Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 17 of 124)

Time flies when you’re having fun! It’s a big day for fans of Disco Music today on The AIR.

Five years ago today, Mel Larch’s showcase of Disco Music, MIRRORBALL, made its debut on The AIR (PopCult’s sister internet radio station), and our listeners have been dancing like crazy ever since.

It’s been an amazing journey getting here with what we thought was just a throwaway music special that nobody would listen to. We were wrong, and here we are celebrating with thousands of listeners and a worldwide audience. It was during the late summer of 2019 when Mr. and Mrs. PopCulteer were careening through Eastern Pennsylvania eating chocolate and listening to The Rialto Report podcast about Andrea True, that my lovely wife, Mel, remarked on how much she loved classic Disco music, and we began to talk about doing a Disco show for The AIR. The show didn’t happen until the pandemic shut everything down and gave us more free time, and the first MIRRORBALL debuted as an AIR Music Special on May 1, 2020.

We decided to do another one two weeks later, and the reception was so striking that we just didn’t stop.

To mark the occasion of this anniverary, The AIR will run a 24-hour marathon of Mel’s hand-picked favorite episodes beginning Thursday at 2 PM.  Then, when it concludes, Friday at 2 PM we will serve up a Brand-new episode of the show, and as a special treat, this new episode is comprised entirely of Disco club hits that have never previously been featured on the show.

My Melanie

When we launched, Mel was concerned that we’d run out of classic Disco-era music, but the truth is, after digging in the club vaults for five years, there is no end to the countless grooves that we can bring you. For a show that was inspired by a podcast about vintage porn and was never intended to be an ongoing series, to be still going strong after five years is quite an achievement.

You will still be able to tune in to The AIR for new episodes of MIRRORBALL, Fridays at 2 PM for the foreseeable future.

So prepare to shake your groove thing, turn the beat around and fly your freak flag high as The AIR brings you 25 hours of Disco, beginning Thursday afternoon.

And then, Friday at 2 PM, tune in the newest edition of MIRRORBALL. Just check out this playlist…

MIRRORBALL 115

Good Life Ltd. “I Got It”
Alice Steet Gang “Bahia (Also Sprach Zarathustra)”
Crosstown Traffic “Party People”
Ike Noble “Dance, Dance, Dance to the Music (Y’all)”
Panach “Sweet Jazz Music”
Universal Robot Band “Disco Boogie Woman”
Stringfield Family “The Sound of Disco Rock”
Sandpebbels of Barbados “Suntan”
Legal Defenses “The Disco Stomp”
Volstarr “Dancin'”

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. Soon that mini-marathon will be moving to a new night, but for now, it’s a Saturday night experience.

On Wednesday The AIR brings you great new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast  and The Comedy Valut that are seasonally appropriate and downright cute.  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 is inspired by this week’s “Fruit Salad” 100th episode of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack, and is something I’ve been threatening to do for some time.

It’s an entire hour-long mixtape devoted to one song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” You will hear multiple takes of the song by The Beatles, as well as covers by Greg Hawkes, Andy Timmons, Peter Gabriel and even one Paul McCartney. You’ll here the song transformed into Jazz, Bluegrass, Salsa and arena rock, and by the end of the show, you will have the tune stuck in your head for days.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch presents a mixtape collection of new musicals that have opened this year on Broadway, off-Broadway and in London’s West End. This has become an annual tradition on Curtain Call as Mel awaits the Tony Award nominations that will be the basis for her next episode.

Some of these shows are certain to be nominated. Others, not so much.  This show will let you sample the latest from the world of Musical Theatre. Just check out the playlist…

Curtain call 155

New Shows 2025

“Let’s Do Lunch” from Sunset Boulevard
“Making A Man” from Operation Mincemeat
“The Call” from Floyd Collins
“You’ll Never Get Away From Me” from Gypsy
“Daydream” from Real Women Have Curves
“Why Look Around The Corner” from BOOP! The Musical
“For The Gaze” from Death Becomes Her
“The Assassin and the Martyr” from Legends of Arahma
“I’m A Disney Whore” from Waiting In The Wings The Musical
“Where’s My Superhero” from Your Lie In April
“Don’t Forget Me” from Smash
“Just In Time” from Just In Time

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM,  Saturday at 8 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM. A marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning and afternoon starting at 9 AM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault brings you a brand-new episode featuring the third of multiple installments of Viv Stanshall’s “Rawlinson’s End.”

In case you missed the news yesterday, this week all of The AIR Musical Specialty programs will be brand-new. That means that…Tuesday is once again “New Show Day” on The AIR.  As such, we have new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift for you. 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.

The first hour of this week’s RFC is loaded with local, independent and whatever else music I feel like playing, and it’s filled with gems.

