The PopCulteer
May 19, 2023

Saturday, May 20th, HBO premieres a new documentary about the legendary singer, Donna Summers, just days after the eleventh anniversary of her passing.

Love to Love You, Donna Summer is an in-depth look at the iconic artist as her voice and artistry takes her from the avant-garde music scene in Germany, to the glitter and bright lights of dance clubs in New York. A deeply personal portrait of Summer on and off stage, the film features a wealth of photographs and never-before-seen home video footage – often shot by Summer herself. Through a rich window into the surprising range of her artistry, from songwriting to painting, Love to Love You, Donna Summer explores the highs and lows of a life lived on the global stage.

The documentary was directed by Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s own daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, and it debuts tomorrow on HBO and the soon-to-be-renamed, HBO Max.

In honor of this new documentary, Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch presents her second tribute to Donna Summer on the Disco Showcase, MIRRORBALL. The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Mel first paid tribute to the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, back on the fifteenth edition of MIRRORBALL and this week she goes back to the well and brings you another solid hour of dance classics from the woman who was the female voice of the Disco era. Rather than simply rerun that earlier episode, Mel decided to put together an all-new collection, with no songs duplicated from her previous tribute.

Donna Summer was the first artist to get the MIRRORBALL spotlight with a solo show, and she created so much iconic Disco music that it was easy to put together a second tribute show. Who knows, maybe someday Mel will grace us with a third tribute to Ms. Summer.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 076
Donna Summer Tribute #2

“With Your Love”
“Walk Away”
“Spring Affair”
“Journey To The Center of Your Heart”
“Try Me, I Know We Can Make It”
“Take Me”
“Could It Be Magic”
“Happily Ever After”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM.

Friday and Saturday evenings at 9 PM, this week you’ll get a mini-marathon with the new MIRRORBALL followed by an encore of the previous tribute to Ms. Summer and a show devoted to the soundtrack of her movie debut, Thank God It’s Friday.

At 3 PM we bring you an encore of a classic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from April, 2017.  This was another show where Sydney Fileen educated the masses on the finer points of New Wave history.  Rather than send you to a link, we’ll just re-post the playlist here…

BEC 020
Oingo Boingo  “Private Life”
Missing Persons  “Hello, I Love You”
INXS  “Need You Tonight”
Vivabeat  “Man From China”
Go West  “We Close Our Eyes”
Fad Gadget  “Back To Nature”
Erasure  “The Circus”
The Clash  “Straight To Hell”
Toyah  “Blue Meaning”
Ultravox  “Rockwrock”
Fear  “Let’s Have A War”
Biizarre Leidenschnatt  “Plasticpuppen”
The Nerves  “TV Adverts”
Stiff Little Fingers  “Nobody’s Heroes (Live)”
Blitz  “Youth” Mi Sex  “21-20”
Yoko Ono  “Move On Fast”
The Cure  “10:15 Saturday Night”
The Distributors  “T.V. Me”
Kraftwerk  “Tour De France”
Simple Minds  “Someone Somewhere In Summertime”
Ian Dury and the Blockheads  “What A Waste”
The Saints  “Know Your Product”
Aerial  “Cold War Love”
Siouxsie and the Banshees  “Suburban Relapse”
Berlin  “Sex (I’m A)” (extended version)
Blue Me  “Berlin”
The Jam  “Going Underground”
Generation X  “King Rocker
Yellow Magic Orchestra  “Cosmic Surfin’”

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. Two classic episodes can also be heard every Sunday, starting at 10 AM.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content because it makes you metaphorically larger than the average human.

It’s that time of the week when we tell you that there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves tearing through 2023 at the speed of light.  This week our suggestions cover everything from music to writing workshops, retail festivals and more, and we plug events in Charleston, and everywhere from Morgantown to Fayettefille to Marietta to Huntington and even in exotic and alluring Dunbar!

