Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 70 of 125)

Tuesday finds a bittersweet Radio Free Charleston on The AIR.  Our all-new first hour of  Radio Free Charleston is accompanied by a two hour mixtape of vintage Charleston Playhouse-centric music and hijinks, to observe the demolition last week of the beloved, but short-lived local music epicenter.  You can read what I have to say about that HERE.

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.

Our first hour opens with “The Finding,” a newly-released tune by Brian Diller, who will be returning to Charleston for an acoustic performance this coming Friday at The Roc, below the old Quarrier Diner.  Then we hear a great tune from our “Chicago Connection,” as Radio Free Honduras continues their mission to salute the music of Charlie Baran  with  an incredible Latin sound.

The rest of our first hour continues with great local and independent music. Then we devote our second and third hours to some audio artifacts of the magic that was The Charleston Playhouse & Tavern.

You’ll hear actual recordings from the Playhouse, as well as studio tracks from some of the bands who played there as well as a few snippets of the original broadcast version of RFC.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links in the first hour will take you to the artist’s pages  so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live. Don’t expect that in the third hour, though…

RFC V5 156

hour one
Brian Diller “The Finding”
Radio Free Honduras “Pero Te Olvidare”
Aristotle Jones “Best Nest”
The Alright Maybes “Come On Charlie”
Novelty Island “1102”
The Settlement  “Do It For You (Live at Sam’s)”
Nu Mutants “Undertaker”
John Inghram & Bud Carroll “Father Christmas”
Audrey Smiley “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”
Pallas “This Haunted Christmas”
The Dollyrots “Fairytale of New York”
Corduroy Brown “Medicine (Live at The Shop)”
Ann Magnuson “Live, You Vixen”
Hello June “Honey I Promise”

hour two and three The Charleston Playhouse & Tavern Archives Mixtape

Alan Griffith unplugged at the Playhouse with the unfortunate participation of The Stunning Janice and Rudy Panucci
Go Van Gogh Live At The Playhouse
Mad Scientist Club “Thunder and Lightning (Studio version)”
The Swivels “Cinnamon Girl”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You (Studio version)”
The Tunesmiths “I Don’t Want To Be Your Hero (Studio version)”
Brian Diller “Don’t Stop At Anything (Studio version)”
Three Bodies “The Trax (Studio version)”
Stark Raven “There’s More To Life Than This (Studio version)”
The Velvet Brothers “Savannah Moon (Live, but not from the Playhouse)”
Strawfyssh “Graveyard Shift (Studio version)”
Three Bodies “Treehouse”
Meandering rant
Sexy Coughing
David Friesen “Festival Dance”
Some Forgotten Color “Restrain”
Johnny Rock and Rudy in the studio
Cranky Old Men (Rudy and Brian Young)
Clownhole-Excerpts from “The Last Fart (live at the Charleston Playhouse)”

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 offer up a new mixtape episode of The Swing Shift.  The plan is to record this show, which will open with a new track from The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, after I write this (on Christmas Eve, no less), so there won’t be a playlist but rest assured, it will Swing. I promise to include some Cab Calloway, Tyler Pedersen and Royal Crown Revue, though.

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.

Why the title?  It’s “a wreath-a,” get it?

Sorry about that. Anyway, it’s Christmas Day. Above you see a quick and sloppy acrylic painting done on paper for pens and inspired by a big wreath in the Northbridge Shopping Center in Chicago. It’s not based on a photo, just on my memory, so any resemblance is purely amazing.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday  on The AIR,  the Christmas programming begins its last day this year as we devote one final big marathon to celebrating the holidays with special episodes of our regular programs, plus huge comglomerations of holiday music, radio plays, weird Christmas stuff and more. That runs until 7 AM Tuesday, when things get back to whatever passes for normal in this blog. I hope whoever might be reading this is having a great holiday and isn’t just browsing the web because there’s nothing else going on.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and whatever good tidings fill your bill from PopCult and the Larch-Panucci household.

2023 has been a year. We’ll stay positive and leave it at that while running our traditional holiday greeting…

‘I hope that everybody can find some peace and well-being on this special day, and that the new year brings us all new happiness, joy, good health, and justice for the Democracy.”

As is our tradition on Christmas Day, we bring you Melanie Larch singing “Ave Maria” from the very first Christmas episode of Radio Free Charleston.

