Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 3 of 133)

Lionel 7-12130 O Gauge Santa Fe Flyer Battery Operated Train Set
by Lionel
$169.99 suggested retail price.
Available from many retailers for much less

The (delayed by the CloudFare outage) second pick today in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is the perfect gift for the young train enthusiast who may have outgrown Thomas, but isn’t quite ready for the complicated wiring and AC/DC conversion of a full electric train set yet.

From Lionel’s newest line of battery operated O-Gauge train comes the classic Santa Fe Flyer, complete with the classic “Warbonnet” engine, plus three cars and a caboose. This is a battery-operated set, but the cars will run on existing 2 or 3 rail O Gauge layouts too.

In addition to the train itself, the engine is Bluetooth Equipped so you can operate your train using the Lionel Cab3 APP or the included remote. The battery Powered Locomotive (Requires 4AA batteries, not included) cars and caboose look great and bring a new level of realism to the set. This set comes with a hopper, a boxcar and a tank car.  Lionel’s Battery O-Gauge trains feature a water vapor “smoke effect” which simulates the authentic look and feel of diesel exhaust, producing realistic and safe puffs of “smoke” for an immersive experience. This is water-based and does not have the traditional and offensive stank of the old “smoke pellets.”

The Remote is designed for easy use. The Remote Control requires 3AAA batteries, not included). The plastic track, which does not carry a live current, and is safe for younger kids includes 10 straight, 16 curved, 2 right interchange switches, and 2 left interchange switches, plus 1 figure 8 crossover.

Sets include an operating headlight on the engine. Battery operated O-Gauge sets also include an assortment of trackside accessories including expansion track, road signs, and trees.

This is an O Gauge set, despite being battery-operated, and the cars are compatible with traditional O Gauge sets, so you could run most Lionel cars on this set (just not the engines or powered cars).

If you shop around the online hobby shops you ought to be able to find this set for under $150. Remember to buy tons of batteries. You know some kid (or adult) will love this set.

Okay, this is a combo post. Tuesday is once again “New Show Day” on The AIR.  As such, we have a brand-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.  

However, this post is also today’s first enty in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide.  In fact, today’s episode of RFC is part of The Gift Guide.

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week. You can also hear it embedded below. This time, we will have links for every song in the playlist, but the idea is…you will follow those links to buy music to give to the person on your holiday shopping list who likes to support local and independent music.

This year we are doing double-shots…two songs in a row by some of RFC‘s favorite local and independent artists who have released new music this year.

This gives me two chances to link to the artist’s pages.  First I will link to where you can buy the music, and then,  if possible,  I will link to where you can buy physical media or merchandise from the artist.   Since we don’t have a mystery bonus track this week, you may still find a bonus or two, as maybe some of the artists have a mystery third track.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show because these are great gifts for the music lover or RFC fan on your shopping list. And keep in mind that the first Friday of December is the next Bandcamp Friday, where the artist’s get the full cut of the money spent on their work.

Radio Free Charleston V5 248

hour one
Brian Diller “In Every Heart”
Brian Diller “All Right Tonight”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Thankful”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “The Ghost of You”
John Radcliff “Me & You”
John Radcliff “Look Smart
The Carpenter Ants (with Ann Magnuson) “Let’s Break Up Before Christmas”
The Carpenter Ants (with Larry Groce, Don Dixon and Randy Gilkey) “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'”
The Paranoid Style “Tearing The Ticket”
The Paranoid Style “It’s A Dog’s Breakfast (for LR)”
Novelty Island “Jigsaw Causeway”
Novelty Island “An Orange Goodbye”
Aliza Hava “Into The Light”
Aliza Hava “Fix My Fate”

hour two
Byzantine “Riddance”
Byzantine “Dam That River”
The Settlement “Days Go By”
The Settlement “Rainbow”
Custard Flux “The Floating Chamber”
Custard Flux “Icy Tranquility”
Guitarmy of One “Lone Werewolf of the Baskervilles”
Guitarmy of One “Awaken The Sleeper Agent”
The Surfrajettes “Hockey Night In Canada”
The Surfrajettes “Sugar Town”

hour three
The 4D Man “Il Fantasmi Dello Spazio”
The 4D Man “The Earth Dies Screaming”
Ron Sowell “Dance ‘Til the Music Stops”
Ron Sowell “Everything That Goes Round Comes Round”
The M.F.B. “Funkle Sam Needs You”
The M.F.B. “Funky Bunz”
Vinto Van Go “After Hours”
Vinto Van Go “Skyscraper Birds”
J Marinelli “Hillbilly Effigy”
J Marinelli “So Much For The Tolerant Left”
Erik Woods “Liberated”
Erik Woods “Tigers”
A Tale of Two “Renegade”
A Tale of Two “By The Light of the Moon”

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.

