Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 59 of 125)

From July, 2009, Radio Free Charleston’s 76th episode, “Peace Sign Shirt,” was the last episode of the show hosted on the Charleston Gazette servers, and it features cool videos of  two particularly long songs by Option 22 and Suburban Graffiti. Those are punctuated by a Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie, and a couple of important announcements. I get all serious and stuff over what was essentially no big deal. It seemed huge at the time.

After this episode of RFC, we began posting the show directly to MySpace, which eventually turned out to be a disaster when they unceremoniously dumped all their video uploads, then brought them back, then disabled a ton of them again.  That’s why we find ourselves remastering and re-uploading the older episodes of the show to YouTube to this day, and it’s why four episodes are missing in action.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 12, 2024

We lost one of the great comic book writer/artist/editors and historians Wednesday.

Trina Robbins passed away after suffering a stroke in February.

I’ve been a fan of Robbins’ work for at least fifty years, but I had no idea how wild of a life adventure she’d lived until I read her autobiography back in 2017.  She was very happy with my review, and we struck up a casual friendship via Facebook. I’d go on to review several more books by her over the years.  I’ve remained a fan since I discovered her work in Comix Book back in 1974.

In her book, Robbins tells of her upbringing as a poor Jewish girl during World War II, and her association with early science fiction fandom, before she fell into the world of Hippies, Comix and Rock and Roll. Famous and notable people come and go through her story at a rapid pace. I can’t recall reading another biography that mentions Harlan Ellison, C.C. Beck, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Robert Crumb, Alan Ginsberg and other semi-mythical beasts in the context of real people in the subject’s life.

Her comics career spanned Underground Comix, The National Lampoon, DC’s Wonder Woman, Misty and Barbie for Marvel, and several incredible works for independent publishers in recent years.  She also designed the outfit for Vampirella, which Frank Frazetta painted for the cover of the first issue of her magazine back in 1969.

As has has been pointed out in several obituaries this week, she was name-checked in the first verse of the Joni Mitchell song, “The Ladies of the Canyon.”

My interactions with her were always pleasant, and I can’t stress enough how important she was, not just as a cartoonist and a feminist, but also as a historian, preserving the legacies of unjustly overlooked female creators. She was a truly remarkable woman and she will be greatly missed. Condolences to her family and her partner, Steve Leialoha.

New MIRRORBALL On The AIR

Your humble blogger is still a bit gutted by the passing of Trina Robbins, as well as recovering from a day spent doing our taxes, so the rest of this week’s PopCulteer will star the playlist for today’s new episode of MIRRORBALL 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, Mel Larch devotes her hour of Disco to a well-curated assortment of classic dance tracks from the golden age of Disco. She opens the show with a from Kleer, then mixes big hits from Sister Sledge and The Spinners with hidden classics from Timmy Thomas, The Undisputed Truth and more.

IIt’s a wild assemblege of crafty dancefloor motivationals. Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 097

Kleer “Tonight’s The Night (Good Time)”
Aquarian Dream “You’re A Star”
Foxy “Hot Number”
Timmy Thomas “Touch to Touch”
The Natural Four “Try To Smile”
The Spinners “Rubberband Man”
T Connection “Saturday Night”
Sister Sledge “We Are Family”
“Jimmy Castor Bunch “Space Age”
The Undisputed Truth “Let’s Go Down To The Disco”
Goody Goody “#1 Dee Jay”
Deodato “Whistle Bump”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM we bring you  an encore of a birthday salute mixtape edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from the Summer of 2022. Sydney Fileen delivered a special mixtape edition of her show that presents two full hours of the New Wave era music of Siouxsie & The Banshees, including tracks from their first ten studio releases.

Peruse this here playlist for a preview…

BEC 092
Siouxsie’s Birthday Party

“Helter Skelter”
“Jigsaw Feeling”
“Nicotine Stain”
“Premature Burial”
“The Lord’s Prayer”
“Hybrid”
“Spellbound”
“Night Shift”
“She’s A Carnival”
“Painted Bird”
“Dear Prudence”
“Belladonna”
“Red Over White”
“Cities In Dust (Eruption Mix)”
“The Unrest”
“Candyman”
“This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us”
“Hall of Mirrors”
“Strange Fruit”
“The Passenger”
“The Killing Jar”
“Carousel”
“Turn to Stone”
“Peek A Boo”

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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day.

