The PopCult Toybox

We have a quick photo review for you today of a great new figure from our friends at Vintage Toys and Trains and White Elephant Toyz.

A couple of years ago when Steve Stovall (of VT&T and Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo fame) and Jason from White Elephant Toyz teamed up to realize Steve’s longtime dream of reviving the late 1970s Super Joe action figure, the idea of it being successful enough for them to revive his arch enemy, Gor: The King of the Terrons, was just a pipe dream.

However, the Super Joe Unlimited revival was successful enough to not only bring down the wrath of Hasbro, causing them to change the name to Adventure Command and Astro Command, but also to invest in the considerable tooling required to make a new incarnation of King Gor.

Like the Adventure Command figures, the newly-rechristened “Gargon” is not an exact reproduction. The construction is vastly superior, he’s a bit bigger, and he lacks the light-up function that won’t be missed by many. I think he has a couple of added points of articulation at the wrists, too.

Gargon is available in the same shade of green as the original Gor, but he’s also been made in a very limited Glow-In-The-Dark version, with accessories that glow as well. You may be able to snag one of the glowing Gargons if you act fast, but the original color is pretty cool by itself.

Seriously this would look right at home on a shelf filled with collectible vinyl monster toys. These are a godsend for collectors of the original Super Joe toy line, but they are so freaking cool that, even for someone like me who grew up before that line hit, they are well worth collecting on their own. I’m not going out on a limb to say that Adventure Command is a huge improvement over the Super Joe line, which may be the most fragile action figure line in history.  These new figures are built like a tank.

I’ve had these guys a couple of weeks, but things have been so hectic that I just had time to de-box them and take some pics yesterday. Because I don’t have the fancy lighting necessary, I faked the glow while editing the photos. However, later in the evening, I had left this guy under the lightbox, and when I turned it off, the glow effect was striking.

You can order Gargon at White Elephant Toyz or get one from Steve’s eBay store. There are also a limited supply at a few other online sellers, or if you go to JoeLanta, Steve will have them for sale there.

Check this guy out, he’s really cool…

Fresh out of the box, this is one impressive figure, with great sculpting and terrific color.

Just look at that face.

The extremely cool accessories are really sharp-looking.

“Ya see, foist I shoots him, thens I beats the hell outta him wit’ dis club!”

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The AIR FRIDAY!

Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to special themes to close out PopCult’s anniversary week.. 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 presents Disco songs about travelling, or rather, transportation.  It’s trains, planes and automobiles…not necessarily in that order…making their way to the danceflor.

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

MIRRORBALL 118

Rose Royce “Car Wash”
Hemnlock “Drive Me Crazy”
JBs “Hot Pants Road”
Hot Chocolate “Heaven Is In the Back Seat of my Cadillac”
Donna Summer “Highway Runner”
Celi Bee “Fly Me On The Wings of Love”
A. Chrome “Fly On UFO”
Rhythm Heritage “Gonna Fly Now”
ELO “Last Train To London”
Gap Band “Party Train”
The O’Jays “Love Train”

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 mini-marathon that includes the latest episode Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that salutes Echo and The Bunnymen, one of the major bands to come out of Liverpool’s New Wave scene in the late 1970s.

The dominant band in Mersey was The Crucial Three. Its three members would all go on to become major figures in British New Wave in the 1980s:  Julian Cope formed The Teardrop Explodes; Pete Wylie became the leader of various bands with “WAH” in the name; And Ian McCulloch joined up with Will Sergeant Les Pattinson and later, Peter DeFrietas to form Echo and The Bunnymen.

Over the course of this week’s show, sydney brings you the highlights of the band’s output from their beginning up to their self-titled 1987 album, which was the last with their drummer, Peter, before his tragic death in 1989.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 131

Echo and The Bunnymen

“Pictures On My Wall”
“All That Jazz”
“Going Up”
“Monkeys”
“Rescue”
“Crocodiles”
“Read It In Books”
“The Puppet”
“A Promise”
“Broke My Neck”
“Heaven Up Here:”
“Over The Wall”
“The Subject”
“The Killing Moon (All Night Version)”
“Silver”
“Crystal Days”
“Ocean Rain”
“Nocturnal Me”
“The Cutter”
“The Back of Love”
“Bring On The Dancing Horses”
“Bedbugs and Ballyhoo”
“Porcupine”
“People Are Strange”
“The Disease”
“Seven Seas”
“Lips Like Sugar”
“The Killing Moon”

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 Sunday morning at 10 AM.

