Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 71 of 125)

From 2006 to 2015, I produced ten Christmas episodes (or specials/treats) of the Radio Free Charleston video show. For some reason, until now, I have not compiled them all in a handy playlist to embed in this blog so you can watch them all together. One week out from Christmas Eve seemed like a good time to spring this on you.

We didn’t do a full-blown holiday episode every year. In 2008 I totaled my car on black ice early in December, and only managed to post a “half-episode” featuring music from the CYAC production of MARY: A Rock Opera from that year.  I don’t remember the exact reason, but in 2011 all we did was a short video of Johnny Compton’s Prank Monkey.

But that’s all in here, and in order.  The 2006 show features Clownhole and Mel Larch. In 2007 we had The Mountain Laurel Ensemble, 60 Fingers and The Android Family. 2009 saw an extra-long show with music from Molly Means, Joseph Hale, Todd Burge, and Melanie Larch with The Diablo Blues Band. In 2010 we presented the talented crew from The Contemporary Youth Arts Company singing Christmas Carols and songs from Mary: A Rock Opera.

2012 saw us back to full-length with a show that features music from the Charleston Gay Mens Chorale, a duet from Lee Harrah and Pepper Fandango, a special “double trio” from the cast of “MARY: A Rock Opera,” and Prank Monkey. Also in this episode, we have the Ghost of Animation Past, a holiday message from Razor Sharp Studios and Burt Flemming, and a quick musical tour of The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, WV.  “Hasa Diga Shirt,” was our 2013 Christmas spectacular, with music from The Bob Thompson Unit and Frenchy and The Punk, plus a message from Santa, and animation from Jake Fertig.

In 2014 it gets a little bittersweet as we had quite a bit of help from the late Mark Scarpelli. Melanie Larch and Mark performed “Christmas Time Is Here,” the classic tune from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” This was our “all female voices” Christmas show as the other musical acts include: Marium Bria performing the Jody Herndon song, “Naughty Christmas.” Lady D — aka Doris Fields — took on the Donny Hathaway classic, “This Christmas.” The Laser Beams wrapped up the show with a rendition of “Up on the Rooftop.”  Also in this episode is the short film “Incomprehensible Words From Santa Claus,” as well as “Death Train,” a charming holiday cartoon about the real War on Christmas, created and animated by Jacob Fertig.

The final show in this playlist is both our least and most Christmas-y one of the batch. Our Christmas show for 2015 captures songs from a benefit show put on at The Empty Glass on December 12 of that year. The Logan-area band, let The Guilty Hang, lost all their equipment, merchandise, instruments and equipment cases in a fire in October. To help raise money for the band, Jeff Ellis, Sheldon Vance, Aaron Fisher, Speedsuit and Farnsworth all performed, with all the proceeds going to help this band get back on their feet. This was the true spirit of the season. Musicians came together, giving their gift of music to help raise money for fellow musicians down on their luck. When I first heard about this concert, I felt that it would make for a Christmas show more appropriate for the season than anything that I could contrive with a holiday theme.

As longtime readers of PopCult know, a few months after this show I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, and cut way back on producing video.  RFC is basically an annual video show now (and I’m scrambling to figure out what to put in this year’s episode), so I haven’t really done any holiday-themed episodes since this last Christmas special. We still do radio specials (and you can hear a bunch of them on The AIR starting Monday), but these ten videos are the video version of our holiday legacy…for now.

The RFC Flashback continues our chronological presentation of classic episodes of the long-running local music video show. Hopefully this will hold you over while your PopCulteer works toward producing a new episode for you before the end of the year.

This classic from January 2009 featured music from Lonely Town and Marcie Bullock, icy animation from Frank Panucci and a quick look at the CYAC production of “Lincoln” an original opera, that opened the week after this show debuted.

Our live music was recorded at The Blue Parrot and at Sam’s Uptown Cafe, both Capitol Street institutions that are still open today. Lonely Town was a band that counted Mark Bates, Jonathan Glen Wood, Aaron Fisher, Frank Miller and Bill Dean among their ranks. It was a veritable supergroup. Marcie was backed by Steve Himes, another Charleston institution.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
December 15, 2023

We have some radio notes for you today as we drift dangerously close to the Christmas vortex.  Before we get sucked into that we also have a small batch of STUFF TO DO to get you in the holiday mood.

