As the month turns, it’s once again time for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston this week in our latest edition of STUFF TO DO.
This time, since things are sort of back to normal here in the PopCult office and I have some spare time, we’re going to mention a few things that are happening that don’t have handy graphics for me to swipe. Links will take you to their Facebook events pages.
Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Key to Adam with their Special Guest (and old RFC buddy) Spencer Elliott. Saturday is another old RFC buddy, Alan Griffith, with The Madison 2. The Davisson Brothers will be in Dunbar at The Bucket on Saturday.
Also, even though we have a cool graphic for it below, note that Wednesday night The Empty Glass is bringing in You Bred Raptors, a band I’ve been a fan of since I saw them performing at The International Toy Fair in New York City six years ago.
Theater fans should note that Dan Kehde’s award-winning hour-long drama, “Love Is Not An Angry Thing”, comes to the stage of the Elk City Playhouse, 128 Wahington St. W, for a two night run, April 29 and 30. Curtain rises at 7 PM for this two person play about a young teenager’s battle to save her best friend from an abusive boyfriend and their progressively obsessive relationship. Love Is Not An Angry Thing features the talents of local actors Sophia Mallory and Sara Jo Bender and, due to obvious adult themes, is rated PG 13. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for students/seniors and are available at the door prior to each performance as well as online at https://cyacwv.showclix.com.
Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet, and now only the stupidest of people are going without vaccinations if they’re eligible. Despite some recent dubious legal rulings, many people 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.
If you wanna hear something funny, tune in to The AIR Wednesday night at 11 PM where we will offer up a new episode of The Comedy Vault, this time featuring an hour of Rik Mayall’s last project.
In the meantime, if you’re up for going out, here are some suggestions from folks who were kind enough to provide graphics and make my job easier…
Tuesday on The AIR your blogger and radio show host once again dives into the vast RFC Archives and comes up with a “new” patchwork edition of Radio Free Charleston. This time our excuse is HVAC issues that have left the office/studio for RFC at a balmy 80 degrees, which is right about the temperature where yours truly really starts to feel his Myasthenia Gravis.
This week I decided to go back to April, 2019, and splice together a wonderful episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume 4, with a lovely episode of Radio Free Charleston International. To hear all this cool three-years-old music you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.
At 10 AM and 10 PM you can hear this special compilation of RFC volume 4, episode 104 and RFC International episode 65.
The first hour is a all local, while the last two are non-local. This was a few months before I combined the programs into the three-hour audio assault you know and love today.
These shows haven’t been heard in almost three years, so I thought it was a good idea to bring them back and plop them into the RFC V5 rotation. I do apologize for not having live links for the bands in the playlist this week. It’s too hot to sit in front of the PC.
Check out the playlist:
RFC V 5 086
hour one
Beggars Clan “Beautiful World”
Poor Man’s Gravy “For The Hell Of It”
William Matheny “Moon Over Kenova (live)”
Mark Beckner “Sweet Addiction”
Beneath “The Shining Truth”
The Science Fair Explosion “The Plan”
The Company Stores “Optimistic”
The Scrap Iron Pickers “Junkyard Jesus”
Feast of Stephen “Mystery Hole”
Rasta Rafiki “Never Go Away Again”
hour two
The Beat “Maniac”
Claypool Lennon Delirium “Cricket Chronicles Revisted”
Gryphon “Sailor V”
David Bowie “Never Let Me Down (dub/accapella)”
Camel “Earthrise”
Pink Floyd “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”
hour three
10 CC “Rubber Bullets”
The Specials “BLM”
Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer (live)”
YES featuring ARW “Make It Easy/Owner of a Lonely Heart”
The Cure “The Kiss”
Frank Zappa “The Complete Saga of Nanook”
Belle and Sebastian “Mornington Crescent”
XTC “Scissor Man”
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 3 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 episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.
(Update: Thanks to the fine folks at JP Mechanical, the AC at Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor was restored, and the blog will be back to normal in time for Wednesday’s STUFF TO DO post)
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 MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and NOISE BRIGADE at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.
This week our art is a bit compromised by an AC failure. This is a quick watercolor and acrylic study of the sky, which I hadn’t really intended to use here, but since it’s over 80 degrees in my office/studio, and high temps aggravate my Myasthenia Gravis….well, beggars can’t be choosers.
This was done in watercolor on airbrush paper a few weeks ago, then abandoned because I didn’t think it looked like much of anything. The shocking white highlights were done in acrylic a day or so later, and then I abandoned it again. I’m not often happy with my attempts to paint clouds. Your milage may vary.
If, for some reason, you want to see this one a bit bigger, just click on it.
Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a 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 at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.