A special note: ArtWalk happens again in Charleston Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM.  This free event is open to the public as art lovers can walk to all the usual suspects and take in the majesty of the art. Some galleries will have music and/or munchies as well. It’s a really cheap way to support the local scene and get out and mingle a bit…if you are so inclined.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Megan Bee. Saturday Josiah Whitley entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit or worthy cause.  Thursday at 10 PM Harper and Midwest Kind come to town.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Friday at 10 PM Luke Trimble has a full band show. The East End Ghouls have an open stage at 10 PM. Sunday it’s time for EMPTY GLASS GOT TALENT at 10 PM.  Next week they’ll have an open mic hosted by Unmanned on Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday.

Extra note: The Graveyard Mafia show, which you’ll see a graphic for below, happens at Sam’s Uptown Cafe. I was unable to find the full poster with the venue listed.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

Continue reading

For yet another Wednesday afternoon, The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could 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 a mixtape with stupider premise than last week’s show. This time I tried to put together a collection of Beatles songs, group and solo, with one song title that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Beatles Blast being only a one-hour show, I only made it to the letter “U” before I ran out of time. Maybe I’ll finish it next week, and fill out the show with songs about numbers or something.

Still, any collection of Beatles music is good listening, so you might want to tune in and see what I came up with. Some are obvious, some are not.

There’s no playlist this week because the element of surprise is pretty much the only thing this episode has going for it.

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, Mel Larch presents the original Broadway cast album for a strangely-forgotten show that one the Tony Award for Best New Musical fifty years ago.  Mel will tell you why Sugar is a relevant show today.

Right now on Broadway, one of the hottest shows is a new musical adaptation of the classic 1959 Billy Wilder movie, Some Like It Hot.

It’s doing very well at the box office and is nominated for this year’s Tony Award for Best New Musical. Interestingly enough, Sugar , which featured a book by Peter Stone, music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill, is also based on the classic 1959 Billy Wilder movie, Some Like It Hot.

Mel brings you the full show album and talks about how it’s still well-known in some parts of the world, but isn’t here in the US. Mel also gives listeners a chance to compare and contrast Sugar with the current Broadway adaptation of Some Like It Hot, with a couple of songs from the new show tacked on at the end.  Stick around to the very end of the show and you’ll hear a couple of minutes of outtakes from the 1973 recording of Sugar, just as a bit of an Easter Egg.

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 once again presents a new episode that I  haven’t produced yet, so there’s no telling what it’ll have in it.  It’s the fun of discovery!

We have come to Tuesday, which almost always lands somewhere between Monday and Wednesday, and on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston and a new edition of The Swing Shift. 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 tons of replays throughout the week.  This week we have two hours of freeform radio that mixes local, independent and not-so independent artists together. Then we devote our third hour to a seven-year-old RFC Interview with David Synn. This is because we close our second hour with a new track from David, showing off the new musical direction he’ll be exploring with his next release, early next year.

We open the show with a great new hard-rocking tune from Shake The Dead, and also have loads of other new music from WV bands like Golden and Massing. In our second hour we open with new tunes from WV artists I discovered thanks to The WV Music Detective.  They put The Wearing Hands, Socialist Book Club and Overvue on my radar this week.  I’ll be picking their brain a lot more in the coming weeks so I can keep bringing new WV artists on the show alongside the free-format, indie artists and major players.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Where possible, live links will take you to the artist’s pages so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 131

hour one
Shake The Dead “From Fury”
Golden “Smokers”
Gogol Bordello “Focus Coin”
The Dirteez “Boogie Rats”
Atomic Annie “Creeps”
Dave Strong “Nights In Jail”
John Lancaster “A Bloodrunner Conspiracy (Andre Blacksugar Remix)”
Massing “Nothing To Fear”
Novelty Island “The Desperately Strange”
Logical Fleadh “Fermoy Lasses-Noisy Curlew-Gravelwalk”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood “Expedition on Heavy Submarines”
Stark Raven “Bowl Ethereal”
Jethro Tull “The Feathered Consort”
Ovada “Church of Paranoia”
dog soldier “Blanket”

