Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 81 of 581)

This week we go back to September, 2014 for an RFC MINI SHOW starring Elephant in the Room, an Appalachian Rock group featuring previous RFC guest, Donnie Smith, along with Dylan Burkhammer, Bo Ballard and Devin Fields.

You may want to note that the group is called “Elephant in the Room” and not “The Elephant in the room,” as RFC host, Rudy Panucci (that’s me, by the way), mistakenly refers to them in his introduction, twice. Panucci (againt, yours truly) had the excuse of being distracted by his then-recent wedding to RFC co-producer, Melanie Larch. Also of note in the host segment is that it was shot in front of Ian Bode’s Peer-to-Pier work of public art on Virginia Street.

Elephant in the Room was recorded live at The Empty Glass and is seen here performing a cover of the Dolly Parton classic, “Jolene” and their original tune, “Ghost Town.” Thanks for Jason “Roadblock” Robinson for recording and engineering. The final audio mix was by Rudy Panucci.

The PopCulteer
October 2, 2020

It’s follow-up day for The PopCulteer as we update some previously published posts and tell you about today’s programming on The AIR.

5 Surprise Toy Mini Brands

Just minutes after yesterday’s PopCult Toybox about 5 Surprise MIni-Brands was posted, I got the following press release:

LOS ANGELES (October 1, 2020) – The hot miniature collectible trend takes a whole new spin with the introduction of Toy Mini Brands, a range of realistic miniature replicas of classic and contemporary toy brands from award-winning toymaker ZURU. Through a partnership with Nickelodeon/Viacom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SpongeBob SquarePants JoJo Siwa are among the company’s nine toy brands that will be miniaturized and hit store shelves across the globe this year. In addition, iconic and popular brands such as Classic Rubik’s, Crayola and Wham-O join the Toy Mini Brands portfolio.

ZURU’s Toy Mini Brands will arrive in North America/USA in November, the UK and Germany in December and rest of Europe in 2021.

“Our product development and licensing teams have worked closely to take some of the most iconic toy brands and shrink them to fit in your hand,” said Aneisha Vieira, Global Brand Director of ZURU. “The mini collectible trend is unwavering and we’re confident Toy Mini Brands will follow suit as one of the most in-demand products of the year. ”

With Toy Mini Brands, unwrap the iconic 5 Surprise capsule and peel back the segments to discover what five mini toys are inside. Each capsule is a surprise unboxing with toy miniatures and toy shop accessories, including shopping basket, cart, bag and shelves, to find. Perfect for kids, kids at heart and collectors of all ages, ZURU TOY Mini Brands will be available at an SRP of $6.99.

In addition, a Toy Mini Brands collector’s case features room for 30 of the most sought after minis and comes with four exclusive minis. The case is available for an SRP of $9.99.

This is pretty cool news. While miniature toys have been sold before with Super Impulse’s “World’s Smallest” line, the amazing level of detail that we’ve seen with 5 Surprise Mini Brands combined with the fact that you’ll get five mini toys in each package for the same price as most “World’s Smallest” toys makes it a much better value.

It looks like they’re not going with a consistent scale here, but most of these seem like they’ll also work for dioramists and customizers. Plus it cracks me up that they’re doing 5 Surprise Toy Mini Brands of their own 5 Surprise toys. It’s a level of meta that you can’t not enjoy.

5 Surprise Toy Mini Brands is something new to look forward to this holiday season. As soon as I get my hands on them, you can expect a review.

Non Sport Update Turns 30

I’ve been writing for Non Sport Update, the definitive guide devoted to non-sport trading cards, since 1997, and in the latest issue, you can read that tidbit and even see a recent photo of your PopCulteer as the magazine celebrates it’s 30th Anniversary, Halloween and new Star Wars and Marvel Comics cards all at once.

Here are the articles in this issue:

Cardboard Conversation: Read & Write But no arithmetic!
Vintage Spotlight: 30 Years and Counting
Celebrating NSUʼs Pearl Anniversary.
18 Artist Remarques: Adventure Time
From X-Men to Dungeon Dolls, versatile artist Rhiannon Owen runs the gamut.
Make Mine Masterpieces: Illustrator Dave Palumbo conquers the Universe.
Topps Holocron Series Promises a Galaxy of Excitement!
Hail to the Chiefs: Just in time for the election we put our focus on POTUS.
New & Noteworthy: Horror Monsters Series 3, SPOOK SHOW Series 2, Nosferatu.
Plus the 32-page A-Z Price Guide covers all relevant trading card releases from Agents of SHIELD to Xena Warrior Princess!

