Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 96 of 581)

RFC 99 "Porkchop shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we go back ten years ago for the episode of Radio Free Charleston before our big 100th show.  Due to an encoding glitch, this video has been missing from PopCult for quite a long time.

Our 99th show was called “Porkchop Shirt,” in honor of Eamon Hardiman’s horror epic, which has sent gone on to become a cult classic, sold at Walmart and streamed on dozens of different online and Roku channels…sometimes even legally. We produced what was then an extra-long show, with music from Highway Jones, OVADA and HARRAH, plus a visit from IWA East Coast Heavyweight Champion contender, Chris Hero, a short film by Murfmeef and some really cute, but disgusting animation.

This was the first show where we used the Kodak Zi8 video camer, which was then-new, and is today obsolete, but it’s still our weapon of choice as we now have five and a half of them. (Don’t loan your cameras out to other people, kids)

It was also the first appearance of HARRAH as a band, although Lee Harrah had been part of the show since episode 19.

The promo for Chris Hero was shot for us by Bo Vance, and is notable because Chris spent years at WWE’s NXT brand (until just recently, in fact) as “Kassius Ohno,” and in this clip he challenges Roderick Strong, who is still a star in NXT, and name-checks other wrestlers he’d faced, like Billy Gunn, Jerry Lynn and current AEW champ, Jon Moxley.

All  in all, it’s a pretty solid show, loaded with great music and plenty of weird extras to help you pass the time. Original production notes are HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 15, 2020

It’s hard to believe that we’re almost halfway through May already.

We offer up our second edition of MIRRORBALL and a somber new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Friday afternoon on The AIR.

At 2 PM we present an AIR Music Special, the second edition of MIRRORBALL, hosted by Mel Larch. We follow that with a rememberance of David Greenfield, the keyboardist for The Stranglers on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat at 3 PM. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

Your PopCulteer is trying to assemble some fun stuff to go along with VirtuALL FestivALL, and that is taking me away from the essayist’s chair this week, so we shall once again devote our weekly column of randomness to telling you about the new programming Friday afternoon on The AIR.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about a fateful car trip last summer when your PopCulteer and his wife were driving around Pennsylvania looking for toys and chocolate for our anniversary, we were passing the driving time by listening to the porn-nostalgia podcast, The Rialto Report. In particular, we were listening to a two-part podcast about porn-star turned Disco Queen, Andrea True.

This got Mel (Mrs. PopCulteer) talking about her love of Disco music of the late 1970s, and we came up with the idea of doing a Disco Music special for The AIR, with the idea that it might turn into a series if enough people like it. It turns out that enough people did like it, as it became the most-listened-to non RFC program on The AIR in its first airing.

As I mentioned before, MIRRORBALL is Mel’s baby. While I hated Disco during its peak, I have come to appreciate the production and the musicianship and actually like the best of it now, but Mel knows this stuff inside and out, so I just follow her lead while producing the program.

Here’s the playlist for episode two, so you can follow along at home…

MIRRORBALL 002

Amii Stewart “Knock On Wood”
KC and the Sunshine Band “I’m Your Boogie Man”
Rose Royce “Car Wash”
Sylvester “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)
Kool And The Gang “Ladies Night”
Donna Summer “Love To Love You Baby”
Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes “Get Dancin'”
Candi Staton “Young Hearts Run Free”
Silver Connection “Fly Robin Fly”
Peter Brown “Dance With Me”
Patrice Rushen “Forget Me Nots”
Barry White “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe”

You can tune in at 2 PM and hear our second installment. Later today, it will go up in the Podcast section of The AIR website, so you can listen on demand. Let us know what you think. Mel would love to do more of these, and we plan to bring you more specials that focus on different types of music in the future. MIRRORBALL will also be replayed Saturday at 7 PM and 11 PM, Sunday at 11 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM. We’ll probably sneak in a few more airings during the week.

At 3 PM on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, Sydney Fileen pays tribute to David Greenfield, the keyboardist and occasional vocalist for legendary punk band, The Stranglers.

Sydney was friends with the entire band back in her days in pirate radio and Greenfield’s death from Covid-19 on May 3 hit her pretty hard. She introduces the show, and then turns it over to his music for the remainder of the two-hour episode.