Nigel Pye has assembled a particular swell edition of Psychedelic Shack, which, for the second week in a row, I cannot describe to you because I’m writing this before I receive it through the internets. There’s no holiday excuse this week. I’m just rushing through these notes quick so I can go back to my basement where the temperature is livable. I think he’s opening this one with The 13th Floor Elevators.
PsychedelicShack 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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.
Following that hour of Psychedelic joy, at 3 PM Herman Linte’s Prognosis will bring us two-hours of the underrated prog-rock supergroup, UK, performing live. UK was, for most of this live special, Eddie Jobson, Terry Bozzio and the late John Wetton. Near the end of the program Herman has dropped in a few live cuts that feature the original line-up of Jobson, Wetton, Bill Bruford and Allan Holdsworth.
I’m not running the playlist for this one because…I’m melting while I type this.
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, we bring you an episode of The Comedy Vault filled with an hour of Shakesperian comedy from Firesign Theater. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of our comedy showcase, this time bringing you an hour of rare material from Rik Mayall.
Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Beatles Blast, 21 days ago we missed the 58th anniversary of the day the Fab Four held the top five spot on the Hot 100 singles chart, so we’re running a marathon of recents shows now. Better late than never!
This week we are devoting this space to an episode of Radio Free Charleston from ten years ago. With this being the last Sunday in April, I thought it was fitting to go back to a show that debuted on April 1, 2012, featuring the work of our much-missed friend, Johnny Rock, and his friends. Below we bring you the original production notes for this depature episode of our show, which holds a unique place in cinematic history.
“Adventure Comics Shirt” is a special episode of Radio Free Charleston, dedicated to presenting once-thought-lost scenes from The Lower West Virginia Contemporary Light Opera Stage Players film production of the James Bond film, “Coalfinger.” All prints of this film were destroyed after MGM, EON Productions and the Ian Fleming estate won a permanent injunction against the tiny, Southern West Virginia theater company Luckily, a few scenes were preserved in filmmaker Johnny Rock’s long-supressed documentary on the making of “Coalfinger.”
Audiences have been waiting nearly 20 years to see this title sequence.
From February, 2010, it’s the 93rd video episode of Radio Free Charleston, “Tofujitsu Shirt.” This edition of the show featured a vintage video of Strawfyssh, from 1991, a music video for The Scrap Iron Pickers set to 95-year-old animation by pioneering cartoonist, Winsor McCay, and a moody video of Melanie Larch singing an acapella version of the classic tune, “Summertime.”
You’ll also believe that a pig can cuss, and you’ll get to see an animated re-telling of Andy Dick’s nearly-forgotten misadventures in Huntington.
Not a lot to write about this week, but thankfully we do have a brand-new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, so I don’t have to post random photos or anything silly in this space.
Friday afternoon we offer up eminently danceable music with an encore edition of MIRRORBALL and and brand-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 at the top right column of this blog.
At 2 PM, Mel Larch Takes a week off to get ready for next Friday’s second anniversary/50th episode of MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music mark both milestones next Friday afternoon, then later that night, The AIR will kick-off a fifty-hour marathon of every episode. In the meantime, you can see the playlist for the show we’re running this Friday right HERE.
You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at 9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM exclusively on The AIR.
At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat which is also the sixth Big Electric Cat mixtape of New Wave 12″ extended remixes. This time Sydney introduced the show and then presents almost two full hours of dance-remixed New Wave classics.
Back in the day, all the top New Wave artists released special extended mixes of their hits so that they could get extra club play and confound the collectors of today, who can’t keep track of all the wild versions of these tunes. This show has lots of great New Wave hits, some of which are barely recognizable.
Peruse this here playlist for a preview…
BEC 089
A-Ha “Take On Me”
Thompson Twins “In The Name Of Love”
Duran Duran “Wild Boys”
Visage “The Damned Don’t Cry”
Human League “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”
Adam Ant “Apollo 9”
Eurythmics “Sexcrime (1984)”
Red Box “For America”
Malcolm McLaren “Double Dutch”
Tears For Fears “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Bronski Beat w/Marc Almond “I Feel Love”
New Order “True Faith”
Eighth Wonder “I’m Not Scared”
Haircut 100 “Love Plus One”
Bananarama “Cruel Summer”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Rage Hard”
Alison Moyet “Love Resurrection”
Kim Wilde “Never Trust A Stranger”
Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.
That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back because we have a fresh post every day. Really, even if it’s sorta lame.
Just a couple of months ago I told you about a Kickstarter campaign for a fun set of trading cards from artist, Robert Jiminez. Earlier this week Startling Lineup landed in my mailbox, and you can now order this cool set of card directly from Jiminez at his webstore.