Yours truly covered New & Noteworthy this time around, and it’s really cool because all three sets are Kickstarter projects that I’ve supported. It’s been a real kick to be part of the NSU family for 23 years, and counting.

Non Sport Update‘s October/November issue should start showng up on newsstands soon, or you can order it HERE.

Support Our Shops

A couple of weeks ago I told you about The Give Comics Hope initiative, which is a series of charity auctions designed to raise money to help comic book stores stay in business. It was Ed Catto who told me about that project, and Ed was also kind enough to send me a copy of a special fundraising comic published back in June that had escaped my notice.

Seeking to help comic book retailers struggling to deal with the effects of COVID-19, AfterShock Comics released Support Our Shops, a special one-off anthology featuring seven all-new stories.
The 48-page issue, which was shipped at no cost to retailers, features work by Cullen Bunn, Stephanie Phillips, Zac Thompson, Steve Orlando, Jamie McKelvie, Jerry Ordway, Aaron Douglas, Leila Leiz, Don Kramer, Szymon Kudranski, Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, Gordon Purcell, and Cliff Richards, behind a cover by David Mack. Each story in the issue centers around the importance of comic book stores in their lives, or the lives of fans.

“This benefit book celebrates the central and critical role that comic shops have always played in fostering a love of the medium among fans – many of whom have gone on to become creators in their own right,” AfterShock publisher Joe Pruett said in a statement. “It might be a drop in the bucket, but it’s a hell of a drop in the bucket. These are heartfelt stories, crafted by creators with deep, lasting connections to the comic shops of yesterday, today and, we have no doubt, tomorrow.”

“Speaking and connecting with hundreds of comic shops regarding the challenges they face – as an overall retail channel and as individual and independent business owners – we felt an obligation to give something back, something that was uniquely AfterShock,” added SVP of sales and marketing, Steve Rotterdam. “We’ve always been about creators and their visions, so this was an easy decision.”

Twenty copies per storefront were delivered free of charge to Diamond Comic Distributors’ 200 top-ranked AfterShock accounts, with the next 300 ranked accounts receiving 10 free copies. Copies arrived with shipments of product with a June 24 on-sale date. If your local store got these in, you may still be able to find them on sale. Any store not included in these 500 places that is looking for copies is invited to contact AfterShock.

“S.O.S. is our small way of saying ’thank you’ to all of the wonderful stores that have supported AfterShock since the beginning,” editor-in-chief Mike Marts said about the project in his own statement. “Now it’s our turn to give back.”

S.O.S. is a absolute treat, a valentine to the best of what comic book shops meant to hardcore fans who finally found a place to enjoy their hobby in a welcoming atmosphere, and a reminder of why comic book shops are worth saving. In particular, Jerry Ordway’s story really pushed my nostalgia buttons and reminded me what it was like the first time I walked into Comic Kingdom back in 1976. This was how folks who lived outside the mainstream found acceptance back in the days before the internet.

Support Our Shops can be ordered online, but in the spirit of the project, if you’re interested, you ought to mask up visit your local comic book shop first.

Celebrating Joe Jackson on The Big Electric Cat

Friday at 3 PM on a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, the legendary London Underground DJ, Syndey Fileen,  presents New Wave era live recordings of the post-punk sophisticate, Joe Jackson. You can hear this show and more Friday on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

Born David Ian Jackson, and taking his stage name from the American comic strip, Peanut’s “Joe Cool,” Jackson was originally cnsidered a prototypical New Wave artist, alongside the likes of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. However, Jackson veered off into a different direction, first with his fourth album, Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive, which is considered an early spark in the Swing Revival, and later with his Night and Day album, which combined New Wave instrumentation with musical inspiration derived from Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.

This episode of Big Electric Cat presents live recordings of Joe Jackson and his band from 1980 to 1986.

As a live performer, Jackson had few equals, and his inventiveness is on display as he drastically re-arranged his first New Wave hit, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” every time he toured. You will hear four versions of that song in this two hour mixtape-style program, with no rendition sounding a thing like the others.

