The PopCulteer
November 6, 2020

Friday On The AIR

It’s fun with flashbacks day Friday on The AIR.  I’m not talking about reruns here. On a new MIRROBALL special Mel Larch salutes one of the top bands of the Disco era, Chic. Meanwhile, Sydney Fileen gives us a time capsule of New Wave Music from the pivotal year of 1978 on Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Friday afternoon on The AIR. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on this embedded radio player…

At 2 PM we present an AIR Music Special, the fourteenth edition of MIRRORBALL, hosted by Mel Larch. This salutes the brilliance of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards and their band Chic, with the following tunes…

“Dance, Dance, Dance”
“Strike Up The Band”
“Real People”
“Take It Off”
“Open Up”
“Burn Hard”:
“Bone (Funny)”
“Flash Back”
“Rebels We Are”
“Le Freak”
“Good Times”

You can tune in at 2 PM and hear our latest MIRRORBALL.  MIRRORBALL will also be replayed Friday night at 10 PM, Saturday at 5 PM, Sunday at 11 PM and Tuesday at 1 PM. We’ll probably sneak in a few more airings during the week.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen treats us to another mixtape look at a specific year of the New Wave era. This time it’s 1978. This was the year that saw debut albums by The Police, DEVO, The Cars and our national treasure Kate Bush. Also in this year were sophomore efforts by Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Boomtown Rats, and the first two albums by XTC, plus 1978 also brought us memorable early releases from The Ramones, The Stranglers, Souixsie and The Banshees, The Cure, The Clash and more.

Check out the playlist here…

BEC 064

The Police “So Lonely”
The Cars “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”
Kate Bush “Wuthering Heights”
DEVO “Come Back Jonee”
The Ramones “I Wanted Everything”
The Boomtown Rats “Rat Trap”
The Clash “All The Young Punks”
Siouxsie and the Banshees “Switch”
Ultravox “Can’t Stay Long”
The Cure “Killing An Arab”
The Godz “Gotta Keep Runnin'”
The Jam “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight”
Tim Curry “Brontosaurus”
Elvis Costello and The Attractions “Pump It Up”
Lene Lovich “Tonight”
The Stranglers “Nice and Sleazy”
Nick Lowe “(I Love The Sound of) Breaking Glass”
The Buzzcocks “Fast Cars”
Wreckless Eric “Whole Wide World”
Kraftwerk “The Model”
Talking Heads “Take Me To The River”
Blondie “One Way Or Another”
Japan “Adolescent Sex”
The Dickies “I’m OK You’re OK”
Be Bop Deluxe “Electrical Language”
The Adverts “No Time To Be 21”
Patti Smith “Because The Night”
Sham 69 “Angels With Dirty Faces”
X-Ray Spex “Germfree Adolescents”
XTC “This Is Pop”

As Sydney says in her intro, “1978 was the year that punk grew beyond three chords and evolved into a musically diverse and powerful energy force that revitalized music well into the 1980s.”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check back later Friday for three more installements of The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide. While we’re running the gift guide, we will be suspending The RFC Flashback and Sunday Evening Videos. But that means you’ll get three or four gift guide entries each day all through the weekend.