We open with a new track from Corduroy Brown, and it’s a Britney Spears cover, because…why not?  It’s part of an EP he recorded at WDVX and released via Bandcamp.

Speaking of Bandcamp, I mention repeatedly in this week’s show that Bandcamp Friday happens this week. finally I got it right! The next Bandcamp Friday is just days away on May 2.  Follow those links below and give money to these people.

Our first hour is filled with lots of new music from Dice Johnson, Kerosine Stars, Billy Idol, Nellie McKay and more.

Our second and third hours of the show revive a ten-year-old episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three, from back when The AIR was Voices of Appalachia/New Appalachian Radio, and I did RFC as a two-hour, all-local show.  In this episode, I resorted to a gimmick to make programming the show easier. Here’s what I wrote…

After our first set of random cool new music, the rest of the show will consist of four-song blocks from some great local artists.

Some of you may remember that back in the olden days of Rock 105, they’d play ROCK BLOCKS with two-to-four songs in a row by the same artist. I have a little bit of fun with that idea this week. I have fun with the reverb, too.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show.

RFC V5 223

hour one
Corduroy Brown “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”
Kerosene Stars “Kerosine”
Billy Idol w/Avril Lavigne “77”
The Settlement “Snake Farm”
Alice Cooper “Black Mamba”
Ghoulbox “Necrokiss”
Sinz of Eden “Angels Turn Away”
Dice Johnson “Caravan”
Matt Berry “Silver Rings”
Nellie McKay “Initiation”
Massing “Frozen Blood”
Adrian Belew “Elephant Talk (Live)”

hour two
Byzantine “Agonies”
Talented “Put Ya Gloves On”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Firest of Dreams”
QiET “Cosby Sweater”

The Company Stores
“Street Corner Blues”
“Dear Universe”
“Pocket Change”
“Lips”

Highway Jones
“I Get Numb”
“Cigarettes and Liquor Stores”
“Beautiful and Grace”
“Gimme Back My Radio”

Total Meltdown
“Silverine”
“Bad Bad Leroy Brown”
“Country Roads”
“Wake Me Up When September Ends”

hour three
Andy Park and the True Lovers
“I Got Some Swag”
“Drones”
“Black Chicken”
“A Little Attention”

Zeroking
“Dead Rock Star”
“Love Is Dead”
“Girls of California”
“Showtime Revolution”

Hillbilly Deathride
“I Am”
“Necessities”
“Bilderburger”
Weaponized”

Tape Age
“Tell me Why”
“You Need Me To Need You”

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 we offer up a new episode of The Swing Shift that collects a bunch of brand-new and old-classic Swing tunes, with a more mellow bent, but don’t get too relaxed, some hyper-swinging moments will take you by surprise.

I’m also really happy to open this show with a track by Dice Johnson, who just released his debut album days ago (and who you also hear on RFC this week). Dice is a Marshall student, a great vibe player and arranger and he grew up less than two blocks from me. It’s a kick to have him open up The Swing Shift this week.

Check out the playlist…

The Swing Shift 170

Dice Johnson “Spachik”
Sean Nelson & New London Big Band “Reply All”
Doc Severinsen “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”
David Carroll “Witchcraft”
Vince Guaraldi Trio “Fly Me To The Moon”
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra “The Sunny Side of the Street”
Marilyn Monroe “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”
Duke Ellington “Take The A Train”
Lester Young “Lester’s Be-Bop”
Clark Terry “Gravy Waltz”
Stephane Grapelli “It Don’t Mean A Thing”

 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.

Monday in radioland we have a milestone episode to celebrate.  Beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring new episodes of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack, and 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.

Nigel Pye has managed to hit episode 100 with Psychedelic Shack. This is one of the shows produced by our friends at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and while all three of our British shows started in the same week, Psychedelic Shack had a bit of a rocky launch, and was MIA for a couple of years while we found room for it on the schedule.

When we officially re-branded Voice of Appalachia as The AIR back in July, 2016, we had one day (Thursday) where, instead of just offering one music specialty show, we brought you four half-hour programs as part of a two-hour block. Of those four shows, Psychedelic Shack and Beatles Blast are still on the schedule.  The two other shows, The Punk Club and Ska Madness, were also produced by Haversham.  Ska Madness made the transition to a one-hour show, but was discontinued when its host, Dexter Checkers, developed health problems. The Punk Club stalled after four half-hour episodes when the host mysteriously disappeared.

Beatles Blast, of course, is hosted by yours truly. Psychedelic Shack returned to the schedule full-time as a one-hour show in 2018. In addition to hosting Psychedelic Shack, Nigel Pye is also the chief engineer for Haversham, and produces all of their shows.

