Month: December 2025 (Page 5 of 5)

Today’s new Radio Free Charleston was not an episode of the show I enjoyed putting together. If you’ve been reading PopCult for the last few days, you know that Lee Harrah died on Thanksgiving night.

When one of your best friends dies, and said friend was not only a fixture of the local music scene, but also a trusted partner in radio and video hijinks, you pretty much have to do a tribute show.

I am interrupting the planned “Best of 2025” series of RFC shows to dedicate this show to Lee. This is Lee’s episode of Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear 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.

This episode is a mix of Lee’s music with three bands, Stone Ka Tet, The Ghosts of Now and HARRAH, combined with some of his favorite artists, and three episodes of the show we did together, Word Association with Lee and Rudy. I hope that the many people who knew Lee will enjoy spending just a litle more time with him, and those who didn’t can get just a hint of what he was like.

There was nobody like Lee Harrah.

Also, throughout the week, you can hear, in the RFC Daily timeslot at 5 PM Eastern time Tuesday through Friday, instead of RFC, you will hear a mix of Harrah’s Hard & Heavy and Word Association with Lee & Rudy. These were the shows Lee did for The AIR back in 2016 and 2017, before life got in the way.  Sunday at 9 AM, and runing until 8 PM, you can hear a marathon of Lee’s shows, along with his episode of Six Degrees of Separation.

We don’t have links this week, but here’s the playlist…

RFC V5 250

The Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
HARRAH “Nothing Me”
The Ramones “Rock n Roll High School”
Creedence Clearwater Revival “Green River”
Iron Maiden “Can I Play With Madness”
Type O Negative “Love You To Death”
Stone Ka Tet “Adam’s Song”
Word Association “The Hulk”
HARRAH “Blood Moon”
The Ghosts of Now “Alaska Looks Like Arizona”
Lemmy & Friends “Back In The U.S.S.R.”
Tina Turner “Get Back”
The Beatles “Now And Then”
Stone Ka Tet “River Low”
Word Association “George Romero”
HARRAH “Pay The Piper”
Stone Ka Tet “Patton’s Blues”
Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train”
Iron Maiden “Hallowed Be Thy Name”
Word Association “Great Albums”

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. 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.

Our second entry today in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is for the Original Cast Album for BOOP! The Musical.

This is a wonderful gift for anybody who enjoys classic Broadway musicals, and for fans of Betty Boop. This will also be a great gift for anybody who appreciates incredible musical theatre talent, because it is the recording debut of Jasmine Amy Rogers, who is destined to be one of the all-time greats of the stage.

Melanie and I saw the original Chicago production of BOOP! in December, 2023, and this is what I wrote at the time:

…as it is, BOOP! is nearly perfect. The songs are catchy as hell. The story is fun. The stagecraft is amazing. And Jasmine Amy Rogers, who plays Betty Boop, will likely come out of this role as a major star. She really IS Betty Boop, come to life.

The show is about 90% perfect. I’m sure the producers will tinker with the pacing and I hear that the composer, David Foster, has two new songs ready to plug into the production. At this point, it seems that this show just needs minor tweaks to become a major hit.

So much of BOOP! is simply stellar. Bob Martin contributes a clever book that weaves romance, spectacle and interdimensional travel into a thrilling and delightful story. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics and David Foster’s music manage the difficult feat of capturing the Golden Age Jazz sound of the original Betty Boop cartoons while still projecting a contemporary vibe.

Jerry Mitchell, who directed and choreographed this show has conducted a symphony of pop culture visuals and dance numbers that pay tribute to the original cartoons as well as remaining strikingly original.

Speaking of strikingly original, the scenic design by David Rockwell and the projection design by Finn Ross help immerse the audience in a world based on classic Fleischer animation in the beginning, and then a full-color astonishingly surreal New York City in the “real world.”

The show transferred to Broadway this year, and for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the show, it did not last.

I was flabbergasted.

Part of the blame lies with the now-demoted New York Times critic who wrote a hatchet-job review that made little sense.  Part of it was likely due to the Broadway Wing’s Tony Committee continuing their annoying trend of overlooking shows that began with out-of-town tryouts. Part of it has to do with the strange trend of almost every musical that opened this year closing their doors early as audiences stayed away.

All I know is BOOP! The Musical is one of the best, most-entertaining musicals I’ve ever seen, and it’s a crime that it didn’t find more success.

Having said that, there are plans to take the show on a national tour next year. London’s West End may also beckon. And we have this killer Original Cast Album, available as a CD, or on deluxe colored vinyl.

And it would make a great gift, even if you just buy it for yourself.

Chitty Bang Bang Magical Car 1:45 Diecast Model
by Corgi
Around $50 from hobby retailers or Amazon

The first entry today, in this bonus week of The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide, is a pretty freaking incredible diecast model of a car from one of the most fondly-remembered children’s movies of the 1960s. It’s an amazing replica of the original toy, and this is basically the car that was sent to subscribers of The Corgi Model Club back in April, only in a newly-designed box.

This is a great gift for diecast collectors, fans of the original movie, fans of the movie’s star, Dick Van Dyke, who turns 100 next week, and fans of the author of the children’s book that’s it’s based on, Ian Fleming.

Yes, the original children’s book was the work of the creator of James Bond. Hell, the screenplay for the movie was written by Roald Dahl.

Corgi originally released the lovable magical car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a diecast model in November 1968. With this model you can fly through the nostalgia that was every child’s delight growing up by collecting this iconic 1:45 display model.

At nearly six inches long, the model is the perfect size as a desk or shelf ornament. And it makes a perfect gift for any person who loves Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

This model comes in sturdy display box with clear window so that it can be kept as a collectible or taken out of the box to display or play.

Corgi is a premier line of highly detailed die cast products that has been arround for over 50 years and features aircraft, space crafts, tanks, trucks, emergency vehicles and buses. I wrote about them a couple of times this year, and I’m a huge fan of the Corgi Model Club.

You can find this great replica at many online diecast hobby stores, and also at Amazon.

I’m still reeling from the death of my friend, Lee Harrah last Thursday.

So late Saturday I sat down and pulled a piece of black canvas board that I’d bought for him, but never got to give him, and did a quick acrylic painting.

It’s based on a screen grab from video I shot of him performing at The Sound Factory in Charleston several years ago.

Lee was at home on the stage. While he was perhaps overly passionate in life, on stage he could be explosive, filled with rage, powerful and…also peaceful. Ultimately, it was where he was happiest. I chose to depict Lee in a rare moment of peace, between the power.

It was a brief moment of him in Dr. Banner mode, between smashing the stage as The Hulk.

I can hear him in my mind looking at this, tearing up, and saying, “Dammit, Rudy.”

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

Today at 5 PM on The AIR , in the RFC Daily timeslot, we will bring you an encore of Lee’s 2016 interview on Six Degrees of Separation. That will be followed by nearly an hour of Lee’s music. Tomorrow, the planned Radio Free Charleston “Best of 2025” show will be bumped to next week as I put together a tribute show to Lee with his music, his favorite music, and some episodes of Word Association with Lee and Rudy.

Later today we continue The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide.

Meanwhile, 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 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.

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.