Month: September 2025 (Page 1 of 4)

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

Radio Free Charleston is all-new this week and we open with a track from the brand-new Guitarmy of One album, Silver Screen Spy Scene. That will be available very soon at the Guitarmy of One website. Us Kickstarter folks got it a few days early, ’cause we’s special.

Our whole show is loaded with great new local and indie music, as well as some really cool tracks from deep in the RFC Archives and a third hour of relaxing, semi-ambient tunes. Our Chicago pipeline is represented by tunes from  Aliza Hava and Vinto Van Go. We even dig up a fifty-year-old tune from a cult band, Crack The Sky, who formed in Weirton before relocating to Baltimore quite some time ago.

It’s a pretty cool show, if I say so myself (and I just did).

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 243

hour one
Guitarmy of One “Espionage in Black Camouflage”
CHUM “Headhunter”
J Marinelli  “Antifa Grandpa”
Crystal Bright and The Silver Hands “Choke”
Crack The Sky “Sea Epic”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood“Corpse Juice Medley”
The Aquabats “The Wild Sea”
Novelty Island “Apollo”
Aliza Hava “Soul Family”
Robert Plant with Suzi Dian “Too Far From You”
The Settlement “Midnight Train”
Spacehog “In The Meantime”
Novo Combo “Long Long Road”

hour two
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess  “The Ghost of You”
M Robin Scott “Save Me”
Sahsa Colette & The Magnolias “Kiss And Make Up”
Vinto Van Go “Pleasance”
The Beautiful South “I Should’ve Kept My Eyes Shut”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “Common Ground”
Nixon Black “Wonderland”
Government Cheese “Kentucky Home”
Sheldon Vance“Watch It Burn”
June Swoon“Play Something I Know”
Messer Chups “Jokermobile”
Terra Atlantica “Caribbean Shores”
Unmanned  “Light The Beacons”
Frenchy & The Punk “Dark Carnivale”

hour three
Deni Bonet “(All Around The World) Music Is Love”
Nothing to Protect “Common”
Beat “Sheltering Sky”
The Art of Noise “Moments In Love”
Vexian Arch “Time Forgot Us”

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  The Swing Shift is an encore of two recent episodes.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 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 Thursdays and Sundays.

Worthy of a separate post this week, we have a mildly amusing coincidence Monday on The AIR.  Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also new 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.

The odd thing about these shows is that Nigel Pye produced his show two weeks ago and then went on vacation without telling anybody at Haversham that this episode consists entirely of Dutch Psychedelic bands with tracks released in the golden age of mind-expanding music. This was news to Herman Linte, who over the weekend produced an episode of his show, Prognosis, devoted to the Dutch Symphonic Metal band, Epica. While they were somewhat embarrassed, I didn’t think it was a big deal, plus I embraced the chance to do the feature image you see above this post.

At 2 PM (EDT) Nigel delivers a show filled with incredible Dutch obscurities, and if you listen carefully, you’ll even catch him in a bit of a mistake while making a pun.

Check out the mind-expanding playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 105

Surprieze “Lazurus”
Children of Jubal “Song of Jubal”
St. Giles System “Swedish Tears”
Maskers “Death”
NV Groep 65 “Pipe And You Like It”
Short 66 “I.L.N. Double U”
Mother’s Love “Highway To Heaven”
Met & Zonder “Now I Know”
Woorden “(Excerpt)”
Motives “I Can Hear Colors”
Incredible “She Died”
Bumble Bees “Maybe Someday”

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.

At 3 PM (EDT), Herman Linte brings us two hours that he seems to think is controversial. He devotes to the entire show to the Dutch band, Epica, despite them not being considered a Progressive Rock band. I personally don’t see the big deal. I mean, they have metal beats, soaring solos, an operatic female vocalist and a symphony orchestra and choir. Sounds pretty progressive to me.

Check out this playlist, then tune in and listen for yourself…

Prognosis 132
Epica

The Phantom Agony
Sensorium
Facade Of Reality (The Embrace That Smothers – Part V)
The Last Crusade A New Age Dawns #1
Mother Of Light A New Age Dawns #2
Consign To Oblivion A New Age Dawns #3
Dance of Fate
Caught In A Web
Vengeance Is Mine
The Angel of Death
Supremecy
Unholy Trinity
Trois Vierges
Valley of Sins
The Last Embrace
Higher High
Kingdom of Heaven-A New Age Dawns
Deconstruct

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.

This week’s art is a pastel crayon and acrylic paint creation on illustration board that I started about six weeks ago, and never really finished.

