Category: Uncategorized (Page 14 of 739)

The PopCulteer
June 6, 2025

The reason this is not “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” is because I’m still doing it.

If you’ve been wondering where our regular features, like a new RFC or STUFF TO DO have been this week, well…I’m writing this in Chicago. Last Saturday we were in Louisville, for WonderFest. The original plan was to go to Lexington for shopping after WonderFest and then drive home Sunday.

However, Mel got invited to attend a tech rehearsal at Steppenwolf Theater the following Tuesday…in Chicago, so plans were changed. I cranked out ten days worth of PopCult posts and scheduled marathons on The AIR, and had them all done by May 29th.

Saturday we got to see Greg Nicotero and Joe Alves talk about a little project that Alves was in charge of fifty years ago…building Bruce The Shark, from JAWS,, and then we high-tailed it straight home Saturday night, hopped the Amtrak Cardinal to Chicago Sunday evening, and we are still enjoying the holy heck out of the City of Wind.

Tuesday night we got to see part of a very complicated tech rehearsal for a play called You Will Get Sick, starring one of Mel’s acting heroes, Amy Morton.

In fact, we were to go back to Steppenwolf Thursday night to see the first preview performance of You Will Get Sick, but it was postponed, so we will see it Friday night, and because I now have time to blog from the road, you fine folks are getting a PopCulteer this week.  The tech rehearsal was only for part of the show, so I only have a tiny idea of what to expect. I’m sure it’ll be incredible, and I’ll likely write a little abouut it next week, but since it’s a preview performance, I won’t be doing a full review.

I will be sharing some photo essays over the next week, in addition to our regular features (including a new Radio Free Charleston, loaded with new music).

And speaking of photos…how about we share a few of them from the trip so far?

Expect a bunch of photos of cool people and custom models from WonderFest

Dennis Prince, Greg Nicotero and Joe Alves, jawing about JAWS.

Meanwhile….in Chicago.

We finally made it back to Rotofugi, and you can expect a photo essay of the wonders of designer toy coolness.

We leave you with some of the booty I scored at Rotofugi and Laurie’s Planet of Sound. You could probably guess my age from this picture.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. We’re back in town Sunday and back to normal Monday. Check back for all our regular features.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.   

Legendary London DJ Sydney Fileen presents our second program from the Haversham Recording Institute, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This two hour weekly megadose of pure New Wave music will whisk you back to the days of neon, skinny ties, big hair, Swatch watches, and Farfisa organs.  Sydney’s Big Electric Cat can be heard every Friday at 3:00 PM, with repeats throughout the following week.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.   

Today our marathon is devoted The Swing Shift. After two very well-received episodes of Radio Free Charleston International devoted to Swing Music, I decided to go all-in and do an all-Swing program. This also tied in with some nice synergy involving our music license, and now The Swing Shift is among our most-listened-to programs.  The Swing Shift is a weekly one-hour show that mixes together the best swing music from the last century into a concise, swinging, blast of jumpin’ music. We mix Swing hsitory with brand-new music and even some genre-bending experiments…but they all still Swing.

can normally be heard Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays throughout the week and overnight marathons Thursday and Friday beginning at midnight.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.   

Mel Larch presents a weekly hour of the best of musical theatre with Curtain Call.  Running the gamut from the early days of Broadway to today, Curtain Call will bring you the entire history of the world of musical theatre in weekly one hour doses.  Curtain Call can be heard  every Wednesday at 3:00 PM, with replays throughout the following week. You can also hear an overnight marathon every Wednesday at midnight, and six more hours of classic episodes Sundays beginning at 9 AM.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.   

Today the honors go to our flagship program, Radio Free Charleston. Hosted by your humble blogger, this show has been around in radio and video form since 1989.  You can expect a wild mix of local, independent and excellent and/or bizarre music, presented in a free-format radio style for three hours of crunchy sonic delightfulness.

Normally, RFC premieres Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays throughout the week, and a classic episode running every weekday at 5 PM.

What you see above is a very small acrylic study, based on a phone photo I snapped Wednesday night at the Three Things event. I grabbed the photo because the early evening sunlight was so drastic and dramatic.