Let’s follow that up with the 2014 Christmas treat that saw Melanie backed by the late and much-loved and missed, Mark Scarpelli…

And we’ll continue with Mel’s 2009 Christmas song with Diablo Blues Band…

Let’s go back to Chicago, in 2019, for one more…

Wishing you and yours the best-

Rudy Panucci and Melanie Larch

Above you see episode 165 of Radio Free Charleston (from 2012), where I take Kitty Killton to the site of The Charleston Playhouse to introduce a video of my old friends, Clownhole, performing there in 1989.

I’m running this here because last week, sadly, the building that played host to The Playhouse was demolished.  It’s a fun video, and it’s a nice way to remind everyone that Clownhole, who last performed together at The Playhouse in 1989 have new music coming out soon. But it also gives me a chance to run an “obituary” for the building that was home to The Charleston Playhouse.

While it sucks for those of us who have fond memories of the place, the demolition shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone. The building was originally “Don Emilio’s,” a Mexican Restaurant, built in the 1980s, which was long out of business by the time a group of artistically-minded friends decided to have a go at The Charleston Playhouse in that location.

The Playhouse opened in 1989 and closed in 1990, but it left a huge mark on the lives of the people who went there.  I met my wife there. I also met dozens of people, including some of my closest friends there.  Radio Free Charleston became what it is there. I have far more attachement and fond memories of the Playhouse than I do of High School. It’s where I became an adult, at least socially.

Post-playhouse, the building was mostly vacant. It was briefly an attempt at an upscale Italian Restaurant from the folks who own Graziano’s, and for a few years it was a Mimi’s gambling den, before they relocated that to the vacant Wendy’s next door.  However, I’d say that for the 33 years since the Playhouse closed, the building was probably empty close to 25 years.

At some point in the last few weeks, someone broke in and stripped the wiring, plumbing and took anything valuable from the building. It is said that over a million dollars of damage was done, leaving the owners no option but to finish the job and tear down the building.

The toxic sludge that is angry Republicans in Charleston on Facebook are trying to say that this was the work of homeless drug addicts, who get to roam free in Kanawha City thanks to Democratic Mayor Amy Goodwin. They seem to have forgotten that the exact same thing happened to Top O’ Rock during the term of Republican Mayor, Danny Jones.  They also don’t seem to realize how implausible it is that homeless drug addicts would be able to descend on a building, strip it in hours, and leave undetected.

I’m not saying that homeless drug addicts are not capable of committing crime. I just think it’s a bit ridiculous to suggest that they’d be so efficient and organized about it. I’ve seen photos of the damage. This was done by people trained in demolition, using professional tools, and who had to have the means to quickly load up and transport what they stole far, far away to avoid being traced.

Why would they pick a vacant building in this area of town?

Well, because that area of Charleston is dealing with a lot of unhoused people, and whoever did this knew who would be blamed, and that no serious investigation would be conducted.

That negativity aside, it’s best to remember The Charleston Playhouse as the magical place that it was.

I used the Charleston Playhouse as a sort of second base of operations for the Radio Free Charleston radio program, recording many acts on the stage for broadcast on the show. Clownhole was one of the most requested bands on Radio Free Charleston, with songs such as “Heads On Fire” and “Old Man Jumping Over A Fence.” And they were also really good friends of mine.

One sign of how close we were is that in this video, you will see Sham Voodoo wearing a hideous canary yellow sport jacket. He actually borrowed this from me. For some unfathomable reason, I thought it would be cool to attend this show dressed in the most idiotically garish combination of primary colors possible: a bright blue shirt, bright red tie, canary yellow sport jacket, fingerless gloves, and round sunglasses. It may be hard to believe for my PopCult readers who were not yet born at this time, but in the 1980’s and early nineties, you could actually dress like this in public without being socially ostracized and even still have the faint possibility of hooking up with members of the opposite sex.

The Charleston Playhouse was where all of Charleston’s artists, musicians, actors, filmmakers and the occasional voodoo priest met and mingled and collaborated. I used to sit at a table and do jam drawings on the tablecloths with the late Charley Jupiter Hamilton. I wound up onstage more than a few times, which is amazing when you consider how much I hate performing live in front of an audience. I was comfortable enough there to join in and sing, emcee, do improv or just goof around.