Here at Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor your PopCulteer is preparing to enter into the perilous waters of this year’s tax preparation.  Since I am a little preoccupied with that, how about we go to a truncated version of our least-read weekly feature?  There’s plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State as we pull out the calculators and slide rules.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you 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. This is going to be a short one because I don’t have access to my full resources. All of these shows are “weather permitting.”

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Leslie Brooks. Saturday Minor Swing takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery, possibly all at once.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Thursday at 5:30 PM the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin makes the world a better place with music(details below).   Friday, Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Next Tuesday Spurgie Hankins Band returns to the Glass. You can check below for the graphics for other cool weekend shows at The Empty Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is still not entirely over yet. It’s a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, stray bullets from Republican primary shootouts, liver sports, people who put cucumbers in Greek Salad and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order…

And because I’m not sure when STUFF TO Do will land next week, here’s a look at an event for next Wednesday…

It’s time for another covers mixtape show Wednesday as The AIR brings you a special episode of Beatles Blast.  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 (EST) Beatles Blast brings you an all-star hour of  top artists performing their versions of classic Beatles songs.

We open with Beyonce, of course, who covers the White Album standard, “Blackbird,” as the opening track of her country-crossover album, Cowboy Carter.  We also pay tribute to the recently-departed Steve Harley with his epic cover of “Here Comes The Sun.”

Then we bring you all four Beatles songs that were performed at Woodstock, and this means we repeat a few tunes, but the arrangements are so different that I don’t think Beatles fans will mind. Then we bring you some mid-60s bands doing their turn with Beatles material and wind up with some classy covers by Allan Holdsworth, The Jam and Fiona Apple.

And in the middle, just to keep you on your toes, we have the Fab Four themselves performing “Nowhere Man” live in Germany in 1966. It’s a fun collection of elcectic covers.

Here’s the playlist…

Beatles Blast 108

Beyonce “Blackbird”
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel “Here Comes The Sun”
Richie Havens “With A Little Help From My Friends/Strawberry Fields”
Joe Cocker “With A Little Help From My Friends”
Crosby Stills & Nash “Blackbird”
The Sorrows “We Can Work It Out/No Reply”
Glen Dale “Good Day Sunshine”
Silkie “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”
The Beatles “Nowhere Man (live)”
Allan Holdsworth “Norwegian Wood”
Saturna “Come Together”
The Jam “Rain”
Fiona Apple “Across The Universe”

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 (EST) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch brings you two encore episode from just a few months ago.  Curtain Call will return with a new episode next week.

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.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault brings you an hour of musical interludes from The Simpsons.

We have three hours of new RFC today on The AIR.  We have a new episode of  Radio Free Charleston,completely newly-recorded to make up for last week’s power-outage-induced compilation show.  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 tons of replays throughout the week.

This week we have three hours of newly-assembled coolness with the first hour comprised entirely of recently-released music, including new local tracks from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Jim Lange, Unmanned, Massing, Sierra Ferrell and more, plus new Custard Flux from our Chicago pipeline, and new major artist releases from Pet Shop Boys, Sheryl Crow and The Anchoress. Plus we have a track from the latest House of Tabu release by Kitten & The Tonics.

Our second hour opens with a new local Rap track from Duck City Music, then veers into a lenghty set of Progressive Rock, and winds up with a couple of day-late Eclipse songs.

Our third hour digs into the RFC archives for some classic local tracks, and then winds up with Americana and New Wave tunes.

Consider it a three-hour tour with no danger of getting shipwrecked on an uncharted desert isle. Rudy don’t do boats, kids.

Links in the artist’s names below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music. Check out the playlist.

RFC V5 171

hour one
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Chasing You”
Jim Lange “Reverend Aakin Jaykins’ Shakin’ Revelations”
Kitten & The Tonics “Alarmium”
Pet Shop Boys “If Jesus Had A Sister”
Unmanned “Edge of Night”
The Anchoress “The Living Dead”
Custard Flux “Equinox”
Massing “Dayblind”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood “Evil Tide”
Disco Risque “The Scene”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Restless Spirit”
Sierra Ferrell“Rosemary”
Alabaster Boxer “Singback”
Sheryl Crow “Digging In The Dirt”
Shadows on Mercury “Calculate (Control)”

