Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 1 of 143)

With the nasty weather at least temporarily taking a break, Tuesday on The AIR  we bring you a partly-new episode of Radio Free Charleston that’s got tons of great new music packed into its first hour 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 kicks off with an hour loaded with great local and independent stuff, and the final two hours bring you the second part of a Beatles Tribute from Radio Free Charleston International that hasn’t been heard in more than nine years.

We open our show this week with Massing. It’s their first new original tune in five years, and it’s well worth the wait. Our first hour also includes the RFC debut of the hotly-anticipated Common Ground 304, as well as new tracks from The Paranoid Style, Buzzcocks, Kula Shaker, Nothing To Protect and more.

Our second and third hours revive episode six of Radio Free Charleston International, from March, 2016. This was the second of two shows devoted to The Beatles, and it led to the creation of Beatles Blast, my show devoted to the Fab Four. While chunks of this show were recycled into the first four episodes of Beatles Blast, it has not been heard intact in more than nine years. It is loaded with rarities and curiosities from the Beatles canon, as well as some unusual covers. We even reconstruct the famed “Abbey Road Medley” with unique covers.

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

Radio Free Charleston V5 259

hour one
Massing “Chemicals”
The Paranoid Style “Badges and Wages”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Superstition”
Nothing To Protect “Step By Step”
Emtidi “Saat”
Gogol Bordello “No Time For Idiots”
Payback’s A Bitch “Election Day”
Common Ground 304 “We Ain’t In The Prisoner Takin’ Business”
POHGOH “I’m A Fan”
Golden “Gotta Let It Go”
Moron Police “Waiting Around For You”
Kula Shaker “Broke as Folk”
Buzzcocks “Heavy Streets”
The Other Timelines “dronesBHM”

hour two
Beatles “Free As A Bird”
John Lennon “Yer Blues”
Paul McCartney “Blackbird”
George Harrison “If I Needed Someone”
Ringo Starr “With A Little Help From My Friends”
Dawn Penn “Here Comes The Sun”
Vanessa Mae “Because”
Hamilton de Holanda you never give me your money
Beatles “Sun King”
Frankie Howerd “Mean Mr. Mustard”
Roy Wood “Polythene Pam”
Joe Cocker “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”
Ben Folds “Golden Slumbers”
Phil Collins “Carry That Weight/The End”
Chumbawumba “Her Majesty”
The Smithereens “All My Loving”
Harry Nillsson “You Can’t Do That”
Lemmy “Back In The USSR”

hour three
Under The Radar “Eleanor Rigby”
Dons of Quixote “Savoy Truffle”
The Marlowes “Old Brown Show”
The Blue Cartoon “I Want To Tell You” The Sarah Vaughn version I mention in the show was not complete)
Jamie Hoover “Only A Northern Song”
Eytain Mirsky “Don’t Bother Me”
Journey “It’s All Too Much”
Frank Zappa “I Am The Walrus”
The Vines “I’m Only Sleeping”
Yes “Every Little Thing”
Robert Palmer “Not A Second Time”
Eddie Vedder “Hey, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”
Heather Nova “We Can Work It Out”
The Donnas “Drive My Car”
Sweet “Paperback Writer”
Sparks “I Want To Hold Your Hand”

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 of our Swing Music extravaganza.

 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.

Today’s art is another small color rough of a possible high-detail painting I may do as a high-detail Hopperesque piece later. This time I went back to a pencil rough that I did six years ago, and fleshed it out a bit in pastel crayon to try to get the colors looking like I remembered from a January, 2020 trip to Chicago, right before the world shut down for a while. It’s a look at the famed skyline as seen from Navy Pier, which was delightfully nearly deserted because we were there in the dead of Winter.

At the time I just did the pencil version on textured paper, then set it aside. This time I went in and worked it over with pastel crayons because it’s Sunday and I spent the weekend with my lovely wife celebrating Valentine’s Day, and this post is due to go live in about six hours.

So…quick ‘n’ sloppy it is!

Someday, when I have all the time and money in the world and my Myasthenia Gravis lets up for more than a day or two, I’ll get around to doing all these canvas paintings I keep talking about.

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 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. New shows are on the way this month. 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 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. The Haversham stuff starts at 1 AM and tonight it’s a mix of all three of our shows from our friends in the UK.

This week we bring you photos and video from January 23, 2026 at the Friday session of the weather-truncated Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Show Winterfest.  This show happened back when our new ice age was just beginning. I had planned to bring you this stuff last Sunday, but it was delayed so that I could post my memories of the late Danny Boyd.

