sardinia. This story is told with slapstick hilarity that recalls the work of titans of British comedy like The Goon Show and Monty Python.

Dead Outlaw is a musical with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna and a book by Itamar Moses. It is inspired by the life of Elmer McCurdy, a gunfighter in the 1800s who was shot dead, stuff, and went on to have a successful career in show business.

Buena Vista Social Club is a stage musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez and featuring the music recorded by the ensemble musician group Buena Vista Social Club. It’s based in large part on the aclaimed 1997 documentary of the same name directed by Wm. Wenders, and musically directed by Ry Cooder. The musical is set in Havana, Cuba and spans time from the 1950s to the 1990s, following the lives of four prominent musicians, the effect communism and the rise of Fidel Castro had on musicians at the time, and their eventual collaboration in 1997 on the landmark album Buena Vista Social Club. The original cast album is not due for release until after The Tony Awards, but Mel samples a couple of tunes from the original album that made it into the show.

Following the songs from the nominees for Best Musical, we get a taste of three of the four nominees for Best Revival of a Musical.

Check out the playlist:

Curtain Call 156

“Something To Shout About” from BOOP!
“World Within My Room” and “A Sentimental Person” from Maybe Happy Ending
“‘Til Death,” “That Was Then, This Is Now” and “Don’t Say I Didn’t (Warn You)” from Death Becomes Her
“Born To Lead,” “Bevan’s Update” and “Did We Do It?” from Operation Mincemeat
“Something From Nothing” and “Dead” from Dead Outlaw
“Chan Chan” and “Dos Gardenias” from Buena Vista Social Club
“Together, Wherever We Go” from Gypsy
“Sunset Boulevard” from Sunset Boulevard
“The Carnival” from Floyd Collins

The 2024 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Pluto TV and Paramount + on Sunday, June, 8.

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.

Prepare yourselves for three hours of brand-new Radio Free Charleston today on The AIR.  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.

It’s a free-format extravaganza as we open this week’s show with a new track from Ghoulbox. We also have brand-new tunes from Novelty Island, The Heavy Editors, Peter Murphy, Tracey Bonham, Arcade Fire, The Kooks, Suzanne Vega and more.

Our second hour brings you long-form music, while our third hour mixes pop with Prog and Synthpop, and even tosses in some vintage Police.

You should stick around, as always, for our mystery bonus tracks at the end of the show. We’d tell you more about them, but then they wouldn’t be a mystery, now would they?

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists who have websites.

RFC V5 225

hour one
Ghoulbox “The House That Wouldn’t Die”
Novelty Island “Rainy”
Corduroy Brown “Biting My Tongue (Live)”
The Heavy Editors “The Sea’s On Fire”
Peter Murphy “Hot Roy”
Tracey Bonham “Jumping Bean”
Kerosene Stars “Kerosine”
Arcade Fire “Stuck In My Head”
The Kooks “Echo Chamber”
Suzanne Vega “Galway”
Ian Hunter “Fiction”
Ann Magnuson “Moonage Daydream”
Ron Sowell “Everything That Goes Round Comes Round”

hour two
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess ” “Sour”
The Settlement “Linger (live)”
Brass Camel “Zealot”
Living Stilts “The Puppet Massacre”
Elleven “Release”

hour three
Falling Stars “Waiting For Love”
David Synn “The Trifecta”
Tarja “Victim of Ritual (live)”
Marco Mattai “Human Again”
Magic Pie “Someone Else’s Wannabee”
Byzantine “Floating Chrysanthema”
SPACE FREQ “Trickle”
Blank Spaces “Courage Of My Convictions”
The Police “Don’t Stand So Close To Me (86)”

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 give you an encore of two classic episodes 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 is new again this week, and it’s a pencil drawing.

Actually, it’s a “pencils” drawing. I used my Blackwing Palamino, a charcoal pencil, a wax pencil and even a cheap mechanical pencil, plus a straight edge and the better part of a Blackwing eraser.

I had this idea to try to draw Chicago’s “Bean” (otherwise known as Cloudgate) in pencil on copy machine paper…from memory.

I’ve spent hours looking at photos I took of The Bean in Millenium Park over the years, so this wasn’t exactly a feat of astounding ability. I knocked this out in three sessions over three days, and it’s far from perfect, but I’m happy enough with it.

It was another case of me fighting through a Myasthenia Gravis flare-up. This time stubbornness prevailed.