Startling Lineup is a 36 card baseball player parody set written and illustrated by Jiménez. A companion set of sorts to the Fearsome Weirdos sets, it features 24 bizarre ball players along with a collection of MVPs, Most Vile Products. Card backs feature conceptual sketches of the design on the front, and these are printed on old-school cards, not that fancy bright-white stuff that lacks the charm of vintage cards.
Included with each set is a wrapper card with checklist, a sticker and two different authentic, unfolded wax wrappers!
Nowhere else can you thrill to the ballpark exploits of Joe Formaggio, Veggie Jackson, Babe Tooth and other Wacky Hall of Famers.
Since it’s opening day for the unfortunately-named Charleston Dirty Birds, and Major League Baseball is back and early enough in the season that the Baltimore Orioles have yet to be mathmatically eliminated from the playoffs, I thought it’d be fun to show off this cool, fun card set and point you to Robert’s store, Zerostreet, where you can find Startling Lineup and several other cool card sets, apparel, wall decor, books and tons more cool stuff. If you like clever parody art, Tiki art or cool fantasy illustration, this is the place to go.
And now a quick look at the set, without giving too much away.
Everything that comes in the tuck box. The base set, the MVP cards, two promos, a checklist and a sticker.
A couple of cool extra postcard prints and the unfolded old-school wax packs for the set.
I’m not going to post every card in the set, but here are two cool ones.
And here are two more.
We wrap up this photo essay with a look at one of the card backs, which feature Jiminez’s rough sketches for the character on the front of the card.
Okay, it’s time once again for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston during this post-Easter Week in our latest edition of STUFF TO DO.
A special note: ArtWalk happens again in Charleston Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM. This free event is open to the public as art lovers can walk to all the usual suspects and take in the majesty of the art. Some galleries will have music and/or munchies as well. It’s a really cheap way to support the local scene and get out and mingle a bit…if you are so inclined.
Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet, and now only the stupidest of people are going without vaccinations. Despite some recent dubious legal rulings, many people 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.
Another special note: Record store Day is Saturday. We have details on a few of the participating retailers below.
Also, it appears that The Empty Glass is still undergoing repairs and will not be open. Let’s hope they get everything worked out by next week, when You Bred Raptors is due to perform.
If you wanna hear something funny, tune in to The AIR Wednesday night at 11 PM where we will offer up a new episode of The Comedy Vault, this time featuring an hour of stand-up by Billy Connelly.
In the meantime, if you’re up for going out, here are some suggestions from folks who were kind enough to provide graphics and make my job easier…
Mad For Kicks A Tokey Wedge Swinger
by Jack Lynn
published by Grizzly Pulp
$9.95
Tokey Wedge, that dynamic little (5 ft 6 and 3/4in) private eye goes undercover as “Al White, hitman from Detroit” to insinuate himself into a gang of rapists and murderers. Once again, he’s a few steps ahead of police lieutenant Ordway, but outnumbered several gangsters to one. Law-abiding Tokey has to prove himself to the thugs by making a couple of killings. After all, that’s what hitmen do, right?” How can he possibly do what’s expected of him without becoming a murderer himself?
This is Grizzly Pulp #2, the long-awaited follow-up to Nympho Lodge, which I reviewed last year. It’s another classic pulp adventure starring Tokey Wedge.
Tokey Wedge was the star of about 20 cheap pulp novels that were originally published back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Cranked out by proflic “Men’s Adventure” writer Max van derVeer under his “Jack Lynn” psuedonym, these were originally put out by Novel Books of Chicago and they are now being resurrected by the folks at Grizzly Pulp, featuring terrific new covers by Jim Silke, just in time to warp the minds of a new generation of readers. As with their first release, the book comes with a tasteful dust cover to protect the book from prying eyes.
As I said last year, essentially, these books were “grindhouse” for folks with no access to a grindhouse theater.
The Tokey Wedge adventures are genuine pulp material of the period, following the adventures of a diminutive “citizen cop,” tooling around the city in his Triumph, who has an enormous anatomical advantage over the other dicks on the beat. These books are loaded with sexual innuendo, fast-paced action and amourous and lusty diversions. Seriously for a little guy, Mr. Wedge makes James Bond seem like a eunuch by comparison.
In Mad For Kicks, it’s like the book’s original editor said, “We loved the first book, but for the second one, can you make it way more rapey?”
As with Nympho Lodge I have to provide a trigger warning: The Tokey Wedge adventures are more than a little rapey, and they’re jokey about it. They do not treat women as much more than sex objects. There is also plenty of racism and homophobia on display. If you are bothered by violence toward women, you probably don’t want to read these books. In Mad For Kicks, Tokey Wedge finds himself helping the police hunt down a gang of brutal Beatnik rapists.