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, Wednesday at 8 PM and Thursday at Noon, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. As always, check back for fresh content every day, including all our regular features.

The PopCult Toybox

Mini-Brands, The Hot Collectible That Is Also A Diorama Godsend

5 Surprise “blind box” toys from Zuru are one of the hottest kids collectibles on the market right now. They have innovative packaging, a small portable size and are priced just right for kids to obsess over. Among the popular lines in this program are Glitter Unicorn Squad and Dino Strike, but today we’re going to look at a particularly cool subdivision of 5 Surprise that is not only highly collectible for kids, but is also a dream come true for many 1/6 scale dioramists.

5 Surprise Mini-Brands hit stores before Christmas last year and while they flew under the radar of adults, they became an instant hit with kids, selling out almost everywhere and garnering over half a billion views for a viral campaign on Tik Tok and YouTube.

5 Surprise Mini Brands are exact realistic miniatures of some of the world’s most loved shopping brands. Inside each package (more on that later) you will find tiny replicas of popular name-brand food items, candy, shampoo, deodorant and other household essentials.

Kids love these because kids love miniature stuff. These are highly collectible, with some rare “chase” items featuring metallic or glow-in-the-dark highlights. Each package includes a checklist, which is cleverly designed to look like a full-color cash register receipt, and some packages include buildable extras like shopping carts, shelfs or baskets.

The tiny replicas are extremely well-made, with exact copies of the product’s labels and packaging, and very high-quality printing to capture all that detail. They even mimic the distinctive shapes of the full-size product’s packaging. While that is great for kid collectors, it’s a godsend for folks who build dioramas for 1/6 action figures or fashion dolls (I’m talking about the original GI Joe and Barbie-sized figures here). Keep in mind that most of these are less than two inches long.

While the scale across the entire line is not consistent, most items are close enough to 1/6 scale for diorama work. A Barbie kitchen or GI Joe mess hall can now be stocked with real products.

Amond the food brands you’ll find are Hormel Chili, Armour Bacon, Moon Pies, Twinkies, Spam, Skippy Peanut Butter, Bagel Bites, Laughing Cow Cheese, Miracle Whip, Jell-o, Kool-Aid, and many, many more. The first series offers over a hundred tiny brand-name items, while the newly-released Series 2 adds more than seventy new products into the mix.

It’s not just food. There’s stuff like Q-Tips, Vaseline, Wet Ones, Pez, Dove Body Wash and more.

The packaging is particularly cool. The 5 Surprise line is sold in a shrink-wrapped ball, about the size of an orange. Like an orange, once you peel it open, it divides into segments. Each of the five segments is a sealed compartment with one Mini-Brand (or buildable accessory). This is remarkablly clever. The items can even be put back into the segments, which can be reassembled for storage, but there are also collector albums and a display Mini Mart available.

The first series of 5 Surprise Mini-Brands is sold in a white segmented capsule, while the second is gold. A quick glance at the checklists indicates that the second series is primarily food, spices, condiments and beverages, while the first series is a mix of all sorts of grocery staples.

I can’t imagine the work that must have gone into licensing all these different brands. I doubt that they had to pay any fees, since this is basically free advertising for the products included, but they do have to secure permission, and that probably took a Herculean effort.

These are very affordable. They can be found for six or seven bucks per capsule, and each capsule contains five Mini-Brands, so it’s not a back-breaker if you want some additional products for your GI Joes or Barbies to have around their Head Quarters or Dream House.

I can certainly understand the appeal to kids, and I think these could catch on big with 1/6 dioramists too. Even the packaging has customizing potential. You can find tons of videos about 5 Surprise Mini-Brands on YouTube, and they’re sold at Walmart, Target, Amazon and many other retailers.

I didn’t have time to build a complete diorama, but below you can get an example of how well 5 Surprise Mini-Brands work with 1/6 scale action figures and fashion dolls.

Spaceman Joe likes his Bagel Bites with a dash of Barbecue Sauce. I suppose we shouldn’t judge.

Johnny West goes for a more down-to-Earth diet of Chili and Pickles.

Of course, Moon Barbie lover her some Moon Pie.