All the creatives at The Playhouse had interesting things going on. The rock and roll faction was responsible for the legendary Tuesday night jam sessions and weekend concerts. The theater crowd put on some of the best shows Charleston has seen–from “True West” to “Side by Side by Sondheim”. The art crowd encouraged creativity by providing paper table cloths and crayons at each table. For its short life, the Playhouse was a nexus for all things cool in Charleston.

Where else could you find Sondheim, Sam Shepard, Brian Diller, Clownhole, David Friesen, Duke Robillard, Go Van Gogh, Eraserhead, Danny Boyd’s movies, and drunken Reggae renditions of the “Beverly Hillbillys” theme, all on the same stage?

One night early in 1990, if I recall correctly, I knocked off work early at WVNS, and rounded up my buddy John “Sham Voodoo” Estep, because he was going to host a Thursday night acoustic jam at the Playhouse. The Tuesday jam had been a huge success, but we wanted to try something a bit quieter.

The problem was that nobody told us that the Playhouse had already been booked that night.

Morgantown film maker Jacob Young and Michael Lipton had arranged for a performance by the then-unknown “dancin’ outlaw” Jesco White to take place.

It was quite a shock. After getting over the disappointment from the cancelled jam session, Sham and I found ourselves mesmerized by the unique dance styling of the Boone county legend. I had my camera (loaded with pretentious artsy-fartsy black and white film) and snapped the photo you see at left.

At the time, I chalked it up as just another night of Charleston Playhouse bizzaromania. I also remember that the stage at the Playhouse was never the same after Jesco had at it with those cast-iron tap shoes.

Everybody who went to The Charleston Playhouse has a memory (or dozens) like that. I remember hanging out with all the top bands in town, meeting new people, and most importantly, the night of the Stark Raven CD release party where I met my wife, Melanie Larch.

It had long been a lottery dream of mine to buy the building, restore it to its former glory, and reopen it as an all-ages club with a state-of-the art sound system and robotic cameras to capture bands playing on the stage.

Now that dream is dashed. If I do ever win the lottery, it’ll save me a fortune. Aside from the magic and wonderfulness, The Charleston Playhouse was in a lousy location on the ass-end of Kanawha City, just past the Interstate entrance. In fact, it was located right off the off-ramp, and you had to pass it turn right, then double-back to get to it.

That played a large part in why it was only around for a year. It was too far from anyplace else for bar-hoppers to hop, parking was cramped, the lot was not well-lit, and it was in a part of town that most people never bothered to become familiar with.

I loved the layout of the building, but I would’ve loved it even more if it had been more conveniently located.

Now it’s located in my memories…and those are way more rich because of it. Everyone who ever went there will carry a little piece of it with them.

This week, the RFC Flashback heads to February, 2009 for an episode of our video program devoted to the Contemporary Youth Arts Company production of the Dan Kehde/Mark Scarpelli opera, “Lincoln.” This production of the show featured performances by Dan Khede, Tonya Dillon-Page, Jonathan Tucker, Maddy Gourevitch, Alicia Renae Lewis and a large and talented ensemble.

This episode also contains some other Lincoln-centric entertainment as we bring you the musical montage, “Funky Lincoln” and a President’s Day rebuttal by George Washington, animated by RFC Big Shot Brian Young and voiced by our host, Rudy Panucci. An additional honor for our 16th president is that this episode is named “Pittsburgh Steelers Shirt,” after his favorite NFL team. Original production notes can be found here.

Also, I did not intentionally try to dress like Dick Tracy. Sometimes these things just happen.

The PopCulteer
December 22, 2023

It seems a little odd to review a musical running in Chicago just two days before its final performance, but I wanted to go on record about BOOP! The Musical. I got to see it back on December 5, but didn’t have a chance to write this until now.

It is, as you may have guessed, a stage musical featuring the iconic Fleischer animation heroine, Betty Boop. Melanie and I got to see the World Premiere, out-of-town run before the show moves to Broadway, sometime next year.

Producers do out-of-town runs so they can sort of workshop a new musical and make changes based on a live audience reaction. By the time BOOP! moves to Broadway, it might be substantially different.

However, I’m thinking it’s not going to be that much different because, as it is, BOOP! is nearly perfect. The songs are catchy as hell. The story is fun. The stagecraft is amazing. And Jasmine Amy Rogers (seen left), who plays Betty Boop, will likely come out of this role as a major star. She really IS Betty Boop, come to life.

