Month: October 2025 (Page 1 of 3)

We are barrelling into the last weekend before Halloween, and there is a scary amount of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston. Let’s see what some of that is, shall we?

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. Seriously, for the last several weeks, by the time the weekend rolls around, I discover several events that I just totally missed out on.  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 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 Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Bug on Friday, and Minor Swing on Saturday. Sunday afternoon at 1 PM, stop by for Charlie Murphy.

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, or at The Cavern on Charleston’s West Side, and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons.

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, please respect their weishes and 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

The PopCult Toybox

Longtime readers of PopCult probably know (and some of them happily anticipate) the annual PopCult Gift Guide. I’m already at work on it, and this year, like last year, the plan is to run two Gift Guide posts each weekday, along with our regular features, for the entire month of November.

If all goes as planned I’ll have the Master List ready to go on Black Friday, thanks to the quirks of this year’s calendar.

Each weekday you can expect one single-item post, and one multi-item post. I will recommend books, music, toys, video, comics, collectibles and maybe even some decor or clothing.

However, this year I am breaking a streak that’s gone on for more than a decade. For over ten years, the first item in The PopCult Gift Guide has been that year’s HESS TOY TRUCK.

This year that isn’t going to be the case. In fact, this year the HESS TOY TRUCK won’t even make the list at all. I just can’t recommend it. I hate this because I generally don’t like to do negative reviews, but I felt the absence of our usual first Gift Guide entry needed an explanation. This is the first time that I have not been incredibly impressed by the HESS TOY TRUCK.

For one thing, it’s not a truck. It’s two Stock car racers. They aren’t even the same scale. One fits inside the other. And the price, which has risen every year for a while now, is just a penny under fifty bucks (including batteries and shipping).

It’s just not a special enough toy or collectible, or a good enough value for me to recommend to my readers. It’s a major disappointment. Every year I look forward to what HESS offers, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt really let down.

It’s not just me that feels this way. The response online, on social media, collector discussion boards and Reddit groups, has been overwhelmingly…underwhelmed.

I’ve never seen people react this negatively to a HESS Truck announcement before, and I’ve been observing this since my days writing for Toy Trader Magazine over a quarter century ago.

I’m seeing longtime collectors state that they will skip this year’s offering. People who buy multiples are saying that they only plan to get one. People who have fond memories stretching back sixty years are taking a pass on this year’s set. One person who posted a comment on Instagram said that, instead of getting this year’s set for their grandkids, they were going to go to eBay and find one from a prior year that was a better value.

I mean, it’s not even a truck. And while they’ve had HESS collectibles that weren’t trucks before, at least they were something special, like a plane or a ship.

Every year you’ll get a handful of people who aren’t happy with the choice of truck or the price. That’s natural. You also get a handful of people who will praise whatever the HESS Truck is, regardless of merit. That’s just how the internet works.

This year it’s different. HESS apparently knew they had a dud, and reached out in advance to “influencers” and minor celebrities and gave them advance copies of the toys and/or paid them to make promotional videos to try to boost the appeal of this year’s choice. Some of these YouTubers actually posted their videos as “reviews” then went on social media bragging about “partnering” with HESS on their video.

Guys…if you got paid to do a video, it’s not a review…it’s a commercial. The mutual ass-kissing on some of the social media accounts was embarrassing and nauseating.

In the past, the HESS Trucks were so cool that HESS didn’t need to do any kind of marketing. They’d put up their website, send out emails to their previous customers, post a short commercial to their social media accounts, and the Truck would sell out, often before The PopCult Gift Guide even ended at the end of November.

Unless they cut production way down this year, I suspect they’ll be stuck selling these cars well into 2026.

For fifty bucks you get a largely hollow larger car (with lights and sounds), about a foot long. The hood and roof open so you can remove the smaller car, which has lights and a pull-back and release feature.

The big car looks to be about a foot long. The smaller one is supposed to be seven inches long. The larger car is essentially a plastic box with wheels that holds the smaller car.

Except for being able to stuff one car inside the other, you can get comparable toy cars for considerably less money almost anywhere toys are sold. Heck, at Walmart you could get two different remote control cars for half what they’re asking for this set, and those also have light and sound features in addition to being radio-controlled.

It’s just not a good enough value for me to include it in the Gift Guide this year. I hope this is just a one-time blip, and not a trend. Ten years ago HESS offered a Fire Engine Platform Truck carrying an SUV with a rescue ladder…a way cooler toy with much more play value…and it cost nineteen dollars less.