The West Virginia FILMmakers Festival, celebrating its 21st-year, will be screening virtually on Eventive the weekend of October 3 & 4, 2020. Screening 18 films online over two days. Despite not being an in-person event, this year’s slate looks to be mighty impressive, with the premiere of a documentary on West Virginia troubador Mike Morningstar, and screenings of great WV-made feature films like River of Hope and My Autopsy.

Highlights from the WVFF press release explain the decision to not to run as a physical festival at their home theater in Sutton:

“In Spring 2020, we witnessed many film festivals cancel for the year. We knew we didn’t want to cancel WVFF. Our research reflected festivals were running virtually (online) and live from location. We set that as our goal and in pursuit of it, we realized there was technical infrastructure work that needed to be done. For this reason, we are virtual only this year. Truth is, our festival and our filmmakers will have an even broader reach by embracing the option to screen virtually. We are seeing a lot of opportunities in opening the festival up online. We have the ability for more screening events throughout the year instead of one weekend. I admit, it’s not the same. As a FILMmaker or film goer, you want to see film in a theatre on a big screen with your crew, cast, family and friends. However, this whole year isn’t the same. So we adapt to survive. It is our plan to be both virtual and live in 2021, and screening live at the historic Elk Theatre in Sutton.”

“A great feature of a virtual festival is that you can watch the films on your schedule. You’re not tied to the screening time like you are in a live event. Just like any show you are streaming you can elect to watch Day One of the festival that’s best for you. You must order your ticket festival weekend and you have several days to view the films.”

West Virginia filmmakers screening at the WV FILMmakers festival for the first time this year include Deborah Novak, Carling McManus, Jen Susman, Quinton Miller, and Calvin Grimm.

Returning filmmakers are Richard Anderson, Harrison Reishman, Holly Mollohan and Bob Celli, who represent FILMmakers from West Virginia, Ohio, California, Virginia, New York, Canada and France.

The festival will begin online Saturday, October 3 at 11:00 a.m. on the Eventive platform from your smart tv, computer, smart phone or tablet. The festival kicks off with Andre Van Damme & The Story of the Charleston Ballet by Deborah Novak about founder Andre Van Damme, a premier danseur etoile and a Belgian resistance fighter of World War II, and the Charleston Ballet, one of America’s oldest ballet companies.

Saturday’s s final screening begins at 5:30pm with Richard Andersons’ feature documentary Mike Morningstar: Here’s to the Working Man. Mike Morningstar is a singer/songwriter born and raised in West Virginia. Mike began his musical career in 1964 when at the age of 16 he joined a predominately black rhythm & blues soul band. Four years later, Mike was drafted and sent to Vietnam where he was exposed to Agent Orange and other traumas that resulted in PTSD. Consequently Mike’s musical career as well as his personal life changed dramatically. His marriage ended as well as his career playing with large bands. Mike became a loner, both in his personal life and in his musical career where he performed mostly as a solo artist. It took Mike over 20 years to get to the point where he could describe his Vietnam experience in song with the haunting Neu Ba Den. Other songs describe the plight of the working Man and the environmental destruction coal mining brought to his beloved West Virginia such as Buffalo Creek and Coal Country Blues. The film tells the story of Mike’s loss of his musically inclined son in a fatal car accident and Mike’s struggle to overcome his mental and physical challenges from the tragic episode of Vietnam. “Mike Morningstar: Here’s to the Working Man” is comprised of interviews with Mike and his wife of 27 years, Donna Morningstar as well as 14 of Mike’s songs, the majority of which are performed live.

Saturday evening, October 3, 7:00 p.m., live music with a Q & A session following the feature documentary, Mike Morningstar will play live streaming on Eventive from Todd Burge Studios with FILMmaker Richard Anderson. Tickets can be purchased at wvff2020.eventive.org.

The Sunday, October 4, at 11:00 a.m., screening schedule starts with three WV features: River of Hope, A Journey Through the System, and Hard Road of Hope followed by WV FILMmaker Holly Mollohan’s feature My Autopsy and several award-winning shorts wrapping out the day with the stunning stop motion animation Gon, The Little Fox.

Nominations for West Virginia FILMmaker of the Year and Impact Award were not held this year.

Check out the schedule in these graphics or at this link.