 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.

BEAT Neon Heat Disease Live Limited Deluxe Edition
Available from record retailers, including Amazon
Under $60

Today’s second entry in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is for the Limited Deluxe Edition of the BEAT Neon Heat Disease LIVE in Los Angeles album. This is the perfect gift for the music fan on your holiday shopping list whose tastes straddle Progressive Rock and New Wave Music.

BEAT is, essentially, a tribute band that covers songs by the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson. The cool part is that half of the band was actually IN the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson.

Legendary former King Crimson members ADRIAN BELEW and TONY LEVIN banded together with guitar virtuoso STEVE VAI and explosive Tool drummer DANNY CAREY to create BEAT, a creative reinterpretation of the three iconic 80s KING CRIMSON albums – Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair.

In 2024, the ensemble staged 65 shows in North America, before following it with an expansive run in Mexico and South America in 2025. While this new release is available as a 2 CD and 3 LP package, I’m recommending the Limited Deluxe Edition because it contains an extra CD of music, plus the video of the entire Los Angeles show on a Blu ray disc with 5.1 sound.

It’s an incredible package of video and music, and it’s great for die-hard fans who couldn’t make it out to any of the tour dates. The idea of Steve Vai playing Robert Fripp’s guitar parts is still mind-blowing.

You should be able to get this from any record shop, or take the easy way out and get it from Amazon.

As a bonus for PopCult readers today, I have worked with Herman Linte to create a special episode of PROGNOSIS, debuting Monday at 3 PM (EST). This show will feature three tracks from the BEAT Neon Heat Disease LIVE album, in a mixtape collection of the “1980s King Crimson Family Tree,” which gathers together songs from the offshoots and solo works by the members of the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson. You’ll hear solo works, collaborations with other artists and even a couple of other groups that include members of KC. Tune in and see what all the fuss is about.

Check out the playlist:

Prognosis 134

Beat “Elephant Talk”
King Crimson “Frakctured”
Bill Bruford’s Earthworks “My Heart Declares A Holiday”
Adrian Belew “Big Electric Cat”
Tony Levin “Road Dogs”
Robert Fripp with Peter Gabriel “Here Comes The Flood”
Robert Fripp with Andy Summers “Tribe”
KIng Crimson “Barbershop”
Adrian Belew “Tango Zebra”
King Crimson “Into The Frying Pan”
Beat “Industry”
Adrian Belew “Rail Song”
Robert Fripp & The League of Gentlemen “God Save The King”
Anderson Bruford Wakeman & Howe “Quartet”
Sunday All Over The World “Freedom”
David Bowie and Adrian Belew “Pretty Pink Rose”
Beat “Indiscipline”

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.

Our first entry today in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is not for just one item. It’s another retailer spotlight. And today’s pick is a brand-spanking new retailer, located at 7 East Main Street in Buckhannon, West Virginia. It’s a fun day-trip from Charleston and is a quick trip from Morgantown, Fairmont or Clarksburg.

I’m talking about Volume Bookshop & Studio. It’s primarily a bookstore, with lots of extras, and it’s co-owned by Spike Nesmith, who is currently Director of Production, Producer, Presenter, Voice Talent at WVRC Media, but is well known in the Charleston area for his years at WKLC, Rock 105. Spike’s partner is his wife, Nicki Bentley-Colthart, and they have created a charming and unique shop, located on Main Street in Buckhannon.

They have an online store offering new and gently-used books of all kinds, but the real treat is in visiting the store in person. In addition to books, they have video, vinyl, handmade quilts, totes, and…a nod to Spike’s Scottish origins…a selection of teas, candies and snacks from the United Kingdom.

On top of that, right in the middle of the store is a working podcast studio. You can rent it to record your own show at very reasonable rates.

Volume Bookshop & Studio is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 AM to 6 PM, and it is a gem of a store that’s just getting started. The place is dripping with charm and while you can find all kinds of great gifts there, taking somebody there in person is a pretty great gift itself.

