The PopCulteer
October 3, 2025

This week we’re going to talk a little bit about Kickstarter and it’s use to fund comic book projects. Before I get deep on that, let me tell you about a very cool upcoming project that collects, colors and updates a book I first reviewed in this blog over sixteen years ago.

I’m going to recycle bits of my original post because I did a pretty good job explaining the concept back then.

Brian Bolland’s The Actress and the Bishop Coming Back In Print In Color

You can go HERE to pre-save the Kickstarter campaign and be notified for a newly-colored collection of Brian Bolland’s classic comic strip.

Bolland is veteran British comic book artist, best known for illustrating “Batman: The Killing Joke” (written by the legendary Alan Moore), and the ground-breaking maxi-series “Camelot 3000.” He’s spent most of his career as a cover artist, applying his meticulous pen to such characters as Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Judge Dredd and The Invisibles, among others.

Created originally as one plate of a limited-edition art portfolio, Bolland’s strip “The Actress And The Bishop,” ran as three-page installments in the first two issues of the anthology comic, A1 in the late 1980s. The third strip, a 17-page epic, was drawn in the early 1990s, but remained unpublished until a collection of Bolland’s work was released as a hardcover nearly twenty years ago.

“The Actress And The Bishop,” taking it’s title from an obscure (to the US) bit of British slang, tells, in rhyming couplets, the story of the unlikely pairing of an elderly Anglican Bishop, and his beautiful lady of the evening (“Actress” is a very polite British euphemism for prostitute).

The rhymes and stories are clever, but the real star is Bolland’s ultra-detailed art. This is eye candy so good you can actually gain weight looking at it. The level of detail is just amazing. The fact that Bolland draws some of the most beautiful women in comics is a bonus. You don’t get to be the cover artist for Wonder Woman by drawing ugly women.

“The Actress And The Bishop” is a unique, very British, work of art. It’s poetry. It’s comics. It’s drawing. It’s entertaining, charming and engaging. I heavily recommended it back in the summer of 2009, and now that Bolland is coloring it and adding a more recent installment, I’m pretty much on board instantly.

Let me quote form the campaign:

Brian Bolland’s amazing The Actress and the Bishop in a Deluxe Collectors form -gathering all the strips in FULL COLOUR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER plus prose and illustrations. Available with a companion black and white volume, showcasing Brian’s incredible linework.

A beautiful Hardback with gold foil accentuated dust jacket, printed endpapers, coloured head and tail bands, ribbon and signed – this is the ultimate collection of Brian Bolland’s Actress and the Bishop.

Featuring the strips The Actress and the Bishop Go Boating, The Actress and the Bishop Throw a Party (originally printed in A1), The Actress and the Bishop and the Thing in the Shed (from Bolland Strips!) and finally The Actress and the Bishop Go to the Seaside (printed in Shift Anthology volume 2 issue 5).

Also rounded off with two prose stories with spot illustrations from Brian – The Actress and the Bishop Go Shopping and The Actress and the Bishop Take Up Sport, plus pin ups, covers, preliminary art and an interview.

Brian is colouring the strips over the coming months, for an estimated delivery in November.

The collection I wrote about is long out of print and commanding collector prices. This is a great chance to get an exquisitely beautiful collection of comics from one of the finest illustrators of the last century.

About that black and white linework available in the companion volume, I originally wrote, “It’s in black-and-white, which shows off Bolland’s artwork in sparkling clarity.”

The Actress and The Bishop is definitely not for kids. The Actress spends much of the comic book sans clothing. That’s not really a negative. Any fan of offbeat comics and fantastic art should seek this out. Go HERE to be notified the day that the campaign goes live, which should be any day now.

Speaking of Comics On Kickstarter

You may have noticed that I haven’t been plugging too many comic book projects over on Kickstarter (or other crowdfunding sites) lately. There are a few reasons for that.

I’m still supporting a few of my favorite creators, folks like Anthony Stokes, Austin Hough, Karl Kesel and Jason Pell, and I’ve been keeping up with a few reprints of Golden Age classics, but I have almost completely stopped supporting campaigns by folks who aren’t known to me.