Saturday at Noon The AIR will present 36 hours of Radio Free Charleston to celebrate the 36 years since RFC debuted on WVNS radio over Labor Day Weekend in 1989.  Because this will wipe out many of the regular replays of our musical specialty shows, next week we will encore all of them in their regular timeslots.

The PopCulteer
August 29, 2025

For the PopCulteer that starts to wind up our 20th anniversary week, we are going to bring you a photo essay of a place that’s also celebrating an anniversary or two.  I’m talking a really cool place that opened to the public twenty years ago, The American Sign Museum in Cinncinnati.

You might have noticed that this is our third photo essay devoted to a museum in Cinncinnati in the last week. That’s because we actually went to them all on the same day.

I’d decided that, for my birthday this year, I wanted to take a fun trip to a place we really hadn’t visited before. Now, we’d gone to Cinncinnati for a Queen City Beautiful Dolls Club show a few years ago, but we didn’t venture into the city proper.

And for years, I’ve wanted to visit The American Sign Museum, and Mel really wanted to see The Lucky Cat Museum…and since we were in the area and we both always wanted to see the historic Cinncinnati Union Terminal, we decided to go the weekend before my birthday, and hit all three attractions on the same day.

That was on a Friday, and then Saturday we went randomly shopping and found places that definitely merit a return visit.

Jungle Jim’s, I’m talking about you.

Actually, all the museums merit return visits, and the next time we go, we might do so fully as civilians. I’m trying to break the habit of habitually taking way too many photos for the blog and not basking in the full experience of these cool places. As it was, this was one of the most fun trips we’ve taken…and we specialize in taking fun trips, so that’s saying something.

But share pictures with you I will. Our first stop was The American Sign Museum, and it’s an overwhelming immersive experience of nostalgia, art, craftsmanship, advertising history, and everything popular culture has to offer.

Much of the museum is a neon wonderland, but they also have lots of land-marking statuary, print poster art, folk art and clever sleight-of-sign.

The phrase “sensory overload” is appropriate here. It is a mind-blowing experience. The museum offers a guided tour that takes almost two hours, but we chose to just wander aimlessly for our first visit, and the effect was not unlike that of being a hyperactive kid in a candy store.

You can find full details about how you can plan your visit at their website, and get directions all all the other useful information you need so you can go take in this incredible museum. You really need to see this in person. These photos barely scratch the surface.

Now, let’s have the photos do the talking…

As you drive down Monmouth Avenue, you can tell you’re getting close when you see some…signs.

Most of the signage is indoors, but some of it is so huge it has to live in the parking lot, or on the side of the building.

When you walk in, the glow of the neon permeates your world.

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Tucked away in an arts incubator in Cinncinnati is a wonderful little shrine to the Maneki-neko.

In case you don’t know, that’s the Lucky Cat, the cute little waving kitties you see in Asian restaurants and markets. When we were in Cinncinnati a few weeks ago, we stopped into a place Mel has wanted to visit for years…The Lucky Cat Museum.

The Lucky Cat Museum is a small, appointment-only collection of thousands of Lucky Cats. It’s an absolute treat for fans of Japanese art and culture, Asian mythology and kitty cats in general. They even had some Kaiju Kitties to entertain yours truly.

Let me quote from their website:

The Lucky Cat Museum is the passion project of Micha Robertson and her husband Jaime. They moved to Cincinnati, Ohio from Oklahoma in 2001. Micha had always collected cat ephemera and Japanese and Asian art, but hadn’t been able to find any Lucky Cats in Oklahoma. She received her first Neko from her sister, Brenna (purchased from Tokyo Foods) and the second from the Cheviot Goodwill. Coincidentally, she and Brenna went to an anime/manga convention in California in late 2001, where she became a beta tester for Rinkya, one of the very first US companies to offer bidding services on Yahoo Japan Auctions. This opened the fortune feline floodgates, as it were, and the collection continues to grow.

In 2012, Micha’s friend Eva Clarke asked if she would be interested in sharing a space with her and Jenn Sczur at the Essex Art Studios. At the same time, the room at home that hadn’t quite become totally overwhelmed with the collection needed to be emptied for a family member. Eva and Jenn were cool with the idea of moving the collection into Micha’s third of the space. Cappel’s, her employer, provided many glass and acrylic display cases to get things organized.

