The PopCulteer
June 27, 2025

Roughly once a year we have a harmonic (and rhythmic) convergence as both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to the music that makes you dance.  Just when the heat and humidity make you feel dead, music helps you feel alive on The AIR Friday afternoon as Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes. MIRRORBALL is always all about dancing, but this week Sydney’s Big Electric Cat presents part eight of the New Wave Dance Mix Mixtape and gets into the dance-instigating act as well.

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.

Rejoice and prepare to feel four or five decades younger (where applicable).

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch once again presents a selection of the best and brightest of the classic Disco era. This time it’s a new batch of rare club mixes with a Disco stew of huge hits and underground classics.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist. It’s got filled to the rim with Disco…

MIRRORBALL 117

Rose Royce “Do Your Dance”
Foxy “The Way You Do The Things You Do”
Donald Byrd “Love Has Come Around”
Five Special “Why Leave Us Alone”
Gino Soccio “I Wanna Take You There (Now)”
Slave “Feel My Love”
C.L. Blast “I Wanna Get Down”
Frankie Valli “Swearin’ To God”

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 coincidentally turns out to be the eighth Big Electric Cat mixtape of New Wave 12″ extended remixes.

Combined with MIRRORBALL, that makes three solid hours of decades-old dance music, so if you see folks approaching retirement age getting their boogie down, you know why.

This time Sydney decided to dig out some more bizarre mixes from some of the bigger names in New Wave, so you might recognize some of the songs, but not the way you’ll hear them here.

Check out the playlist (all extended remixes)…

BEC 129

Yazz & The Plastic Population “The Only Way Is Up”
DEVO “Disco Dancer”
Billy Idol “Flesh For Fantasy”
Bananarama “Only Your Love”
INXS “I Need You Tonight”
808 State “Pacific 707”
Men At Work “Down Under”
Toyah “Moon Migration”
Malcolm McLaren & The Bootzilla Orchestra “Waltz, Darling”
The Beloved “The Sun Rising”
The B 52s “Love Shack”
B-Movies “Nowhere Girl”
Sisters of Mercy “Lucretia My Reflection”
Pete Shelley “Homosapien”
Bronski Beat with Marc Almond “I Feel Love/Johnny Remember Me”
Kate Bush “The Big Sky”
New Order “Blue Monday”

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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer.  As your humble blogger has been bravely fighting off a sinus infection of the most nastiest variety this week, the promised photos from The Marx Toy Show will be delayed until the week after July 4th, when the plan is to bring you a bonus photo essay every weekday as we play catch-up from our recent travels. Check back for our regular features every day.

We start our trek through STUFF TO DO this week with a weather advisory. As I write this, it’s hot…unbearably hot and humid. And I’m writing this at 4:30 AM. This weekend we are expected to get a very small amount of relief from the heat due to spotty and potentially fierce thunderstorms. It might be a good idea to plan for indoor events. At least stay hydrated,

We have a few unusual items this week. The first of those is a graphic for a great toy show…in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. It’s not exactly in or around Charleston, but a lot of regular PopCult readers will be interested, and your PopCulteer is pencilling in a trip to this show next year…

Also of note: Saturday at 9:45 PM at the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema, below Taylor Books, there will be a 50th anniversary screening of Monthy Python and the Holy Grail.

And our local recommended show this week is at Pumzi’s. To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. This Friday starting at 7 PM Pumzi’s plays host to a special benefit show as several bands come together to raise money to help repair the damages that The Blue Parrot, a beloved local music venue, sustained back in March. Jerks, Friendly Fire and GLDN (doing an acoustic set) will perform, with 100% of the proceeds going to help restore The Blue Parrot.

Oh…and as for being indoors…you can’t get more indoors than staying home and watching YouTube. Our old friends, Frenchy and the Punk, premiere a new live video taken at Dark Force Fest on May 2nd, 2025 of the song “Midnight Garden!” Join them at 7:30 PM this Friday June 27th on the Frenchy and the Punk Youtube Channel!

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 Smoke signals.  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 it 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 Matthew Malinoski is listed for Friday, and Saturday Luke Molina entertains the crowd at the air-conditioned bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

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. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

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.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

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.

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.