hour two
Duck City Music “Incarcerated Scarfaces”
The Progressive Souls Collective “The Core”
Dr. Curmudgeon “Ex Ridiculum Ut Sublimi”
The Settlement “Rainbow”
Steve Hackett “Ghost Moon and Living Love”
Klaus Nomi  “Total Eclispse”
Graham Parker “Total Eclipse of the Moon”

hour three
John Radcliff  “Hold On Tight”
Under The Radar “Krakatoa”
The Heydays “I Never Slept With Alan Ginsberg”
The Concept “Guitar Pick In My Kool Aid”
The Ghosts of Now “Patton’s Blues”
Miniature Giant “Kill Yr FriENDs”
4 OHM MONO “Void All In Between”
Novelty Island “Paprika”
Slate Dump “TIPPLE”
Erik Woods “There’s War In The World”
Velez Manifesto“The Poseur”
Skafish “She’s Taking Her Love Away”
63 Eyes “Pool Game”

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,  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 recent episodes of The Swing Shift with the plan to return with a new show next week.

 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.

This week’s art is a small study (using Winsor Newton inks on textured paper) for a potential Edward Hopper-style painting.

This was done quick ‘n’ sloppy just to get the composition and rough colors down. Chances are the finished piece will change the angle, and maybe lose the buildings next door and maybe the fence. I’ll also be using a different medium. As you can see the ink was a little hard to tame in places.

I based this on a few quick photos I took out the window of The Amtrack Cardinal somewhere between New Jersey and Washington DC last January.

I’m still trying to get to the point where I can imitate parts of Hopper’s mastery of light and shadow, but apply it to my own surreal subject matter. It’s fun to try and learn new things at my age.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a recent 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. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of Cheech and Chong on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of The Swing Shift. It kicks off with our recent four-episode look at Boogie Woogie, and I also scheduled another four-parter, this one devoted a rough history of 100 years of Swing, back when we hit episode 100 of our show.

About ten years ago we featured a song on the video version of Radio Free Charleston about a tiny, rotund and evil man named Patrick Morrisey. At the time he was the Attorney General of West Virginia, and his terms in office were marked by him filing nusiance lawsuits against Democratic administrations, while also filing lawsuits to advance the agendas of pharmaceutical companies, coal companies, Big Oil, and pretty much any business that wanted to pollute our state and harm its people.

Of course, now he’s running for governor on a platform of exterminating transpeople and minorities, polluting our state even more and basically doing whatever else ALEC orders him to do. He’s running as a Republican (of course) and his opponents are a shady used car salesman millionaire son of a Congresswoman; a shady millionaire son of a Senator and grandson of a disgraced and convicted former governor; and a shady election denier who was the top election official in our state.

I don’t have songs about them, but we do have this one, with a Boylesque dance by Leo Tuxedo and lyrics on the screen so you can follow along to this song by The Laser Beams. It’s relevant again, but it looks like there’s a long line of candidates for governor who somehow all manage to look worse than Jim Justice, who might be the worst governor of WV in my lifetime. We’re sharing it here because we’re sick of seeing his awful commercials every time we turn on the TV for weather and traffic reports.

We are going to dig back into the archives for a very special episode of Radio Free Charleston from July, 2009. Radio Free Charleston celebrated three years of our video revival with our 75th episode, “Unknown Hinson Shirt.”  Our third-anniversary Rock And Roll Extravaganza was a pretty ambitious, epic show.

This landmark edition of RFC featured music by The Pistol Whippers and  a pre-fall-into-disgrace Unknown Hinson, both legends of honky-tonk psycho-billy stage. We also had a snippet of Princeton’s Option 22 over the end credits.

With this being our third anniversary, we took it upon ourselves to corner a few really cool people with our camera to get them to say nice things about us. Among those who weren’t quick enough to escape are Ann Magnuson, Necrobutcher, the late wrestling legend Gypsy Joe and GWAR’s front-man, Oderous Urungus.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 5, 2024

As with tens of thousands of my fellow West Virginians, I am still without power (as I write this).

Updating this, my power actually has been restored and I’m back in the house, but I was stuck in the hotel all day Wednesday and didn’t have anything else to do, so I put this together while I had the free time.

I’m quite lucky. My house did not sustain any damage. My neighbors didn’t fare as well. That drone photo you see at the right, which came from WCHS-TV, is just a couple of blocks from my house. It’s one of a few billboards in the area that just snapped in the high winds. It’s a miracle that nobody was killed or even seriously injured during Tuesday’s storm.