For a while there, I was taking more chances, snapping up books by more unknown talents and looking for fun, new kinds of work.

But it got to be too costly. See, I hate to read comics digitally. I literally will only do it if I’m writing a review and that’s the absolute only way to read a comic. If this makes me sound like I’m older than sin and out of touch…well, you may have a point.

But I remain defiantly within my old fartedom to the point where I will never pay money for a digital comic book again. I have Myasthenia Gravis. Trying to work a touchscreen is torture for me. I look like a bear trying to solve a Rubik’s cube.

And reading on a computer screen is what I do for work all day. It’s not relaxing to me. If I’m reading a comic book…something I’ve been doing for going on sixty years, I want to hold it in my hands.

So I have to go with print versions of the comics I support, and the prices on those have skyrocketed, along with the postage. I understand and accept that it costs more to make physical comics now, but the cost has gone up so much that I have to be pickier about what I support.

Most of the time, a single comic book, after the postage is added in, will set me back more than twenty bucks on Kickstarter. And I can’t just gamble that on an unknown quantity.

With the creators I support, I have no problem paying enough to cover the shipping costs, printing costs and a decent wage to the creative team. But if I’ve never heard of the artist or writer, and the concept is sorta stupid and you’re asking me to cough up over twenty bucks for a print copy…I’ll take a pass.

What’s worse is when you somehow get on somebody’s email list and get inundated with plugs for campaigns where, in many cases, they don’t even bother listing the names of the writer or artist.

Another reason I’ve stopped gambling on new comic book projects is that my bets haven’t all come in. Some show up and just aren’t very good. Others take their sweet damn time showing up.

ZOOP! is a competitor to Kickstarter. They run campaigns for larger collections for books, with deluxe features and first-rate production and printing. Often their books are in support of a great cause like supporting victims of war and wildfires and such. When you support a ZOOP! project, you feel like you’re donating to a charitable cause.

The main reason for that is that you’re lucky if your book shows up within two years.

I have supported three books via Zoop! The first one showed up 26 months after the campaign closed. The latest one is closing in on the two-year mark with no publication date in site. It was supposed to have been delivered in April, 2024.  The one in the middle showed up about a month ago. It was a shock to me because it had been so long since the campaign ended that I totally forgot I had ordered it.

In fact, I still don’t remember ordering it. When it did finally appear in my mailbox, it seemed like the first time I’d ever heard of it.

There are other things that bug me about crowdfunded comics. I realize that this next one is a bit of a necessary evil, and without it the creators would be leaving money on the table, but I personally despise variant covers.

And I find it pathetic that so many of the variant covers are “naughty” with gratuitous nudity. I’m not a prude by any means. I wouldn’t have plugged The Actress and the Bishop if I were. Don’t get me wrong…I’m a huge fan of gratuitous nudity, but living in a world where real women are naked all over the internet for free, it’s beyond my understanding why somebody would pay ten or twenty dollars extra for a comic book just because it’s got a poorly-drawn tit on the cover.

Some of these artists draw like they’ve never seen a naked woman in real life. it’s weird as hell to me. Some of these girls don’t even look human. What manner of meat-beatery be this? I mean…how hard up are the people buying these things?

But I can’t blame the folks making the comics for indulging in a little softpore cornography if it puts more money in their pockets. This is more just me being cranky in my old age…and really embarrassed for the younger generation.

It strikes me as weird that, in a time where raw boobage is abundant and universally free to anybody with a smartphone, folks will still plunk down money for a crudely-draw nude chick on a comic book cover.

Another annoyance is something that’s happened to me three times in the last two years.  I have Kickstarted books that became fully-funded, then changed their publishing plans and delivered books to comic book stores months before they were delivered to Kickstarter supporters. That might’ve been the biggest thing that soured me on crowdfunding.

Anyway, that’s my venting about Kickstarter and comics for now. I’ve get to get up early in the morning to go yell at some clouds.