Above you see about thirteen minutes of the raw footage, shakiness and all, that Mel and I shot at Winterfest. In order to cover up any accidentally-recorded conversation, the audio has been replaced with some instrumental music that might seem familiar to folks with great taste. Below you will find a very short photo essay.   To see our first photo essay from the event, click HERE. For the music video I made out of the above footage, click HERE.

Now, on with the photos…

This was the convention set, a uniform for Adventure Command that recalls a classic Adventure Team GI Joe set. of course I got one.

The Marauders line of 3 3/4″ figures. One of these days I’m gonna have to interview these guys.

This brought back memories. My sister had one of these.

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From November, 2012 you see Radio Free Charleston 174 “Mark Wolfe Design Shirt.”

This week’s episode of Radio Free Charleston featured music from Qiet and Farnsworth, plus a special performance from the Dan Khede/Mark Scarpelli rock opera, MARY. We also have some fresh DEVO hat animation and part of a complete breakfast. Host segments were shot on the river side of our beautiful State Capitol Building. Our titular shirt comes to us from our good friend, Mark Wolfe, and plugs Mark Wolfe Design, which is still pretty much the hippest design firm in town.

We started the show with something childish and hysterical and we’re still not going to say anything more about it.

Original production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
February 13, 2026

Valentine’s Eve On The AIR FRIDAY!

So people are either dreading the 13th, or they’re gearing up for a marathon session of Love on Saturday, but Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to special themes that some folks might find similar. 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.  This time Mel devotes her show to the Disco sounds of love.

It’s a lovefest on the dancefllor as Mel assembles a mixtape of the romantic danceable songs you can legally find in one place.  Some of the selections may not seem love-soaked on the surface, but romance is at the heart of every single tune.

Just check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 123

Candi Staton “Young Hearts Run Free”
Odyssey “Use It Up and Wear It Out”
The Real Thing “Can You Feel The Force”
Crown Heights Affair “Galaxy of Love”
Liquid Gold “Dance Yourself Dizzy”
Shalamar “Take That To The Bank”
Eruption “I Can’t Stand The Rain”
Tina Charles “I Love To Love”
Elton John “Are You Ready For Love”
Loleatta Holloway “Love Sensation”
Stepanie Mills “Never Knew Love Like This Before”
Kelly Marie “Feels Like I’m In Love”
The Emotions “Best of My Love”
Donna Summer “Love’s About To Change”
Dee D. Jackson “Automatic Lover”
Barry White “You See The Trouble With Me”

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 The Ska/Pop brilliance of Madness, who managed to transcend their Stiff Records/Two Tone roots and become one of Britain’s biggest New Wave hitmakers.

Unfortunately, Sydney’s been having some computer issues and was not able to get a playlist to us in time to include it here, but she wants me to assure you that the show will include all their biggest hits from the New Wave era, along with a smattering of ultra-rare cuts, deep-album tracks and a surprise or three.

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 intend to observe Valentine’s Day in our own manner, which is none of your diddly-damn business.

Check back for fresh content in this blog every day, along with all our regular features.

It’s Valentine’s Day on Saturday, the wretched winter weather has subsided and people are making lots of plans. As such, there’s still things you can get into, so here we are with our trademark cursory list of cool STUFF TO DO all over the state, noted as briefly as possible. Please note that these are events local to WEST VIRGINIA, and not “West Virgina,” whatever the hell that is.

There are tons of smaller events that are escaping my radar, and a lot of couples are heading out of town to take advantage of the long weekend, or have other plans that don’t involve being in public, but if you want to get out and mingle in the local scene, here’s how you can do it.

Last week’s featured event was postponed due to frigid weather, and it will be rescheduled for a later date. I’ll keep you posted on that. This week our featured event happens on Saturday and Sunday, and it’s an annual event for Model Railroad hobbyists all over West Virginia.

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.  Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, even if your promotional graphic uses cruddy AI 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.

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.  Many Sunday afternoons at 2 PM they also have live music. This weekend they have Steve Himes on Friday, Pete Kosky on Saturday and Jordan Dyer on Sunday.

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.

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.  You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.

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. Besides, it’s too freaking cold for outdoor events now anyway.

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…

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In observation of Valentine’s Day, which happens this coming Saturday, we offer up new lovey-dovey episodes of our shows that debut on Wednesday afternoon, as The AIR brings you new installments of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, each of which offer their own slant on love.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a solid hour of different artists performing the Beatles song, “All You Need Is Love.” Aside from it being my catchphrase on the show, and damned great song, our reason for this is pretty freaking obvious.