Sydney did not give us a full playlist, but I know that the show opens with “Golden Brown,” which was based on a harpsichord riff Greenfield came up with, and it includes songs that Greenfield sang lead on with The Stranglers, some of his more memorable keyboard lines with the band, and work he did outside the band with Celia and The Mutations, The Purple Helmets and in collaboration with The Stranglers’ bassist, J.J. Burnel.

The show concludes with “Waltzinblack,” his tour-de-force with the band.

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, Tuesday 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.

Yesterday it was announced that FestivAll, the annual arts festival that turns Charleston into a work of art, will cancel all live, in-person events, but will release a schedule of virtual events that will take place during the same timeframe.

Maria Belcher, the Executive Director of FestivALL writes in the press announcement,

“We invite you to join us June 14-28th as our City Becomes a Work of Art and we look forward to sharing in these moments with you. The full schedule of this new “VirtuALL” experience will be available at the end of May, but until that time we encourage you to enjoy our weekly streaming suggestions that will fill your days with art, music, theater, and dance.

It is my sincerest hope that you and those close to you continue to stay safe and healthy during this time. On behalf of the entire FestivALL team, we thank you for your support amisdt so much uncertainty.

For more than 15 years, FestivALL has been synonymous with gathering with friends and family – at concert halls, parades, and street fairs. While we may not be celebrating in person this June, we will still be able to share in the feeling of FestivALL, together, and for many more years to come.”

You can keep checking the FestivALL website for the updated schedule as it comes together. PopCult and The AIR will unofficial join in during that time as we turn the blog into a virtual art exhibit and progam loads of local programming on our sister internet radio station. We’ll also keep you updated on the many virtual events happening in town that week.

This was a absolutely necessary move, and I’m glad to see sanity prevail as our city realizes that it is simply far too soon to safely stage any mass gathering. I also commend the organizers of Live On The Levee for calling off the 2020 season of this great outdoor concert series.

It’s bittersweet to see so many fun and exciting events being canceled this year, but the sacrifice is far outweighed by the safety factor. We can happily attend these events in 2021, and if we’re smart about it, more people will survive long enough to join us then.

There are forces in this country that want to hurry up and end the lockdown for a variety of nonsensical, wrong-headed, selfish and downright evil reasons. We need to resist stupidity and do what’s best for the country, which is to continue to stay home as much as possible to prevent the further spread of this disease.

It’s okay to feel bad about missing out on so many cool events, but you have to keep reminding yourself that your own personal jollies are not more important than the lives of other people.

My original plans for the weekend of June 18th involved a trip to Wheeling for the Marx Toy Convention, getting up early Saturday to head to Columbus for Record Store Day and MEGO Meet, and then meandering home through Ohio with stops at Menards and Meijer along the way. That is not going to happen. The Marx Toy Convention is canceled. MEGO Meet is indefinitely postponed. Record Store Day is tentatively rescheduled for three days over three months later this year.  None of the events I had planned for that weekend are going to happen. I’m okay with this because I know that it’s for the best.

Depending on how many waves of this virus we have to deal with, it could be three years before we can safely have toy or pop culture conventions on a large scale. The longer we keep the initial stay-at-home orders in place, the shorter that period will be. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking to watch the Covid-Lemmings rush to beaches and stores and gatherings way too soon. People are going to die because of this and it’s going to make this crisis last longer and cost more lives.

That’s why we need to be grateful when our leaders act like adults, and do what’s best, instead of encouraging the worst of human behavior.

I am considering publishing a book of the best of Monday Morning Art in conjunction with the virtual art exhibit happening in PopCult during VirtuALL FestivALL. I’ll keep you posted on that project if I can pull it off in time.

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a new episodes of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call that both continue series-within-a-series of shows that bring you rare Beatles recordings and pay tribute to the legendary composer/lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, in his 90th year, respectively. You can tune in at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

At 2 PM, your humble blogger returns with the first of five episodes of Beatles Blast that will wrap up what has turned into a 20-part series, The Lost Beatles Project. This brings together bonus material from deluxe reissues of The Beatles group and solo albums and weaves them together in a flowing stream of consciousness mixtape that allows the listener to pretend to be a fly on the wall in the studio while the Fab Four make their magic.