hour two
The Wearing Hands “Closer To You”
Socialist Book Club “Mountain”
Overvue “Horizon”
The Liquid Canvas “Spirit Molecule”
Under Surveillance “City Boy”
City Boy “Rat Race”
Renaissance “Deja Vu”
Payback’s a Bitch “Get Up…Go (Live at the Marquee Club, London)”
Wreckless Eric “Semaphore Signals (Live)”
Jane Aire & The Belvederes “Yankee Wheels”
Graham Parker & The Rumour “Saturday Night Is Dead”
David Synn “The Gap”
David Synn “Van Gogh’s Awakening”
David Synn “Jazz Hands”

hour three
The RFC Interview with David Synn, from 2016

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,  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 brand-new episode of The Swing Shift. This time it’s a solid hour of great Swing tunes from all around the world, chosen, seemingly, at random. It seems that way because they sort of were. I recorded and deejayed this one live with no prep. Still, it swings like crazy.

Just check out this seemingly random playlist…

The Swing Shift 142

Swingaria “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”
Lily Wilde “Rip Van Winkle”
Robbie Williams “Swing Supreme”
Mijares “Lamento Boliviano”
Pink Turtle “Hotel California”
Renée Geyer “Comin’ Home Baby”
Igor Butman “The Song Is You”
Golden Swing Band “Love Me Or Leave Me”
Big Band Gustav Brom “Sumpf”
Franck Dijeau Big Band “Sing, Sing, Sing”
Adriano Baltoba Orchestra “One Minute To One”
Big Joe and the Dynaflows “Gumbo Blues”
Django Reinhardt “Swing Guitars”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Sometimes you come up with something sorta cool when you feel totally devoid of inspiration.

This is what it was like for your humble blogger just last night when it came time to create something for this week’s Monday Morning Art.  I started playing around with old skyline photos I took in Chicago more than five years ago, found one that looked sort of weird and decided to go after it digitally.

I cropped it, rotated it, compressed it, did a little digital painting and ran it through a ton of filters and came up with what you see above.

The end result looks to me sort of like an album cover from the 1980s. You might see it on a record by a Post-Punk band with neat suits and pretentious lyrics, or maybe it would be at home on a progressive Jazz album by a group that didn’t like being photographed.  It sort of made me feel like I was playing the part of a third-rate Hipgnosis imitator.

I can almost see this album clear in my mind, by “Suave Businessmen” or “Trio Number Twenty-Nine,” sitting in the cut-out bin at Budget Tapes & Records a week after it was released.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a classic 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.

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. 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 8 PM you can hear an hour of radio sketch comedy from Canada on a new episode of Comedy Vault. These are the “Boot to the head” guys.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of the most recent shows created for The AIR, as we give you a chance to play catch-up.

Just about nine days ago, your humble blogger did his first video shoot of a band in Charleston in over four years. it was Cinco de Mayo and The Velvet Brothers were playing the outdoor pavillion at The Red Carpet.

And to give you a little added perspective, it was the first time I’d set foot in The Red Carpet since 1989.

Mel and I went and captured the first twenty minutes or so of the Velvet’s set before the smoking on the Pavillion drove us away. I would’ve loved to have stayed for the whole show, but even wearing my trusty mask, I knew I had to limit my exposure.

The boys were in fine form.  Whitney Velvet was sitting in for Dave Velvet, which meant they had a sax instead of a trumpet, and that gave the Brothers V a slightly different flavor for the evening. Maybe we’ll get to hear both of these guys Velvetting it up together someday.

Above, you get one song from the evening, Tommy Bolin’s “Savannah Moon.” The rest of these gems are being squirrled away for a future project.

Any VB is good VB. So enjoy this taste of Cinco de Mayo from The Velvet Brothers.

This week, firmly entrenched in a several-week stretch of early episodes of Radio Free Charleston that were just reposted here last fall, we bring you another classic show.

From August, 2007, this episode of RFC, “Flaming Skull Shirt,” has been missing in action for thirteen of the last sixteen years.  This episode features a video by the late, legendary darling of Dunbar, The Amazing Delores. You’ll also get to see a performance by Joe Slack, recorded at LiveMix Studio, back in the glory days.

Over the end credits we play one of the most-requested songs from the original radio incarnation of RFC. We also have a very special movie trailer, and animation from Frank Panucci’s movie, “Reperkussionz.”

