Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 23 of 124)

The fates have conspired to give you only a partially-new edition of Radio Free Charleston Tuedsday on The AIR.  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 week we bring you one brand-new hour of free-format radio, mixing local, independent and whatever music,  then for our second and third hours, we revive a long-dormant episode of Radio Free Charleston International that hasn’t been heard since 2017.

We open our new hour with a semi-title-track from the upcoming new album by The Heavy Editors. They’ve just released a new single, which you will hear next week, but we abused our friendship to grab an as-yet-unreleased album track to play for you this week. You’ll have to wait until Undertow is unleashed on the general public to hear this song anywhere else.

We also pepper the first hour with new tracks from The MFB, The Settlement, Five Finger Death Punch, Tori Amos and Manic Street Preachers.  Add in some local and regional classic tracks and a bunch of fun weirdness, and you have a strong opening hour.

The rest of the show brings back the first episode of Radio Free Charleston International that I did after I had eye surgery.  Here’s what I wrote about this show at the time:

Listeners will get to hear brand-new music by Chuck Berry, The Foo Fighters, Ray Davies, Todd Rundgren and Donald Fagan, Erasure and more. It’s another of our trademark hodge-podge episodes that should not work, but on RFC International, we somehow find a way to make it all flow into a cohesive musical experience. Even when we segue from Frank Sinatra to The Stranglers.

It’s the kind of wild mix of music that runs through my head most of the time.

The links in the playlist for hour one will take you to the pages for the artists where possible.

RFC V5 216

hour one
The Heavy Editors “Movie FX-Undertow”
The M.F.B “PH Steve”
Massing “Kickball”
Five Finger Death Punch w/Brian May, Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Brantley Gilbert “Blue On Black”
The Subjunctives “I Don’t Have The Time”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Ignorant”
Kate On Crack “Keep Me Hanging On”
Wolfgang Parker “The Father/The Son”
Manic Street Preachers “Critical Thinking”
Tori Amos “Spike’s Lament”
M “Moonlight and Muzak”
The Settlement“The One That Got Away”
Small Faces “Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake”

hour two
Desmond Dekker “It Mek”
Chuck Berry “Jamaica Moon”
Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello “My Brave Face (demo)”
Hank Marvin “Peter Gunn/Baby Elephant Walk”
Foo Fighters “Detroit Rock City”
Steven Universe “We Are The Crystal Gems”
James McCartney “Peyote Coyote”
Todd Rundgren and Donald Fagan “Tin Foil Hat”
Andy James “From The Dark”
Mainhorse “Such A Beautiful Day”
Duncan McKay and George Voros “Let Go”
Frank Sinatra “She Says”
The Stranglers “European Female”
Thunderclap Newman “Something In The AIR”
Gentle Giant “Dog’s Life”

hour three
Rancid “Telegraph Avenue”
Marillion “Man Of A Thousand Faces (live)”
Imagine Dragons “Blank Space/Stand By Me”
George Harrison “Got My Mind Set On You (extended mix)”
Julian Lennon “Lucy”
Cheap Trick “Everything Works (If You Let It)”
Erasure “Love You To The Sky”
The Paladins “New World”
The New Triumvirat “Party Life”
Ray Davies “Wings of Fantasy”
Blondie “Fragments”

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 give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Yet another week of MG flaring up too much for me to do a new piece of physical work sees me digging out something I had lingering in my slush pile. This time it’s a very rough pencil sketch I slapped down as a compositional note for a more fully-realized rough piece that I first shared here 364 days ago.

This was done using the Blackwing Palamino plus a charcoal pencil on typewriter paper. It only took up about a third of a sheet. It’s sort of interesting on its own, outside of just being a rough sketch, but it’s not a style I’ll be using for finished pieces much in the future. If my fingers were working better at the moment, you’d probably never see stuff like this.

To see it bigger (pretty much actual size) try clicking HERE.

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 an also classic edition of 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.

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 the humours music of Garfunkel and Oates on a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of special “Dance Remix” episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, as New Wave tunes get extended and dance-ified.

I told you last Thursday that I briefly stopped in at the Model Train and Craft show on February 15 at the Charleston Coliseum. I already brought you a photo essay, but today I have a music video for you.

I had not intended to shoot any video, but once I got to the show and saw the layouts, I changed my mind and whipped out the new camera.

Interestingly enough, I only shot about three minutes of video. You see 98% of that in the video above, which is set to Emerson Lake and Palmer’s version of the Meade Lux Lewis mainstay, “Honky Tonk Train Blues.”