To see this week’s art bigger try clicking HERE.

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

At 8 PM you can hear the Simpsons sing on a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, focusing on a few special theme episodes.

This week we are going to refurbish and restore an edition of PopCult’s Sunday Evening Video that originally ran in this space way back in November, 2008.  Since that time, the standards for embedding video have changed, and many of these clips have vanished from their original spots on the internet. We’re going to do our best to recreate the original post from almost seventeen years ago, because the cereal talk in which we indulged earlier this week made us hungry for our once again-discontinued favorite cereal of all time.

I’m talking about Quisp. You know, the cereal from the 1960s that had the little alien with a Jerry Lewis voice on the commercials? It was the greatest breakfast cereal known to man. I get hungry just thinking of it. Tonight we’re looking at some of the classic commercials by Bullwinkle and Rocky creator Jay Ward, as well as a now quaintly out-of-date web commercial by John Kricfalusi (of Ren and Stimpy fame). Rather than posting a stack of videos, we have one classic, and one long compilation of almost all of the Quisp vs. Quake commercials, then the “new” commercial, which is 24 years old now.

The funny thing is, Quisp and Quake (and Cap’n Crunch) all had the same flavor. The difference was that Quisp was pleasantly chewy, whereas Cap’n Crunch would destroy the roof of your mouth, and Quake, which was shaped like rocks and gears or something, could actually draw blood. What I’m saying here is…stick with Quisp, if they still made it, that is. Quaker Oats once again discontinued this cereal last year. I guess it was just too perfect to exist the world we have now.

In this long compilation, watch as Quisp battles his rival, Quake, for breakfast cereal dominance. Quake goes through a few changes along the way.

And finally as promised, here’s Quisp in the 21st Century, by John K. and Spumco!

For the next few weeks The RFC Flashback will go back to the most ambitious series of episodes in Radio Free Charleston history.  In June, 2011 I decided to try and do something sort of crazy. I’d managed to crank out Radio Free Charleston on a weekly basis before, which was no mean feat since the show was basically produced by me alone, with camera help from my now-wife Mel Larch and occasional help from other friends. For FestivALL 2011, I managed to produce eight episodes of Radio Free Charleston in under two weeks.

This week we being you the third special FestivALL 2011 episode of Radio Free Charleston, which featured music from The Kingfish Five, Joseph Hale, 600 lbs of SIn and Uncle Eddy and Robyn. There are also scenes from Sunday Funday at The Clay Center and Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art Show. By the end of this show we’d posted more than an hour of FestivALL in three days, and next week you’ll see the episode that we posted on the fourth consecutive day of our insane production schedule.

The PopCulteer
MAY 16, 2025

So…I’m not really in London.

Your humble blogger is still working from the teeming metropolis of Dunbar, but my computer thinks it’s in London. Allow me to explain (and fill up this short edition of The PopCulteer).

As part of my now two-month-long (and counting) effort to upgrade my computer and internet, this week I signed up for a popular VPN service (which I will endorse whole-heartedly once I have the chance to see how much I like it) and for a couple of reasons, one related to paying work, I have used it to set my virtual location to London, England, which is just one of the many cool things you can do with a VPN.

My main reason for this was a work-related issue where I needed to have access to a client’s servers in the UK. But the side benefit is that I now have access to Netflix in the UK.

Netflix is different in every country, and in the UK they have quite a few programs that they do not have in the US.

For instance, and this is the big one actually, in the UK, Netflix is home to ALL of WWE’s programming.  In the US they show RAW on Monday nights.  In most of the rest of the world they carry RAW, NXT, Smackdown and all the PLEs.

As a extra treat, they carry these shows commercial-free. There’s actually bonus programming to fill in most of the gaps caused by the US commercial breaks.

And this is desirable, not only for the bonus content, but because our local CW affiliate, WQCW, is run by WSAZ, who have always had utter contempt for their network programming and seem to enjoy pre-empting their most popular entertainment programs in order to show sports. They tend to do this with no warning.

It’s like their ad sales department can’t sell anything but ads on sporting programs, and their programming department doesn’t care to let the public know in advance that the show they’ve been looking forward to watching all day will be replaced by a Reds game, or hockey, or some other nonsense.

It is apparent that, for the remainder of the baseball season, WQCW (managed by WSAZ) will be pre-empting the highest-rated show on The CW every Tuesday night, NXT. They won’t admit to this, but it’s happened the last two weeks and at one point they shared a graphic on social media indicating that it was “Every Tuesday.”