Nigel was also reluctant to do anything special to mark his 100th episode, but we twisted his arm, and he came up with a fun theme for the show…fruit salad. An unusual number of Psychedelic Rock songs mention fruit, so Herman collected a bunch of them into one show.

Check out the playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 100 (2 PM EDT)

Ben Harper “Strawberry Fields Forever”
XTC “Fruit Nut”
One Step Beyond “Scene of the Lemon Queen”
The Monkees “Apples, Peaches, Bananas and Pears”
The Attack “Lady Orange Peel”
The Searchers “Cherry Stone”
The Nice “The Diamond Hard Blue Apples of the Moon”
Andy Partridge “Cherry In Your Tree”
Donovan “Mellow Yellow”
The Elopers “Music To Smoke Bananas By”
The Move “Cherry Blossom Clinic”
Dave Gahan “Bitter Apple”
Syd Barrett “Apples and Oranges”
Legay “The Fantastic Story of The Steam Driven Banana”
Prince & The Revolution “Raspberry Beret”
Negative Space “Forbidden Fruit”

At 3 PM, Herman Linte put together a mixtape show featuring Brand New progressive rock. All the tunes you’ll hear were released in early 2025 (except for one ringer from late 2024). This show proves that Prog is not dead.

Which we pretty much knew anyway.

Check out the playlist…

Prognosis 127 (3 PM EDT)

New Prog For 2025 Mixtape

The Mars Volta “Lucro sucio”
Steven Wilson “The Overview”
Jethro Tull “Drink From The Same Well”
Patrick Leonard “Mary Saw Angels”
Bryan Ferry/Amelia Barrett “The Florist”
The Residents “Empty”
Colosseum “English Garden Suite”
Firephoenix “Torn Between The Good and the Bad”
James Whitely “Haunted”
Avamanyar “Cry Forevermore”
Hawkwind “Changes (Burning Suns and Frozen Waste)”
Glass Hammer “Terminal Lucidity”
Copperwell “By The Water”

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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of brilliant stand-up from Lenny Bruce on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of Psychedelic Shack, that were hand-picked by Nigel Pye as his favorite episodes.

This week we bring you another smallish acrylic painting on illustration board.

It’s inspired a little bit by an old digital design I did years ago, but didn’t actually use here in Monday Morning Art.

It started out looking a bit like a war mask, but after I settled on that name, I kept painting, and it wound up looking a bit more like a Mardi Gras mask at Carnival. This was basically an exercise in limbering up my fingers because I haven’t spent enough time painting over the last few weeks.

To see this week’s art bigger try clicking HERE.

For an update on today’s new radio shows on The AIR, check back before noon. One of our shows is hitting a milestone, and it gets its own post this week.

Educational standards in this country are shockingly disappointing. Hardly any kids are taught the history of Godzilla these days.

Test scores and intelligence levels have dropped since they took Godzilla out of our schools.

The above video should help remedy that, just a little. Please, gather up your children and make them watch this one-hour-plus condensed history of the King of the Kaiju, Godzilly, himself.

Do it, in the name of Godzilla!

Do it for…the children!

At the top of the post you will find Radio Free Charleston number 132 from June, 2011. This was our last episode before we launched into our extensive coverage of FestivALL, which you will see unfold in this space over the next two months or so. This special pre-FestivALL episode included music from Wiley Sonic, The Voodoo Katz, and The Poor Taters, plus belly dancing from Jennifer Brooke Swanson, and animation by yours truly.

Host segments were shot on a sunny Sunday morning on Charleston’s historic East End in front of Glen Brogan’s then-new mural on the side of the Bluegrass Kitchen.

Jennifer was recorded on Capitol Street during a previous FestivALL. We caught up with Wiley Sonic at The Empty Glass, and recorded The VooDoo Katz at Haddad Riverfront Park. Finally the Poor Taters showed up courtesy of our old and much-missed buddy, Jerry Fugate, recorded on a back porch somewhere in Putnam County, if I recall correctly.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 25, 2025

Music helps you feel alive on The AIR Friday afternoon as 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.

Rejoice and prepare to feel four or five decades younger (where applicable).

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch once again presents a selection of the best and brightest of the classic Disco era.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist. It’s got filled to the rim with Disco…

MIRRORBALL 114

Tina Turner “Love Explosion”
Miami “Disco Weekend”
Stargard “You’re The One”
The Natural Four “Try To Smile”
Blue Magic “Welcome To The Club”
The Meters “Disco Is The Thing Today”
Norma Jean Wright “Sorcerer”
The Undisputed Truth “Let’s Go Down To The Disco”
Eloise Lewis “1,000 Laughs”
Curtis Mayfield “Move On Up”
Tasha Thomas “Shoot Me (With Your Love)
Gene Page “Wild Cherry”

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, it’s Big Electric Cat time as Sydney Fileen delivers a special NEW mixtape edition of her show that brings you an all-star LIVE IN CONCERT mixtape of the greatest hits of the New Wave era performed in front of actual, living hoomin beans.

