Category: Uncategorized (Page 194 of 758)

Tuesday on The AIR  we deliver brand-new episodes of Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift. It’s a block of programs that let you support the local scene and indulge your dancing desires. You simply have to move 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.

We have a newish Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with the new singles from The Settlement, and bring you one all-new hour of RFC, and one encore of an early RFC Volume Three episode from over six years ago that originally aired on Voices of Appalachia. Your PopCulteer is planning to come up with some excuse for slacking off again and insert it into this place-holder paragraph, eventually.  We do manage to bring you some killer new and vintage local and independent music in our first hour, plus some really great stuff in hours two and three.

After the first hour of RFC, stick around because the second hour revives an old Radio Free Charleston from 2015, which hasn’t been heard by human ears in almost six years. This was the show I recorded right after my first visit to Toy Fair in New York, and my voice is shot, but the all-localish music is pure ear candy.

Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we bring you this week…

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hour one
The Settlement “Opening Remarks Volumes One and Two”
Novelty Island “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”
Guitarmy of One “Nonesuch Napoleon Solo”
The Swivel Rockers “Lost Without Your Love”
David Synn “Walrus and the Carpenter”
All Torches Lit “Swim”
Jim Lange “Coming ‘Round Again”
Al Stewart “Paint By Numbers (demo)”
Juliana Hatfield “The Shame of Love”

hour two
Timothy Price “Kashmir”
Byzantine “Purity”
Burt Reynolds Death Metal Experiment “Finding Emo”
Science of the Mind “Taste My Fist”
The Renfields “Mars Attacks”
Under The Radar “Mothman Prophecy #1”
Radio Cult “Man Made Monster”
Linnfinity “Martian’s Bloom”
Sheldon Vance “No Reason To Ask Why”
Stone Ka-Tet “Here It Comes Again”
Stark Raven “It Never Goes Away”
Wolfgang Parker “Blood Red Water”
Pepper Fandango “Make-out Bandit”
Crack The Sky “Still Be There”

hour three
Timothy Price “Classical Gas”
Spencer Elliott “Some Forgotten Color”
Josh Buskirk “Neck Ties”
Punk Jazz “?”
Doctor Curmudgeon “?”
Underdog Blues Revue “Crescent City Stroll”
Trielement “Nut Butter”
John Lancaster “A Penchant for Hell on Earth part two”
The Jasons “Church Hymn”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

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.

After a few weeks off from fresh episodes of our Tuesday music specialty show, The Swing Shift returns with today’s all-new episode at 3 PM. This week our show is a bit blue. It’s not sad or anything, but while I was putting the show together, I noticed that the first several songs all had the word “blue” in their title or the band’s name, so I decided to run with it. Check out the playlist, in case you want to feel blue…

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Maria Muldaur and Tuba Skinny “Big City Blues”
Stan Kenton “I’ve Got A Right To Sing The Blues”
Louis Prima “Alice Blue Gown”
Buck Clayton and the Marlowe Morris Trio “Blue Moon”
The Rusties Blues Band “Sweet Home Chicago”
Peggy Lee “Blues In The Night”
The Swing Shift Big Band “Blue Five Jive”
The Mighty Blue Kings “I Can’t Stop It”
Woody Herman “Blues For Red”
Royal Crown Revue “The Walkin’ Blues”
Frank Sinatra “The Birth of the Blues”
Louis Jordan “Blue Light Boogie”
Glenn Miller “Rhapsody in Blue”
Indgo Swing “Red Door Blues”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “’49 Mercury Blues”

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

It had never occured to me to paint a catfish before. What happened was, Sunday afternoon Mrs. PopCulteer wanted to run out to check out the new soap store opening out at Southridge (or Dudley Farms or Trace Fork–I just call all that stuff “Southridge”) and I was at home, downloading and scheduling our Haversham Recording Institute programs for The AIR this week, and also slacking off and looking at old photos from my first trip to Cabela’s in Wheeling ten years ago.

I took tons of photos in their giant aquarium, most of which didn’t come out well because of glare, or fast-moving blurred fish. However, I did get enough partial images of a large catfish to use as reference for a quick oil pastel painting. And so I did just that. It’s been scanned, lightly color-corrected and cropped.

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

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a new edition of 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.