And that is your very short Sunday Evening Video.

This week we still find ourselves in March, 2011 for an episode of Radio Free Charleston filled with an eclectic mix of music and some great short films.

The show kicks off with Frank Panucci’s “Prelinger Finger Zinger,” yet another collection of public domain footage from Prelinger Archives, set to a jaunty industrial dance tune. Our first musical guest is Slate Dump, a one-man-band ,formerly of Morgantown and currently based in Memphis.

Following some animation from Frank, we have Electro Biscuit which was Greg Wegman, the late and much missed Kai Haynes and RFC Big Shot, Brian Young. This performance was recorded at LiveMix Studio shortly the beloved institution was shut down by minions of the Pope. Wrapping up the show we have the RFC debut of Red Audio, a great pop punk band from Summersville that has become a favorite among listeners of the RFC Radio Show on The AIR. You can find the original production notes HERE.

Next week the RFC Flashback presents episode 125 with music from Mother Nang, Pepper Fandango and Adrian DeQuiros. Also included in this show is Kitty Killton and the most wholesome animation we’ve ever shown! Host segments will mess with your mind.

The PopCulteer
February 28, 2025

Get ready to dance your way out of February as Mel Larch serves up some wild and unexpected Disco music on a new edition of MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen returns with a classic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat devoted the New Wave Music of the movies, Friday on The AIR.  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.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a terrific new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch plunges into her diverse collection of dance music to assemble a show that has everything from attacking Martians to glass hearts, spooky supernatural happenings, a chase scene, a second alien encounter, and epidemic and of course, a Disco Dancer.

It’s a carefully curated collection of captivating curios, calculated to cause you to dance.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 112

Jeff Wayne “The Eve of War (Disco Version)”
Blondie “Heart of Glass”
James Last “Knock On Wood”
The Glitter Band “Makes You Blind”
Cerrone “Supernature (full length version)”
Giorgio Morodor “Chase (From Midnight Express)”
Sarah Brightman “I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper”
Rose Royce “Best Love”
Trammps “Love Epidemic”
Frantique “Disco Dancer”

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

In a world, Friday at 3 PM you will believe in mighty movie New Wave goodness. This week we bring you New Wave classics that found their way to the big and small screen. You’ll hear hit songs that were used in movies like The Breakfast Club, Rumblefish, Pretty In Pink, Times Square, The Last American Virgin and more, plus you’ll get to relive New Wave moments from TV shows like CPO Sharkey, Teenage Kicks, Cavegirl and Square Pegs.

This classic episode was specially assembled by Sydney Fileen a few years back, and it’s so good that we just had to bring it to you again.

Some of the songs you’ll hear were only available on soundtrack albums or singles for most of the 1980s. This is a great way to hear some hard-to-find tunes, along with some massive hit songs.

Just check out this epic playlist that Sydney has compiled for you…

BEC 047

Simple MInds “Don’t You Forget About Me”
The Knack “My Sharona”
Wang Chung “To Live And Die In L.A.”
Bow Wow Wow “Go Wild In The Country”
“The Undertones “Teenage Kicks”
Psychedelic Furs “Pretty In Pink”
New Order “Shell Shock”
Echo and The Bunnymen “Bring On The Dancing Horses”
OMD “If You Leave”
Stan Rideway and Stewart Copeland “Don’t Box Me In”
Oingo Boingo “Weird Science”
The Art of Noise “Dragnet”
The Dickies “Hideous”
DEVO “Peek A Boo”
The Waitresses “Square Pegs”
Elvis Costello and The Attractions “Accidents Will Happen”
Pretenders “Talk of The Town”
Joe Jackson “Pretty Boys”
XTC “Take This Town”
The Ramones “I Wanna Be Sedated”
The Cure “Grinding Halt”
Gary Numan “Down In The Park”
The Human League “Love Action”
The Cars “Since You’ve Gone”
U2 “I Will Follow”
The Gleaming Spires “Are You Ready For The Sex Girls”
Blondie “Call Me”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Relax”

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.

The day after Valentine’s Day, your PopCulteer and his lovely wife made a brief stop at The Model Train & Craft Show at the Charleston Coliseum, and I took a few photos.

It was a fun show, but we were in-and-out before the crowds got there, and only spent a half-hour or so being tempted by the cool toy and model trains. We had other stuff to do, and didn’t stick around too long.

A lot of the stuff was hard to resist, but not having any spare room for more cool toys made it a bit easier.

I didn’t take my camera, but habit forced me to whip out the new phone and shoot a few pics. I also shot some video of the layouts, which you will see Sunday.

