Author: rudy panucci (Page 2 of 34)

At the top of this post you see the latest episode of Radio Free Charleston, which is comprised primarily of music from the CYAC Rock Opera, “Mary.” We also have a really cool “120 Second Art Show” from the Habitat Restore Relics show a couple of weeks ago.

This year’s production of “Mary” opens Friday at the WVSU Capitol Center Theater. Performances are at 8 PM on November 27 and 28 and December 3,4 and 5. A 2 PM Matinee will be held Sunday, November 29. Tickets are $9.50 for adults, $5.50 for students and seniors.

We brought our cameras into Monday’s rehearsal so we could bring you this sneak preview of one of Charleston’s coolest holiday traditions. This was another “guerrilla film-making” episode of the show, where we shot the show and try to have it online within 30 hours.

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The PopCulteer
November 20, 2009

Habitat Restore Relics

A very cool art event took place last Saturday at Habitat Restore. “Restore Relics” presented the work of over 30 local artists, all working with recycled material. The theme of the show was centered on the holidays, and half the proceeds went to Habitat For Humanity.

The show was a real kick, with several very inexpensive pieces that were being snapped up left and right. I was lucky to get there early to take pictures. Most of this week’s PopCulteer is devoted to a photo essay of the show. But that’s not all, so read on.

Our headline photo is Charlie Hamilton, hamming it up with one of the very cool pieces he created for the show using recovered wood.

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We kick off this week with a digital abstract I call “Feedback Cross.” I came up with this design by looping feedback in my graphics program, which came out looking like a cross. Y’know, they can’t all be profound. Click the image to see it larger.

The PopCulteer
November 13, 2009

Scrap Iron Pickers CD Release Show Tonight

Tonight at The Sound Factory, accompanied by Bud Carroll and His Southern All Stars and The Barkoloungers, The Scrap Iron Pickers, guests on Radio Free Charleston episodes 57 and 72, celebrate the release of their first CD.

The CD is actually a double EP, contained on one disc, joined by some found audio in between. The first six numbers–all instrumental save for some archival spoken-word interludes, are the “Redeeming Metal” EP and feature the Scrap Iron Pickers trademark blenderized soup of progressive metal music with hints of reggae, blues, country, near-ska and thrash. It’s a crunchy mix of styles made possible by the raw talent of the Pickers, Johnny Sizemore on guitar, Roadblock on bass and Matt Wolfe on drums.

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Today’s Monday Morning Art is a simple, un-retouched photo, taken a couple of weeks ago, just up the street from my house. Once again, real life happenings kept me from doing the “leaves changing road trip” thing, so this was one of the few shots I got of the changing season.

As always, clck to enlarge. And check PopCult tonight for episode 86 of Radio Free Charleston, “Adamfest VI Shirt.”

There will be no new posts at thegazz.com lineup of blogs all day Tuesday, Nov. 7 as we switch to a new blogging program. We are abandoning blogger.com and moving to an in-house version of the Word Press blogging program. It’s hard to complain about a free program (which blogger.com is) and are thankful blogger.com blogs got us blogging in the first place. But long lulls in fresh posts to our gazzblogs have not always been because of bloggers asleep at the switch. Sometimes, the switch didn’t work. We have too often been unable to post for long stretches of time and it went on one time too many. And on the web, no one can hear you scream (which is what I was doing when our blogs were down). Our hope is the new program, hosted on our own servers, will allow is to serve up more frequent content to gazzblogs. Stay tuned.

thegazz.com editor
Douglas Imbrogno

Last week I used a digitally-assaulted photograph of the capitol building to illustrate the Blogger meet-up at Capitol Roasters (which was much fun and I’ll be blogging about it later today). I like that photo, which was taken out the back window of a moving car that I was driving, so I played around with it some more, and came up with today’s art. “Capitol” is a stark rendering of the capitol building in purple, black and white.

Click the picture to enlarge, the title to look at the T shirts.

Area bloggers will be getting together twice in the next week to gather and share our top-secret plans for world domination…and exchange recipes. Both Meetings are at Capitol Roasters, on the corner of Quarrier and Summers streets in Charleston.

The first meeting is Saturday November 4 at 2 PM. We’ll be getting together to meet each other and talk about all the huge money we make from our blogging plantations. Anyone who writes (or reads) a West Virginia-based blog is welcome to stop by. It’s an informal thing, cooked up over at the West Virginia Blogger’s Board.

Election Day, Charleston Area Bloggers, another informal group, will meet at Capitol Roasters from 7 Am to 9 AM. This will be the first CAB meeting for several months, and again anybody is welcome to come by. If you don’t have a blog when you get there, you may have one when you leave. It’s happened before.

I plan to be at both meetings. It’s a perk of being a freelancer. Plus, I love the Italian Creams at Capitol Roasters.

Just a quickie: The Mostly Ghostly Music Sharing Blaaahhhggg!!! brings you rare music from monster movie soundtracks and other spooky audio treats all year long. You can head over now and download the musical score to the original “King Kong,” the audio storybook for “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” and the original 1938 radio broadcast of “War Of The Worlds,” among other way-cool scary gems.

Happy Halloween, now scroll down this page and follow the links to the Radio Free Charleston Halloween special!

Neither side likes to admit it, but comic books and soap operas are a lot alike. Both tell melodramatic stories and use elements that require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. Both have rabid fans who follow the stories closely and call “foul” quickly when something violates established continuity. And both genres are treated with no small level of disrespect by the mainstream press. So it’s about time that soap operas and comic books team up. Tomorrow, November 1, long-running CBS soap, Guiding Light, crosses over with Marvel Comics. An 8-page insert started running in Marvel’s comics last week, and tomorrow on the show, one of the soap’s characters gets super powers. Harley Cooper, a cop, and a mother of two, gets electrocuted, and gains several new abilities, which she uses to fight crime, for at least the one episode.

This is a bit of a bizarre development, and somewhat surreal for the tiny population of people who both, watch Guiding Light, and read comics. Reaction has been mixed. Heidi MacDonald has a good sampling of mainstream reaction here. CBS has a preview of the episode up here. You can also see the trailer here (scroll down). Word is that her powers go away by the end of the episode, but they’re being a bit coy about whether or not they may return someday. I’m in that tiny population that follows both GL and comic books, so I’ll just sit back and watch.

UPDATE: Comic Book Resources has a behind-the-scenes look at the show here. However, they do list the wrong timeslot. In most of the country, the episode airs today at 3 PM.