At 2 PM, Nigel Pye’s new Psychedelic Shack includes the following songs:

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Jefferson Airplane “White Rabbit”
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Am I In Heaven”
The 13th Floor Elevators “Slip Inside This House”
Iron Butterfly “It Must Be Love”
Brian Wilson “Good Vibrations”
Fijid Pink “Pain In My Heart”
Janis Joplin “Oh Sweet Mary”
Klaatu “Sub Rosa Speedway”
Small Faces “Here Comes The Nice”
Julian Lennon “Crucified”
Sean Lennon “Part One of the Cowboy Trilogy”
The Monkees “Porpoise Song”

Psychedelic Shack can now 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.

At 3 PM, Herman Linte offers up a new Prognosis, which is a two-hour mixtape dedicated to spanning the career of Camel, one of the lesser-known, but no less amazing bands of the original prog-rock era. Here’s this week’s playlist…

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Camel
“Never Let Go”
“Arubaluba”
“Lady Fantasy”
“Freefall”
“Rhayadar Goes To Town”
“Dunkirk”
“Lunar Sea”
“Chord Change”
“Another Night”
“Unevensong”
“One of These Days I’ll Get An Early Night”
“Who Are We”
“Ice”
“City Life”
“Lies The Laser Farewell”
“You Are The One”
“Refugee”
“Rose of Sharon”

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 7 PM, stick around for a 12-hour marathon of The Comedy Vault, because we plan to start compiling new episodes soon.

Above you see a feature-length animated movie made in 1941 by the legendary Max Fleischer studios, and not widely known. It was considered a huge flop. In fact, while the version posted here is called “Hoppity Goes To Town,” the original title was “Mr. Bug Goes To Town” and it was also retitled “Bugville.”

The movie was an epic flop. It’s the financial disaster that caused Paramount to foreclose on the Fleischer studios and shut down their new Miami production facility, moving them back to New York, and renamaing them “Famous Studios.”

Here’s the synopsis from IMDB (written by CPL Rixter):

In a vacant corner lot off Broadway (by about a yard) is a place called the Lowlands by the tiny community that lives there. Bugs and insects are neighbors and hang out at the Honey Shop of old Mr. Bumble the bee and his daughter Honey. Hoppity the grasshopper arrives to be with Honey, his sweetie. This bugs the crooked C. Bagley Beetle, so do his bunglers Smack the Mosquito and Swat the Fly. The Beetle wants Honey and the Lowlands for himself. But the Human Ones, with their littering and carelessness, pose a threat of destruction to every Lowland home of bug and beetle alike. Despite the doomsaying of Mr. Creeper, the snail, Hoppity finds hope of a new home behind the house of two Human Ones: Mary, who cares for a beautiful garden; and Dick, a struggling songwriter who puts his own hope on a Broadway hit to save his home.

As for why  the film flopped, there are many theories. Some folks think that audiences just didn’t want to spend that much time watching cartoon bugs. More conspiratorial minded folks think it was deliberate sabotage by Paramount, so they could seize Max Fleischer’s studio and boot him out.

The fact that the movie opened two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor probably didn’t help matters any.

Now you can watch for yourself and see if this second (and last) animated feature by The Max Fleischer Studio was justly or unjustly overlooked.

Above you see one of the episodes of Radio Free Charleston, the video show, of which I am most proud.

In April, 2015, a local jazz group, 4tet, added several members and took on a rather ambitious project. They learned the entire classic Miles Davis album, Bitches Brew, and performed it live at a few different venues.

The musicians involved were Thom Walker – bass; Jeffrey Thomasson – guitar; Nate Bohach – vibraphone; Dave Roberts – drums; Tyler Stewart – drums and percussion; Tim Smith – keyboards; Chris Mickel – saxophones; Chris Clark – saxophones and bass clarinet; Gabe Muncey – trumpet. It was an amazing line-up of musicians tackling a very difficult piece of music, and they nailed it.

This is a major departure episode for RFC. Usually I brought viewers three or four different bands, almost always rock or alternative and I rarely do interviews. For this show we focus on one group, sit in on a rehearsal and intersperse that with interviews to give viewers a better idea just how ambitious this undertaking was.  Considering that this episode was shot on a Sunday afternoon/evening, and was finished and online by the next Tuesday, I think I have reason to consider it one of my more impressive Radio Free Charleston programs.

You can read the full production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 14, 2021

A big “thank you” to my readers for putting up with a sparse week of stuff here at PopCult and on The AIR. This has been a long and grueling week that has seen your PopCulteer get his second Pfizer shot, among many other medical misadventures, and my blogging and radio time had to be sacrificed.

I want to stress, however, that I am not fully-vaccinated. Unlike most people I will have to wait two weeks after my second shot, and then get an antibody test to see if it worked. As an immuno-suppressed person, this is pretty standard. There is a chance that the vaccine won’t work on me. I’m very optimistic that it will, but I’m still not ready to rip off my mask and run naked in the world.