Schedule and Tickets available at: wvff2020.eventive.org
More Information www.wvfilmmakersfestival.org.

Tuesday afternoon on The AIR we deliver two brand-new episodes of The Swing Shift that were supposed to debut last week before a power outage hit right when I was getting ready to start recording the shows.  If you wanna hear 100 Years of Swing, interrupted, 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 this convenient embedded radio player…

The Swing Shift has made it to 100 episodes, and we’re marking the occasion with a four-part series that celebrates 100 years of Swing Music. Tuesday afternoon you can hear episode 101, followed a 4 PM by episode 102. Episode 100 debuted two weeks ago, today, but as I mentioned, we wuz waylaid by a sudden power outage. You may recall me complaining about it a lot last week.

Since day one, the tagline for The Swing Shift has been “The Best Swing Music from the past Century!” As we started to get close to our 100th episode, I decided to put that into practice, and do a three-part series that would bring us Swing tunes from the biggest names of each of the last ten decades. We’d devote episodes 99, 100 and 101 to this almost educational jitterbug through the history of Swing. That was the plan. When it came time to execute that plan, I discovered that I was going to have to expand this series to four episodes. So this week you’ll get parts one and two, and next week you’ll get parts three and four.

To be quite frank, after producing this four-part series, I am sorely disappointed that I didn’t have enough room to cover every important artist and orchestra, so in the coming weeks we plan to go back and fill in some of the gaps with shows that focus on particular years or decades or sub-genre or artists.  For now, we’ve got our two remaining episodes that cover Swing Music from 1980 to the present. Next week the plan is to do an entire episode devoted to the Women of Swing, so bear with me as I try to cover all of the best Swing Music of the last century.

At 3 PM our first new hour of The Swing Shift takes you back to the early days of the Swing Revival, as New Wave music mined the depths of that which had gone before, and a new generation exploded with a love of reborn Big Band and Jump Swing.  Check out this playlist:

The Swing Shift 101

the 1980s
Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive “We The Cats Shall Hep You”
Roman Holliday “Don’t Try To Stop It”
Pete Townshend “Face The Face (Live)”

1990s
Royal Crown Revue “Hey Pachuco”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Cruel Spell”
Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers “Everybody’s Talking About Miss Thing”
Indigo Swing “The Indigo Swing”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Dr. Bones”
The Atomic Fireballs “The Man With The Hex”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Sittin’ On It All The Time”
Lily Wild and Her Jumpin’ Jubilee Orchestra “Work Baby Work”
The New Morty Show “The Demon”
Johnny Favourite “Motorcycle”
Dem Brooklyn Bums “Boozin’ and a Cruisin'”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Hell”
Keely Smith “Swing, Swing, Swing”

At 4 PM we bring you up to date, with a non-chronological collection of some of the best new Swing Music from the last two decades. Some of the Swing Revival bands are represented as grizzled veterans now that they have a couple of decades under their belt, and we get to hear a little Electro-Swing, second-generation Swing and new classic-sounding Big Band Swing. As you can see on this playlist:

The Swing Shift 102

the 2000s
Royal Crown Revue “Rockville”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Pennsylvania 6-5000”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Save My Soul”
Lady J and Her Bada Bing Band “EBAY”
Squirel Nut Zippers “Rusty Trombone”
Janet Klein “My Blue Bird’s Singing The Blues”
Pasadena Roof Orchestra “Stormy Weather”
Jack’s Cats “A Minor Interruption”
Tyler Pedersen “Sheb’s Struffle”
Joe Stilgoe “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”
Jive Me “Miss Annie”
Hot Swing Sextet “A Smooth One”
Louis Prima Jr. “Go Let’s Go”
Joe Jackson “It Don’t Mean A Thing”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 2 PM, Saturday at 5 PM and Sunday at 10 AM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each of our finest episodes, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Tuesday on The AIR we deliver a mostly brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston.  In order to hear some great new musical treasures, 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 this convenient embedded radio player…

We have a mostly-new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This show kicks off with “Lay That Burden Down,” a tribute to the late Congressman and Civil Rights icon, John Lewis. This song was written by Ron Sowell and Jon Wikstrom, and features vocals by “Lady D,” Doris Fields and Sowell. There is an accompanying music video which can be found at WestVirginiaville, along with an in-depth behind the scenes article by Douglas J. Imbrogno and an interview with Ron Sowell. You should check it all out. The video is awesome and the story of the song inspiring.