To be honest, I forgot I had these photos to share, or I would have posted them here last week.

These photos just give you a tiny taste of the excitement at the show, before it really got going after we left. Check out the action…

Just one dealer at the 2025 Model Train and Craft show, set up with tons of cool stuff.

I have to admit, I walked right past this cool display and didn’t notice what it was. Mel pointed out to me that it was an entire porcelin street scene based on the movie, “A Christmas Story.”

The train show, before too many people showed up.

Continue reading

Unvbelievably, we are practically one-sixth of the way through 2025. This weekend Charleston has plenty of Celtic Calling activities, which I told you about last Friday.  Follow that link and then follow the link within that post for a full schedule of that particular festival.  In our graphics you’ll find a few select Celtic Calling events, as well as other STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston this weekend.

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 or Twitter. I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. 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.

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.

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.

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 burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late tend to 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.

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. 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. I 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.

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…

Continue reading

Just because it’s the last Tuesday of February, that don’t mean it ain’t “New Show Day” on The AIR.  As such, we have a totally new episode of  Radio Free Charleston 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 week we bring you three full hours of our free-format blend of local, independent, alternative, weird and whatever else I feel like playing music.

New music this week includes tunes from J. Marinelli, Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Kate Hudson, The Wombats, Manic Street Preachers, The M.F.B., Todd Burge, The Settlement, Dinosaur Burps, The Lumineers, The Heavy Hitters Band, Dark Entities, Shining Glass, SPACE FREQ and more.

We also dig into the local archives and dredge up some other classic tracks from God only knows where.

This is the kind of radio I always dreamt about making.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show where possible.

RFC V5 215

hour one
J. Marinelli “Crucial Spew Yeah”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Sour”
Kate Hudson “Romeo”
The Wombats “I Love America and She Hates Me”
Dinosaur Burps “Steampunk (instrumental)”
Manic Street Preachers “Brushstrokes of Reunion”
The M.F.B. “Funkle Same Needs You”
Todd Burge “These Extremes”
Lulo Reinhardt “Letters From Joyce”
The Settlement “Gotta Have You”
The Lumineers “Plasticine”
Hello June “Dance (M Walker Remix)”
Brad Stank “All Apologies”

hour two
The Heavy Hitters Band, Smoochie B. Trippin “Dreamers”
Jerry Goodman, Billy Sherwood & Nektar “Dream Weaver”
Massing “No Scrubs”
Loud Love “Magic”
The Surfrajettes“Instant Coffee”
Frenchy & The Punk “Cities In Dust”
Dave Stewart “Don’t Come Around Here No More”
Dark Entities “Into Darkness/March of the Skulls”
Shining Glass “Watering Trees”
SPACE FREQ “The Big Cheese”
M “Moderne Man/Satisfy Your Lust”
Soft Machine “Song of Aeolous (live)”
Inception In Black  “Voyeur (Tetraheadral Mix)”

hour three
Brian Diller “The Finding”
Go Van Gogh “Stripes With Stains”
Astrodot “Can’t Hide When You’re Fried”
Wall of Voodoo  “Far Side of Crazy (live)”
Clownhole “Washed Up Has Been”
Orville Rex“The Great Houdini”
Cyndi Lauper “Keep A Knockin’ (Live)”
Hawthorne Heights “Lucerne”
Hurl Brickbat“World of Fire”
Amazing Delores “Coal”
The Company Stores “Little Lights”
Jimmy Vivino “On The Shady Side of the Street”
The Taj Mahal Sextet “Sitting On Top of the World”

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 give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Another week of MG flaring up too much for me to do a new piece of physical work sees me dragging out a smallish rough piece from late last year.  This is another Chicago cityscape, rendered in pastel crayon with colored ink wash over top in places, on illustration board. It’s basically just a visual “note” for a potential later piece on canvas with much greater detail.

This was done to capture the composition and color that I wanted, but if I take it to canvas I may try to employ some Hopperesque technique on it.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

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 an also classic edition of 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.

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 the twisted music of Barnes and Barnes on a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we alternate between Psychedelic Shack and Beatles Blast, beginning with the crossover episodes between Nigel Pye and myself.

Sometimes, when it’s time to choose a topic for PopCult’s Sunday Evening Video, I do it when I’m hungry.

Here are two short videos about how cheese puffs are made.

I mean, they are part of the food pyramid. Actually they’re two parts, grain and dairy. And some folks include air in that, so that’s three parts of the pyramid.