Apologies for putting that image in anyone’s mind.

I am a little concerned at how fast the penduluum of public perception seems to have swung. We should not villify people who err on the side of caution. I know the CDC issued new advice on mask-wearing Thursday, but I hope that we don’t go from shunning people who don’t wear masks to shunning those that still do. I hate the idea of vulnerable people being accosted by morons for the simple act of trying to stay alive. If you see someone still wearing a mask after mandates have been lifted, it means that they know something you don’t (about themselves, most likely) and you should respect that.

I know that there are toxic thought bubbles emanating from the cesspool of arrested-adolescent, narcissistic wing of pundritry disguised as journalism that express contempt for the economic shutdown and all the safety measures that kept the pandemic from killing millions more people than it did. As much as I hate to acknowledge those people, it’s an obligation of decent people to point out how full of crap these self-centered, self-appointed experts are, and how dangerous their crackpot theories can be.

I’ve seen some really poorly-thought-out articles online that suggest that people have become dependent on masks and that they’re clinging to them needlessly out of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome-type connection. That idea is irresponsible idiocy.

While the number of new cases of COVID and the number of deaths reported daily are dropping dramatically, they are still as high as they were in September of last year, and they’re way higher than they were a year ago. The trends are very encouraging, but we are not through this pandemic yet.

Dropping all the safety measures now makes as much sense as jumping out of an airplane as soon as you see the runway.  We have a lot of obstacles to overcome and a lot of goals to reach before we can begin to approach normal life again. Let’s land this plane and taxi to the terminal before we start acting like we’re already home.

I get what the CDC is doing. They’re using masklessness as the carrot on a stick to get some of the more stubborn among us to get vaccinated. That’s not a bad idea. We just maybe need to rein in the irrational exuberance a bit over here in smart people land. In a country where we had to put out an official statement telling people not to put gasoline in plastic bags, we can’t count on everyone to exercise sound judgement or use common sense.

I hope everyone realizes that we may see vaccination mandates this summer. You might just need to show your card to get on a plane, train or bus, or in a stadium or arena. If this becomes necessary, it’ll be because too many folks decided they could just ditch their masks without getting their shot.

If all goes well and my body starts producing antibodies, there’s a chance you might see me and my video camera out recording local bands in a month or two. You might see me still wearing a mask. That’s me being careful. I hope that everybody is careful and doesn’t take any unnecessary risks.

We made it this far. Do you really want to be one of the doofuses who dies from COVID the week before the pandemic ends?

AIR Marathons Continue

Meanwhile, over at our internet radio station, I’m taking advantage of my down time to bring you more marathons of our AIR Music Specialty programs. Friday from 7 AM to 1 AM you can listen to Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL, celebrating the Disco era. Then Saturday morning at 1 AM, shift gears into the New Wave era with Sydney Fileen, who will bring you Sydney’s Big Electric Cat until Saturday night at 9 PM. That’s when we kick into twelve hours of Radio Free Charleston before going back to our normal schedule Sunday morning.

Sure, it’s  all reruns, but they kick fifteen distinct kinds of butt so you ought to listen anyway.  You can tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in the right-hand column to binge-listen to the coolest music on the planet.

Live Music Saturday

If you are fully-vaccinated, you can go to The Empty Glass Saturday night for this show, featuring three great local punk bands that we’ve been playing the hell out of on Radio Free Charleston for the last year, Jay Parade, Jerks and Boldly Go…

Swiped From Twitter

A cute and funny fake ad, sent out by my favorite American Passenger train company to have a little fun with the gas situation…

And that’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, which I’m writing early Thursday evening, just in case I feel like a truck hit me Friday morning. Check back for all our regular features, including a very special RFC Flashback on Saturday, and cross your fingers for all-new shows on The AIR next week.

It seems like just yesterday when I told you about a Kickstarter campaign for Madman’s Ginchy Glider, from The Drawn Word.  Actually, it was early February, but the campaign was a huge success, met all its stretch goals, and just yesterday, I got a decent-sized surprise package filled with Madmaniverse goodies. Since I’ve been a fan of Mike Allred’s for more than thirty years, this was a real treat.

In addition to three Madman gliders, plus a couple of blanks, I also got seven sheets of stickers (so I can customize my gliders), four 3-D postcards (plus a set of 3-D glasses), a metal trading card, the second issue of the Madmania fanzine and…five Duncan Yo-Yos, imprinted with different designs from Madman and his creator, Mike Allred.