Now, as far as using Kickstarter for other kinds of projects…the tariffs have pretty well killed off most crowdfunded action figures, but non-sport trading cards are still going strong, and I’ll be telling you about some of those in a week or two.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day and all our regular features.

Earlier this week the news broke that this year the West Virginia International Film Festival would take place, in part, at the currently-shuttered Park Place Stadium Cinemas in Charleston. This is great news on a couple of fronts.

First, it means that the folks at WVIFF expect crowds that will be larger than the Floralee Hark Cohen micro Theater can hold. It’s a nice space, but it is tiny. Second, that means that Park Place is being kept in decent enough shape that it could be up and running in short order should a new owner be found. It’d be great to see that happen. It’d be even better if the new owners don’t try to turn it into some kind of “drafthouse” theater. Charleston needs to have at least one thing going on that doesn’t involve beer. 

You can find the full schedule and details about the Film Festival HERE.

Meanwhile, all this talk of movie theaters took me back to an early post in this blog, twenty years ago today, to be exact, where I was very enthusiastic about a then-new theater in the area. Happily it’s still in business, and it’s also the the movie theater where I saw two movies last year. Those were probably the only two movies I’d seen in a full-blown theater in about a decade. I’ll talk about that at the close, but for now, here’s the original PopCult post from October 2, 2005.

To give you the short background  story…from 1991 to 2005, Mel Larch and I, as part of the Animated Discussions column for The Charleston Gazette, reviewed animated movies. That Gazz link is long dead. 

We had some wonderful experiences seeing some fantastic films. Watching The Lion King after midnight in an otherwise-empty theater in Kanawha City the day before it opened is a fond memory.

However…reviewing movies at the Marquee Cinemas at Southridge made me hate seeing movies in a theater. I NEVER had a positive experience seeing a movie there. Even if the film itself was great, we had to endure lousy sound, audio bleeding from ther theaters due to the paper-thin walls, out-of-focus pictures, poorly-behaved fellow audience members and just a general malaise at having to watch movies in a glorified shoebox. Marquee destroyed any desire I had left in me to ever see a movie in a crowded theater again. 

In the twenty years since I first posted about what is now The Regal Cinemas in Nitro, I have not set foot in the Marquee…and I never intend to. The pandemic taught the world how wonderful it can be watching a movie at home, without the expense of going out or the forced interaction with other humans, who en masse tend to suck. If I do go out to see a movie, I still head to Regal. 

Somehow we made it to October.  Pumpkin spice is infecting the world and All Hallows Eve is looming, and of course, we still have a whole bunch of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and West By God Virginia to tell you about.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

There are some big things happening this week. FunktaFest will take over Huntington Friday and Saturday, and you can find a complete schedule of the cool stuff happening there HERE. This is a great show where you can hear lots of the bands we bring you on Radio Free Charleston, as well as tons of other cool things.

We have a pretty huge show in Dunbar Friday night as well. Friday at The Shop in Dunbar, it’s The Chris Chaber Community Garden Project. This is a fundraiser to name the East End Community Garden after the late and much-missed Chris Chaber and make some improvements to it to make it even better.

This epic shows starts Friday, October 3rd at 5 PM at The Shop, in Dunbar.

For 25 years, Chris Chaber poured his heart into the East End community—lifting up local music, connecting people, and supporting neighborhood projects that made Charleston a better place for everyone. Now we have a chance to honor Chris by renaming the East End Community Garden in his memory, and restoring an agricultural water account at the property to keep the garden thriving.

There will be Live Performances All Night in Chris’s Honor. Here are just a few of the names you’ll see on stage: Andy Frampton; Jeff Haynes; Tony Harrah; Johnny Compton; Nolan Collins; The Spurgie Hankins Band; The Carpenter Ants; Jerks; Duck City Music; Justin Steele; C.W. Vance; Christopher Carter (Hurl Brickbat).

Plus you can see live artist: Eric Thomson and you can expect a guest appearance by John Chick.

There will be a suggested donation at the door, but you should give more than that because every dollar goes directly to officially dedicating the garden as “The Chris Chaber East End Community Garden.” As it says on the Facebook Event page where I swiped most of this info, “Come for the music, stay for the community. Invite your friends, spread the word, and help us honor a legend the right way.”