We have a special encore and a brand-new mixtape Friday on The AIR. This afternoon we serve up a classic episode of MIRRORBALL and a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat! The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch observes a special anniversary one day late with a classic episode of MIRRORBALL devoted to the movie, Saturday Night Fever, which opened exactly forty-five years and one day ago.

In an episode that originally aired in 2021, The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music salutes the definitive Disco Movie, Saturday Night Fever. To observe 45 years of le danse boo-gee, Mel brings you an hour of highlights from one of the best-selling movie soundtracks in history. You’ll hear classic Disco tunes by The Bee Gees, Tavares, KC and The Sunshine Band, Yvonne Eliman, David Shire, Kool and The Gang, Walter Murphy and The Trammps.

The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever is a crash course in Disco history, and if you miss the days of polyester, danceable beats and unironic cheesiness, then you won’t want to miss MIRRORBALL Friday.

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays most weeks  Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Gets Into The Jam

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM (EDT), Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney devotes her entire program to The music of The Jam.

Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Butler formed The Jam  in 1972 at Sheerwater Secondary School in Woking, Surrey. They released an amazing 18 consecutive top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1982, including four number one hits.

The band mixed Punk and New Wave with 1960s Beat Music, Soul and R&B, playing up their Mod Revivalist image and paying tribute to The Who, who were a major inspiration. The band also cited The Beatles and The Kinks as major influences, and up to their dissolution in 1982, evolved their sound with every release, adding instruments and more complex arrangements and creating more challenging pop music than many of their contemporaries.

We do not have a playlist for this week’s show. Sydney was barely able to finish it and transmit it to us before we had to upload it to our servers. But Sydney assures me that this week’s show is packed with the band’s major hits, choice album cuts and even a few rarities.

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.

STUFF TO DO

Your humble blogger is back from Chicago and things are as back to normal as they can be with Christmas charging at us full-speed. With the holidays waiting just around the corner, we do have some STUFF TO DO to tell you about. As I have been doing 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.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday Steve Himes takes the stage. Saturday a mysterious masked individual performs at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend  to tell you about. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Sunday Bo McMillion will entertain from 9:00 to 11:30 PM. Next Monday it’s open mic with Eric Robbins at 9 PM. Tuesday Alondra Johnson takes the stage at 9 PM. Next Wednesday Andrew Pauley brings his singer/songwriter music to the Glass at 9 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, Republican House members on holiday break running amok, flying reindeer moving their bowels overhead, billionaire governors pleading poverty in court 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…

Continue reading

I have to place the blame on FiestaWare.

I speak, of course of the beloved, multicolored dinnerware line, produced right here in West Virginia, and obsessively collected by Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch. That FiestaWare.  That’s how I wound up in Canton, Ohio last summer right after the Marx Toy Show in Wheeling.

A new FiestaWare outlet store opened at the Hartville Marketplace & Flea Market, just North of Canton, and we decided to go there after the Marx show, since we were already fairly close to it.

We went there and Mel got some new pieces and while we were there, we checked out a few other fine shopping destinations. I was on the fence about going to one of them. I saw “Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom” on the Google Maps, and having been burned many times while looking at toy stores in new cities, I was prepared to be disappointed. In fact, I almost didn’t even go.  We stopped on the way out of town because it was practically on the ramp to get back on I 77 South to come home.

Mel stayed in the car, and I went in expecting nothing more than plush, STEM toys and maybe some wooden trains or something.

I was not prepared for the sensory overload of a toy store, stocked with new stuff–not antiques, larger than any Toys R Us that I’d ever been in, and filled with almost any toy you can imagine. I was greeted by a five-foot motion-activated animatronic raptor, and it just got wilder from there.

This is not your average independent toy store.

Sir Troy is actually a longtime LEGO collector who had opened up a couple of shops in malls around the area, before deciding to go whole-hog and open a complete, full-service toy store in The Beldon Village shopping complex in Canton, right off of Insterstate 77.  This location is a 30,000 square-foot behemoth of a toy store, reportedly the largest brick and mortar store devoted to new toys in the country, and it’s a worthy day trip for any toy collector, kid, or adult pretending to have a kid because they love toys so much.