I know they can’t do anything about inflation and tariffs, but the difference in the quality of these two HESS Collectibles is pretty striking.

There are claims online that HESS takes ten years to design their annual truck and bring it to market. If that’s true, then they had a full decade for someone to realize what a dud this year’s set was and replace it with anything else. It just looks like they went to the factory in China and asked, “What can you make cheap and easy?” This is all the more confusing because this year’s three-pack of HESS Mini Trucks that they released in June was one of their best ever, and sold out in record time. It’s obvious they can still come up with great collectible toy ideas. Like I said, I hope this is just a one-time misstep.

There are so many great HESS TRUCK ideas floating around out there. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen: A Christmas tree truck; A bucket truck; A loudspeaker truck (with a microphone that kids could talk through): A flatbed tow-truck with a new car with a bow on it (and a working flatbed); A box delivery truck; A garbage/recycling truck; A diesel locomotive engine; A track-inspector truck; A double-trailer semi; An intermodal truck with cargo box; An oil tanker ship (they haven’t done one as their main offering since the 1960s), A surveyor’s truck with launchable drone. Imagine all of those done up in the HESS Oil green-and-white livery.

Any of those would look better than a pair of size-mismatched race cars, and that list took longer to type than it did to think up. You have to wonder what they were thinking.

Having said that, completist collectors who want to keep their streak going and people who look at the photos here and still think that it’s a good deal can order the 2025 HESS “Truck” HERE.

Tuesday…you may know it as the second workday of the week, but regular PopCult readers also know it as a great day to tune into The AIR  with a partly new episode of Radio Free Charleston to brighten your gosh-darn day.  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 opens with an all-new hour that’s loaded with great new music, then we bring you an encore of the very first episode of Radio Free Charleston International, from January 2016.

The plan was to bring you an all-new show, but the fates conspired to make it unbearably loud right outside my studio window on Monday afternoon, so I was lucky to get one hour of new stuff to you. One of these days I’m gonna have to soundproof this place.

Our first hour opens with a brand-new tune from our old friend, John Radcliff. We also have special new tracks from Novo Combo and Payback’s a Bitch. If you are so moved, please feel free to comment on these new tunes below, and I’ll make sure the artists get to see them.

Our first hour is also loaded with new tracks from Chrissie Hynde’s new duets album as well as RFC favorites, Guitarmy of One, Novelty Island, Aliza Have, Jeremy Short and Vinto Van Go.

For our second and third hours we go back to the first RFC International, the series which I merged into this program almost five years ago to create the show you hear each week now. It’s loaded with some of my favorite tunes that I was dying to unleash into the world back then.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page for the first hour…

RFC V5 245

hour one
John Radcliff “Look Smart”
Novo Combo “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
Payback’s A Bitch “Searching For Eden”
Chrissie Hynde and Brandon Flowers “I’m Not In Love”
Novelty Island “Floating”
Aliza Hava  “Behind Your Eyes”
Guitarmy of One “The Chase for the Hidden Face”
CHUM “Embracing The Eyesore” Find their merch HERE.
Byzantine “The Shortest Straw”
June Swoon “Transatlantic Accent”
Ace Frehley “Do Ya”
Jeremy Short“Happy Trees”
Vinto Van Go “Diamond Dust”

hour two
The Beatles and Led Zepplin “Helter Skelter”
The Beetlevanias “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
The Rutles “Shangra La”
Chemical Beats “Welcome To The Black Parade”
Todd Rundgren “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
The Beatnix “Stairway To Heaven”
Be Bop Deluxe “Surreal Estate”
Kerry Livgren “Mask of the Great Deceiver”
The Buggles “Vermillion Sands”
Nightwish “The Heart Asks Pleasure First”

Ian Dury and the Blockheads “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll”
Madness “One Step Beyond”
Lene Lovich “Lucky Number”
DEVO “Jocko Homo”
ELP “Benny The Bouncer
FFS “Dictator’s Son”
David Bowie “Blackstar”
Transvision Vamp “Velveteen”
Jellyfish “Brighter Day”
Split Enz “Bullet Brain and Cactus Head”
Hazel O’Connor “Writing on the Wall”
Kate Bush “Suspended in Gaffa”

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.

This week’s art is a bit of a delayed-reaction piece. I was moving stuff around in the office and found a sketchbook with textured paper that I apparently bought in Chicago. I say “apparently” because there was only one drawing in it…a very rough pencil sketch of a view of Chicago’s River North district, probably done while I was looking out the hotel window at the Building formerly known as Hancock Tower.