Our first hour is all-new, loaded with great music from local and international artists. In our second and third hours we re-present a very special episode of Radio Free Charleston International from almost four years ago. I’ll tell you about it below, after you check out the full playlist to see all the fantastic goodies we bring you this week…

RFCV5 032

hour one
Lady D and Ron Sowell “Lay That Burden Down”
Todd Burge “Weight Too Heavy”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “The Wind That Shakes The Barley”
The Bounty “These Things Take Time”
Abandon The Ship “Rub Hubbard (Demo)”
Jay Parade “Machine”
Battleship Battleship “Ad Hominem”
Mark Beckner Group “Odessa”
Andy Prieboy “I Had A New Wave Act”
The Empty Hears “Sometimes…”
The Aquabats “Sneak Attack”
The Dollyrots “Hyperactive”
King Crimson “The Sheltering Sky”
Sufjan Stevens “Goodbye To All That”
Prince “Rebirth of The Flesh”
Smashing Pumpkins “Confessions of a Dopamine Addict”

In hours two and three we bring you an encore of a special episode of RFC International that took way too much time to curate. In this show your humble host and PopCulteer brings you two hours of music where every song has something to do with the song that comes after it. Your challenge is to figure out just exactly what that connection is. It might be that the two songs are written by the same person, or share a producer, or a member of one band produced the song by another. It might be a tenuous connection, like both musical artists appearing on the same television show, or it might be a rock-solid tie, like two groups that share members.

Some of the songs you’ll hear in this revived replay of Radio Free Charleston International are by cutting-edge underground artists, some of them are from ultra-hip cult artists, while other tunes are by high-profile artists and may have been major hit records. But every song has something in common with the next.

At the end of the show, you get to hear me come in and ad-lib a six-minute explanation, in one take, of how each song ties into the next.

If you want to get a head start on trying to figure it out first, here’s the playlist:

Nu Tra “Superhuman”
The Aquabats “The Controller”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Dear Joy”
Surf Punks “Welcome To California”
Size 14 “Superbabe 2000”
Pink Floyd “In The Flesh”
Paul McCartney “On The Way”
The The “This Is The Day”
Rip Rig and Panic “Sunken Love”
Madness “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”
Suggs “I’m Only Sleeping”
Alice Cooper “Eleanor Rigby”
Hollywood Vampires “Come and Get It”
Badfinger “Baby Blue”
Todd Rundgren “Terra Firma”
XTC “Dear God”
Shriekback “Nemesis”
The Veils “Lavina”
Julie Cruse “Falling”
Sparks “I Predict”
FFS “Johnny Delusional”
Franz Ferdniand “Take Me Out”
The Cardigans and Tom Jones “Burning Down The House”
The Firm “Satisfaction Guaranteed”
DEVO “Communication Break Up”

To be honest, I’d forgotten most of the connections before I re-listened to the show. I never revisted this concept because it took so long to put the show together. It came out so good that I decided to share it again this week, because I had a short window to record my announcing segments due to a B-29 which kept flying over my house.

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM, Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 7 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at 11 AM and Midnight, Sunday at 1 PM and the next Monday at 8 PM, exclusively on The AIR.

Doing a detailed pencil drawing when your fingers are semi-paralyzed due to a Myasthenia Gravis flare-up is not the wisest thing in the world to attempt. I’m typing this through severe finger cramps after spending a few hours this weekend creating this pencil portrait of my lovely wife, Mel Larch. It’s based on a selfie she took the other night. Mel is notoriously camera-hostile, so getting a photo of her to work with is a rare occurence.

I drew this on paper for pens, using the Blackwing Palamino pencil, and in the interest of full disclosure, I darkened it considerably and cleaned up some smudges after I scanned it. It was rough on my fingers, but well worth it to capture the beauty of the love of my life.