The store is loaded with the newest Hot Wheels, Barbies, Marvel Action Figures, GI Joe, action figures of all kinds, plush animals, model kits, model railroads, boardgames, children’s books, Schleich figures, Playmobil, outdoor toys, educational toys, slot cars…I could go on, but the videos might give you a better idea. Oh, and they have what is likely the largest collection of LEGO sets for sale in the country. This location just opened in November, 2022, and it’s already become a bit of an underground legend among toy collectors. We had to go back last month with the PopCult cameras, arriving just before they decorated for the holidays.  If something about the stores seems familiar, well, you’ll have to watch the videos to find out why.

Seriously, several of the “departments,” like Barbie, Hot Wheels, Breyer, Bruder, LEGO, Marvel Legends and more are bigger than entire other toy stores. There’s a candy and soda section (stocked by Grandpa Joe’s, from Pittsburgh) that’s probably twice the size of the average GameStop.

Above you see the “short” video, which runs nearly ten minutes. There was simply too much visual excitement to cram into a shorter clip. I should warn you that this is a very frenetic video and in places it looks like you’re watching The Blair Witch Project in fast motion. Below you’ll see the director’s cut, which is around twenty-five minutes, and includes a guided tour of the massive LEGO display that takes up one corner of the store (Thanks again, Jeff!).

Below that I have a photo essay, which is mostly made up of screen grabs from shots that I couldn’t fit into the videos. Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom is about a three-hour drive from Charleston, taking Insterstate 77 almost all the way there.

The Photos

This is a tiny slice of a massive Hot Wheels section, wherein each peg holds one style of car, so you don’t have to go digging like a heathen the way you have to everywhere else.

This is the 2023 holiday Breyer Horse, part of a gigantic section of nothing but Breyer’s.

Another cool Breyer horse.

I don’t know if you understand how big this thing is.

A small portion of the gigantic Cleveland-inspired LEGO diorama.

Are you into model airplanes? They have a few.

Holiday Star Wars figures, not to be confused with the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I hear people complaining about not being able to find GI Joe: Classified figures…

…maybe that’s because they’re all here.

And finally, we have The Village People, reunited as Playmobil figures.

We have hit Wednesday afternoon, and The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast that both focus on what’s new.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a one-hour mixtape of  that attempts to create “The Fantasy Final Album” by The Beatles. I put this together using the “new” tracks from 1995 and 2023, along with select solo tracks that sound Beatlesque, and I realize that millions of people have been doing mixtapes like this ever since The Beatles broke up, but this is my latest attempt. To make it more like an old-school LP, I take a short break in the middle so I can “turn it over” and play the B-side. Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 102

The Fantasy Final Album

“side one”

“Real Love”
“Return To Pepperland”
“When We Was Fab”
“English Garden”
“Now and Then”
“Same Love”
“Sat Singing”

“side two”

“Free As A Bird”
“This One”
“Tears Of The World”
“I Really Love Her”
“Grow Old Along With Me”
“Never Without You”
“Stop, You Don’t Know Where She Came From”
“Now and Then (Reprise)”

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 (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch celebrates everything new on the musical theatre front, with a preview song of a musical for which we saw the world premiere in Chicago last week, and then shining the spotlight on three musicals currently running on Broadway.

Check out this playlist…

Curtain Call 138

“Where I Want To Be” from Boop!

From Harmony: “Harmony,” “Your Son Is Becoming A Singer,” “The Wedding” and “We’re Goin’ Loco.”

From How To Dance In Ohio: “Under Control,” “Getting Ready for The Dance,” “So Much In Common,” and “Building Momentum.”

From Merrily We Roll Along: “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Franklin Shepard Inc.,” “Now You Know,” and “Opening Doors” Also the backer’s audition version of a trunk song, “We’re Awfully Glad That You Came.”

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 god only knows what because I haven’t put the show together yet.

It’s a joyous week back from our winter vacation marathons on The AIR and that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston on Tuesday! 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 full hours of glorious free-format radio with lots of local acts mixed in with independent artists from around the world and a few classic tracks from major artists, just to keep you on your toes. Our third hour is a special treat for Bowie fans.