Seriously, the pull quote for the book is this:
“Simple rape would have been child’s play compared to what these kick-crazy Beatniks planned!”
The publisher’s blurb goes into more detail…
It starts off simply enough for Tokey Wedge, “citizen cop.” He’s hired by rich Walter Fisher to find and kill the men who raped his daughter. The horror later leads to a criminal operation too big for one guy to take on—unless the guy is Tokey Wedge!
This almost insurmountable challenge is further complicated by all the ample-chested dames who yearn for Tokey’s prodigious affection …..will our hero be able to take out the gangland boss first, or will he end up in the morgue under John Doe?
The prologue is a detailed description of the abduction of a woman and beginning of a rape that sets the tone for the book. While this book can be hilarious and entertaining to people who enjoy the sheer absurdity of mid-century, pre-hardcore days of mysogynistic pseudo-porn, it could also be very traumatic if your personal experiences outweigh your interest in this type of fiction.
Warnings aside, Mad For Kicks is a quick read, intentionally and unintentionally funny, and it’s a wild artifact of its time. We’ve seen this genre watered down and done as homage for so long, it’s fascinating to experience the genuine article.
Aside from the controversial subject matter, the books are well-crafted “crime noir.” Aside from the prologue, the book is written in the first person, as Tokey. The dialogue is crisp and clever, and the characterization of Tokey is very solid. Since we meet everyone else through his perceptions, it makes for a very consistent narrative.
Just as last time, Grizzly Pulp has done an amazing job here, recreating the look and feel of a cheap pulp novel, with thin cover stock and grayish pulp paper. The book is in the traditional cheap “pocket book” size around 4″ by 7″. Jim Silke provides another exquisite cover, which is hidden behind a plain black dust cover, so you aren’t seen reading such scandalous material in public. You can order Mad For Kicks starting today at their website. You can also pick up the first volume in this series, Nympho Lodge.
Mad For Kicks is $9.95 plus shipping, and when the books will likely come loaded with extras like stickers, coasters and stuff that plug other pulp novel reprints. It’s a guilty pleasure, to be sure, but it’s good sleazy fun, the kind men like.
Tuesday on The AIR your blogger and radio show host combines a mostly-local first hour with two hours of RFC International that haven’t been heard in five years, to bring you a three-hour mix of splendid free-format radio.
We have a ton of new music in our first hour, and all but one song is local. Our second and third hours were mostly new music in 2017, so you can pretend it’s new too! To hear all this cool local music you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.
At 10 AM and 10 PM (Eastern Time) you can hear this new-old episode of RFC, and just enjoy the bejesus out of it.
Our opening hour has exciting music from folks who have just put out new albums, including Spencer Elliott, The John Inghram Band and Three’s Company Blues, while our final two hours are loaded with music ranging from Cheap Trick to Reginia Spektor to Midnight Oil.
If you don’t believe me, just check out the playlist:
hour two
Trevor Sensor “Andy Warhol’s Dream”
Midnight Oil “Don’t Wanna Be Forgotten”
Toads of the Short Forest “The Emeralds Gleam”
Superfruit “Vacation”
Arcade Fire “Everything Now”
The Beach Boys “I Was Made To Love You”
Advection Stride “Reverse Universe”
Jaymes Young “Two People”
Styx “Red Storm”
Fallout Boy “Champion”
The Tubes “Talk To You Later (Live)”
Modern Talking “Atlantis Is Calling”
ELP “Paper Blood”
Regina Spektor “On The Radio (Live)”
hour three
Cheap Trick “Gonna Raise Hell (Live)
Zalza “Lights In The Sky”
Prince “Sex Me, Sex Me Not”
Duane Eddy and Ravi Shankar “The Trembler”
Alice Cooper “Paranoic Personality”
Raygon Cowboys “Painful Reminder”
The Samurai of Prog “Elements of Life”
Stockhausen Syndrome “Rowdy Roddy Piper At The Gates of Dawn”
Sandy Alex G “Bobby”
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 3 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 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 MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two classic episodes of The Swing Shift. I do apologize for the lack of new episodes of The Swing Shift lately. I plan to take a day and record several new episodes soon. It’s just been rough working it into my schedule.
As the month turns, it’s once again time for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston this week in our latest edition of STUFF TO DO.
Tuesday on 
The PopCulteer
Just a couple of months ago I told you about a Kickstarter campaign for a fun set of trading cards from artist, 
Nowhere else can you thrill to the ballpark exploits of Joe Formaggio, Veggie Jackson, Babe Tooth and other Wacky Hall of Famers.
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