If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday at 9 AM on The AIR, the Monday Marathon brings you six hours of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, which follows the regularly-scheduled repeat of last weeks Big Electric Cat at 7 AM. Included among these three bonus episodes of our New Wave showcase are the special two-part episode that presents new music made by New Wave artists. At 7 AM, you will hear a replay of last Friday’s Scotland-based edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

At 3 PM on Prognosis, Herman Linte brings us a loaded episode of Prognosis, filled mostly with  a mix of recently-released  and classic progressive rock music. Check out the playlist:

Prognosis 047

Genesis “The Musical Box”
Jethro Tull “Dark Ages”
Hemina “I”
Intrigue “Thursday’s Child”
White Willow “In Dim Days”
Big Big Train “Experimental Gentlemen (Part 2)”
iamthemorning “Belighted”
Kate Bush “The Fog”
Curved Air “The Rose”
The Enid “Someone Shall Rise”
Marillion “Gaza”
Plastic Overloards “You Crumble To Bits”
Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman “23-24-11”

That’s followed by a classic Prognosis and an evening of Psychedelic Shack and Radio Free Charleston. You can hear replays of Prognosis Tuesdays at 7 AM, Wednesdays at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 9 AM. But we’ll be tinkering with the schedule over the next few weeks, so don’t get too used to that.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

I originally posted this playlist of New Wave videos over ten years ago, but since then YouTube has deleted so many of the videos and changed so many settings that the entire playlist I posted had disappeared. So I beefed it up with newer video uploads and updated the doohickey ephemera and here it is again.

They say the best music in the world is whatever you’re listening to during your late teens. At the risk of showing my age, the above embedded playlist is a collection of some of the best music in the world.  During the heyday of New Wave music, skinny ties, primitive sythesizers, effects-laden guitars and quirky vocals broke through into the mainstream, introducing the world to some bold new sounds…and a few old ones that sounded new to inexperienced ears.

Up above you will see and hear performers like Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, XTC, Lene Lovich, Joe Jackson, The Buggles, Klaus Nomi, The Jam, Mike Batt, Pearl Harbor and The Explosions, The Humans, and more. Sit back and travel to a time before the world lost its innocence and had to face the horror of Hair Metal.

Since this topic was first addressed here in PopCult, we have added our sister internet radio station, The AIR, and every Friday we bring you two hours of New Wave music on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, hosted by the legendary London DJ, Sydney Fileen.

This week we go back to August, 2014, for a show that isn’t exactly a stellar achievement in audio quality. This was the week The RFC MINI SHOW presented the mighty Plaid Clash, who brought their Celtic magic to the Bluegrass Kitchen. This four-piece features Chris Higgins, Garrett Maner, Dan Carney and Vaughn Gold singing and playing a variety of instruments.

The performance and the band were great, but we didn’t bring the right recording equipment to capture the audio at this event in our usual high quality. Bluegrass Kitchen is one of the finest restaurants in town, and was packed, and our microphones picked up nearly every dinner conversation in the place instead of the music. Plaid Clash hasn’t played together for a couple of years now, but Dan and Garrett are currently in The Charleston Rogues, who hopefully will return to playing live again someday in Charleston.

The PopCulteer
September 25, 2020

The Domino Effect of Being Powerless

Your PopCulteer had a power outage for five hours last Tuesday, and it’s amazing how such a thing, when perfectly-timed, can have a domino effect that throws off your entire week. Let me share with you some behind-the-scenes dirt on how PopCult works.

The original plan for this week was for yours truly to get up early Tuesday, record the announcing parts for two episodes of The Swing Shift, and post a PopCult item about The AIR schedule in this blog. Normally I would have had The Swing Shift and Radio Free Charleston recorded over the weekend, but I slacked off a bit because my Myasthenia Gravis was acting up. I planned a repeat for RFC so I could focus on the two special “100 Years Of Swing” episodes of The Swing Shift scheduled for this week.

I had the shows completely laid out and had already prepared the playlists and even had the post written. I was working on the graphics when the power went out.

So I had a bit more than five hours to sit around and do nothing. It didn’t help that these five hours fell during what is normally the most productive time of my work-week.

The power came back on around 1:30 PM, and I scrambled to get a PopCult post published that gave all the details on the new episode of Psychedelic Shack that we had scheduled to run on The AIR at 2 PM, but I was definitely off my game.

We decided not to do new episodes of Beatles Blast or Curtain Call Wednesday, because I’d lost so much prep time, and after the power outage it took a couple of hours to get all the electronics in the house restored to working order. Normally we record those shows the night before they air, but I didn’t have time to properly lay them out and choose the music.

