The PopCulteer
December 26, 2025

Boxing Day On The AIR FRIDAY!

It may be the day after Christmas, and a lot of folks may be sweaty and lethargic following a day of Yuletide cheer, but Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to special themes to close out this Godforsaken year. 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.

At 2 PM we present a brand-new edition of Mel larch’s Disco Music Showcase/.  For the first time since  the fourteenth edition of MIRRORBALL, we devote a show to the music of Chic. Our second one-hour salute to one of the biggest-selling and most-influential Disco bands of all time is well-deserved because. It’s been five years since we’ve bowed down at the altar of new York’s Disco Magicians. This episode salutes the brilliance of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards and their band Chic, with the following tunes…

MIRRORBALL 122

CHIC

“Everybody Dance”
“Chic Cheer”
“At Last I Am Free”
“Savoir Faire”
“My Feet Keep Dancing”
“Real People”
“Stage Fright”
“Chic Mystique”
“Flash Back”
“Hangin'”
“I Want Your Love”

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 mini-marathon that includes the latest episode Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that salutes Dave Ball, the instrumentalist half of the seminal New Wave Band, Soft Cell, who passed away in October.

Sydney opens her show with the song, “Floatation” by The Grid, the band that Ball formed with Richard Norris and Sascha Souter during a hiatus from Soft Cell.

For the remainder of her program, Sydney pays tribute to Dave Ball with the music he created with vocalist Marc Almond in Soft Cell. Together, they created a sound that some say was definitive of the New Wave era.

This is a mixtape presentation so you can resort to the songlist below.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 134

The Grid “Floatation”
Soft Cell “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”
“Memorobilia”
“Say Hello Wave Goodbye”
“Sex Dwarf”
“Torch”
“Baby Doll”
“Heat”
“Martin”
“Kitchen Sink Drama”
“Forever The Same”
“Where The Heart Is”
“Hendrix Medley”
“Numbers”
“Soul Inside”
“The Art of Falling Apart”
“Down In The Subway”

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 Overnight late Monday/early Tuesday.

Your PopCulteer and his wife had a peaceful, quiet and relaxing holiday at home, which was much-needed following a year that, to put it in rather tame terms, sucked ass. Check PopCult every day for fresh content and all our regular features.