You will hear the song in question performed by a dazzling array of artists, as you will see listed below:

Beatles Blast 128

“All You Need Is Love”
by
New Musik
John Bayless
Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker
Neri Per Caso
Nada Surf
Jason Lytle
Daryl Hall
Jamie Lancaster
Yusef Islam and Paul McCartney
Echo & The Bunnymen
String Quartet
Elvis Costello
James Last
John Wetton and Robby Krieger
The Beatles

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch brings you a mixtape comprised of three versions of the musical, She Loves Me.

You will hear songs from The Original Broadway Cast Album from 1963, the London Cast Album from 1964 and the 2016 Broadway Revival, which was the first-ever Broadway show to be streamed live. Listeners will be treated to performances by Gavin Creel, Rita Moreno, Jack Cassidy, Laura Benanti and more.

She Loves Me is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock, and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. The original Broadway run was directed by the legendary Hal Prince.

This is the third English-language adaptation of the 1937 play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklós László.

The first adaptation was the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner and the second was the 1949 musical version, In the Good Old Summertime. The plot revolves around Budapest shop employees Georg and Amalia, who, despite being consistently at odds with each other at work, are unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal met through lonely-hearts ads.

Later, this same story was adapted into the movie You’ve Got Mail.

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 six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  and today we prove it with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to prepare you for the holiday of Love coming up this weekend. This week we have a new edition of The Swing Shift, too! 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 brings you a new show with three full hours of newly-assembled music. We open with new tunes from Frenchy & The Punk and Ghoulbox, and fill the remainder of the first two hours with love-heavy songs from local and independent artists, just to get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day on Saturday.

Our third hour is a Valentine-themed MYSTERY BONUS TRACK MIXTAPE with a very appropriate, yet very specific theme…that you will have to tune in to discover.

Although there may be hints somewhere. Our feature image, in part, uses a design from episode 155 of our video show, “Love Robot Shirt,” which was a TeeFury design by artist, Rebekie B.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

Radio free Charleston V5 258

hour one
Frenchy & The Punk “War on War”
Ghoulbox  “Juju Bag”
Payback’s A Bitch “Stop The World I Wanna Get Off”
June Swoon “Working Dog”
Gary Brooker “No More Fear of Flying”
Mind Garage “Paint It Black”
Cult Canyon “Real Sublime”
Tape Age“Hours To Days”
Nervous Twitch “Love 4 Me 2”
Falling Stars “Waiting For Love”
Novo Combo “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”
Government Cheese “Fall In Love With You”
The Aquabats “Spider Love”
Hello June “Soft Love”
Skafish “She Lives For Love”

hour two
Deni Bonet “All Around The World (Music Is Love)”
The Settlement “Only Love”
Three’s Company Blues “Addicted To Love”
Jim Lange“Love Is Casual”
Buni Muni “Love Spell”
Stark Raven “Feel Only Love”
The Amazing Delores “Love Magic”
The Cast of Paradise Park “Never Ending Love”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You”

hour three
Mystery bonus Valentine-y Mixtape

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 get ready for a new edition of The Swing Shift. Since I’m in the mood to be all mysterious today, all I’m gonna tell about this show is that, of course, it Swings like crazy, but it also features a solid hour of music by an unlikely Swing musician. You’ll just have to tune in to be surprised by who it is. You might find this show irrisistible.

 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 meandering watercolor that I did when people who gave half a crap were watching The Super Bowl. I couldn’t have cared less, so this was a better use of my time, even with MG-afflicted fingers.

Usually when we take the train to Chicago, like we did in December, if we get stuck with a roomette, I’ll be sleeping uncomfortably on the top bunk and I’ll wake up around 5 AM. With nothing better to do, and not wanting to wake up Mel, I will just pull back the curtains a bit and watch the sunrise (if we’re lucky enough to be on the East-facing side of the train). This usually happens as we’re speeding through Indiana, where those poor folks can’t afford mountains, so the landscape is vastly different from what we have here.

Since I wasn’t terribly inspired, but wanted to make some art to distract myself from other things, I decided to slap some watercolors onto a new textured paper and, without reference, do my impression of what it looks like watching the sun rise from the Amtrak Cardinal in the Winter weather of Indiana.

It came out better than it had any right to.

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 a new 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.

At 2 PM, Nigel Pye brings us a Valentine-ish episode of Psychedelic Shack, with the entire hour devoted to the Welsh Psych/Blues band, Love Sculpture (featuring an embryonic Dave Edmunds). Here’s what you’ll hear…

Psychedelic Shack 108

Love Sculpture

“Sabre Dance”
“Mars”
“Morning Dew”
“Three O’Clock Blues”
“Don’t Answer The Door”
“In The Land Of The Few”
“Seagull”
“Why (How Now)”
“Farendole”
“Brand New Woman”
“The Stumble”
“People People”
“Summertime”

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.