I don’t recall which trip this was, and I’m not sure exactly which hotel (most likely the Hilton Garden Inn or the Homewood Suites on E. Grande Ave.), but I decided to finish the piece a few days ago with pastel crayons. I have have done the original sketch a decade ago (or any time since).

I had no color reference, so don’t expect a slavish recreation here. There may be a touch of my Hopper influence there, but it’s not intentional.  That’s just something that’s become ingrained to me now. I cropped it a bit after scanning. 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 classic stand up from Lenny Bruce.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish 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.

A few years ago on the late, lamented (RIP Rhonda) Roku Channel, Bizarre TV, I discovered a couple of horror movie hosts operating out of Cleveland, The Mummy and The Monkey. Featuring Janet Decay, Cleveland’s First horror hostess and Grimm Gorri, Cleveland’s Late Night Missing Link, the duo are the hosts of The Mummy And The Monkey’s Hairy Scary Hangout. since we are featuring spooky videos every Sunday this month, we thought it’d be a good time to catch up with the scary movie mavens on the lake.

The Mummy And The Monkey have been part of Cleveland Ohio’s horror movie scene since 2014. They host cheesy movies on their Channel on most Friday nights at 9:45 PM (Eastern Time) and you can watch on YouTube or their Facebook Page.  Past episodes are archived, so you can catch up whenever you want. They follow the usual format of the classic horror movie host (think Svengoolie or Elvira) but they put their own spin on it and make it loads of fun to watch.  They even have their own merch and also maintain a cool eBay store, stocked with wild vintage items.

Above you see their latest Hairy Scary Hangout show, featuring a chat with The Mads from MSK3k (Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff), plus the movie Teenage Zombies and tons of really fun, bizarre and only mildly disturbing cool stuff.

From the last day of April, 2012 we have Radio Free Charleston 157, “The Mighty Thor Shirt” On this week’s show we are brought you three songs from the then-upcoming production of The Color Purple by the Charleston Light Opera Guild, plus we had some new music from Godmode Broadway, and a heartfelt plea from The Tom McGees. Host segments were shot around The Charleston Civic Center, a good six and a half years before the current remodeling job that elevated it to Colissuem status.

Director Nina Denton Pasinetti invited us into the Guild workshop so we could take in an early run-through of The Color Purple. Melanie and I were mightily impressed. A week out from opening night, the cast had already gelled into a finely-tuned vocal ensemble. Even without the benefit of an orchestra, set or full costumes, they put on a compelling evening of theater. The entire cast was just amazing and the music was incredible.

The Charleston Civic Center Little Theater was the site of the Charleston Light Opera Guild production of the musical version of The Color Purple. The beloved novel by Alice Walker was turned into a Broadway musical a few years ago by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, with a book by Marsha Norman, and it was the spring offering from Charleston’s Light Opera Guild in 2012. The Guild was chosen to be the first community theater troupe to perform the show, following it’s Broadway run and national tour.

Also appearing on this episode of RFC was Godmode Broadway, the greatly-missed progressive hybrid band. We bring you their song, “Arson Wells (The Misadventures of Ray Von Siskle),” which we recorded at their rehearsal space, the same day we recorded “Surfboards and Broadswords,” which you saw on RFC a few weeks ago.

You can find the full production notes for this show HERE.

The PopCulteer
October 17, 2025

I wanted to take this week’s PopCulteer to bid farewell to an old friend. Last week I learned that Greg Miller, the former owner of Comic World in Charleston, passed away in late August after an accident at home. He was two days shy of his 74th birthday.

Greg was a good friend at a time when I really needed one. I haven’t written much about him in PopCult, but I did include him in my “Secret Origin.” He was very supportive of CODA, the book my brother and I published in the mid-1980s, and was a sympathetic ear when my first marriage was crashing and burning. Greg was also a big supporter of Radio Free Charleston, which I wrote about in this blog before…

At this point in the narrative, let me digress and share with you a commercial that I wrote and produced.  Greg Miller, owner of Comic World on Charleston’s West Side, was a friend of mine, and he wanted to advertise on the show.  It fell to me to produce a commercial on spec just to give him a rough idea what it would sound like.  So I wrote this fun little exchange between a husband and wife, and started to record it.  I was going to do my “wiseguy” voice, and get one of the female announcers at the station to play his wife.  My boss, the aforementioned program director, Garrett Majors was supposed to do the bit at the end with all the “money info.”

Sadly, Garrett was having sobriety issues that made him unavailable.  Also, the female announcers at the station were either too busy to record the spot, or they were refusing to speak to me.  So I had to do all three voices myself.  I figured it wasn’t too bad, since this was only a spec spot, and would never be aired.