Most of these are vintage performances, recorded during the New Wave era, but Sydney has slipped in a few recently-recorded ringers, and being the sly fox she is, she isn’t saying which tracks are old and which are newish. You’ll just have to figure it out for yourself. Rest assured, all of the songs are indeed recorded live in concert. She swears it.

Check out this killer playlist…

BEC 127
Live Mixtape

Thompson Twins “Hold Me Now”
The Tubes “Talk To Ya Later”
Human League “Don’t You Want Me”
DEVO “Somewhere With DEVO Medley”
Blondie “Rip Her To Shreds”
Shriekback “My Spine Is The Baseline”
Talking Heads “Psycho Killer”
Ramones “Pinhead”
The Cars “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”
Elvis Costello “Radio Radio”
The Police “Can’t Stand Losing You”
Cyndi Lauper/Blue Angel “Can’t Blame Me”
Joan Jett “Bad Reputation”
Joe Jackson “Friday”
The Alarm “Sixty Eight Guns”
ABC “How To Be A Millionaire”
Camoflage “Computerliebe”
The Teardrop Explodes “Ha Ha I’m Drowning”
Annie Lennox “Here Comes The Rain Again”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Lene Lovich “Lucky Number”
The Dickies “You Drive Me Ape”
Gang of Four “At Home He’s A Tourist”

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 it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular feature, with fresh content, every day, even when we sneak one town over to see a musical.

The PopCult Bookshelf

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960’s
compiled by Anthony Taylor
APT Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8312227680
Paperback $35.99
Hardback $64.99

This book, the first of two volumes, is manna from heaven for fans of Aurora Model kits. A huge, mainstream hobby from the 1950s into the 1970s, and still a popular pastime today, one of the most creative companies making these assemble-it-yourself kits was Aurora Plastics.  I’m reviewing the first of two volumes here because it was a gift from Mrs. PopCulteer for Easter. I’ll be getting the second volume in a few weeks.

In this book, after a brief intro by Anthony Taylor, you get over 320 pages of pure gold–ten years worth of retailer sales catalogs from Aurora from the 1960s.

These catalogs were available in most hobby shops so kids (and adults) could make wishlists and see the full product line. A special treat for collectors of today is the presence of the original suggested retail prices, which are hilariously low. Back then you could get a top-notch model kit for less than what you pay for a candy bar today.

The catalogs are reproduced in full color, close to their original size, and they trace the evolution of the hobby over the course of the 1960s. The early years see the catalogs dominated by airplanes and cars, with just a few historical figures in the mix.

As the years progress, we see a virtual explosion of pop culture topics, as Aurora’s selection reflects the passions of the day, from the space program to James Bond and spies, to superheroes, Batmania, hit TV shows and movies and even “original equity” creations designed to cash in on the burgeoning counter culture.

And we can’t leave out the monsters. “Monster Kids” loved model kits, and one of the major forces driving the hobby was the Universal Monsters, with additional kits featuring Godzilla, literary horror and other scary subjects. At one point they even combined the monsters with hot rods. The package art shown here is incredible and the product descriptions priceless.

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960’s is a brilliant time capsule of a hobby that is still going strong. In fact, at the end of May I’ll be going to WonderFest USA, the countries biggest convention devoted to model kit building and horror, and I intend to hook up with Anthony there to buy the second volume, which is devoted to the 1970s.

That means it’ll have Prehistoric Scenes, Monsters Scenes and other model kits that I grew up attempting to assemble.

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960′s is a must-have for any model kit collector, and will be of great interest to anybody interested in pop culture from the 1960s, and one of the most creative ways to ever play with toys…building models.

You can order the book from Amazon, through Anthony Taylor’s website, or track him down at one of the many conventions he’ll be attending and/or organizing this summer.

We find ourselves rapidly approaching the one-third mark in 2025, and as this year flies by, both too fast and also not nearly fast enough, there is a ridiculous amount of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston, WV, this coming weekend and beyond, so let’s jump and maybe beef up the boilerplate a bit.

This weekend there is a lot of stuff happening in Huntington.  Wednesday, Marshall’s production of of The SpongeBob Squarepants Musical begins its run. The Appalachain Film Festival happens at the Foundry Theater starting Friday with  showing of Danny Boyd’s Invasion of the Space Preachers (with the director and cast members on hand), and also on Friday, some RFC faves appear at The Loud. You’ll find graphics for all these events below.

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, 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. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also 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.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend’s shows are not yet known to our intelligence sources.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Browing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. 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. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

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 illlnesses 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.

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 that I was able to scrounge up online…

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