Month: July 2026 (Page 3 of 3)

It’s time for our weekly half-assed list of STUFF TO DO, around the Mountain State, and this week it’s halfder-asseder than usual. Basically, I’m just going to run an edited version of the boilerplate with no extra graphics.

I figure that, if you are interested in the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta, there’s not much I can add to what you know. If you go, stay hydrated and have fun.  The same holds for whatever the heck that giant Ferris wheel thing is for at the State Capital Grounds. If that’s your idea of fun, go knock yourself out and enjoy yourself.  It’s the Fourth of July and chances are good that you feel more like celebrating our country than I do at the moment.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t do well in the heat, and it’s going to be insanely hot here in Charleston this weekend. Please stay safe and use common sense when dealing with the heat.

As for me…I’m not going to be in town at all this weekend. Mel and I plan to hop a train to Chicago, where it’s just as hot, if not worse, and we plan to spend our time inside enjoying cool stuff and trying to avoid fireworks. As such, I am sprinting to get PopCult and The AIR covered while I’m gone, so that I don’t have to do any writing from the road on this trip.

Most weeks I try to tell you in detail about a few cool events all around the state, but this week, I’m slacking off.  Things will be back to normal next week.  If you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, even if your promotional graphic uses cruddy AI slop art, 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.

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.

I also need to point out that Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

You might also find cool musical events at 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.

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.

Enjoy your holiday and be careful out there in the heat.

It’s hard to believe, even for someone like me who seems to have some kind of anniversary in this blog every week or two, but ten years ago today, The AIR became the internet radio station of PopCult.

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.

Our little internet radio friend began life as Voices of Appalachia, and was a project of WV EDC, which was known as Digiso, back in the day.  Voices of Appalachia was launched to fill a void in West Virginia’s community radio landscape, back in the days before WTSQ and WWSA were granted low-power FM licenses.  Eric Meadows headed the project, and in October, 2014 he invited me to bring Radio Free Charleston back to its radio roots as a show on the station.  Over the next year Eric had more and more duties at WV EDC heaped on his plate, and at one point technical issues took the station out of commission for a couple of months.  He decided to turn the station over to me, Jason “Roadblock” Robinson and Lynn Browder at the end of 2015.

We transformed it into “OnTheAIRadio,” which was a compromise choice after my suggestion, “The AIR,” was found not to have an available URL to use. After a few months, Jason and Lynn found that they had too many other things going on and I became the sole owner, and incorporated it into PopCult and reverted back to the name I came up with, The AIR.

When we relaunched the station, ten years ago today, we had several shows that carried over from the Voices of Appalachia days, and we also introduced several new shows. Remarkably, quite a few of those shows are still running on the station.

Radio Free Charleston, of course, is still our flagship show.  At the beginning of 2020, I revamped the format and combined the local-music-focus of the VOA version with the free-format concept of RFC International. This brought the show very close to my original concept for RFC back in 1989, when it was on broadcast radio.

With the launch of The AIR we also introduced Curtain Call, hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch. This is her show devoted to Musical Theatre.  Originally, Mel also hosted a travel show, On The Road With Mel, it was extremely popular, but writing that was too time-consuming, so we let it fall by the wayside. In May, 2020, Mel began her classic Disco show, MIRRORBALL on a lark, and it quickly became the second most popular show on The AIR.

I reached out to friends in London who were eager to produce “labor of love” programs for The AIR, provided they could do whatever they wanted and use fake names, since they weren’t getting paid. The Haversham Recording Institute originally provided five shows for us: Prognosis, Progressive rock, hosted by Herman Linte; Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, New Wave Music hosted by Sydney Fileen; Psychedleic Shack, Psychedelic Rock, hosted by Nigel Pye; SKA Madness, filled with Ska Music and hosted by Dexter Checkers; and The Punk Club, hosted by Humphrey Hubert. The last three of those shows were 30-minute components of a two-hour block of programming on Thursday afternoons, with the addition of a fourth program, Beatles Blast, hosted by yours truly.

Sadly, Dexter had to stop doing SKA Madness after suffering a series of health setbacks.  After four half-hour episodes of The Punk Club, Humprhey apparently vanished in Brazil during the Olympics. At least that’s what I was told.

Psychedelic Shack, SKA Madness and Beatles Blast returned after a short hiatus as hour-long shows, and Psychedelic Shack can now be heard every Monday at 2 PM, while Beatles Blast is on Wednesdays at 2 PM.

These days, our friends at Haversham only produce  roughly one new episode a month. This is due to a combination of their time being eaten up by paying work, and The AIR having limited server space available to store programming.

To mark the tenth anniversary of The AIR joining PopCult, the plan is to have new episodes of our shows all this week, with bonus episodes later in the month.

That means that this afternoon you can tune in for new editions of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast celebrates both the anniversary of The AIR, and this weekend’s 250th anniversary of our country with an episode featuring The Beatles, as a group and solo, performing LIVE IN AMERICA!

It’s a mixtape that blends The Beatles at The Hollywood Bowl with recordings of John in NYC, George from The Concert for Bangla Desh, Ringo from MSG and the L.A. Auditorium and Paul from Bonnaroo, Los Angeles and Shea Stadium. It’s a full hour of a fantasy concert for Beatle fans of all stripes.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon. A two-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes runs every Monday evening, starting at 11 PM.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch  presents a mixtape version of the patriotic, historical musical, 1776, that combines demo recordings of the show with songs from the movie soundtrack and parts of the 1997 Revival album that features Brett Spiner and Pat Hingle. Many years ago Mel played the entire original Broadway cast album, but this is a whole new take on the musical that’s very popular this year.  In fact, acclaimed productions of 1776 have been mounted in both Charleston and Huntington in recent days.

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 two-hour mini-marathon of classic episodes can be heard Monday evening starting at 9 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

At 10 PM (EDT), a new episode of Comedy Vault, will present two episodes of the rarely-heard Mel Blanc radio show, from 1946.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been running The AIR for ten years. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.