After we conclude the Lost Beatles Project series in June, Beatles Blast will revert to it’s usual format, presenting The Beatles group and solo material mixed with cover tunes by other artists, music from related acts (like labelmates, offspring, or former collaborators) and songs that feature guest contributions from the boys.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM, Friday at noon, Saturday at 4 PM, Sunday at 5 PM and Tuesdays at 9 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM Mel Larch once again devotes the entire hour of Curtain Call to a musical tribute to Stephen Sondheim for his 90th year. This time she goes back ten years to an 80th birthday salute to the famed composer that was part of the BBC Proms series.

For this second of three parts of the Curtain Call Sondheim 90th birthday tribute, Mel presents a remarkable collection of West End legends who bring the songs of the master to life. You will hear Dame Judi Dench, Byrn Terful, Russell Beane and more, performing selections from…Frogs, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeny Tood, A Little Night Music, A Funny Thing Happened on the way To the Forum and Company.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 9 PM, Friday at 10 AM and Saturday at 6 PM. An all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight, and an additional marathon can be heard Sunday evenings from 6 PM to midnight.

We offer up two new episodes of our speciality music shows Tuesday on The AIR with fresh editions of Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift. You can jump over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and listen to this exquisite little embedded radio player…

Tune into this week’s Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday for a how loaded with an eclectic mix of music–local and international–brand new and decades old–you can expect everything from punk to metal to ska to classic rock, melodic pop, experimental jazz and the blues.

We open with music from a new Charleston band, Jerks! who count former members of Miniature Giant among their line up. We also have the latest from Jay Parade and Mark Beckner Group, as well as a deep dive into the RFC local music archives, with a track recorded for our video show and several other classic local cuts. This is all mixed in with music from all over the world, including stuff by Paul McCartney, B.B. King, DEVO, Soul Asylum, Mungo Jerry, No Doubt and more.

We are about five months into my experiment of combining Radio Free Charleston and RFC International into one show, and I have to say, I’m loving the results. This is what I tried to do with the original broadcast incarnation of RFC back in 1989/90.  There’s just something really satisfying about taking local artists and showing that they can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the coolest music that the world has to offer. I’m having so much fun with this format that I did all the announcing this week in one take. In the process I mangled one song title, so if you want to, you can try to figure out which one.

Check out this playlist…

RFCV5 017

hour one
Jerks! “You’re So Cool, Brewster”
Jay Parade “Jay Charade”
Rich Kids “Cheap Emotion”
Time And Distance “Little Disaster”
Cockney Rejects “Oi, Oi, Oi”
The Renfields “Ramones Zombie Massacre”
DEVO “Come Back Jonee”
Whitechapel District ‘How Heavy Is Thy Crown”
Stage Moms “California Cream”
Scorpions “We’ll Burn The Sky
John Lancaster “Liars”
Rush “Presto”
Sky “Toccota”
Danzig “Baby Let’s Play House”
Captain Catfeesh “They Hung Him On A Cross”

hour two
The Swell Fellas “Acid Tone”
Mark Beckner Group “The Beautiful Ones”
Paul McCartney & Wings “Letting Go”
Slade “I Don’t Mind”
Farnsworth “Erased”
Soul Asylum “Landmines”
Tom Rader “Angels”
Killing Joke “The Hum”
Scrap Iron Pickers “Junkyard Jesus”
J.G. Thirlwell and Simon Steensland “Catholic Deceit”

hour three
Green Day “Sugar Youth”
Payback’s A Bitch “Do You Wanna Go Out Tonight”
Blue Million “Don’t Leave”
Paul Callicoat “Trampled Flowers”
Mungo Jerry “You’ll Be Sorry”
Gary Moore & B.B. King “Oh, Pretty Woman”
Underdog Blues Revue “What You Say”
The Science Fair Explosion “Kornchipz”
69 Fingers “Average Joe”
The English Beat “Rough Rider”
Goldfinger “99 Red Balloons”
Madness “Night Boat To Cairo”
No Doubt “Snakes”

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 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.

At 1 PM today, we’ll replay last week’s edition of Rudy & Mel’s Shut-in Show. 2 PM sees an encore of a great episode of Steven Allen Adams’ NOISE BRIGADE. Steven is still being held hostage by the governor’s daily Coronavirus briefings, but we’re hoping he’ll return with new shows soon.

We have a new episode of The Swing Shift at 3 PM Tuesday. It’s a special episode that brings you Wynton Marselis and the Jazz From Lincoln Center Orchestra with their new release, The Fifities: A Prism, a celebration of Swing and Jazz as it evolved in the middle of the last century.  This is a stunning follow-up to last year’s Swing Symphony.