This show is notable for having two segments directed by my old pal, Danny Boyd. Danny did the video for Delores, and he also did the original short film, “Coal Dust, Fairy Dust,” which I re-edited and bastardized into a cheap parody of “Brokeback Mountain.” The joke was funny fifteen years ago, trust me.

Also, I couldn’t fix it in the remastering, so the credits still have the incorrect songwriting credits for “Love Magic.” They should be Delores Boyd/Michael Lipton/Stan Lynch.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 12, 2023

We don’t have any new radio today, so join me for a few short items and one STUFF TO DO graphic that showed up too late for inclusion in yesterday’s post.

Cookies Vs. Beer

Crumbl Cookie showed up in Charleston a couple of weeks ago, and the initial response was very strong. There were lines out the door and down the strip mall where they’re located, and at its peak, there was more than a two-hour wait to get in.

Much of this is due to the clever marketing and designed “event” of Crumbl Cookie, and much of it is because the cookies are really good and word of mouth is strong.

Mel and I had tried them earlier this year on a trip to Lexington, and if you get the right cookie for you, they definitely live up to the hype. Your PopCulteer is on a diet, so I haven’t indulged much, but what I’ve tried has definitely been great (but not “stand in line for two hours” great).

Part of the hype is that they only offer six different cookies a week, and they rotate them, so that if you find what you consider to be the best cookie you’ve ever had in your life, you have one week to buy it before they replace it with something that you might barely consider food.

This has built up a mystique and a cult-like following, and it’s also created a backlash. Recently the NY Times (paywalled) wrote about online groups that actively hate and despise Crumbl Cookie.

I guess it takes all kinds. Some folks get their kicks out of hating cookies. Go figure.

More puzzling to me, however, was the reaction of local food blogger, Steven J. Keith.

Keith is “The Food Guy,” and his work is informative and entertaining, and it’s a great way to keep up with the local restaurant scene, especially for those of us who have yet to return to dining out because of the pandemic. You can read Keith’s blog HERE.

When Crumbl Cookie opened, Keith wrote the following: “I’ll definitely check it out once the crowds die down, but I honestly don’t get the hype. I mean, there are lots of places around town – including a handful of locally owned businesses – that have been baking incredible cookies for years. I get that there’s a shiny new place in town that many folks can’t wait to try, but I don’t get waiting in long lines for … cookies.”

Taken out of context there, Keith’s statement seems perfectly reasonable. However, if you read his work regularly, you know that Keith instantly vaults into orgasmic cartwheels any time somebody opens a “shiny new” micro-brewery in Charleston (which seems to happen two or three times a week).

Half the country doesn’t drink beer at all, but I’ll bet way more than half the county eats cookies. We get one national cookie chain in Charleston, and Keith goes out of his way to diminish it, but he never seems to go for a single column without raving about some new beer place, or the beer selection at a new restaurant.

Charleston doesn’t need any more freaking breweries. We’re in a boom period for beer now, but there’s going to be an inevitable bust, and then we’ll have empty storefronts all over town…again.

Crumbl Cookie is the first national cookie chain to locate in Charleston since Great American Cookie deserted the Charleston Town Center many years ago. I agree that we have lots of great local bakeries, but none of them make the kind of atomic calorie bombs that roll out of Crumbl Cookie’s factories six days a week.

Count me firmly in the “More cookies, less beer” camp. For the record, I’m not a beer drinker…in case you couldn’t tell. You guys can divvy up my share. I’ll be over here enjoying my one-fourth of a cookie.

News About News

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the WCHS/Fox-11 News programs.

I like the people who work there. I have friends on the crew, and the on-air talent, especially on their morning show, is a collection of very likable, competent, hard-working people. It’s a nice mix of experienced veteran newscasters and promising young talents who will likely be snapped up by a station in a larger market once they get a little more airtime under their belt.

But the stations are owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, a far, far right propaganda media organization that makes FOX News look like MSNBC in comparison.

Sinclair is so extreme that, years ago when ABC aired the Steven Speilberg movie, Saving Private Ryan, Sinclair forbade their ABC stations from running it, because they felt it was too “anti-war.”