We open with a new track from Cassius At Best and also feature new tunes from Trevor Horn and Rick Astley, Mika, Brian Diller, Deni Boney & Chris Flynn, Todd Burge, Massing and more.

Since your humble blogger is just back from Chicago, it’s only fitting that we feature a couple of bands from our Chicago pipeline in our first hour, too.

Chicago bands (and frequent tour mates) Umbra & the Volcan Siege and The Anna Maze have joined forces for a split 12″ vinyl release. This week we bring you samples of both sides of this cool slab of vinyl. The Umbra & the Volcan Siege tracks comprise the “His Side” of the record and are streaming via Bandcamp.  The Anna Maze tracks comprise the “Her Side” of the record and are also streaming via Bandcamp.  Umbra & The Vulcan Siege will celebrate the release of their split vinyl at Reggie’s in Chicago on New Year’s Eve.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links will take you to the local and indie artist’s pages (where possible)  so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 155

hour one
Cassius At Best  “Devices”
Umbra & The Vulcan Seige “Romeo And Juliet”
The Anna Maze “Years Roll By”
Trevor Horn with Rick Astley “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”
The Anchoress “Dead and Lovely”
Mika “Touche Touche”
Brian Diller “Home”
Deni Bonet & Chris Flynn “Can’t Wait To See You On Christmas”
The Fab Four “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
The Fab Four “Blue Christmas”
Klaatu “December Dream”
December People “Silent Night”
Jay Parade “Let It Snow”
Massing  “Moving Out (Anthony’s Song)”
The Sinister Ducks “The March of The Sinister Ducks”

hour two
63 Eyes “My Pen”
Jamie’s Pawnshop Guitars “Outshined”
Leon Else “Safety Dance”
American Authors “Dance Hall Days”
The Jam “Stand By Me”
Brian May “FBI”
Big Daddy “Welcome To The Jungle”
The 3 Clubmen “Racecar”
IDKHOW “Gloomtown Brats”
The Tom McGees “Cool Kid”
Astrodot “Walking On The Wind”
Todd Burge “When Pigs Fly”
Sierra Ferrell “Fox Hunt”
Guitarmy of One “Plight of the Searchlight”
Lost Decades “Come Run”
Sgt. Van and the Highway Dogs “Strange Ride”

hour three
Moonage Daydream: The Bowie Songbook
Ryan Hardiman, Mark Scarpelli, Alsaha Al Qudwah, Joseph Cevallos, Jeff Lipscomb, Dean Pauly, Eli Chambers
“Space Oddity”
“Lady Grinning Soul”
“Moonage Daydream”
“Changes”
“Heroes”
“Dollar Days”
“China Girl”
“Under Pressure”
“Life On Mars?”
“Ziggy Stardust”
“Ashes To Ashes”
“Blackstar”
“Absolute Beginners”

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 two recent 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.

As I mentioned last week, this week’s art is a pastel-acrylic painting on paper for pens based on a photo I took last July in Chicago as we waited out a tornado warning on the 23rd floor of our hotel.

It was a bit unsettling, but it did make for some cool photos.

I did this version, and a couple of others, before I decided to put them away and look at them again later.  Well, later is now, and I’m happy enough with this one to share it here. I may revisit it in the future, but I’m not sure I really want to. I like the lighting and composition, but I think it might work better in the background of a more surrealistic piece.

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.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of the stand-up of Steve Harvey on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of classic Disco music from Mel Larch on MIRRORBALL.

After taking a year off, and with no popular demand at all, we once again bring you a collection of Christmas-themed short films that are, shall we say, “less traditional” than those you might normally watch to get into the holiday spirit. Against all common sense this has become a new tradition! Some of these you may have seen before here in PopCult, while some are new to our readers. All of them, are pretty messed up, in their own ways. These are our olive branch to those of us who have more of a “Bah, Humbug” attitude toward the holiday on this Christmas season.

Our opening video this year is a heartwarming cartoon about ways to die at Christmas…

Returning from 2020, it’s a music video by The Dollyrots, conveniently called “Messed Up Christmas,” and it was written using contest entries from their fans that asked “What messed up thing do you want for Christmas?”