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

This week we start our Monday with art that is a study of detail of the old Kanawha Courthouse, drawn last weekend with oil pastels on paper for pens while ye artist was looking at old reference photos that date from sometime around 2008. It was an experiment in using paper that wasn’t really intended for the medium, and it took a bit of practice to get the oil crayons to behave the way I wanted, but I’m happy with the end result. Sort of.

I have to confess to cropping the image and boosting the saturation a bit after I got it scanned. I also had to clean the scanner afterward because those oil pastels can make quite a mess when you use slick paper.

You can click the image if you want to see it bigger.

Meanwhile, over in radio-land, Monday on The AIR, our Monday Marathon runs from 7 AM to 3 PM , and brings you eight hours of Psychedelic Shack, presented by Nigel Pye. Then 3 PM sees a brand-new episode of Prognosis with Herman Linte. Herman’s got an interesting theme and a bit of a chip on his shoulder this week. With this episode of Prognosis, Herman is determined to put the lie to the idea that punk rock killed off prog rock. He does this by presenting two hours of top-notch, killer progressive tunes that were all released between 1976 and 1978, the heyday of British punk.

Tune in to see if he makes his point. Here’s the playlist to give you the heads up…

Prognosis 058

YES “On The Silent Wings Of Freedom”
Emerson, Lake and Palmer “Pirates”
Genesis “The Lady Lies”
Gentle Giant “Memories of Old Days”
Jean Michael Jarre “Equinoxe Pt. 7”
Jethro Tull “Pibroch (Cap In Hand)”
Kansas “Hopelessly Human”
UK “Nevermore”
Procol Harum “The Worm & The Tree”
Kate Bush “In The Warm Room”
Steve Hackett “Icarus Ascending”
Renaissance “The Sisters”
Utopia “Hiroshima”
Triumverat “Vesuvius 79 A.D.”
ELP “Tiger In The Spotlight”

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

Last week we brought you Hardware Wars, so this week we’re going to treat you to a companion piece (done by a totally different collection of people), Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind. These were released together on a VHS cassette along with several other parody shorts back in the days of movie rentals.

This short parody from 1980 should be familiar to anybody who had HBO in the early 1980s. They used it for filler between movies for several years. Closet Cases was written and produced by Rick Harper and Bob Rogers,

In the film, sewage worker Roy Dreary and a number of unusual characters meet up with strange extraterrestrials traveling to earth in a giant pie in the sky. Dreary develops an obsession with mashed potatoes, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries. He encounters singing mailboxes, truck radios that spout bubbles and bubble music, and one pie in the face after another, before finally finding himself at the Sara Loo pie factory-and his close encounter of the nerd kind.

Of the filmmakers, Bob Rogers went on to have a legendary career as a design engineer and producer for Disney, and has produced and directed Oscar-nominated short films. Rick Harper directed two documentary shorts before vanishing from the world of movie-making in 1984.

Be prepared for the music at the end to stick in your head for forty years.  It did with me.

From September, 2008. This edition of the show features music by Brain Trauma and The Underdog Blues Revue, plus a Kitty Killton movie trailer and the debut of the Astonishing Finger Man! Just one show after our fiftieth, Radio Free Charleston kicked out the jams with Brain Trauma’s Horrorcore Rap and hot blues from Chuck Biel’s Underdog Blues Revue.

We first met Kyle and Toxik Flow from Brain Trauma at an IWA East Coast show way back in the early days of the PopCult blog. It took a couple of years for our schedules to jibe so we could have them on the show, but it was worth the wait. Using footage we shot at The Empty Glass in August, 2008, we created a music video for the song “Rock It.”  Rounding out the show this time is an amazing performance by The Underdog Blues Revue. This was recorded in July 2008, at the last show UBR gave before going on hiatus.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCult Toybox

The Marx Toy Convention, which was scheduled to take place at The Kruger Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling over Father’s Day weekend in June, has been canceled. This is no real shock, since the Coronavirus Pandemic is still a very real threat, and while state goverments are giving permission for some businesses to open prematurely, it is highly unlikely that gatherings of more than 25 people will be allowed in time for this show to happen.

It’s also common sense that older toy collectors probably shouldn’t risk exposure to the virus while it’s still actively spreading throughout the country.