In 2016, a space on the first floor of the Essex became available. It featured carpet, air-conditioning and complete walls (all things absent from the first space). The Museum moved downstairs and reopened with regular hours.

Micha’s collection is stunning in size and scope. As a fellow collector of cool stuff, I could only nod and smile with familiarity as she described how she’s pursued her obsession.

The Essex Art Studios is brimming with artists and is cool enough to merit a return visit the next time we go to Cinncinnati, but the Lucky Cat Museum is just a gem of pure happiness, nestled among the Walnut Hills neighborhood.

We’re just going to bring you a few photos. If you want to see the whole collection, you’ll just have to visit there yourself.   Contact them through the website ahead of time. The museum is open by appointment only, and admission is limited to six people at a time.  It’s a cozy space.

The variety of Maneki Neko is mind-blowing

Even the many minor differences between the traditional lucky cats is a revelation.

Of course, with some styles there’s strength in numbers.

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On this day, twenty years ago, the first two posts appeared in PopCult.

It’s hard to wrap my brain around that fact. The idea of doing ANYTHING for twenty years is a bit…confounding. I don’t feel old enough to have done this much stuff. It’s one of the pitfalls of feeling younger than I really am.

For those of you new to PopCult, this blog started out as part of The Gazz, an online version of the entertainment section of The Charleston Gazette. It bounced around the various web versions of the Gazette and Gazette-Mail until I exited stage right from that sinking ship five years ago, dragging all my previous posts along with me (save for most of the images from the first year or so, which had been lost during one of the many Gazette-content portings). And I always have to pause and thank Douglas Imbrogno for hiring me to write this blog in the first place, and giving it the name it has now.

While I’m perfectly content to enjoy all the credit, when it comes to blame, Doug has to bear some responsibility (I kid…go see his band, Through the Trees, opening for Ron Sowell Saturday at Pumzi’s).

I was going to say that the first two posts were nothing to write home about, but then it hit me that this is far from the first time I’ve written about them. And I work at home.

Like I said, last year, The first was a silly little bit of wordplay about buying an eBow on eBay. The second was a short plea for tips on where to find good Won Ton (or crab rangoon, to some folks) in Charleston.

That second post carried my first reference to a bit of actual pop culture, and also mentioned that I was “seafood-phobic,” a condition of which I have since been cured. On Tuesday Melanie and I had our anniversary lunch at Red Lobster, in fact.

And that first post has a deep, dark secret that only now, after two decades, will I confess: I didn’t really buy my eBow on eBay. I got it from Sam Ash.

Those were just test posts, really. I wasn’t sure exactly what this blog was supposed to be (sometimes I still wonder about that), but they do mark the humble beginnings of a blog that has reached and shot past seven thousand posts and has lasted many years past the typical lifespan of a blog.

There were a few more test posts before I jumped in whole-hog. The official launch of the Gazz Blogs, was the first week in September, and in that week I wrote about The Charleston Playhouse, Hasil Adkins, Kroger, local wrestling and WHCP, which was not yet owned by WSAZ’s parent company, and was just moving some operations to Charleston after having previously broadcast out of a Port-A-Potty in Portsmouth, Ohio.

The first Monday Morning Art

Since then, I’ve covered toys, comics, movies, TV, music, local music, theatre, travel, Myasthenia Gravis and anything else I feel like writing about. It’s been fun.

Monday Morning Art first appeared on September 8. I didn’t make it a regular feature for almost a year.  Instead I was originally posting my art a few times a week,  faster than anybody was bothering to look at it. It was a little shock to finally do the math and realize that I’ve posted over 1,000 original pieces of art (and two guest entries) in this blog over the last two decades.

Twenty years on, I’m still pretty much covering the same beat, though the media has changed quite a bit and a lot of the cool places I wrote about aren’t even places anymore. Life goes on. I’m still basically writing “Hey, this is really cool, check it out.”

We now have our sister internet radio station, The AIR, as well as our regular weekly features: Monday Morning Art, STUFF TO DO, The PopCulteer, The RFC Flashback, and Sunday Evening Video. I also run Kickstarter Alerts and review toys, comics, theatre, books, movies and TV shows, plus I whine about having Myasthenia Gravis a lot. And every November I kill myself cranking out The PopCult Gift Guide. This year will be the 21st PopCult Gift Guide.