Since I still needed a post for PopCult on Wednesday, I went ahead and ran my review of the new Aquaman collection, which I had planned to run in October. Yesterday I told you about Gotta Go Flamingo (left), which was a last-minute substitution for a toy review that will require a photo shoot that I simply didn’t feel like conducting this week after the major disruption. Hopefully you’ll get to see that review next week.

Then we come to this post, which you are now reading. Every Friday I do a blog post that acts as an old-school newspaper column (the name is a tribute to Jim Dent’s “Gazetteer” column from days of yore). I don’t always know at the beginning of the week what will wind up in the Friday space. Sometimes it’s a photo essay. Sometimes it’s a single-topic essay. Sometimes it’s two or ten short items. Flexibility is my motto. It’s weird doing a column within a blog, but it works for me, and has for over eleven years now.

Most weeks I prepare The PopCulteer on Thursday. Some weeks I do it earlier than that. Other weeks, I get up early Friday and try to crank out a coherent essay of some sort, either because am buried under other work, or I just don’t know which of several fluid topics will still be worth writing about.

This would be one of those weeks. It’s Friday, not quite 9:30 AM as I write this, and what was supposed to have been a brief introduction to a handful of items has turned into a behind-the-scenes explanation of why I may seem a bit off my game this week.

I had planned to write about Halloween, but I’ve done that already here way back in early August, and I can probably wait a few weeks, closer to the holiday, before revisitig the topic. I toyed with the idea of commenting on the current political situations in the country, but aside from being outside of my normal journalistic jurisdiction, I’d get so angry and intense that I probably wouldn’t have this PopCulteer finished until late in the afternoon. I don’t think my readers come here for 6,000-word essays that basically amount to anger over how stupid and evil one third of this country is.

I do chime in on politics from time to time, but I also like to provide a safe haven from reality for my readers who actually live in the real world, and not the twisted fantasy land of certain despotic leaders.

With any luck, things will be back to normal next week. The plan is to debut a new episode of Radio Free Charleston, loaded with new music, plus we’ll premiere episodes 101 and 102 of The Swing Shift and have loads more new programming for The AIR. And I’ve got all our regular PopCult features on tap, The RFC Flashback on Saturday, Sunday Evening Video, Monday Morning Art, plus that toy review I told you about.

Let’s just hope the power stays on. I wasn’t even able to enjoy any down time Tuesday because every time I’d get relaxed, the phone would ring with either a telemarketer or someone conducting a survey (or push poll), for the upcoming election.

And that is why you’re getting this PopCulteer today. It was easier to complain about my week than it would have been to research and write about other stuff.

MIRRORBALL Returns Again

It’s our last chance to drop a new episode of MIRRORBALL, hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch, in September, so we just had to open the show with that Earth, Wind and Fire classic. This is our eleventh edition of MIRRORBALL what debuts Friday afternoon at 2 PM on The AIR. and that’s followed by two great encore epsodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  You can hear all this good stuff on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

As I mentioned, this week we open the show with Earth Wind and Fire and the month-appropriate song, “September.” The rest of the show is chock-full-o classic dance tracks of The Disco Era.  Check out the playlist:

MIRRORBALL 11

Earth Wind & Fire “September”
Andrea True Connection “Fill Me Up”
MFSB “K-Jee”
Diana Ross “Upside Down”
Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”
Sister Sledge “Lost In Music”
Chic “Everybody Dance”
Giorgio Moroder “I Wanna Rock You”
Gloria Gaynor “Honeybee”
Tony Wilson “I Like Your Style”
Close w/Donna Summer “Dim All The Lights”

You can tune in at 2 PM (Eastern time) and hear the latest edition of MIRRORBALL. The plan is to drop a new episode roughly every other Friday afternoon, until Mel gets tired of doing it, or people stop listening. Later today, it will go up in the Podcast section of The AIR website, so you can listen on demand.  MIRRORBALL will also be replayed Friday night at 10 PM, Saturday at 7 PM (part of a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM and Tuesday at 1 PM. We’ll probably sneak in a few more airings during the week.

And that wraps up this largely self-indulgent PopCulteer.  Check back for fresh content every day, unless the power unexpectedly goes out again, then we’re screwed.