The show is about 90% perfect. I’m sure the producers will tinker with the pacing and I hear that the composer, David Foster, has two new songs ready to plug into the production. At this point, it seems that this show just needs minor tweaks to become a major hit. I felt that one song we hear as a false climax would pack more punch if it were foreshadowed with a less-orchestrated verse much earlier in the show, but that’s a minor note.

So much of BOOP! is simply stellar. Bob Martin contributes a clever book that weaves romance, spectacle and interdimensional travel into a thrilling and delightful story. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics and David Foster’s music manage the difficult feat of capturing the Golden Age Jazz sound of the original Betty Boop cartoons while still projecting a contemporary vibe.

Jerry Mitchell, who directed and choreographed this show has conducted a symphony of pop culture visuals and dance numbers that pay tribute to the original cartoons as well as remaining strikingly original.

Speaking of strikingly original, the scenic design by David Rockwell and the projection design by Finn Ross help immerse the audience in a world based on classic Fleischer animation in the beginning, and then a full-color astonishingly surreal New York City in the “real world.”

Grampy, Betty and Pudgy, before her trip to the real world.

The cast is amazing, and we have to once again note that Jasmine Amy Rogers shines brightly in what should be a career-defining role. She has the look, the voice, and the attitude of Betty Boop, and she also has the acting chops and emotional range to bring her into the real world.

DeRosa and Prince, with a sweet, second love story.

Stephen DeRosa is equally amazing as the real-life embodiment of Grampy. Pudgy the dog is onstage via the puppeteer, Philip Huber, and after his first appearance, you forget that there’s a man pulling the strings visible on stage.

Broadway vet, Faith Prince is a hoot as Grampy’s love interest, Valentina, and Ainsley Anthony Melham is great as Betty’s real-world love interest, Dwayne, although he could stand to work on his fake trumpet playing a little.

The story opens with Betty hard at work making the cartoons that we all know and love today. The set and costuming are monochromatic, looking like a Fleischer cartoon come to life.  After a long day on the set, Betty expresses her desire to take a vacation “Where nobody knows me.” Grampy tells her about the real world, and shows her a machine he’s made out of an overstuffed chair that can take her there. But he warns her not to use it because the real world is so dangerous and scary.

Of course, after Grampy dozes off, Betty uses the machine and arrives…at the 2023 New York Comic Con. Suddenly, everything is in bright, vibrant color. Betty encounters cosplayers dressed as DC Comics, Marvel and Hanna Barbera characters (and more), and experiences colors for the first time with the showstopper tune, “In Color.”

Now, I have to admit that, being a comic book nerd for over 55 years, a musical that includes interdimensional travel, classic animation references, Easter Eggs buried in the animated sets AND cameos by Superman, Cyclops, Velma Dinkley, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Chewbacca and more has pretty much punched all my buttons.

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the plot. Let’s just say that we get a couple of love stories, a city politics subplot, a little sexual harrassment, some inspiring feminism, plus a potentially world-ending crisis, all set to impeccably crafted tunes that will stick in your head for months.

I will be shocked if BOOP! The Musical does not go on to have a major run on Broadway (possibly as the first show in the raised and refurbished Palace Theater). I can see BOOP! very easily becoming a hot-ticket show like Book of Mormon or Hamilton. It’s that good.

I also see multiple Tony Awards in its future.

The Chicago run at the CIBC Theater ends December 24, so it might be difficult to see it before it makes the big move, but trust me, you’ll have plenty of chances to see it once it moves to New York. I have a feeling BOOP! will be around for a long time.

Check out the short teaser video and a preview song (“Where I Wanna Be,” heard on the most recent episode of Mel Larch’s Curtan Call, on The AIR)…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content, even on Christmas.

‘Twas STUFF TO DO before Christmas, and all through the blog, not a creature was stirring, not even a frog. 

The presents are bought and the monies all spents, and THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.

There are lots you can see and lots you can hear. It’s better than sitting at home on your rear. 

Holiday cheer is here, wall to wall. Let’s not drink too much, for fear that you fall. 