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…

Continue reading

It’s the last week of a blisteringly hot June and Wednesday afternoon on The AIR , we bring you a fresh new episode of Beatles Blast filled with the Fab Four being…weird. 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 takes an hour to confuse and astound you with a collage mixtape collection of The Beatles at their weirdest.

Of course, I mean “weird” in a good way. You know, it’s weird people who change the world.

Some folks would call this music “experimental” or “avante-garde,” but I think The Beatles would cheerfully admit that they enjoyed being weird much of the time.

Of the course of the hour, you will hear three of the weirdest tracks recorded by the band, plus some wildly bizarre recordings by the solo members.  You will hear obscure b-sides, tracks from experimental albums excerpts from multimedia events and home recordings of the lads just screwing about.

Being a weird show, we do not have a playlist. You’ll just have to tune in to see how weird the Beatles could get. Who knows? We might even do this again in a few weeks.

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

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch serves up  a couple of recent encore episodes, just to keep you on your twinkle-toes.

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 marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning starting at 9 AM, 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 a classic episode that presents a collection of novelty gems from the soon to retire Dr. Demento.

Get ready for three hours of largely brand-new music and a creepily low-pitched announcer on a new Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear today on The AIR.  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, (all times EDT) with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

It’s another free-format extravaganza as we present three hours of incredible music, along with an announcer (that’s me) who has too much fun with his unnaturally low voice that he got from a summer cold.

In this show you will hear brand new music from Golden, Brian Diller, Gloria Gaynor, J Marinelli, Novelty Island, The M.F.B., The Settlement, Byzantine, Madness,  Sparks, Mr. Romance, Roger Waters and more.

You will also get mini-sets of different styles of music like Ska, Spookiness, Long songs and music with the word “June” somehow involved.

Plus you get the RFC debut of June Swoon, who I got to see last Thursday at The Shop in Dunbar (on the bill with Hello June and Nolan Ellis Collins). It was a great night out and we made it home before 11 PM. I talk a lot about that in the show.

I also talk a lot about having an unfamiliar voice come out of my mouth due to a narsty summer cold. Expect the jokes to get tired quickly.

Check out this playlist, and follow the links to the artist’s pages (where possible).

RFC V5 229

hour one
Golden “Gotta Let It Go”
Brian Diller “The Finding”
Novelty Island “Foam Animals”
Gloria Gaynor “Happy Tears”
The M.F.B “Suga Boogie”
Garbage “Have We Met (The Void)”
The Settlement “The One That Got Away”
June Swoon “Working Dog”
Hello June “Dance (M. Walker Remix)”
Lady June “Tunion”
Middle of June “Dancing In The Moonlight”
The B 52s “Junebug”
China Crisis “June Bride”

hour two
Byzantine “Harbinger”
J. Marinelli “Hillbilly Effigy”
Matt Berry “Stay on The Ground”
Madness “in the Hall of The Mountain King”
Sari Ska Band “Robota”
No Doubt “Total Hate ’95”
Max Headroom & The Car Parks “Don’t Panic”
Ghoulbox “Rats In The Morgue”
June Swoon “Water Baby”
Clownhole “Heads On Fire”
Frenchy And The Punk “Like In A Dream”
Messer Chups “Kiss of the Night”
The Heavy Editors “Same Ole Way”
Dice Johnson“Spachik”
Mr. Romantic “What’ll I Do?”

hour three
Brian Diller“The Last Train”
The Settlement“Shakedown Street (live)”
Roger Waters “Us and Them (live)”
Causa Sui “Moledo”
Sparks “My Devotion”

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 the most recent episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift. I had planned to do a new episode, but my voice wouldn’t hold up.

 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.

This week’s art is a quick ‘n’ sloppy acrylic study based on a series of photos I took out the window of an Amtrak sleeper car as we were making our way through Indiana on our way to Chicago a few weeks ago.

It was about 5 AM and we had just pulled out of the long stop at the Indy Amtrak station.  I was awake because I don’t really sleep too well on the train, and the skies had a wild orange glow due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that had been blowing our way. On this trip, Mel and I were sharing images with our friend Pixie, in Liverpool, and I sent her this with a comment that I was thinking about doing a painting based on it. She was very supportive of the idea.

In fact, she sort or ordered me to do it.