I have pulled out all the stops to make this anniversary week something special, and I’m not done yet. If all goes according to plan later today you will get a photo essay from a cool place we visited early in the month, plus a photo review of a cool toy.

The author, still not dead yet.

Tomorrow will bring another photo essay in The PopCulteer, as well as radio notes on new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, and we will wrap up the week with the return of The PopCult Bookshelf.

Over the weekend, our chronological presentation of The Radio Free Charleston video show conveniently arrives at a landmark episode, as I also mark the 36th anniversary of Radio Free Charleston, which premiered on broadcast radio over Labor Day Weekend in 1989. You can expect a 36-hour marathon on The AIR, beginning Saturday at Noon.

Sunday I’m recycling that Jerry Lewis Telethon post again. I think I’ve earned a day to phone it in. I mean, blogging since 2005, blogging daily since 2013, posting over a thousand pieces of original art, and juggling an armload of anniversaries every August deserves a day of rest now and then, doncha think?

Thanks for reading PopCult. I’ll be here ’til I drop.

—your humble blogger, Rudy.

Oh, Geez…NOT ALL AT ONCE!  I mean, be reasonable, we just have Labor Day Weekend coming up, not a two-decade holiday.

PopCult launched, as part of The Gazz, which was supposed to be the digital version of the entertainment section from The Charleston Gazette, on August 28, 2005. The first few posts were just tests before we launched for real a week or so later.

It was in September that I first wrote about a local event, which I believe was an IWA East Coast wrestling show. It was May of the following year when I first used the phrase “STUFF TO DO,” and a few years after that before I made it a stand-alone, nearly weekly feature. Lately, I have resorted to using a boilerplate for the feature so that I don’t leave too many cool things out.

It’s all part of that “supporting the local scene” stuff that I talk about all the time.

With that nod to our Anniversary Week out of the way, how about we jump in to what’s happening in and around Charleston this Labor Day Weekend?

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.

City Center Live at Slack Plaza in Charleston has announced their schedule for the summer.  You can find their schedule HERE.

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

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Bug on Friday, and Sasha Colette 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 and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. 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. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI 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.

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 illlnesses 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 that I was able to scrounge up online…

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

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PopCult’s 20th Anniversary week continues with new episodes of our music specialty shows that debut on Wednesday afternoon, as The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, each of which celebrate a notable anniversary of a different sort.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you an all-covers mixtape recreation of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which was released sixty years ago this fall.

Considered by many to be their best album, it’s one that I have avoided in the past because it concludes with what I feel is the band’s worst song, “Run For Your Life,” which is so mysognistic and threatening that years later, John Lennon apologized for writing it.

However, I managed to find a gender-flipped cover that somewhat redeems the stalkerish sentiments in the song. Since the alubm runs considerably less than an hour, you’ll get to hear more than one version of some tunes.

The rest of our hour presents artists employing a wild variety of musical styles tackling some of the Fab Four’s most beloved tunes.

Check out this playlist:

Beatles Blast 124

Black Heat “Drive My Car”
Parekh & Singh “Norwegian Wood”
Ernie Smith “You Won’t See Me”
Yellow Matter Custard “Nowhere Man” “Think For Yourself”
Blues Beatles “The Word”
Allan Holdsworth “Michelle”
Joe Val & The New England Bluegrass Boys “What Goes On”
Ronnie Von “Girl (Meu Bem)”
Ted Leo “I’m Looking Through You”
Bonnie Tyler “In My Life”
Ben Kweller “Wait”
Joe White “If I Needed Someone”
Nancy Sinatra “Run For Your Life”
Henrique Cazes “Girl”
Dion “Drive My Car”
The Hot Club of San Francisco “If I Needed Someone”
Ozzy Osbourne “In My Life”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, for its fiftieth anniversary year, Mel Larch salutes the Tony and Pulitzer winning show, A Chorus Line.

Conceived by director and co-choreographer, Michael Bennett with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante, A Chorus Line set records for longevity that lasted decades.  With its stark realism and mature content, A Chorus Line was the first raw, honest and occasionally downbeat look at Show Business.

This Mel has assembled a collection of highlights from the musical, using the original Broadway Cast album, later revivals and maybe a surprise or two.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault brings you an hour of something so surprising that, as I write this, I don’t even know what it is yet.