Last week, your humble blogger and his wife decided to do something that might not have been the most sane of things, but right in the middle of yours truly writing The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide, we took a 650-mile road trip over four days, the results of which you will see in this blog in the coming weeks.

We drove from Charleston to Cambridge, Ohio to Canton, Ohio to Hermitage, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh and then Fairmont, before stopping in to check out Volume last Tuesday.

We were the first people in right after they opened, and it was Veteran’s Day, so I was able to grab all these photos before the crowds showed up. As you can see, it’s a great little bookshop with plenty to offer.

If you decide to make the trip to the store your gift, be sure to check out the other cool places in Buckhannon, and on the way back you can stop in Flatwoods and hit Everything Fiesta for your FiestaWare needs, then zip over to the other side of I 79 for lunch at Luzader’s and dessert at The Custard Stand. Make a whole day of it!

As soon as you walk in, you notice that the store is charming and cozy, and there’s a recording studio right there in the middle.

They have a great assortment of current bestsellers.

Plus they have vinyl and DVDs (except for Ferris Bueller…Mel boughtt that)

Continue reading

Anybody who tells you that art can’t be silly is lying.

Some of the greatest works of art are silly as hell. Michaelangelo’s “David” is hanging out in church buck-assed nekkid. The table in DaVinci’s “The Last Super” is so thin that people could only sit on one side of it. And the girl with the pearl earring? That’s not real pearl!

My point here is, sometimes as an artist, it’s your duty…perhaps even your calling…to dare to be silly.

Exactly one week ago today Mel and I took my sister, Debbie, to the Christmas Spirit store just South of Pittsburgh. In it we saw, in all its holiday glory, a massive flaming red rubber chicken. It was over two feet tall, and I grabbed a photo on my phone.

Bu that image haunted me. It taunted me. I couldn’t get it out of my head.

In my mind I heard the chicken clucking in its chicken-y voice (not unlike that of RFK Jr.) “Paint me like one of your French girls.” Even though I don’t have any French girls, and the original line from Titanic was “draw,” not “paint,” I felt compelled to pull out the acrylics and illustration board and grid out the photo so I could do a painting.

Since I’m in the middle of The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide and this was the only piece of art I worked on last week, you sorta get stuck looking at it.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Later today we continue The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Nigel has put together a really cool hour-long collection of mind-exanding music. Check out the playlist:

Psychedelic Shack 107

Ancient Grease “Women and Children First”
Circus Maximus “Wind”
Peter Brown & His Battered Ornaments “The Politician”
Goat Generator “Far From Devine/Kingdom Gone”
Astral Magic “Sea of Infinite Possiblities”
White Witch “Auntie Christy”
The Beach Boys “Cabin Essence”
Love Sculpture “Sabre Dance”

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 also has a new episode of Prognosis, but it’s tied in to the second pick in today’s PopCult Gift Guide, so you’ll have to check back to see what we’ll have on the show.   That post should be live by Noon.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish 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,

Above you see a fantastic music video created by visual artist Shane Swank for “The Floating Chamber,” from the Custard Flux album Enter Xenon (2025).

Custard Flux, is a cool Psych/Prog band from Detroit that was brought to our attention via the Chicago pipeline that I talk about on Radio Free Charleston a lot.  Custard Flux, led by Greg Curvery of The Luck of Eden Hall, and visual artist Shane Swank, have dropped an animated video for the Custard Flux track “The Floating Chamber”

“The Floating Chamber” is the final track on Custard Flux’s acclaimed 2025 album Enter Xenon.  You can buy the track HERE, and get the entire album HERE.

Find out more about the animator, Shane Swank HERE.

Custard Flux is:
Curvey: Vox, Guitar, Arp Odyssey Synthesizer, Pro One Synthesizer, Mellotron, Tape Loops
Vito Greco: Guitar
Timothy Prettyman: Bass Guitar
Nick Pruett: Drum Kit, Percussion
Andy Thompson: Mellotron

Special thanks to August Forte of NoVo Arts Management for turning me on to this.

While it’s November now, this week and next, we present our June, 2012 two-part coverage of FestivALL 2012. Unlike our FestivALL coverage the previous year, we didn’t do eight shows with three hours of content in two weeks, but we did manage to give you nearly two hours of FestivALL in nine days.