So rather than put on my Don Quixote outfit to do battle with WSAZ once again, I just cut them out of the equation. Tuesday I watched NXT on Netflix, and it was delightful.  I didn’t have to watch the same four ads for WSAZ’s news team over and over, and I got the bonus content instead of any commercials. So basically, WSAZ/WQCW can take the Reds and stick them up their ass. I don’t need ’em anymore.

This is not the first example of better living through streaming that has caused me to circumvent WSAZ.  They are also the local affiliate for ME TV on one of their digital subchannels, and over the winter they had the audacity to pre-empt the highest-rated show on that network, Svengoolie, for a freaking Columbus hockey game.

I didn’t even know Columbus had a hockey team.

I mean, you don’t mess with a fella’s Svengoolie. Keep in mind that WSAZ has NEVER shown Toon In With ME, the daily classic cartoon show, because they’d rather run their 7 AM news in that timeslot…at the same time they also run it on The CW.  It has to run on two channels so they can be dicks to fans of cartoons.

Rather than get mad (not a good idea at my age) when I got wind of the hockey blasphemy, I signed up for a streaming service called FRNDLY TV.

For seven bucks a month I get a suite of channels, including ME TV, the new ME TV Toons, and several other ME TV related channels, along with four dozen other channels like A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, The Weather Channel, Game Show Network, Reelz and more.

It even has a built-in virtual DVR so you can record the shows that are on at inconvenient times and watch them whenever you want. It’s like a cool mini-cable system for seven bucks a month. And it’s worth every penny just stick it to WSAZ.

Let me explain…I’ve been pissed off at WSAZ for probably fifty years. Back when Saturday Night Live was first announced, I was extremely excited. I was a huge comedy nerd. I knew most of the writing staff and some of the cast members from The National Lampoon and various projects, and I knew that it was going to be a ground-breaking show.  So I was ready to watch it the first night it debuted, back in 1975.

And WSAZ did not show it. Instead they showed a tape-delay of a University of Kentucky basketball game. When they weren’t pre-empting it with local tape-delayed sports, they’d find anything else to plug into that timeslot.

The Charleston/Huntington tri-state market did not get to see Saturday Night Live for THREE YEARS.

It was 1978 before WSAZ relented to popular demand and finally began showing one of the hottest programs in the country to its local viewers.

That did not stop them from occasionally pre-empting SNL with no warning for tape-delayed airings of UK basketball up into the mid-1980s, but much of the time they did carry it.

But that’s the kind of thing that can make you stay pissed off at a TV station for half a century (and counting).

Now, thanks to streaming, WSAZ and their associated stations, are dead to me. I can watch NBC programming on Peacock. I get my ME TV fix on FRNDLY, and now I can watch NXT on Netflix.

So…WSAZ, y’all can go straight to hell. I gots me a Roku.

There are other advantages to having my virtual location in England. I can finally use my free BBC account to watch stuff in their comedy library. Ads on YouTube are vastly different, with much better music and all sorts of food products we don’t get over here. The prices are in pounds. I get to turn down way more cookies with a single click at most websites, too.

There are disadvantages, too. When I went to Facebook to gather graphics for this week’s STUFF TO DO column, at first all the events listed were in London. Amazon and eBay tend to freak out a little bit when I log in. And some times the VPN does not play nice with the Roku, so I have to watch some stuff on the computer.

But all in all, it’s worth it, if only to deprive WSAZ of my viewership.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day and all our regular features. Also, Keep Calm and Screw WSAZ.

Pip, pip, Tally Ho!

Your PopCulteer is neck-deep in paying work and full of orange-flavored Cap’n Crunch, but we need a post for Thursday, and sometimes you just got to put your head down and plow through it.  Anyway…here’s our weekly guide to STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and beyond for the next several days.

As always, you should remember 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. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday you can hear The Carpenter Ants, and Saturday it’s Nolan Collins.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and 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. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff.

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

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online, which was tricky because I’m using a VPN now, and Facebook thinks I’m in London, England…

Continue reading

I don’t write about food here in PopCult too often. I don’t partake of some of the more popular-cultury foodstuffs like beer, bacon, spicy crap or fungi, but I do have a favorite flavor when it comes to sweets.

That would be chocolate, or chocolate malt. However, that’s pretty mundane and boring and you can almost always find it when you want it.