One of the things I absolutely hate about writing PopCult is obituaries for friends, or “death notices” for beloved businesses.

Sadly, that’s exactly what I have to do right in the middle of my anniversary week. American Sciene & Surplus, the folks with the funniest mail order catalog in history and a Mecca for cool and unusual surplus items has announced that they are closing up shop after 88 years and will not accept any orders after September 7.

You have less than two weeks to get your test tubes, rubber dinosaurs and gas masks at their website.

The goodish news is that two of the three physical locations will remain open after being sold to their management teams, but the mail order side could not overcome insurmountable odds brought on by the need to relocate after losing their warehouse.

They’d been running a GoFundMe campaign, but it wasn’t enough and yesterday they sent out the following email.

It is with a very heavy heart that we are writing to tell you that it’s time to say goodbye. The next two weeks, up until September 7th, will be your final chance to order from us at Sciplus.com and (888-724-7587), as we will be closing our mail order warehouse.

For nearly nine decades, this place has been so much more than a company to us. It has been a community built on discovery, invention, friendship, and shared passions. For the last few months, we have been struggling to keep our doors open. Thanks to all of you, we were able to hang on for a little while longer, but despite the incredible efforts of our team and your unrelenting love and support, our situation has not improved to the point where we can continue.

This will be the Jarvis Farewell Tour on www.Sciplus.com so before we go, please take advantage of the incredible daily deals coming your way. We still have a lot of stock left that we must move from the whs, and we want it to find good homes. Also, please be sure to use any gift certificates you have by September 7th, as they will no longer be valid for online redemption after that date. More notices about the closing to follow.

The Future of American Science & Surplus Stores: While we were unable to find a buyer for the Parkridge store, which will be closing towards end of September, we do have some good news. As part of our closing, we are working on keeping The Geneva and Milwaukee stores operating by selling the stores to remain open as employee-owned and operated locations. We are so excited for them to continue the legacy of American Science & Surplus and we will keep posted on that progress.

Thank You: From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. This company was founded over 88 years ago, and I have been lucky enough to be a part of it for 41 wonderful years. We will miss you and this place more than words can express. Thank you for letting us be a part of your lives.

It is a huge bummer as yet another little bit of joy in so many people’s lives is going away.Mel and I got to visit their Chicago/Geneva location back in 2017, and it’s one of the locations that will remain open, but we are going to sorely miss that catalog. I can’t remember how many times I included their website in The PopCult Gift Guide.

At least they left us with a surplus of good memories.

It was when I married Melanie Larch, eleven years ago, today.

Only a small number of people knew this was going to happen.  We snuck off to Chicago, and got married at 11 AM on stage at the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Then we rode the L back to our hotel, got online at the hotel’s business center, and blew up the internet when we updated our statuses on Facebook.

I had written a week’s worth of PopCult in advance. On the day after the big event, this is what my loyal readers saw…

Just Married

Hey, y’know that top secret project I’ve been talking about all week?

Well, if all goes according to plan, by the time you read this, Melanie Larch and I will have become a married couple. And to think, it only took 24 years for us to tie the knot. With all our elder-care commitments fulfilled and no other obstacles in our path, we can finally be together.

The ceremony is to have taken place Tuesday morning on the Stage of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. We wanted a quiet ceremony in a special place, and that fit the bill perfectly. Every PopCult post that has been published since last week was written on Wednesday, August 20. That’s why the tense is all wonky.

If you’re wondering why we decided to get married in Chicago, there are many reasons. First of all, I hate cermonies. I just can’t stand the pomp and circumstance and other related BS that fuels the Wedding Industrial Complex. I just want to be with the woman I love. I don’t want to go through the Spanish Inquisition.

On top of that, Melanie and I didn’t feel right getting married in a state that does not allow all of our friends the same right. I know it’s inevitable that marriage equality will come to the Mountain State, but we didn’t want to wait any longer.

Add to that the moronic law passed a couple of years ago that coerces people, even people who have been together more than two decades, into undergoing religious and/or psychological counseling before they can tie the knot, and it was clear that, as far as getting married goes, West Virginia is not open for our business.

We were planning to go to Chicago anyway, and Melanie holds Steppenwolf in very high regard, so I suggested she ask if we could get married there. She did. And they said yes. And we said “I Do.”