Those are the two big shows, but there’s always more than just two things going on around here.

We are very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have The Lone Canary on Friday, and Ar Lewi on Saturday.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights.  On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans, or at The Cavern on Charleston’s West Side, and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons.

There’s also some cool stuff hapening at Slack Plaza in Downtown Charleston, as part of City Center Live. Check out the graphic at right.

You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.  I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon and those look to be incredible.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, don’t be a jerk about it.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

Continue reading

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Radio Free Charleston is all-new this week and we open with a track from the brand-new Guitarmy of One album, Silver Screen Spy Scene. That will be available very soon at the Guitarmy of One website. Us Kickstarter folks got it a few days early, ’cause we’s special.

Our whole show is loaded with great new local and indie music, as well as some really cool tracks from deep in the RFC Archives and a third hour of relaxing, semi-ambient tunes. Our Chicago pipeline is represented by tunes from  Aliza Hava and Vinto Van Go. We even dig up a fifty-year-old tune from a cult band, Crack The Sky, who formed in Weirton before relocating to Baltimore quite some time ago.

It’s a pretty cool show, if I say so myself (and I just did).

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 243

hour one
Guitarmy of One “Espionage in Black Camouflage”
CHUM “Headhunter”
J Marinelli  “Antifa Grandpa”
Crystal Bright and The Silver Hands “Choke”
Crack The Sky “Sea Epic”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood“Corpse Juice Medley”
The Aquabats “The Wild Sea”
Novelty Island “Apollo”
Aliza Hava “Soul Family”
Robert Plant with Suzi Dian “Too Far From You”
The Settlement “Midnight Train”
Spacehog “In The Meantime”
Novo Combo “Long Long Road”

hour two
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess  “The Ghost of You”
M Robin Scott “Save Me”
Sahsa Colette & The Magnolias “Kiss And Make Up”
Vinto Van Go “Pleasance”
The Beautiful South “I Should’ve Kept My Eyes Shut”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “Common Ground”
Nixon Black “Wonderland”
Government Cheese “Kentucky Home”
Sheldon Vance“Watch It Burn”
June Swoon“Play Something I Know”
Messer Chups “Jokermobile”
Terra Atlantica “Caribbean Shores”
Unmanned  “Light The Beacons”
Frenchy & The Punk “Dark Carnivale”

hour three
Deni Bonet “(All Around The World) Music Is Love”
Nothing to Protect “Common”
Beat “Sheltering Sky”
The Art of Noise “Moments In Love”
Vexian Arch “Time Forgot Us”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM  The Swing Shift is an encore of two recent episodes.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM,  Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursdays and Sundays.

Worthy of a separate post this week, we have a mildly amusing coincidence Monday on The AIR.  Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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 elsewhere on this page.

The odd thing about these shows is that Nigel Pye produced his show two weeks ago and then went on vacation without telling anybody at Haversham that this episode consists entirely of Dutch Psychedelic bands with tracks released in the golden age of mind-expanding music. This was news to Herman Linte, who over the weekend produced an episode of his show, Prognosis, devoted to the Dutch Symphonic Metal band, Epica. While they were somewhat embarrassed, I didn’t think it was a big deal, plus I embraced the chance to do the feature image you see above this post.

At 2 PM (EDT) Nigel delivers a show filled with incredible Dutch obscurities, and if you listen carefully, you’ll even catch him in a bit of a mistake while making a pun.

Check out the mind-expanding playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 105

Surprieze “Lazurus”
Children of Jubal “Song of Jubal”
St. Giles System “Swedish Tears”
Maskers “Death”
NV Groep 65 “Pipe And You Like It”
Short 66 “I.L.N. Double U”
Mother’s Love “Highway To Heaven”
Met & Zonder “Now I Know”
Woorden “(Excerpt)”
Motives “I Can Hear Colors”
Incredible “She Died”
Bumble Bees “Maybe Someday”

Psychedelic Shack can 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.