I do have a strong second-favorite, and it’s a wee bit more exotic. I’m talking about Orange Cream, the flavor made famous by the legendary Dreamsicle of my youth.

Now is not the time to get into how the Creamsicles don’t taste nearly as good as they did years ago when they were called “Dreamsicles” and had way more yummy chemicals in them. Now is the time to tell you about three limited-edition products, made with that fantastic flavor, which are available for a limited time (or store) only

Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch has been creeping out across the country for the last several weeks, and it’s finally made its way to the Charleston area.

You have to excuse me for being excited. Not only is this a  very strong representation of my second-favorite flavor, but it’s also got some significant and obscure pop culture cred.

it’s been nine freaking years since Quaker has graced us with this particular manna from heaven, and its reappearance almost makes up for the sheer awfulness of their decision to discontinue Quisp cereal last year. Since its inagural limited 2016 release, the only thing that’s changed is that the good Cap’n is wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt on the front of the box.

The back of the box is identical to the 2016 release, and that’s worth noting because it’s a crowd scene with several mascots for discontinued Quaker Oats cereals making a rare appearance on a new product. Or particular note is the presence of Quisp’s nemesis, Quake, and his pet Kangaroo, The Orange Quangaroo, who deserves his spot because Orange Quangeroos were one of the few orange-flavored cereals back in the glory days of serving kids candy for breakfast. You can see the glorious and spectacular back of the box at the bottom of this post.

For the cereal nerds among you, this is the original coal miner Quake, not the ersatz cowboy version that they tried to peddle to us kids late in the life of that cereal.

And while some folks think it’s more important to ban food dyes than it is to feed kids, pay for schools, make sure state workers have insurance or fix potholes, others of us have some fond nostalgia for the big crunchy candy cartoon cereals of our long-ago youth. I would get a major rush from seeing Baron Von Redberry and Sir Grapefellow back on store shelves again, even if just for a limited time. I mean, I think back to how much energy I had as a kid, and I have to wonder how much of that was due to a steady intake of high-sugared, brightly-colored candy disguised as cereal.

And let’s not pretend that this was any way really a “part of a complete breakfast.” Yeah, sure…it’s the candy part of that breakfast. This is a treat, not a meal, and I wouldn’t recommend eating half a box in one sitting or anything…even if weed is legal where you live.

With me dieting rather successfully at the moment, one box of this stuff will probably last two months. I will savor and enjoy every delicious bite. It tastes exactly like the Dreamsicles I ate too many of when I was kid, only it’s cereal instead of ice cream, so there’s no danger of brain freeze.

Anyway, Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch is here in Charleston. I found it at Walmart and I’m pretty sure it’ll turn up…briefly…where ever fine sugared cereals are sold.

Another interesting iteration of Orange Cream is the  Orange Vanilla Cream M&Ms, a white chocolate candy.

What’s cool about this is that the orange flavor is in the shell, while the white chocolate interior has the creamy vanilla taste.

Usually M&Ms don’t have strong flavors (or any) on their shells, and here it works to a wondeful effect. This candy, just like Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch, tastes more like a classic Dreamsicle than most orange-cream flavored ice cream bars do now.

Orange Vanilla Cream M&Ms are exclusive to Dollar General, and they are supposed to be available all year round, but are much easier to find in the late-spring/early summer. It’s another way to get a quick fix if you love the flavor.

Please eat responsibly.

Lastly, we have the Dairy Queen Orange Cream Flavored Shake.

They do this every year for a month or two at the end of Spring, and as somebody who usually only drinks a milkshake two or three times a year, I am grateful for the limited nature.

This shake proves that, if they were so inclined, the giant consortium of ice cream bar manuacturers (or Big Frozen Novelty) could perfectly recreate the flavor of the Dreamsicle in ice cream form.  They just won’t do it.

Those bastards.

It takes a lot for me to forego my beloved chocolate malt for one of my rare indulgences in fine milkshakery, but this one can convince me to do it. I just have to make sure they don’t put that nasty whipped cream on top. I hate that crap.

So, if you love the orange cream flavor of a vintage Dreamsicle…’tis the season. Get out there and eat up while you can.

A combination of Optimum internet outages, technical issues at Stately Radio Free Charleston and a flare-up of Myasthenia Gravis means that this week we bring you an encore of Radio Free Charleston from three months ago.  Tuesday is once again “Old Show Day” on The AIR.  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.

And apologies for the repeat. The spirit was willing but everything else was weak.

