The PopCulteer

September 2, 2022

It’s a double shot of new internet radio programming this Friday as we offer up shiny new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found on this very page.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents a wild collection of classic Disco tracks from the classic era of people dancing in dark rooms on cocaine.

For one hour you can go back to the Golden Age of Disco, where the sideburns were long, the skirts were short and the dancing was endless.

Check out the playlist…

MB 58

Evelyn “Champagne” King “Love Come Down”
Earth Wind & Fire “Boogie Wonderland”
Eruption “One Way Ticket”
The Jacksons “Dancing Machine”
Teri DeSario “Aint Nothing Gonna Keep You From Me”
Jocelyn Brown “Somebody Else’s Guy”
El Debarge “Rhythm of the Night”
Average White Band “Let’s Go Round Again”
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Gloria Gaynor “Reach Out I’ll Be There”
Yarbourough & Peoples “Don’t Stop The Music”
Boogie Box High “Jive Talkin'”
Bonnie Pointer “Heaven Must Have Sent You”
Luthor Vandross “Never Too Much”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, it’s Big Electric Cat time as Sydney Fileen delivers a special mixtape edition of her show that pays tribute to the band, Blondie.  As with our other Haversham programs this week, we don’t have a full playlist to share with you.  However, we can tell you that this two-hour epic is packed with huge hits, deep album cuts, demos of famous tracks and other rarities from Blondie’s New Wave era albums.

Blonide was the American New Wave band that sprung from the fertile punk spawning grounds of CBGBs in New York and are actually still touring the world today.

The classic line up of Clem Burke, Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante, Nigel Harrison, Chris Stein and of course, Debbie Harry took Blondie to the peaks of chart success, and helped drag New Wave Music into the mainstream.

This show is missing a couple of tracks at my request. I just didn’t feel that “Rapture” and “The Tide is High” were really new wavey enough to fit into the show’s format. Sydney made the call to leave out “Call Me,” because the band, except for Harry, doesn’t really play on that track.  I think Sydney has put together a great show that ought to make every fan of Blondie very happy.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer.  This weekend The AIR will launch a marathon of Radio Free Charleston, to commemorate the debut of the original version of the show on broadcast radio 33 years ago over Labor Day weekend on WVNS radio. We’ll kick things off at 9 PM Saturday, and run until Tuesday morning, with a break Sunday at midnight for seven hours of The Swing Shift.

Check PopCult for all our regular features, with fresh content every day.