At 3 PM (EDT), Herman Linte brings us two hours that he seems to think is controversial. He devotes to the entire show to the Dutch band, Epica, despite them not being considered a Progressive Rock band. I personally don’t see the big deal. I mean, they have metal beats, soaring solos, an operatic female vocalist and a symphony orchestra and choir. Sounds pretty progressive to me.

Check out this playlist, then tune in and listen for yourself…

Prognosis 132
Epica

The Phantom Agony
Sensorium
Facade Of Reality (The Embrace That Smothers – Part V)
The Last Crusade A New Age Dawns #1
Mother Of Light A New Age Dawns #2
Consign To Oblivion A New Age Dawns #3
Dance of Fate
Caught In A Web
Vengeance Is Mine
The Angel of Death
Supremecy
Unholy Trinity
Trois Vierges
Valley of Sins
The Last Embrace
Higher High
Kingdom of Heaven-A New Age Dawns
Deconstruct

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.

This week’s art is a pastel crayon and acrylic paint creation on illustration board that I started about six weeks ago, and never really finished.

It’s based on a photo I snapped of a protein drink display in Jungle Jim’s in Cinncinnati in early August.

Jungle Jim’s is some kind of barely describable hybrid of a supermarket,  a toy store and an amusement park, and you’ll learn more about it when we get around to making a return visit sometime in the future.

This was just a chance for me to try to paint a classic strongman pose.  I grew up copying art from superhero comic books, but I haven’t really revisited this theme much in the past forty five years or so.

The reason this is unfinished is that the ole MG is flaring up again. I was going to attempt a pencil drawing of a friend that I’ve wanted to do for weeks, but the fingers didn’t want to cooperate, so I dug this out of the slush pile.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

We will tell you about today’s radio progamming on The AIR later this morning.

Tonight for our Sunday Evening Video we are going to repeat a look at the music and video of one of the most popular of the original Radio Free Charleston bands, Go Van Gogh. Running the “Coalfinger” episode of RFC in yesterday’s RFC Flashback put me in the mood to see more of my old buddies.

Go Van Gogh were: Johnny Rock, Tim Rock, Stephen Beckner and Mark Beckner. Occasionally the band is augmented by Mark Mingrone, Jason Ashworth and Bain Ashworth. The videos at the top of this post were directed by Tim Rock, Johnny Rock, Stephen Beckner, Melissa Beezley and yours truly.

It was just about exactly 36 years ago this weekend when yours truly was hosting what was then a very late-night broadcast radio version of RFC, and the phone rang.  It was Johnny Rock, talking to me for the first time. In his usual hurried manner of speaking, he blurted out, “Hey Rudy, love the show. I’m in a band called Go Van Gogh. We’re the best band in town and all the other bands hate us. It’d be cool if you’d come see us and play us on your show!” The rest was history. I would not be the advocate for local music that I’ve become without Johnny and Go Van Gogh.

A bit more than eight years ago, we lost Johnny, who was a true legend and a beloved character on the local scene. With the permission of the surviving band members I compiled and posted these videos in his memory. Tonight I thought it’d be nice to go back and take another look at a band that was this close to making it big.

Above you see a compilation of nearly two-and-a-half hours of primo Go Van Gogh. Included are:

“All Over The Road” A document of their tour to Morgantown, WV.
“The Sad Truth” (Excerpt) Part of their mockumentary.
“Live At The Levee: 1991” Half an hour of the band in concert at The Levee (later known as The Boulevard Tavern).
“Coalfinger” What happens with a Southern West Virginia community college Drama department makes a James Bond Movie?
“Live At WVSU” Performing the song, “Stripes with Stains” at West Virginia State University.
“Make The Money” A Comedic Short Film.
“Roll” Music Video.
“Planet of Psychotic Women.” Music Video

Below you’ll find the entire half-hour version of “Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth.” This mockumentary was the brainchild of Tim Rock, and you’ll see the band and friends (including yours truly) perpetrating a mythical history of the rise and fall of Go Van Gogh.

Enjoy the fun times with Go Van Gogh.