I forgot about Greg’s sense of humor.  When he found out that I did all the voices, including the woman who sounds a bit like a drag queen, he insisted that they use the rough spot on the air.  I became known as “The man of a dozen voices.”  You can hear for yourself.

If anybody knows Greg’s current whereabouts, leave them in the comments. I haven’t heard from him in years. (Note, I originally wrote that 17 years ago. It’s still true)

I was saddened by the news that he died, but not surprised. What surprised me was that he’d passed so recently. I hadn’t heard from him at all since the last time I saw him, probably twenty-eight years ago.

After losing his store to his ex-wife, who ran it briefly before shutting it down (leaving Charleston seriously underserved in terms of access to comic books for years), Greg became a bit of a recluse. He didn’t want to have anything to do with his former customers when they tracked him down, and nobody seemed to really know what had become of him.

I was a loyal customer and friend of Greg’s from 1982 to 1997, when I had to give up comics for a year when my mom suffered a stroke and I became her full-time caregiver. I just couldn’t get away long enough to make it to Greg’s store to pick up my comics and catch up with my buddy.

Greg was understanding and supportive of my decision to drop out of comics, and we parted as friends, with the hope that I’d be able to return as a customer some day.

During my disastrous first marriage, Greg was pretty much my only point of socialization. He consoled me through the break up, and during the worst days of my marriage, when there was no money to be had, he hired me to draw comics and stickers and things just so he could pay me in comics and keep me in the hobby I loved.

He also listened to me, and I returned the favor as his marriage crumbled.

I’m not going to take sides in that dispute. I didn’t witness anything myself, and it’s not fair to just present one side of a story I was told in confidence. I do know that there was a remarkable amount of bitterness on both sides.

Greg was so bitter that after he lost his store, he didn’t want to have anything to do comics or his former customers. His ex was so bitter that she financed, produced and starred in a feature film that seemed designed largely to paint Greg in as negative a light as possible.

The infamous Air Pirates comic

Over the years that I’ve been writing PopCult, one of the questions I’ve been asked most often is “What the hell ever happened to Greg Miller?”

I mean, even people who worked for him were in the dark. He was a well-liked guy and a major presence in the local comics scene. This was the guy that sold me my copies of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and special-ordered Love and Rockets and Nexus for me. There was even one time when we bootlegged a few copies of the famed AIR Pirates underground comic, but that’s a story for another time.

He has been missed by many since he left the comics scene so long ago.

I’m sad to know he’s gone. Rest in peace, old buddy.

About Comics And Me

After going almost a year without buying new comics, things improved for me. Mom stabilized and I was able to get some additional caregiver help. I also started bringing in some disposable income thanks to some magazine-writing gigs, and I decided to start getting new comics again.

I was a bit distraught to find that Comic World was gone. It was almost a decade before I found out the whole story of what had happened, but if I wanted to get new comics, I was sort of stuck. There was (and I think still is) Cheryl’s Comics in Kanawha City, but she wasn’t exactly welcoming of Greg’s customers, and it was a bit farther for me to drive.

Then I remembered that Beau Smith and Cliint McElroy, whom we almost published during the CODA days, enthusiastically endorsed Westfield Comics, a mail-order subscription service. I decided to give them a try, and I’ve been a very satisfied customer for over twenty-five years now. . I still highly recommend them. Since I’ve been a customer, I have never missed a single issue of any comic book I wanted. I’ve never been waylaid by a fellow customer who wanted to explain in detail why his taste in comics was better than mine, and I never had to worry about a comic shop disappearing overnight like The Comic Kingdom in South Charleston did back in 1977.

It’s been rather blissful, even if the new comics aren’t nearly as good as the ones that came out back when I was in the target demographic.

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

It’s another busy weekend as Bridge Day happens at The New River Gorge on Saturday, and that’s after Thursday’s ArtWalk in Downtown Charleston, and there’s just tons of STUFF TO DO all weekend…even though many of us will be glued to the TV to watch Young Frankenstein on Svengoolie Saturday night.  Thursday’s ArtWalk is listed as running from 4 PM to 7 PM, so be aware of that if you are inclined to attend.

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. Seriously, for the last several weeks, by the time the weekend rolls around, I discover several events that I just totally missed out on.  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 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 Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Travis Vandal and Jay Hill on Friday, and Julien Aklei and Matt Green on Saturday. Sunday afternoon at 1 PM, stop by for Charlie Murphy.