So while it’s nice to have the Eyewitness News morning crew covering the weather, giving the traffic reports and talking about local stories, they devote an inordinate amount of time to highly-slanted and questionable coverage of national stories. They either get these stories from FOX News, or from Sinclair’s own “The National Desk.”

For instance, every day this week the lead story on our local newscast was about the “crisis at the border” because Title 42 was expiring. This is a manufactured non-story that will evaporate just like all the imaginary caravans of migrants that never showed up in previous years.

Keep in mind that the border is over a thousand miles away from West Virginia, and we have the lowest immigrant population of any state in the union. Alaska and Hawaii get more immigrants than we do.

While shoving that non-story down their viewers throats every half-hour, news about the former president being found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation and a Republican Congressman being charged with over a dozen criminal counts was relegated to a crawl at the bottom of the screen.

So it was interesting to learn this week that Sinclair Broadcasting is having severe financial issues stemming from their purchase of the former Fox Regional Sports Network. Reportedly they lost billions of dollars on it last year before filing chapter 11 bankruptcy for the newly-named “Diamond Sports Group” just a couple of months ago. These are the cable and satellite stations currently operating under the name, “Bally’s.”

This has put Sinclair in serious cost-cutting mode, and they have eliminated local newrooms entirely in five cities, WNWO Toledo, Ohio; KTVL Medford, Ore.; KPTM Omaha, Neb.; WGFL Gainesville, Fla.; and KPTH Sioux City, Iowa. All of these stations had all their local news replaced by The National Desk, which Sinclair launched a few years ago in an attempt to create a FOX News-like channel for their over-the-air digital subchannels.

The entire news departments at those stations were laid off. At five additional stations, the local newscasts in mornings and at noon were replaced with The National Desk, with many staffers losing their jobs.

I fear that, if Sinclair continues tightening their belts, we may lose our local Charleston news. WSAZ and WOWK do decent enough jobs, but their coverage includes huge swaths of stuff about Ohio and Kentucky, and that isn’t quite as useful when you just want to know how bad traffic is in the capital city.

My fear may be unfounded. We do have a few things going for us locally. West Virginia has legalized online sports betting, and as annoying as those commercials are, they seem to be subsidizing all our local news programs. We’re also a state that has lots of dark money from Super PACs flowing into it, and we have as many TV commercial lawyers as Charleston has new breweries opening next month.

If Sinclair drops the local news here, the ratings will plummet and those advertisers will flee. The fact that we have three vibrant local TV news organizations probably means that Sinclair couldn’t afford to desert this market. If they put the zombie-like anchors of The National Desk on instead of local news, people will just flip the channel.

But, if Sinclair is forced to cut costs further…say if their bankruptcy plan doesn’t fix their nearly nine billion dollar debt, they may decide to lay off a lot of dedicated broadcasters in an effort to stay afloat.

And that is one more reason why media consolidation sucks, and the FCC should reinstate the ownership limits that were abolished in 1981.

For more on Sinclair Broadcasting, watch this…

One More Show

This graphic didn’t show up until late Thursday. Here’s another cool show with some folks I’ve played on RFC…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every damn day.

It’s that time of the week when we tell you that there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves tearing through 2023 at the speed of light. Despite it being Mother’s Day this Sunday, there don’t seem to be too many themed events for us to suggest. But we still have a lot of good things to tell you about.

We start with a reminder about the latest show by Charleston’s most prolific playwright.

Charleston’s Contemporary Youth Arts Company opened a new gothic horror drama by playwright, Dan Kehde, “The Good Ship Barnacle” last week. This show will still be running it May  12 and 13 at 7 PM.

To say it’s a different kind of play is an understatement. It’s the story of a young woman’s apparent battle with her dark past as she is furloughed by her brother from a mental institution and taken to the isolated cabin of her childhood. Haunted by the voice of a kidnapped and murdered childhood playmate, Allie Burroughs, with the often unwilling aid of her older brother, relives the darker moments of her troubled life as she unravels the truth among twenty five years of lies and delusions.