I tried to capture that in paint.  In the picture you see Mark Davis and Larry Groce, who should need no introduction for fans of West Virginia music.  I’m not sure who the other two folks are. This was done on illustration board, but I will probably take it to a larger canvas some time in the future.

To see it bigger, click HERE.

You can find out about today’s programming on The AIR in a separate post today, since it’s a special marathon week.

For the next week, we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM Monday, you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.   

Our first marathon comes from our overseas production partner, the Haversham Recording Institute, Prognosis is two hours of progressive rock, presented by acclaimed recording engineer and musicologist, Herman Linte.  In every episode Herman treats us to “Prog’s greatest hits,” with classic tracks from YES, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and more classic and new progressive rock titans.

Normally, Prognosis airs every Monday at 3:00 PM, with repeats throughout the week.

Sometimes in life, sudden trips to Chicago happen.

I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, but for the next eight days, we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM Monday, you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program.

You’ll be able to come to PopCult every day to see which show gets the honors that day. We will have full days devoted to Prognosis, Radio Free Charleston, Curtain Call, The Swing Shift, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, MIRRORBALL, Beatles Blast and Psychedelic Shack.

Keep in mind that this is purely a way to introduce new listeners to all of our programming, and not just a cheap stunt to give me a way to take a week off for a trip without forcing myself to post fresh content to the blog from the road.

However, there is a chance that you might be seeing some additional posts to PopCult over the next week. I mean, I’ve got photos from WonderFest and there’s cool stuff in Chicago.

This week we bring you an encore of a cool video we first ran back in November, 2023.

It’s a wonderfully eerie song that she performed at her Surruralism show, and she talked about it when we were both on Josh Gaffin’s Afternoon Show on Status Quo back then. She’d been working down to the wire to get it out in time for All Hallow’s Eve, and she just did manage to sneak it in. We originally shared it here a few days later.

“Ghost Cat” has a cool, spooky, timeless quality that transcends Halloween and celebrates the long legacy of Appalachian Mystic Weirdness. So you can watch it any time you want.

And the reason I’m posting it again now is because, just last Wednesday I got to see Ann perform this song live, with backing from the Carpenter Ants, at the FestivALL kickoff event, Three Things. It was a great evening with Ann and the other speakers, and it was cool to catch up with her afterward to talk a little about Pepperland, Alfred Jarry and underground comix.

And to be slightly coy, I did shoot video of the performanance and it may wind up on this year’s video edition of RFC, but I’m not making any promises because I haven’t been able to check out the quality as I write this. Besides, there’s that cool semi-animated video above that you can all enjoy now.

Now that youv’e see it, visit Ann’s Store for cool Ghost Cat stickers and patches (and lots of other cool things) and then hit up her Bandcamp page and download the song as well as her other albums.

We are in the midst of a run of The RFC Flashback that goes back to the most ambitious series of episodes in Radio Free Charleston history.  In June, 2011 I decided to try and do something sort of crazy. I’d managed to crank out Radio Free Charleston on a weekly basis before, which was no mean feat since the show was basically produced by me alone, with camera help from my now-wife Mel Larch and occasional help from other friends. For FestivALL 2011, I managed to produce eight episodes of Radio Free Charleston in under two weeks.

With this show we dive into the second week of Radio Free Charleston‘s ridiculously extensive coverage of FestivALL 2011. The video you see up there is Radio Free Charleston 137, Part Five of our FestivALL 2011 coverage. This episode takes music recorded at the Derick Kirk Memorial Concert and combines it with dance recorded all over town during FestivALL. Our music performed live at Capitol Roasters is provided by the Velvet Nomads, Comparsa, and The Voodoo Katz.

Our featured dancers included the Capitol High School Dance Company, Mandy Petry, Brian Roller, Kevin Pauley, and Jeff Bukovinsky of the No Pants Players, Jenna Brooke Swanson and Raqs Shakti, Professor Danger (left), Kathleen Coffee, the Trillium Performance Art Company (above), and Some Guy In Davis Park.

This whole show was blast to edit. This show was a bit of a departure from our normal format, but we were cranking out so much video that I changed things up just to keep it interesting. We have three more weeks of our FestivALL 2011 shows in our chronological presentation of our video show, but FestivALL 2025 is going on NOW.  If you’re in town, follow that link to a schedule and get out and enjoy. The kickoff last Wednesday was loads of fun.