Included in this episode is music from Red Audio, Andy Park, Emily Burdette, The Kanawha Kordsmen and Sweet Adelines and Paul Calicoat. We are also treated to an Effects Makeup demonstration by Rob “RJ” Haddy, Charleston FX makeup guru.  Much of the show is devoted to the FestivAll Art Parade, while we finish with scenes of The East End Main Street Streetworks Art Auction and Celebration, and auctioneer Ted Brightwell.

Among the Art Parade fun you’ll see Razor Sharp Productions with Porkchop and Pig Girl, Dale Morton Studio Mascots, Zombies and ghouls from Shocka Con, The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, The Chemical Valley Roller Girls, The Charleston Light Opera Guild and more!

Next week in this space you will see part two of our coverage, with music recorded at the Derick Kirk Scholarship Benefit, and cool stuff from the Capitol Street Art Fair, plus even more FestivALL spectacularity.

The PopCulteer
November 14, 2025

As I have mentioned many times here in PopCult, one of my other gigs is that I am a contributing writer to Non Sport Update, the magazine devoted to the non sport trading card hobby.

Well, I have some good news, and I have some bad news.

The good news is that the latest issue of NSU, featuring a new card set based on Star Trek on the cover, goes on sale starting this weekend nationwide.

The bad news, as you might notice on the banner across the top of the cover, is that this will be the final issue.

These are not great days for print media. Magazines are dropping like flies and have been for years. Competition from the internet, which can cover developments in hobbies instantly, has eaten away at most of the niche magazine market.

The non sport hobby itself is seeing a pretty major shift as Topps, which was acquired by the sports merchandising behemoth, Fanatics, seems less inclined than ever to explore or exploit non-sport topics.

The really exciting stuff happening in the hobby is the work of smaller companies using internet-based crowdfunding to create loads of new and exciting non-sports cards. The only downside to this development is that with these small producers, the cost of advertising in a print magazine just does not provide a great return on their investment. It’s risky to advertise a Kickstarter campaign when you have to have the ad submitted two months in advance.

Non Sport Update‘s publisher, Beckett Media, has run into a few problems of its own, with a collapse of their card-grading business and some high-profile misadventures that have caused a shake-up of their finances and management team.

It simply got to a point where they could not afford to keep publishing Non Sport Update.

Good Times

I’m really going to miss the gig. My editor, Alan Biegel, was a joy to work with and never got too irritated if I blew a deadline. Harris Toser, the son of the founders of the magazine, stayed on when NSU was sold to Beckett back in 2016, and kept the magazine feeling like a family organization, even with new corporate owners. I’d be happy to work with these guys on any projects they might have come up in the future.

It was really cool to be able to walk into Barnes & Nobel or Books A Million and find a magazine that I wrote for on the stands. I’m going to miss that little bit of joy. I feel lucky that I got to contribute to this beloved institution that was created by Roxanne and Marlin Toser back in 1991. I am proud to say I was a contributor to this magazine.

I wrote for Non Sport Update, I think, for 28 years, after being recommended for the job by John Michlig. I started out covering action figures for them, but after two or three issues they realized that their readers didn’t really care about action figures, and instead of showing me the door, they invited me to stick around and write about trading cards.

I was glad to do it, even though, at the time, I was not an avid collector. I collected the Dinosaurs Attacks card set, and I’d been a fan of Wacky Packages since I was a kid. I also bought the reissue of the Batman trading cards from the 1960s, but in most ways I was a novice.

That’s changed quite a bit in the nearly three decades since. I really got into the hobby and I learned from the experts, who were my colleagues at NSU. I had the thrill of having a few of my articles illustrated by the late Jay Lynch, who was one of my underground cartoonist heroes, and I’ve made dozens of friends along the way.

Writing for NSU also forced me to new levels of professionalism as I tackled the occasional subject about which I knew nothing, and had to research it intensely so I didn’t come off as totally clueless. More than once I wrote a feature article about a TV show or movie that I’d never watched (and in some cases, still haven’t–sorry iCarly).

Non-Sport And Pop Culture

When I began writing this blog, several years after I began with NSU, my editor at the time asked me to avoid covering non-sport cards in PopCult, since they were paying me to write about them for NSU. I felt that was a reasonable request, and except for the occasional Kickstarter Alert, I’ve stuck with that.