But the power did go out. Mel and I absconded to a local hotel that did still have power and wi-fi and I took advantage of the downtime to write ahead on the blog because I know I’ll have plenty to do when we do get power restored.

We’ll have to toss out almost everything in the fridge and freezer for one thing. I hate doing that, especially since some of it is leftover pizza.

Throwing away leftover pizza is like killing a mockingbird.  It’s a sin.

Where we holed up, we had a scenic view of the still-vacant Toys R Us at Southridge, and apparently that parking lot is being used as a staging area for all the power company repair trucks, most of which are coming to our rescue from other states. Trucks were coming and going all day, and the lot filled up and emptied out several times. At points it spilled over and filled up the parking lots for Chuck E Cheese, Quaker Steak & Lube and the now-vacant Bojangle’s.

These folks are why power will be restored as soon as possible.

I want to thank those guys. Your hard work is appreciated.

However, since I need to get some posts written, and I don’t have access to all my resources, the rest of this week’s PopCulteer is a rewrite of a post that originally ran in this space on September 7, 2012. I’m updating it and replacing the art and video and many of the references, but it’ll still serve as a good introduction to this blog. That’s the advantage of having over 18 years worth of archives to mine for content.

Seven Things That Make Up PopCult

This post, in its original form, was a PopCulteer that ran a week after this blog marked seven years of exitstence. The idea was to explain what PopCult is about. There’s no easy answer. I sort of have free reign to write about whatever I want as long as it’s related somehow to Pop Culture, and since that covers just about every aspect of modern life, I get to run a little wild here.

But in order to try and explain our existence, I came up with seven things that help make up PopCult. They are Art, Music, Comics, Theater, Wrestling, Toys and Animation. This week we’re going to revisit some examples of each of these and how they frequently intersect.

Art

Since the beginning of this blog, I have posted examples of my digital art. Starting around the first anniversary of PopCult, I started posting my art regularly, every Monday Morning, hence “Monday Morning Art.”  In the beginning most of my art shared here was digital or manipulated photography.  After my 2016 diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis, and the treatment that allowed me to start sharing actually physical art, I began posting more paintings and drawings and stuff.  Here’s a couple of examples of both…

Hallelujah! It’s time for a hamburger!

I also apparently backed into the role of Art Critic, as my December, 2009 examination of Albert Paley’s “Hallelujah” sculpture that sits in front of The Clay Center, wound up projected on a huge screen at a panel discussion Paley attended.

I missed that event, which might have been a good thing, since I don’t know if they discussed my follow-up piece where I suggested alternative sculptures for the site.

I mean, I don’t know how much of a sense of humor the guy has. Considering how much he charged for “Hallelujah,” he might be laughing all the way to the bank.

Music

This should solicit a “Duh” from my regular readers. I’ve always covered music here in PopCult, but I also steered many good CD reviews to the now-defunct “Newsounds” blog at The equally defunct Gazz, where they seem to be lost to the ages, so I can’t link to my reviews of Roger Waters’ French-languaage opera, “Ca Ira,” or my reviews of albums by Wynton Marselis, Regina Spektor or The Aquabats, but I can link to Andy Prieboy Week and my review of the book he co-wrote, “The Psycho Ex Game.”

And then there’s the matter of local music, and Radio Free Charleston.  Here, try a few randomly-plucked video samples…

Now that The AIR is part of PopCult, Radio Free Charleston is just one of the music specialty programs you can listen to on our sister radio station, which you can hear on the player elsewhere on this page. If you’re a regular reader, you know you get new shows every Tuesday.

Contrary to the belief that I love all the music that I hear, I also reviewed Steely Dan when they came to The Clay Center.

Comics

Comics are a huge part of my life, and I’ve written about a ton of them here in PopCult. I’ve gone on about my love of classic comic strips, like Popeye and Dick Tracy.  I also looked at old and new takes on Superman. I’ve also examined some of the greats of undergroud comics like Kim Dietch and Harvey Pekar.  I’ve also raved about the work of newer masters of the form, like The Hernandez Brothers and Alan Moore. Plus we’ve celebrated some truly great works like “Starstruck,” by Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta. Lately we’ve been following the emerging talent of Anthony Stokes.

Comics will continue to be a big part of PopCult. I wish I had time to cover them even more.