While this is disappointing and sad, it’s made even more bittersweet by the fact that, this year, there was going to be a very limited-edition Marx Toy Convention exclusive figure of Kit Carson, assembled by Scott Stewart of Stewart’s Attic fame, Douglas Nelson and The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum.

While the show is off, the figure is still on, and in fact Scott made these available over the weekend and I have mine in hand already. That means it’s time for a brief photo essay!

As seen above, the box is a nicely-conceived piece of art depicting Kit Carson, a Western pioneer and hero of the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. The sturdily-constructed box includes plenty of historical background material, as well as a list of contents and the logo for Kruger Street.

The whole package is impressive. The figure itself, as you can see at the left, is a Johnny West head mounted on a vintage Geronimo body.

Soft accessories are CXR “Mountain Man” accessories, as are some of the hard accessories.These were produced by the late Noah Coop, a pioneer himself when it came to reviving Marx Action Figures, and his wife, Terri Coop. I believe that this is the first Marx Toy Museum exclusive since the CXR accessory sets produced around ten years ago.

I also believe the flintlock rifle may be 3D printed by Scott.

Also included are an instruction sheet, a Challenge Coin and a Trading Card. These are high-quality items. The instruction sheet evokes the original Marx instruction sheets, while the trading card has great illustration on the front, and info on Kit Carson on the back.

The Challenge Coin is a really nice piece, an impressive silver-dollar-sized coin that has the heft and feel of brass.

The box is in the style of a vintage Marx 12″ figure box, but it’s made of sturdier stock, and includes an extra flap inside where you can stow some of the equipment. This flap also is also printed with information on Kit Carson and holds the Challenge Coin.

Let’s take a closer look, with some bigger photos..

The box is “coffin style” with a lid that lifts off. The top of the box is printed in full color, on all five panels. You can see the side and top flaps above.

Once you lift the lid, you can see how deluxe this package is.

The figure, being made of vintage parts, has the full range of motion of a regular vintage Marx figure, and the body of the one I have seems almost brand-new, with tight joints and no visible flaws.

Above you see the figure and accessories out of the box.

Here’s a closer look at some of what you get.

The trading card is really nice, and comes in a hard protective sleeve.

I don’t know if the photo does justice to this cool Challenge Coin. This is a really great addition to this set.

The bittersweet detail on the box.

This is a great set and would have been a real treat for convention-goers if the show had gone on as planned. As a very-limited edition figure, it’s not cheap. When you consider all the work that went into this set, with a mix of vinage pieces, custom-made items and the deluxe full-color box, $130 plus shipping is practically a bargain.

Since the show was canceled this figure was sold online only. There are still a few of these left (I believe it’s half a dozen). If you are interested you can find them at Stewart’s Attic, and get a piece of history that didn’t get to happen.

The PopCulteer
May 8, 2020

We have a very brief PopCulteer for you today.  Later on Friday we have a new PopCult Toybox, and we still have to photograph and write that, so for now, it’s just this one item.

Friday afternoon The AIR brings you the fifth installment of Rudy & Mel’s Shut-in Show plus an encore episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  It all starts at 2 PM, and you can listen at The AIR website, or just hit the “play” button on this nifty virtual player…

At 2 PM you can hear the newest episode of The Rudy & Mel Shut-In Show. This is one hour of your PopCulteer and his wife talking–often in a not safe for work manner–about whatever pops into our heads. It’s unrehearsed, unplanned, spontaneous talk, presented with minimal editing.

This week we start off talking about the success of MIRRORBALL, the music special that Mel hosted in this timeslot last week, and which was so well-received that it will indeed return on an irregular basis in the future. From there we talk about Disco movies, comfort television, the underrated acting chops of Jimmy Walker, planning for trips that we don’t know when we can take and more pandemic-related issues.

Extra effort was made this time to keep from veering off into angry rants about all the things in the world that make a sane person justifiably angry, so this is a happier-sounding edition of the show. You can hear replays of The Rudy & Mel Shut-In Show Friday at 10 PM, and a few more times over the next few days on The AIR.

At 3 PM we re-present a profile of Duran Duran on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, with the entire show devoted to the best-dressed band in New Wave. 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, Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM and Thursday at Noon, exclusively on The AIR.

And that is this short and snappy PopCulteer. Later today we’ll be back with a photo-review of a very limited edition action figure.