It’s based on a photo I snapped of a protein drink display in Jungle Jim’s in Cinncinnati in early August.

Jungle Jim’s is some kind of barely describable hybrid of a supermarket,  a toy store and an amusement park, and you’ll learn more about it when we get around to making a return visit sometime in the future.

This was just a chance for me to try to paint a classic strongman pose.  I grew up copying art from superhero comic books, but I haven’t really revisited this theme much in the past forty five years or so.

The reason this is unfinished is that the ole MG is flaring up again. I was going to attempt a pencil drawing of a friend that I’ve wanted to do for weeks, but the fingers didn’t want to cooperate, so I dug this out of the slush pile.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

We will tell you about today’s radio progamming on The AIR later this morning.

Tonight for our Sunday Evening Video we are going to repeat a look at the music and video of one of the most popular of the original Radio Free Charleston bands, Go Van Gogh. Running the “Coalfinger” episode of RFC in yesterday’s RFC Flashback put me in the mood to see more of my old buddies.

Go Van Gogh were: Johnny Rock, Tim Rock, Stephen Beckner and Mark Beckner. Occasionally the band is augmented by Mark Mingrone, Jason Ashworth and Bain Ashworth. The videos at the top of this post were directed by Tim Rock, Johnny Rock, Stephen Beckner, Melissa Beezley and yours truly.

It was just about exactly 36 years ago this weekend when yours truly was hosting what was then a very late-night broadcast radio version of RFC, and the phone rang.  It was Johnny Rock, talking to me for the first time. In his usual hurried manner of speaking, he blurted out, “Hey Rudy, love the show. I’m in a band called Go Van Gogh. We’re the best band in town and all the other bands hate us. It’d be cool if you’d come see us and play us on your show!” The rest was history. I would not be the advocate for local music that I’ve become without Johnny and Go Van Gogh.

A bit more than eight years ago, we lost Johnny, who was a true legend and a beloved character on the local scene. With the permission of the surviving band members I compiled and posted these videos in his memory. Tonight I thought it’d be nice to go back and take another look at a band that was this close to making it big.

Above you see a compilation of nearly two-and-a-half hours of primo Go Van Gogh. Included are:

“All Over The Road” A document of their tour to Morgantown, WV.
“The Sad Truth” (Excerpt) Part of their mockumentary.
“Live At The Levee: 1991” Half an hour of the band in concert at The Levee (later known as The Boulevard Tavern).
“Coalfinger” What happens with a Southern West Virginia community college Drama department makes a James Bond Movie?
“Live At WVSU” Performing the song, “Stripes with Stains” at West Virginia State University.
“Make The Money” A Comedic Short Film.
“Roll” Music Video.
“Planet of Psychotic Women.” Music Video

Below you’ll find the entire half-hour version of “Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth.” This mockumentary was the brainchild of Tim Rock, and you’ll see the band and friends (including yours truly) perpetrating a mythical history of the rise and fall of Go Van Gogh.

Enjoy the fun times with Go Van Gogh.

This week we go back to April Fool’s Day, 2012, for a show that has taken on a bit of a bittersweet aura. This episode presents Coalfinger, a film by Johnny Rock, a good friend and local music scene icon whom we lost a few years ago.

“Adventure Comics Shirt” was a special episode of Radio Free Charleston, dedicated to presenting once-thought-lost scenes from The Lower West Virginia Contemporary Light Opera Stage Players film production of the James Bond film, “Coalfinger.” All prints of this film were destroyed after MGM, EON Productions and the Ian Fleming estate won a permanent injunction against the tiny, Southern West Virginia theater company Luckily, a few scenes were preserved in filmmaker Johnny Rock’s long-supressed documentary on the making of “Coalfinger.”

It was April Fool’s Day, and it was time to show the world this short film that Johnny and Tim Rock came up with, with a little help from Stephen Beckner, Jason Ashworth, yours truly and other members of the Go Van Gogh inner circle. The premise was that a Southern West Virginia theatre troupe somehow wound up with the rights to make a James Bond movie, and potshots were taken at lots of local creative types. Making this film remains one of the most fun times in my life.

As with most of our April Fool’s Day specials, the original production notes were written in jest.  I had way the hell too much fun writing these notes. You can read them HERE.

The PopCulteer
September 26, 2025

The AIR FRIDAY!

Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty are new and exciting and cool and nifty, even! Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes.  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.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch once again presents Disco songs from the club days, before Disco invaded and took over mainstream radio, back when only the cool people knew where to go and how to get in. It’s historical, and it’s got a good beat that you can dance to.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist.,,

MIRRORBALL 120

Alec R. Costandinos And The Syncophonic Orchestra “Romeo And Juliet”
Cosa Rica Band “Baila”
Judy Cheeks “Mellow Lovin'”
MTL Express “Dance All Night”
Orlando Riva Sound “Moon Boots”
The Richard Hewson Orchestra “Touch My Love”
Fist O-Funk Orchestra “Dance All Over The World”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a four-hour mini-marathon that runs through the whole series in chronological order every Friday at 8 PM.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that presents a timely look, season-wise, at a prolific band that never quite managed to crack into mainstream success, The Fall.

From their debut in 1976 to the death of their main creative force, Mark E. Smith in 2018, The Fall carved out a niche in the UK’s post-punk landscape with their ever-changing line-up and stylistic approach. They embodied the spirt of New Wave music without ever embracing the label or breaking into the mainstream.

Still, The Fall are considered one of the most prolific and influential bands of the period, and for the next two hour we are going to demonstrate why, by bringing you a mixtape collection of the best of their music from the New Wave era. Sydney brings you a veritable boatload of the best music the band released during the New Wave era.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 132

The Fall

Bingo-Master
It’s The New Thing
Rowche Rumble
Fiery Jack
How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
Totally Wired
Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
Look, Know
The Man Whose Head Expanded
Kicker Conspiracy
Marquis Cha-Cha
Oh! Brother
c.r.e.e.p.
Draygo’s Guilt
Couldn’t Get Ahead
Cruiser’s Creek
Frightened
No Xmas For John Quays
Two Steps Back
Music Scene
Living Too Late
Mr. Pharmacist
Hey! Luciani
There’s A Ghost In My House
Hit The North Part 1
A Figure Walks
Repetition
A Day In The Life

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays  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 as part of the Haversham Recording Institute marathon overnight Monday/early Tuesday.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all our regular features.

Fall is here and soon the leaves and boilerplates will turn. Even with this, we still have a whole bunch of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and the state of mountains and maybe a little beyond.

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 possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  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 weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friady and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have The Carpenter Antson Friday, and Minor Swing on Saturday. Sunday afternoon, at 1 PM, my old buddy Spencer Elliott will bring his incredible guitar wizardry to Charleston’s gem of a bookstore/art gallery/coffeehouse.

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.

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.

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.

There’s also some cool stuff hapening at Slack Plaza in Downtown Charleston, as part of City Center Live. Check out the graphic at right.

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. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.  I 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 and those look to be incredible.

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 illnesses 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. If somebody asks you to refrain, don’t be a jerk about it.

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 happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

Continue reading

We fall into fall with new episodes of our music specialty shows that debut on Wednesday afternoon, as The AIR brings you new installmentsof Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, each of which present a special theme.  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 an episode of music that is “Beatle Related.”

As to what that entails…well, we open with a song heard in Magical Mystery Tour that was not performed by The Beatles, then we have a selection of tunes released on Apple Records that feature musical contributions from the Fab Four, and from there we have covers, collaborations and more that are all…Beatle Releated.

Check out this playlist:

Beatles Blast 125

The Bonzo Dog Band “Death Cab For Cutie”
Jackie Lomax “Sour Milk Sea”
Hot Chocolate Band “Give Peace A Chance”
Billy Preston “My Sweet Lord”
Bill Elliott & The Elastic Oz Band “God Save Us”
Doris Troy “Try Some Buy Some”
Keith Moon “Solid Gold” “In My Life” “Move Over Ms. L”
Yoko Ono featuring Death Cab For Cutie “Forgive Me My Love”
Marshall Crenshaw “Love Me Do”
Eric Clapton & Paul McCartney “Something”
Elton John “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”
Dice “Penny Lane

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, in time for an upcoming Broadway Revival, Mel Larch presents a mixtape sampler of The Musical, Chess. 

With Lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Benny and Bjorn from Abba, Chess has developed a cult following after premiering in the mid 1980s. Several productions and revivals have happened since then, with major changes to the book and songs added and dropped. The new Broadway revival, in the Imperial Theater, which was home to the ill-fated 1988 initial Broadway run, will open in October, 2025, with a completely re-written book, once again.

The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American and the other Soviet, and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other.

This week Mel has stictched together a collection of highlights from the musical, using the original concept album, the first London Cast album, the first Broadway Cast album, an acclaimed Dutch touring production and even one song in Swedish.