Theater

Thanks largely due to the influence of my beautiful wife, Melanie Larch, I have become a fan of live theater, and even get to write about it occasionally. One of those occasions was when I reviewed Dan Kehde’s brilliant piece of surrealistic naval-gazing, “Bert Hellmun Fights The Demons Of The Stage.”

More recently, I was able to share my reactions to some shows by Tracy Letts, as well as The SpongeBob Squarepants Musical, Boop! and just a few months ago, Stephen Sondheim’s final work, Here We Are.

And we also feature Musical Theater on Mel’s show, Curtain Call, on The AIR, every Wednesday.

Ranting

Sometimes I go off on certain topics. I’m a stong advocate of smoking bans.  I don’t want to see Kanawha Boulevard shut down or shrunk.  I’ve type-blabbed about the death of Michael Jackson and the 2012 movie theater shooting in Colorado.  But one of my favorites rants, named after a Frank Zappa song, is “Dumb All Over,” from September 2009, where I took on one of the biggest threats to our country’s future…old comedy routines coming true…

“We have brought sophisticated, edgy, Lenny Bruce-type shock values to lowest-common-denominator humor. A pie in the face has been replaced with oversized plastic genitals bonking someone on the head.”

Over the years I’ve also addressed more personal topics, like getting married, being diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, several obituaries of friends and other things that aren’t really pop culture related, but they do make PopCult what it is.

Toys

So I’m a toy collector. Maybe I never grew up, but I love toys. I collect action figures, toy cars, robots and board games, along with anything else that strikes my fancy. I’ve written about Captain Action and Johnny West and GI Joe. I’ve gone on at length about The Batmobile. I’ve brought you news and reviews of cool new toys.

I’ve also made pilgrimages to Wheeling to The Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum for MEGO Meet and The Marx Toys Convention. Since the original version of this post, I’ve made regular visits to JoeLanta/Toylanta and Kentuckiana, and even took a rather crazed road trip last year to cover two toy shows in the same weekend.

Animation

My working relationship with the Charleston Gazette began in the early nineties when Melanie Larch and I  started collaborating on “Animated Discussions,” the only regularly scheduled animation column running in a daily newspaper at the time.  We started out writing about our then favorite show, “Ren and Stimpy,” and within a year, we began doing more in-depth coverage that garnered national press attention.  From there, we continued to write about television animation and branched out into reviewing animated feature films such as “The Lion King,” “Toy Story,” and what turned out to be our swan song as movie reviewers “Wallace & Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.”

In the summer of 2005, the Charleston Gazette shifted their freelancer budget around and decided to stop carrying locally written movie reviews.  That money was funneled into the Gazz blogs, which are now also a distant memory, and I decided to make the jump to blogger status. I and PopCult eventually left the Gazette-Mail, which is why you’re still able to read these words today.  Animation is still a large part of PopCult and you can expect more coverage of new animated projects as soon as they add more hours to the day.

That’s it for this bit of self horn tootery. It actually took more effort to re-write this piece and fix broken links and graphics than it would have to written an all-new post,  but with my brain preoccupied, this was the PopCulteer of least resistance. Check back for fresh content every day, even if some of it isn’t so fresh.

Because my power is not expected to be restored until late tonight, I’m taking advantage of our hotel stay to schedule this post for you. If I have time to write a real post, you’ll never know this one existed. Which is good, because going back nine years, this is just an edition of The RFC Flashback. It’s a really good one, but it’s not our usualy Thursday fare here in the blog. (Note: My power was restored, but I have a ton of stuff to do around the house, so you’re still getting this post today)

I originally planned to re-post something about the Derecho that hit the area back in June, 2012, but when I checked…I never wrote anything about it. The only reference to it was a brief mention of two now-defunct bands playing a “Post Apocalyptic Storm” show at the Empty Glass. So you get this instead.

From 2007, it’s the nineteenth episode of our video show,  with the RFC debut of Ghosts of Now and archival video of Go Van Gogh.

The Mystery camera person who shot the original footage of Go Van Gogh turned out to be none other than Melissa Beezley (now Melissa Beezely Johnson) who has been a friend of RFC since the radio days.

This show is not 100% as it was when first posted, though. The original version included a commercial parody created by someone who later turned out to be, well, let’s just say “a criminal.” On top of that, it was very poorly done and not very funny. Newly-created animation takes its place, and is much, much better, despite being slapped together in less than ten minutes.

You can read the original production notes here.