We continue with a short film from 2017 called “Sleigh,” starring Matt Berry and Nigel Planer…

Next up we bring you a parody of the 30th Anniversary of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by the comedy crew of 22 Minutes…

Finally we bring you Ken Russell’s heartwarming holiday classic, “A Kitten For Hitler”…

In the spirit of the holiday season, I say, “There, that oughtta hold the little buggers.”

This week in the RFC Flashback, we re-re-re-present one of our most acclaimed episodes, our second “Show Without Words,” Radio Free Charleston 57, “Grumpy Shirt.”

We’ve had lots of requests to bring you this episode again. It’s loaded with great instrumental music, silent film, and tons of animation, and folks really love it. Maybe I need to keep my mouth shut more often.

Here we go, from January 2009, with music from Elemental Devices (AKA James Vernon Brown), Chuck Biel’s Punk Jazz and The Scrap Iron Pickers, plus a short film by Drew The Dramatic Fool and more. You can read the production notes here.

If you’re wondering about the gap of over a month between episodes 56 and 57 of RFC, in between these shows yours truly had a misadventure with black ice that claimed the life of the beloved red Cutlass Supreme. Nobody was harmed except for the car and some groceries. But there were no full-length episodes of the show for over a month.

Our chronological presentation of Radio Free Charleston will continue every Saturday as in The RFC Flashback.

The PopCulteer
December 8, 2023

Today in our weekly columnish post, we will continue to update you on our AIR Marathons, plus we have a wee bit of STUFF TO DO, while your humble blogger is on his way back from an undisclosed location (unless I decided to disclose it already, in which case, nevermind.

The AIR Marathon: Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and More!

All this week on The AIR, we have brought you marathons of our music specialty programs. This is  a great way to give new readers and listeners a chance to sample our shows, and also give our staff a week off from having to produce anything new.

The marathons will begin at 7 AM and run for 24 hours. If you miss anything, don’t worry. We’ve found ways to keep these shows in rotation.

Friday is the normal day for new episodes of our New Wave Music showcase, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat to debut at 3 PM, so today we play 24 hours of some of the best music of our lifetime.

Sydney Fileen (not her real name) brings you classic New Wave music from the golden age of roughly 1976 to 1986. As I’ve explained before, our friends at Haversham Recording Institute use psuedonyms in part as a tribute to their roots in the UK pirate radio scene (from wence Sydney was first heard as “Kelly Brown”), but also because they are all highly-paid and highly sought-after voice talents in the UK, and don’t want people to know that they’re doing these shows for free.

Following her days as a pirate radio Deejay, Sydney then began her career in legit radio and television announcing, and the rest would be history, if she were using her real name to present Big Electric Cat.

Friday you’ll hear classic episodes from the second and third year of Sydney’s show.

Saturday we will let Haversam’s Nigel Pye commandeer The AIR for 24 hours of mind-expanding music from Psychedelic Shack. Sunday it’s a departure as we bring you the best of The Comedy Vault from 7 AM until midnight.

And after that, The AIR will revert to its normal Schedule.

STUFF TO DO

Since this is being written a week in advance, we don’t have the full details for what’s happening this weekend, but here are a few highlights from folks who were kind enough to give us some advance notice. As I have been doing 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 (especially this week), and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday Minor Swing takes the stage. Saturday Sean Richardson, Eric Robbins and Ryan Errickson perform at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin return with Swing for a good cause. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. The Appalachian Melting Pot, Ashley Best & the Set ‘Em Up Band are making their debut at The Empty Glass, Friday October 7th at 10 M.  With Ashley Best,writing & performing Country/Blues/Rock…a bit of Cow Punk if you will. Sunday at 10 PM The Carpenter Ants host the post-Mountain Stage Jam, after the second of two loaded 40th Anniversary editions of Mountain stage. We have graphics below for the rest of the weekend shows at The Glass.

Speaking Mountain Stage, it’s been a big couple of weeks for West Viginia’s musical calling-card to the world…

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, expelled habitually-lying members of Congress, drunken elves, birds with attitude 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 that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check PopCult for fresh content every day, even when your humble blogger is not physically in town. Come back for our regular features, too.