It was like Christmas in July…in May.

Here’s a group shot of the goodies (with only one glider shown) and below that, a look at the flip side of the Yo-Yos, which have different designs from the front.

The PopCulteer will return tomorrow, hopefully with a more substantial post. There’s been a lot of real-world intrusions this week, but getting the Madman Ginchy Glider’s certainly brightened up my week.

Folks who know their way to Dunbar or Saint Albans can come out Saturday for some free live music in a safe, outdoor setting. I still don’t recommend going out unless you’re fully vaccinated, but if you are, there are some great bands performing and you can hear live music and suppor the local scene. Check out these virtual flyers…

Hey folks, it’s one of those weeks.

Longtime readers of PopCult probably remember that your humble blogger has Myasthenia Gravis, an auto-immune disorder that you can learn all about by copying those two words and pasting them in the search window of this blog over in the right column, or elsewhere on the page if you’re reading this on your phone.

This week I have some MG-related tests scheduled, and some other medical stuff to which to tend, and that has intruded on my blogging and radio-ing time. So I’m not exactly feeling all poppity-culture-y this week, and didn’t have time to record new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift or Beatles Blast.

To make up for that, I have cooked and shaped some reruns into a fancy new casserole of internet radio goodness for you.  Go to The AIR for the next three days for your daily recommended requirement of recycled radio shows.  Tuesday, Radio Free Charleston will start at 10 AM and will bring you the best music from Charleston and around the world for 21 hours. In addition, ever time we have a replay scheduled for RFC this week, it will be a different episode, so you can catch up with a bunch of them, in case you missed any.

Wednesday, Beatles Blast will kick off at 2 PM, and run until Midnight.

Thursday The Swing Shift will start early, at 7 AM, and run for a full 24 hours, because if we didn’t, our loyal European Swing Music fans would riot.

The plan next week is to return with new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift, Beatles Blast, and maybe Curtain Call.  The plan is for our Haversham programs to return after a week off, as well.

But this week it’s almost all reruns, so you can tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in the right-hand column to relive our recent past. Be advised that we do plan to drop a new episode of Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL Friday afternoon.

As for PopCult, well this is the only post you’ll get today. The rest of the week may be skimpy, or photo essays, or shorter posts. It all depends on how your PopCulteer feels. I am going to try to bring you something fresh every day, which I’ve been doing for almost eight of our fifteen-plus years now.

This week’s art is, to be honest, a bit unfinished. I wanted to try out some  pastel crayons on a new textured paper, and I was also missing Chicago a bit, so using several photographs I took in Millenium Park over the past few years as reference, I sat down on a very blustery Sunday and tried to create a scene of The Bean.

You may notice that I put a lot of effort into the detail on the buildings. I wasn’t planning to go for an ultra-detailed painting, but I did want the buildings to look realistic.  However my fingers ran out of gas as I worked my way to the lower half of the paper. By the time I got to the Cloud Gate sculpture itself, I was struggling, and you may notice that the people aren’t exactly very well delineated at all. The end result is more abstract than I planned, but I think I actually like it more this way. It lends a bit of an air of creeping surrealism to the image.

The pastel drawing was scanned and color-corrected and cropped a bit, digitally, for posting here.

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

Meanwhile, Monday at beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of recent episodes of  Psychedelic Shack and 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.

The folks at The Haversham Recording Institute are a bit tied up with what we in the business call “paying work” and will be taking the week off from their AIR Music Specialty programs. They tell me they should be back at their labors of love next week.

At 7 PM, The Monday Marathon brings you four episodes of Radio Free Charleston that are probably going to be taking a sabbatical from our servers soon.

Today is Mothers Day, and to celebrate the artificial holiday, born right here in West “By God” Virginia, we bring you a concert by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Recorded in 1973 for the Swedish program Opopoppa, above is rare video of Frank Zappa with a later incarnation of The Mothers of Invention that included  Jean-Luc Ponty, George Duke, Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Ruth Underwood, Ian Underwood and Bruce Fowler.

In this nearly hour-long performance, the band presents three tunes, “Montana,” “Dupree’s Paradise” and “Farther O’blivion,” showing off the more experimental, instrumental side of The Mothers of Invention.

Now isn’t that a better way to observe the day than a cheesy Hallmark card and some flowers?

I posted this video on this day four years ago, and because the world needs more Frank Zappa, and I’m sure that mothers everywhere appreciate the joke, I’m running it here again.