This shtick is too hard for me to continue, so here’s what’s going on, in select local venues…

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday That High Country Revival takes the stage. Saturday Ronald and The RayGunz perform at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend  to tell you about. Thursday Andrew Pauley brings his roots-infused Blues to the state at 9 PM. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Sunday Bo McMillion celebrates Christmas Eve from 9:00 to 11:30 PM. We have graphics below for the rest of the weekend shows at The Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, Dasher, Donner and Blitzen all coked up and running amok, petulant elves complaining endlessly about kids wanting iPhones instead of toys, giant media conglomerates copulating in the streets 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, right below the jump…

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This was not the post that was supposed to be here today.  With any luck, that post will show up tomorrow or Friday. One of the problems of having Myasthenia Gravis is that, when you get on a roll doing something, you don’t want to stop for anything for fear that you won’t be able to start again.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re writing a long review of something, and you get over 800 words into it before you realize that you haven’t backed it up yet. Then let’s say that you hear an explosion, and your power cuts out…before you saved the 800 words that you’d written.

So when the power does come back on…way ahead of the promised restoration time, I might add…maybe you just decide to do something else instead of sinking that deep into trying to remember what you wrote while you’re in an agitated state.

That’s my way of saying, Now it’s time for the annual look at The PopCult Christmas Tree! We have a lot of new ornaments this year, and several from previous years are on hiatus because we’ve got such a huge collection that displaying the whole thing will require multiple trees.

Maybe next year.  But here’s a look at the tree…

Here’s the full-frontal shot of the tree, using the flash, which sort of cancels out all the lights.

The tree-topper, which is something we need to work on every year. I have this great spire, but it just doesn’t sit well on this particular tree, so this year we went with a four-dollar star, surrounded by billiard balls (in honor of my father), with a peacock in front.

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It’s been more than a week since your humble blogger returned from the Windy City, but since we took our trip in the middle of the holiday season, it meant that I had to jump back into the thick of things as soon as I got back, producing new radio shows and writing PopCult.

However, since this week our radio is all spoken for, and I’ve had time to rest up from the trip (and take another short one-in fact), this week we’ll be playing catch-up and with a couple of posts devoted to our Chicago hijinks.

Today that means a quick photo essay about our trip to the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza. It’s a cool thing that many other cities try to copy, but nobody does it like Chicago. Not every city has a 40-foot tall Picasso sculpture to watch over the dozens of vendors.

Without any further ado, and with long captions to describe each photo, let’s just dive in, shall we?

This is the main entrance. Pro-tip: Don’t wait in line for them to open this one. There are three other entrances and if you get there right when they open, it’s way quicker to go to one of those.

This is Bob’s Belgian, which was, until we discovered Lavazza at Eataly, the best hot chocolate I’d ever tasted. It’s still a very close second.

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Once again, your humble blogger was in Chicago the week before last to celebrate my beautiful wife’s birthday, and that’s the real reason we did Marathon Week on The AIR and last week’s posts might’ve seemed off a bit, since they’d been written by an exhausted PopCulteer who was hobbling around on a bum knee (doing much better now,by the way).

Just as with last year,  I took a few photos of the Christmas Tree in Union Station in Chicago, and just like last year, I knocked out a quick, tiny acrylic painting, this time on cheap canvas board.  If you’re looking at this on a computer monitor, you’re probably seeing it at the actual size it was painted, if not a little larger. I photographed it rather than scan it because the paint wasn’t dry. Had to do a little color correction in the computer because of this. I also couldn’t get rid of the highlights and reflections on this one due to me using sunlight. That always annoys me.

I don’t know if it’s the second installment of a new tradition here at PopCult, or just me being lazy and repititive. I have to say, last year’s came out much better, probably because I spent more time on it and my MG wasn’t flaring up.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have brand-new episodes of  Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack and at 3 PM,  Herman Linte’s Prognosis, and because, like Sydney did last week, they rushed to get these to us before heading out of London for an extended holiday, we do not have playlists,  However, Nigel tells me that his show is actually a Psychedelic Christmas show, while Herman devotes his entire program to an obscure 1970s Prog band from Indiananame “Ethos.” 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 next week 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 next week Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

At 5 PM the Christmas programming begins in earnest on The AIR, as we devote big chunks of the next eight days to celebrating the holidays with special episodes of our regular programs, plus huge comglomerations of holiday music, radio plays, weird Christmas stuff and more. That will start every weeknight this week at 5 PM EST, and then on Friday it will take over the entire station until Tuesday morning, so you can tune in at any time and join the party.