Going forward, you can probably expect more in-depth coverage of non-sport cards in PopCult. Over the years I have become a big fan of Richard Parks of RRParksCards, and Robert Jimenez of ZeroStreet, as well as some other folks who do great card sets like Christopher Irving and Kurt Kuersteiner and others, and I’ll be telling you more about them in the future. I may even finish my history of Wacky Packages cards here.

My last article for NSU covered a new card set from Todd Riley and NostalgiCards based on the movie, Metropolis. This set took 30 years to bring to fruition, and you can read about it in that final issue of Non Sport Update. That set will be launching on Kickstarter soon, and I’ll remind you about that when it happens.

I have to be honest here and say that this was not exactly a shock to me. I’ve sort of been expecting the “pencils down” email since the magazine was sold to Beckett almost ten years ago. That feeling has gotten stronger over the last year. It’s to Beckett’s credit that they kept it going as long as they did.

I want to thank The Tosers, my long-suffering editor, Alan, and the many friends I’ve made along the way. I hope some of them join me as I begin to mix non-sport trading cards into the pop culture soup that is PopCult.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, as well as our regular features. The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide will resume on Monday, and I am seriously considering extending it for a week into December this year, so I’ll let you know if that happens.

Today’s second entry in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is a must-have item for fans of The Who, and would make a great gift for any fan of classic rock from the 1970s.

The Who “Who Are You” Super Deluxe Boxset
Geffen Records
$124.99

First a quick note on today’s gift suggestion: You may have noticed that all this week our second entries for the day were music. You may have also noticed that, up until today they were all Beatles-related, featuring the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo, in that order. The logical pick for today would have been The Beatles new Anthology Four album.

However, I did not realize when I made my schedule for The Gift Guide that Anthology Four will not be released until a week from today. So I had to switch out that entry with the one I’d planned for next Friday, which is, luckily, rather a nifty replacement.

Who Are You is considered by many fans to be the last “real” Who album, and now you can explore all the nooks and crannies of its creation with this Limited Edition 7CD / 1 Blu-Ray Super Deluxe Boxset.

This extensive collection gives an unprecedented insight into how The Who made what was to be their final studio album with Keith Moon. The eight discs are housed in a 12” by 12” slipcase and include a newly re-mastered version of the original album, plus demos and out-takes from the Who Are You sessions as the band developed the songs.

This set also includes the 1977 Shepperton tour rehearsals, and the 1978 Shepperton studio recordings made for The Kids Are Alright movie.

Also part of this Super Deluxe package is a 100-page hardback book with extensive sleeve notes by Matt Kent covering the period before and after the album’s release, plus track-by-track details, and session notes, as well as sleeve notes by Steven Wilson on his remixes for Dolby Atmos. The book is lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished photographs, memorabilia, tape boxes and original print ads.

Who Are You is the first album by The Who that I bought back when I was transformed into a giant music nerd, and it’s always going to have a warm place in my heart. This presentation is a terrific artifact of that last Who album with their original line-up.

The Who Are You Super Deluxe Boxset is available from retailers who carry, or can order, boxed sets.

Steven Spielberg’s classic movie, JAWS, turned fifty this year, and chances are you know someone who’s a massive film buff that adores this movie. The problem is, they probably already have books and DVDs and Blu rays, and maybe even action figures that commemorate JAWS. But today’s entry in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide is the perfect gift for them because it was just released!

From the folks at Fright Rags, we have the Officially Licensed Jaws Lunch Box (thermos included!).

It’s a mere twenty six bucks (plus shipping) and it’s made of sturdy metal, embossed and with faux distressing to make it look like a vintage item from half a century ago.

In addition, it comes with a tin-wrapped 12 oz. thermos with a bright blue cap that doubles as a cup.

The lunchbox measures 7.75″ wide x 6.75″ tall x 4″ deep and features JAWS artwork by Geoffrey Blasiman & Joe Guy Allard. The bright yellow thermos features the logo and motto of The Amity Island Police Department.

In case you don’t know, JAWS is the story of a lovable, cuddly Great White Shark (named Bruce), who goes on vacation to Martha’s Vinyard and while innocently enjoying the local cuisine, is stalked and hunted by three dangerous psychopaths.

It’s a fun collectible based on the movie, but it’s also functional, so if you know a lawyer or nuclear physicist who absolutely loves JAWS, they can take their lunch to work in this.

The JAWS lunchbox and Thermos can be ordered directly from Fright Rags.