We’re hoping that none of our friends feel slighted that we did this out of town. In the event that anyone reading this really feels the need for us to have a huge reception with tons of guests, please, feel free to throw one for us. We’ll be there… as long as we don’t have to do any planning or pay for it.

_________________

Eleven years later there are no regrets, and I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.

I just wish I’d been paying more attention to how the anniversaries would fall. Our Wedding Anniversary is 13 days after my birthday, and two days before the anniversary of PopCult.

We probably should’ve gotten married a little earlier…like, maybe in 1990.

Both of The AIR Music Specialty programs will be brand-new Tuesday, which is once again “New Show Day” on The AIR.  Even in the midst of PopCult‘s 20th Anniversary week, we have new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift for you. 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.  

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

This week Radio Free Charleston kicks off with a new track from Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, which is off their just-released new album (You can find it HERE), and after that sparkling new music, we jump back to the RFC Video Archives and bring you THREE HOURS (almost) of music originally recorded for Volume Two of Radio Free Charleston, which is more commonly known as “The Video Version of RFC.”

Probably half of these tracks were recorded at the late, lamented LiveMix Studio. Others were recorded at The Empty Glass, The Blue Parrot and various other local venues. We also have a few studio creations in the mix, but everything you hear in this program (after the first song) appeared originally in the first 76 video episodes of Radio Free Charleston, between 2006 and 2009. Hopefully this will cut through the hazy memories and show everyone how vital the music scene in Charleston is.

I tired to go for a wide variety of musical styles, and bring back some tunes that haven’t been heard on this incarnation of the radio show before.

Because so many of the artists in this week’s show do not currently have websites (and also because PopCult isn’t my only big anniversary this week)  there are no links in the playlists.

Check out this impressive playlist what’s got no links in it…

RFC V5 238

hour one
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Chasing You”
Whistlepunk “Spy Song”
Stephen Beckner “Falling Star”
Sean Richardson, Jay Lukens, Deron Sodaro “Story of the Coyote People”
Raymond Wallace “Champagne Charlie”
Under The Radar “Me, The Boys and Jack”
Appalachian Celtic Consort “Johnny Jump Up/Monaghan’s Jig”
Two Watts of Power “World”
Professor Mike “Greater Good”
Martyranny’s Collective Pulse “Breathing Banshee”
The Concept “Guitar Pick In My Kool Aid”
John Radcliff “Something’s Gotta Give”
Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
Whistlepunk 2.0 “Satellite”
Feast of Stephen “No Vaccination”
Doctor Senator “Jesus Fish”

hour two
Comparsa “La Buena Comparsa”
Seven Minutes ‘Til Midnight “Hey John, I did Imagine”
Go Van Gogh “Requiem For Pepperland”
The Synergy Collective “Looking For Heaven”
Blue Million “I’m Gonna Catch You”
Lady D “Go Higher”
Spurgie Hankins Band “Bullets and Fire”
Quick and Dirty “Jack Daniels and Razor Blades”
T.J. King “Good People”
Dog Soldier “A Christmas Song”
Casi Null “Blue Haze”
The Button Flies “Butch Bottom”
The Hellblinki Sextet “Bella Ciao”
Brain Trauma “Rock It”
The Underdog Blues Revue “What You Say”
Diablo Blues Band “The Price of a Broken Heart”

hour three
Mark Bates & The Vacancies “Michelle”
Elemental Devices “Spirit Molecule”
Punk Jazz “Little Star”
Tofujitsu “Clap On, Clap Off”
The Bible Beaters “Praise Jesus”
A Place of Solace “You Will”
WATT 4 “Empty”
The Scrap Iron Pickers “William S. Burroughs/Coal Bucket”
White Chapel District “How Heavy Is Thy Crown”
Ovada “Church of Paranoia”
The Limbs “Razor Game”
J Marinelli “Pilgrim’s Progress”
Option 22 “Soul song”

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 we offer up a new episode of The Swing Shift that does not have a playlist because I need to get this post written before I head out for a brief Wedding Anniversary mini-adventure.

However, you lucky listeners will be treated to an hour of the amazing voice of Anita O’Day, an incredible vocalist and a strong-willed woman who butted heads with some of the top figures in Big Band Swing before establishing herself as a Jazz artiste in her own right.

 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.

You can expect more posts here in PopCult today, even though it’s my eleventh Wedding Anniversary. Apparently the gift for eleven years is “more work.”