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, or at The Cavern on Charleston’s West Side, and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons.

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. This week they have SE3 and Minor Swing on Saturday.

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, please respect their weishes and 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

{Note: When his post was originally written in October, 2005, PopCult was hosted at The Charleston Gazette, as a “Gazzblog.” It has been partially restored with existing graphics and is re-presented here to show part of this blog’s history, and also to cover for your humble blogger being called away for a routine doctor appointment.}

Elsewhere here at thegazz.com, you’ll find articles about Wallace and Gromit I wrote with my partner in animation crime, Melanie Larch. You may be wondering how we know so much about the process of creating clay and stop-motion animation. The answer is simple… for most of my life, I’ve been an eyewitness to it.

I had the unique experience of growing up in a house with an animator. My older brother, Frank, started making his own animated films as a young teen in the late 1960s. Being five years younger meant that, not only was I likely to hang around watching him do this, but I was also pressed into service as something else to be animated. Yes, I was a child animation model.

It was better than getting beat up for not doing it.

Now, back in those days, Frank had to use Super 8 film to create his masterpieces. He experimented with all forms of animation. I was used to mimic the popular gas station commercials of the day that had pixilated humans scooting around like they were driving, only without cars. I ruined many a pairs of pants doing that. This technique is still being used for commercials today. In addition to little brother animation, Frank also tried his hand at using typing paper, Terry Gilliam-style cut-out animation, notebook paper, and clay.

It was tedious and expensive work. Film cost nearly $20 for three minutes, when you figured in the processing costs. This was before home video had revolutionized the home movie market. Back then, it was so rare for anyone to shoot home movies that people would actually watch them, as opposed to today, where more than half of the home movies shot on video are never seen by human eyes again.

Frank would work for weeks on some of his clay-animated films. He’d move the models, shoot one frame, move everything else again, and so on. It might take several minutes to move each model for each frame of film, and it takes 24 frames of film to add up to one second. So, there were many days where I would have to be quiet and still for hours. Loud noises or sudden movements could upset the models, which were often precariously balanced.

Frank managed to do some pretty impressive things with the limited resources he had available to him. There were cute alien cartoons, dinosaur fights, and the bloody ultra-violent finale to his “Mugger” series. I remember after the final shot was completed for that one, the set with the dismembered Mugger was left on display in the basement for weeks. Every time Mom did the laundry, she’d have to walk past the table with the little clay guy with his entrails strewn about. I think she eventually made Frank clean it up.

Aside from clay, Frank also made movies starring action figures. The epic adventures of “Captain X” spanned several films, and featured special effects ranging from scratches on the individual frames of film to the later years, when real pyrotechnics came into play. I still have film of my GI Joe Space Capsule getting destroyed. Somewhere in the basement, we still have a Latex-covered animation model of a monster for a film he did in college. Thirty years on, the latex smells just as bad as it did the day it was brewed up.

Anyway, these days Frank is using a new medium for his animation. He’s pretty much mastered computer animation. He has done commercials, educational films and television shows, and is currently working on a movie, which stars IWA East Coast wrestler Mad Man Pondo. While he used live-action actors, all the backgrounds, most of the aliens, and all the vehicles and special effects are computer-generated. You can read more about REPERKUSSIONZ over at Frank’s production blog, here. Frank shot the live-action earlier this year, and expects to be working towards finishing it sometime next year.

Making the story complete, I also show up in the film for two brief appearances. I play a giant spider-legged creature. That’s me up at the top of this post. I don’t really have spider legs. It’s just my amazing acting ability. I also play a few hundred tree-headed monsters. Nearly forty years after first being used in one of Frank’s films, he’s asking me to share my incredible screen presence. I couldn’t turn him down.

It’s still better than getting beat up.

{Update: Repurcussionz is still unfinished}

Normally Tuesday  is a great day to tune into The AIR  for a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and make you forget the real world. But today, we don’t have a new show. I needed a week off. I wasn’t even in town most of Monday, when I usually record the show, so instead I’m running a 24-hour marathon of recent episodes.

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.  

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

But today you can listen to eight episodes of the show that were originally broadcast between July and September.  They’ll let you catch up and support the local scene, independent music and yadda, yadda, yadda.

I think this is just the third week I’ve taken off from doing RFC this year. We’ll be back with all all-new episode next week, and we might also have new episodes of our other music specialty shows.

But this week you’ll have to be content with reruns. Luckily they’re really gosh-damnned good shows, loaded with incredible local and independent music, plus cult tunes, novelties and oddities, so it’s not like it’s a major loss or anything.