Check out the list of songs, in order…

One Night In Bangkok
The Story of Chess
Quartet
Where I Want To Be
Terrace Duet
Mountain Duet
Urgen ’56
You and I
Pity the Child
I Know Him So Well
The Deal (No Deal)
Epilogue

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.

Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and make you feel less homicidal. This week we have a new edition of The Swing Shift, too! 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.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show that includes two slightly-recycled hours from almost exactly two years ago.  Doing this brings back parts of two great shows that aren’t due to be in the rotation for our daily show for a few months, and it also lets me finish the show on time and do The Swing Shift and maybe get some sleep.

So it’s all good.  We open the program with a rarity from the legendary Huntington band, CHUM, who are releasing items from their back catalogue and putting some gems up on Bandcamp in advance of some upcoming reunion dates. This particular gem was part of a compilation album back in 2004. Given the option of making a joke in the outro about Plankton from SpongeBob Squarepants, or the musical, Cabaret, I opted for the only slightly more cerebral one.

The rest of our first hour combines great new local tracks with great new non-local tracks and one ringer from the late 1960s.

Our second and third hours revive the opening hours from a couple of shows that premiered in August, 2023. They are loaded with terrific music and hold up remarkably well.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 242

hour one
CHUM “Embracing The Eyesore”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess“Does She Have You”
The Darkness “Don’t Need Sunshine”
Joy Viver “It’s Not Supposed To Be Easy”
Novelty Island “The Only Train Driver In England”
The Heavy Editors “Bleed”
The Settlement “Linger”
Golden“Gotta Let It Go”
Kerosene Stars “Kerosine”
Sophie Ellis-Bextor “Heart Sing”
Aliza Hava “Fix My Fate”
Harry Nilsson “1941”
A Tale of Two “1934”
Chuck Biel w/Scott Milam “Ripstaver”

hour two
Hello June “Interstate”
Jonny Strykes “All The Way Home”
Brian Diller “Drive”
The Anchoress “This Is Yesterday”
Jim Lange “Sky of Fire”
Novelty Island “Turn To Me”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “There You Are”
Guitarmy of One “Top Secret Agent Man On A Wire Tapped Phone At Sea”
The Tentakills “Split The Sea”
Galen and Paul “A Sea Shanty”
Sierra Ferrell “The Sea”
Pete Townshend “Sea and Sand”
Bottle and Bride “A Call To The Sea”
Jerks “Ok New Wave”
Lost Decades “Essex”
Dave Strong “She’s The One”

hour three
Jerks “This Is Fine”
Alabaster Boxer “Build You An Ocean”
The Cleverlys “She’s Not There”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “Appalachain Highway”
Aristotle Jones “Streets of Osage”
Frank Sinatra “Michael and Peter”
Verdeant (Chloe Florence) “Reckless (Demo)”
Foz Rotten “From The Top”
Jonny Strykes “Gimme A Sign”
Buni Muni “Kids Are Dead”
Blur “Far Away Island”
Jack Hues “Since 2017”
The Fusion Syndicate “Io”
Galen and Paul “Esmeralda”

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  The Swing Shift marks 175 episodes with a red hot show. In fact, the whole hour is devoted to Red & The Red Hots. Unfortunately, I don’t have a playlist for this mixtape special because a power flicker took it out before I could hit “save.”  You can find out more about this great Swing Revival band HERE.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 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 Thursdays and Sundays.

This week’s art is a pastel on illustration board rough color study for a painting that I eventually want to do in high-detail in acrylics on a much larger canvas. This was me basically just trying to jot down the composition and color, and the shadows…most importantly, the shadows.

I dipped into a little of my Hopper training for those.

This represents my view, looking down while sitting on my front porch, waiting for my lovely wife to come out so we could go have lunch at the Red Line Diner in Saint Albans.

I had the Greek Salad. It was great.

When I looked down I saw the patterns created by the shadows. When I do this in high-detail, I plan to go all-out on the textures of the grass, the cement steps and my jeans, but this is just a rough. I have neither the time nor the dexterity at the moment to present a finished piece. As it is, the sloppy nature sort of has a charm of its own, even though some of the texture work was accidental.

I suppose the point of this, aside from just trying to capture the cool shadows, is to show that, when people tell you not to look down on yourself, they don’t know what they’re missing.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you an encore of a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we do the same with 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 a classic episode of The Comedy Vault that delivers raunchy tunes from Rusty Warren.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our new Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute: Psychedelic Shack, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis. Tonight that overnight marathon presents three episodes of Herman Linte’s Prognosis.