This week RFC brought you three hours of cool stuff, starting with a cool new M. Walker remix of the song “Dance” by Hello June.  We followed that with loads of new tunes by the likes of The Heavy Editors, Scott Collins & The Sovereignty, AJ Rosales, Shining Glass, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, Ringo Starr, Franz Ferdinand and more.

Our first two hours brought you our usual mix of local, independent, obscure and anything else kind of music that we feel like playing. Our third hour, though, was a special mixtape.

In our third hour we revisited a theme we first brought you last October. We devoted the final hour of this  show to Surf Music, both new and classic. When I did this before, the reaction surprised me, with several people asking if I could devote an entire show to Surf. I don’t have the time or resources to do that at the moment, but every few weeks we’ll dig into my growing Surf archives and bring you a mixtape of the coolest stuff I can find. You can expect the next Surf special in a week or three.

This week’s show included several acts who are on Tabu Recordings,from House of Tabu. They had a big sale that was still going on over the weekend, and there’s loads of cool new stuff on the horizon.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show except for the Surf bands that broke up fifty or sixty years ago…

RFC V5 212

hour one
Hello June “Dance (M.Walker Remix)”
The Heavy Editors “Same Ole Way”
The Subjunctives “We’re Not Friends Anymore”
Camouflage “Laughing”
Annie Lennox “Train In Vain”
Brian Diller “Sooner or Later”
Scott Collins & The Sovereignty “Lament for the Loss”
AJ Rosales “Thunderclouds”
Verdeant “Reckless”
Shining Glass “Bald King of the Old World”
William Matheny “Blood Moon Singer”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “The Queen of Diamonds (live)”
Ringo Starr “Never Let Me Go”
Franz Ferdinand “Night Or Day”
Mediogres“Outta Town”
Novo Combo “Everything It Takes To Be Happy”

hour two
Sierra Ferrell “Fox Hunt”
Deni Bonet “Always Come Home”
Massing “Waffles & Pancakes (rejuiced)”
Hybrid Zero “20 Steps”
The Settlement “Cycles (Live)” Live at the Pour House
Japan “Life In Tokyo”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Ignorant”
Dinosaur Burps “Driftwood”
Kim Wilde “Midnight Train”
Magne Furoholmen “One 4 All and All 4 One”
Astrodot “Impossible Mission”

hour three Surf Mixtape
Los Grainders “Escondida”
The Surfrajettes “Spice Up Your Life”
Guitarmy of One “Must Be The Season of Treason”
Lords of Atlantis “Long Live The King”
Test Subject 17 “Patient Zero”
The Tentakills “A Horse Named Artax”
Messer Chups “Pink Pantheratu”
The Madeira “Sandstorm”
Kitten & The Tonics “Memphis Red”
The Routes “Neon Lights”
The Surf Stompers “Surfer Stomp”
Los Teenagers “Ametrallando (Wipe Out)”
Surf Curse “Freaks”
The Centurians “Intoxica”
The Shadows “Kon Tiki”
Mystery Group “The Fifth Dimension”
Danny Steel “Chinese Twist”
The Centuries “Outer Limits”
The Varitones “Repeto”
The Majestics “Big Noise From Makaha”

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 give you an encore of two classic episodes 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.

This week’s art is actually new. I painted it Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Saturday, your humble blogger had a few things planned, but they were things to which my knees were not up. So I decided to take it easy. However, it was a beautiful day and I knew that my beautiful wife would like to go to Flatwoods to buy some beautiful FiestaWare. And I could relax in the car while she drove.

Not being the driver meant that I could grab a few photos on my camera, and what you see above is a composite of a couple of those, painted in acrylic on illustration board, with some experimental stippling courtesy of some cheap markers. Because it was essentially a day of rest for me, I included the rest area sign. What started out as a simple attempt to cheer up a friend who’s going through a lot became a source of inspiration for this piece.

Capturing that blue in the sky was the key to this. It almost looks as cool as it did in real life.  Actually, I think mixing the paint was more than half the battle with this one.

It came out pretty damned nice considering that my MG was acting up too. The stippling looks great, but after an hour of that my arms felt like I’d been lifting heavy weights for a week.

Better the artist should suffer for his art than the people looking at it. I may take this to canvas at some point.

To see this week’s art bigger try clicking HERE.

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

At 8 PM you can hear the Simpsons sing on a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, focusing on a few special theme episodes.