The play features the extraordinary talents of local veteran actors Amanda Skidmore, Matty Connelly and Abby Connett. Not recommended for anyone under the age of twelve, this intense drama would probably be considered “PG 14” for adult language, situations and implied violence.

$15 Adult. $10 Student/Senior. Tickets are available at the door or online.

The New River Gorge Festival is back May 12 to 14 at ACE Adventure Resort in West Virginia. Folks can celebrate one of Earth’s oldest rivers that outdoorsy peoples all love to paddle, hike, bike, and explore.  Or you can take part in a film festival, shop vendors, enjoy live music and experience ACE’s Adventure Zones. Plus there is a rolling rodeo and race for whitewater paddlers on the New River and a river cleanup Sunday with New River Conservancy. There will be live music featuring Litz on Friday night, while Saturday it’s Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Magnolia Boulevard, Shawn Benfield & The Resolution, Moonlight Mile and Ranford Almond.  Ticket info can be found HERE.

For those of us who prefer indoorsy stuff, live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Minor Swing. Saturday Arthur Deras entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery (details in the graphic below).

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit or worthy cause.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Saturday Fatetteville’s Aura Rising plays at 10 PM. Sunday the post-Mountain Stage Jam happens around 10 PM.  Next week they’ll have an open mic hosted by Unmanned on Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Plus there are shows listed below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

Continue reading

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could 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 a mixtape with an admittedly stupid premise. “A Day With The Beatles” is a collection of songs by The Beatles (and solo) with the word “day” in the title.

The exception to that rule is the opening cut, which does not have “day” in the title, but which does mention six of the seven days in its lyrics.

Instead of just using the original versions of the songs, I’ve tossed a few covers into the mix, and one song, “A Hard Day’s Night” turns up twice, with vastly different versions by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Goldie Hawn. There’s also a healthy dose of obscure solo album cuts by the boys, since I severely over-estimated how many songs the band had with “Day” in the title.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 093

The Beatles “Lady Madonna”
Paul McCartney “Another Day”
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “A Hard Day’s Night”
Jimi Hendrix “Day Tripper”
Procol Harum “Eight Days A Week”
John Lennon “One Day At A Time”
Ringo Starr “Gone Are The Days”
George Harrison “The Day The World Gets Round”
Paul McCartney “A Fine Day”
Dave McClean “Yesterday”
Ringo Starr “Night And Day”
Goldie Hawn “A Hard Days Night”
The Beatles “That’ll Be The Day”
John Lennon “News Of The Day”
Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello “That Day Is Done”
The Beatles “Good Day Sunshine”
Wings “Daytime/Nighttime Suffering”
The Beatles “A Day In The 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, Mel Larch presents a  collection of performances from new musicals, with one 72-year-old ringer thrown in for good measure.

The show opens with the preview single from the new Josh Groban led revival of Sweeny Todd.

Following that, Mel tells you about three interesting new musicals, My Heart Says Go, KPOP and Standing At The Sky’s End.

My Heart Says Go follows the powerful story of a first-generation college student, Indigo. In hopes to become a singer-songwriter, he defies his father and drops out of medical school.  KPOP was a Broadway Musical that, sadly, did not make it out of 2022. The show was presented as a group of Korean music executives pitching a new batch of stars to America.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an Olivier Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Richard Hawley and a book by Chris Bush. Hawley is a one-time member of the band, Pulp, and is a highly-respected singer/songwriter/producer in the UK. The musical (named after Hawley’s 2012 album of the same name) begins in 1961 and tells the story of three families over sixty years living in Park Hill, a council housing estate in Sheffield and features both new and existing songs by Hawley.

Mel wraps up the show with  trio of short tunes from Top Banana, a musical with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft. It premiered on Broadway in 1951 and was written as a star vehicle for comedian Phil Silvers, who played the host of a television variety show program. Silvers won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical in 1952. Top Banana is a classic farce, set in the world of early television, with lots of comedy potshots taken at the then-new medium. It’s a hilarious romp and a true star vehicle for Phil Silvers.

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  presents a new episode that I  haven’t produced yet, so there’s no telling what it’ll have in it. .