At 3 PM, Herman Linte explores the Art Rock/Prog Rock/Proto New Romantic Sounds of Roxy Music, with a two-hour retrospective on Prognosis…

Prognosis 135

Roxy Music

“Love Is The Drug”
“Do The Strand”
“Virginia Plain”
“The Thrill of it All”
“Out of the Blue”
“All I Want Is You”
“Tryptich”
“Prarie Rose”
“Angel Eyes”
“Jealous Guy”
“Mother of Pearl”
“Oh Yeah”
“Re-Make Re-Model”
“Ladytron”
“Avalon”
“He’ll Have To Go”
“Bitter-Sweet”
“Casanova”
“Same Old Scene”
“Over You”
“Dance Away”
“Both Ends burning”
“If There Is Something”
“In Every Dream Home A Heartache”
“More Than This”

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 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. The Haversham stuff starts at 1 AM and tonight it’s a three sterling editions of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

Our previously-announced video and photo essay will be delayed until later this week.

Above you see a video of my friend, Danny Boyd, talking about writing horror at ShockaCon in 2015. This is Danny in his element, teaching storytelling technique.

Danny passed away Friday. I’m not exactly sure what happened, and I don’t want to speculate. I just know that, for the fourth time in four months, I got caught off-guard by the loss of a close friend.

Professionally, Danny was “Daniel Boyd,” and his resume is diverse, impressive and also random as hell. Yes, he was a retired college professor. He was also an award-winning documentary filmmaker. He was a Fullbright Scholar. He built a film school program at West Virginia State (first College, now University). He wrote and directed delightful low-budget movies, some of which were picked up for distribution by Troma. He wrote magazine articles, children’s books, a novella and more. He taught graduate-level courses on creating graphic novels and wrote a few of his own. On top of that, at the age of 48, he decided to pursue a career as a professional wrestler, and as “Professor Danger,” he worked all over the world for major US independent companies and even for AAA in Mexico. I almost forgot, he adapted two of his movies into stage musicals, working with Marc Scarpelli and Larry Groce. The man never went long without a project or five in the works.

And he was always “Danny” to me.

When Danny was persuaded to come to teach at what was then West Virginia State College in 1983, I was one of his first students. We hit it off immediately and became friends. I am proud to say that I aced every class I took from him.

Of course, those classes included “Horror and Fantasy in Film,” and “The Importance of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone,” but still, for me that was an accomplishment.

I would tease Danny that he waited until I was gone to start teaching the meaty film making classes, and he’d tease back that, as a student, I was his guinea pig.

Danny was one of the few friends I was able to maintain contact with during my hellish first marriage. I’d introduced Danny to my brother, Frank, and they became close friends and collaborators, so he’d check in on me from time to time. For a while there, we became “divorce buddies,” commiserating through the ends of our respective unions.

When I finally broke into radio, Danny was one of my biggest boosters, and he played a key part in hooking me up with Michael Lipton, which would lead to a profile of me appearing in The Charleston Gazette, and that would be seen by one Melanie Larch, who decided she wanted to meet me.

Once again, I have lost a friend for decades who was very consequential in my life.

Danny was very supportive of me, as he was of all of his former students. Once I started writing PopCult, he became a regular presence at this website. Danny was also a contributor to the video incarnation of Radio Free Charleston. He very generously allowed me to butcher his short film, Coal Dust, Fairy Dust into a gag movie trailer, and contributed music videos and other short films, including an unreleased comedy short he did featuring animation by my brother.

Danny’s influence on me and on the late Brian Young shaped a great deal of the guerilla filmmaking style we used on RFC.

There are well over a hundred references to Danny in the twenty-years of this blog, with the first being less than a week after PopCult began, and the most recent being last September, when I was plugging his appearance at the first HurriCon.

That was the last time I saw Danny. I’d decided to go to the con as a civilian, so I didn’t take any photos or anything, but I went to Danny’s table and we spoke for nearly an hour. It was just two old friends catching up. I bought a copy of his novella, which I still have not had time to read, and he asked me how Frank was doing and we talked about some of the cool stuff that was happening locally. We also both felt really old when I reminded him that, when I took his film class, we had to shoot on Super 8 film because the Communications Department didn’t have portable video cameras yet, and the only 16 mm camera was bolted to an animation stand.

It was great catching up with Danny. It was always great seeing my old friend. I’m really going to miss him. I am far from alone in that. Danny had thousands of friends and former students who adored him, and he’s going to leave a huge void in West Virginia’s creative community.

He was a rare breed…a creative and energetic soul who was a tireless self-promoter, but also a generous and nurturing teacher and mentor. You don’t usually find all those qualities in the same person.

But you did with Danny. His legacy lives on with the works of his students and colleagues.