This week we go back to April Fool’s Day, 2012, for a show that has taken on a bit of a bittersweet aura. This episode presents Coalfinger, a film by Johnny Rock, a good friend and local music scene icon whom we lost a few years ago.

“Adventure Comics Shirt” was a special episode of Radio Free Charleston, dedicated to presenting once-thought-lost scenes from The Lower West Virginia Contemporary Light Opera Stage Players film production of the James Bond film, “Coalfinger.” All prints of this film were destroyed after MGM, EON Productions and the Ian Fleming estate won a permanent injunction against the tiny, Southern West Virginia theater company Luckily, a few scenes were preserved in filmmaker Johnny Rock’s long-supressed documentary on the making of “Coalfinger.”

It was April Fool’s Day, and it was time to show the world this short film that Johnny and Tim Rock came up with, with a little help from Stephen Beckner, Jason Ashworth, yours truly and other members of the Go Van Gogh inner circle. The premise was that a Southern West Virginia theatre troupe somehow wound up with the rights to make a James Bond movie, and potshots were taken at lots of local creative types. Making this film remains one of the most fun times in my life.

As with most of our April Fool’s Day specials, the original production notes were written in jest.  I had way the hell too much fun writing these notes. You can read them HERE.

The PopCulteer
September 26, 2025

The AIR FRIDAY!

Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty are new and exciting and cool and nifty, even! Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch once again presents Disco songs from the club days, before Disco invaded and took over mainstream radio, back when only the cool people knew where to go and how to get in. It’s historical, and it’s got a good beat that you can dance to.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist.,,

MIRRORBALL 120

Alec R. Costandinos And The Syncophonic Orchestra “Romeo And Juliet”
Cosa Rica Band “Baila”
Judy Cheeks “Mellow Lovin'”
MTL Express “Dance All Night”
Orlando Riva Sound “Moon Boots”
The Richard Hewson Orchestra “Touch My Love”
Fist O-Funk Orchestra “Dance All Over The World”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a four-hour mini-marathon that runs through the whole series in chronological order every Friday at 8 PM.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that presents a timely look, season-wise, at a prolific band that never quite managed to crack into mainstream success, The Fall.

From their debut in 1976 to the death of their main creative force, Mark E. Smith in 2018, The Fall carved out a niche in the UK’s post-punk landscape with their ever-changing line-up and stylistic approach. They embodied the spirt of New Wave music without ever embracing the label or breaking into the mainstream.

Still, The Fall are considered one of the most prolific and influential bands of the period, and for the next two hour we are going to demonstrate why, by bringing you a mixtape collection of the best of their music from the New Wave era. Sydney brings you a veritable boatload of the best music the band released during the New Wave era.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 132

The Fall

Bingo-Master
It’s The New Thing
Rowche Rumble
Fiery Jack
How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
Totally Wired
Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul
Look, Know
The Man Whose Head Expanded
Kicker Conspiracy
Marquis Cha-Cha
Oh! Brother
c.r.e.e.p.
Draygo’s Guilt
Couldn’t Get Ahead
Cruiser’s Creek
Frightened
No Xmas For John Quays
Two Steps Back
Music Scene
Living Too Late
Mr. Pharmacist
Hey! Luciani
There’s A Ghost In My House
Hit The North Part 1
A Figure Walks
Repetition
A Day In The Life

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard as part of the Haversham Recording Institute marathon overnight Monday/early Tuesday.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all our regular features.

Fall is here and soon the leaves and boilerplates will turn. Even with this, we still have a whole bunch of STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and the state of mountains and maybe a little beyond.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friady and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have The Carpenter Antson Friday, and Minor Swing on Saturday. Sunday afternoon, at 1 PM, my old buddy Spencer Elliott will bring his incredible guitar wizardry to Charleston’s gem of a bookstore/art gallery/coffeehouse.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights.  On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings.

There’s also some cool stuff hapening at Slack Plaza in Downtown Charleston, as part of City Center Live. Check out the graphic at right.

You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.  I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon and those look to be incredible.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, don’t be a jerk about it.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

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