The PopCulteer
April 17, 2020

Friday afternoon The AIR brings you a third installment of Rudy & Mel’s Shut-in Show plus a new and very American episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. It all starts at 2 PM, and you can listen at The AIR website, or just hit the “play” button on this nifty virtual player…

At 2 PM you can hear the third episode of The Rudy & Mel Shut-In Show. This is one hour of your PopCulteer and his wife talking–often in a not safe for work manner–about whatever pops into our heads. It’s unrehearsed, unplanned, spontaneous talk, presented with minimal editing.

This week the rambling conversation starts out with yours truly and his lovely wife talking about TV shows to watch during the quarantine, then we veer off into a history of British alternative comedy since the 1980s, before going off the rails in a discussion about how Rudy usually hates the most popular shows on TV, and how some stand-up comedians have ulterior motives for constantly dumping on West Virginia.

And like the first two installments, it’s not really safe for work.

It looks like we’ll be doing this show for a while, so keep listening as the topics grow thin and we have to vamp more to fill the air time.

By 3 PM Friday, this show, and all of this week’s other new programming on The AIR will be available at the Podcast tab on the left side of the screen at The AIR website.

Also at 3 PM on The AIR, we bring you the new episode of our weekly salute to New Wave Music, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This is the one that should have debuted last Friday, but didn’t because of internet gremlins who were chewing at the wires inside my router.

This week Sydney brings us an All-American Mixtape, with two solid hours of great American New Wave Music. In her introduction, Sydney explains that she doesn’t want it to seem like she’s downplaying America’s contributions to New Wave, so she put together a show that collects the New World’s musical pioneers of the 1970s and 80s, with artists like The Cars, Blondie, DEVO, Wall of Voodoo, Missing Persons, Berlin and more.

Sydney tells me that she may revisit this topic in a few months, and when that happens she’ll devote one show to the East Coast, and one to the West Coast.

Check out the playlist…

The Cars “My Best Friend’s Girl”
The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
Mink Deville and Cabretta “Venus of Avenue D”
Missing Persons “Waiting For A Million Years”
Peter Ivers “Even Steven Foster”
Tom Tom Club “Genius Of Love”
The Dickies “Nights In White Satin”
The Dead Kennedys “Holiday In Cambodia”
Romeo Void “Never For Ever”
Johnathan Richman and The Modern Lovers “Roadrunner”
R.E.M. “Radio Free Europe (Live)”
Red Hot Chili Peppers “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes”
Wall of Voodoo “Call Of The West”
Berlin “The Metro (extended mix)”
Talking Heads “Psycho Killer”
DEVO “Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)”
Television “Marquee Moon”
Cyndi Lauper “Money Changes Everything”
Tommy Tutone “Jenny (867-5309)”
The B 52s “Rock Lobster”
Sparks “Achoo”
Moon Martin “Bad Case Of Lovin’ You”
Jane Weidlin “I Will Wait For You”
The Humans “I Live In The City”
Marshall Crenshaw “Someday Someway”
Blondie “One Way Or Another”

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, Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM and Thursday at Noon, 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.

That’s this week’s PopCulteer. Your humble correspondent is a bit written-out this week.  But you should still check back every day for all our regular features.