In the photos the sun is pretty consistent, but the backgrounds changed, so I took elements of several of them and then ignored the way the sun lit up all the dirt on the outside of the window. This is acrylic on illustration board. At some point I will revisit this and do a larger version on canvas. I actually toned down the orange here. The sky was shockingly orange, but as I progressed, I wasn’t happy with the color balance, so I cheated a little and let some blue sky peek through.

When I do the larger version, I suspect I’ll be including more detail and using more contrast in the non-sun parts.

If you want to see this here art bigger for some reason, look HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of what was supposed to run Saturday morning, recapping the previous week’s shows on The AIR. A technical SNAFU screwed up the order of shows and left some out, so I decided to have a do-over.

Above you see this year’s PopCult video for The Marx Toy Show.  It’s a little shorter than usual because we had some technical issues with some of the footage, but it’s still a fun little look at a wonderful toy show.

The Marx Toy & Train Show, a great collector’s convetion held every year at the The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia, has become a tradition for PopCult over the last fifteen years or so.  Videography is by your humble blogger, along with Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch. I handled the editing and narration (which was ad-libbed after guzzling enough Chloroseptic to make me sound somewhat normal, so don’t judge it too harshly).

Because of the technical issues we won’t have a “raw footage” video this year, but I think it’s still a fun video souvenir of the show.

As I mentioned, yours truly was able to croak out a bit of narration and you can get a quick look at the toys and people who make The Marx Toy Show such a cool event. You’re going to get another batch of photos below, but with your PopCulteer still under the weather from whatever bug it is that lowered my voice five octaves, I may have to save a few for later in the week. As I write this, it’s almost time to drug myself to sleep.

Check out these fine photos, in the meantime…

Registration time!

Dave and Donna Roth

Not-so-Secret Toy Agent, Jay Horowitz, with his collectible James Bond set

Wheeling and dealing in Wheeling

Mark Hegeman, who always has an incredible array of vintage toys

Tom Heaton of The Vintage Toy Room, and author of many great Johnny West and Marx action figure books

Scott Stewart (left) the star of last week’s Sunday Evening Video, and one of the stars of the show with his Heroes of the West and Chuckwagon Addition 3D printed sets

The Johnny West room was always abuzz

There were playsets as far as the eye could see

A Marx Classic

We leave you with a really cool Hotel Playset (don’t tell anybody, but it’s not by Marx).

With that your humble blogger is off to medicate himself to sleep. We will bring you another batch of photos from The Marx Toy Show sometime in the next week.

For the past two months The RFC Flashback has gone back to the most ambitious run of episodes in Radio Free Charleston history. In June, 2011 I decided to try and do something sort of crazy. I’d managed to crank out Radio Free Charleston on a weekly basis before, which was no mean feat since the show was basically produced by me alone, with camera help from my now-wife Mel Larch and occasional help from other friends. For FestivALL 2011, I managed to produce eight episodes of Radio Free Charleston in under two weeks. This week we bring you the big finish.

This is the longest of our 2011 FestivALL shows, clocking in at over 33 minutes, and it has the most footage mixed in with the music and theater clips. Our performers include Joseph Hale, T.J. King and The Kingfish Five, Charleston Stage Company, Kathleen Coffee, Contemporary Youth Arts Company, The Velvet Nomads, WATT 4, Christopher Nelson and Albert Perrone. Intercut with the musical performances you will find scenes from The Art Parade, The Art Fair, The Antique Fair, Dizzy Doc’s Balloon Sculpture, Eamon Hardiman’s silent film, The Peer to Pier project and a few other surprises.

Production of these shows was a bit of a marathon for your PopCulteer. I could not have done this without the invaluable help, support and assistance of Melanie Larch, who was by my side running camera for most of the production of these episodes. I also want to thank our additional camerpeople, Steven Allen Adams and Liz McCormick, who pitched in to help record The Derick Kirk Memorial Concert, and Lee Harrah who was our still photographer on the final Saturday of FestivALL.

Next week in this space you’ll see our fifth anniversary special.

Mel and Rudy at The Shop

The PopCulteer
June 20, 2025

Last night your PopCulteer and his wife did something that we hadn’t done in a long time.

We went out to hear a local band play, and we didn’t shoot any video and just took the time to appreciate the music and enjoy ourselves. And we had a great time.

That may not seem like a big deal. Back in the heyday of the Radio Free Charleston video show I used to go out four or five nights a week to record bands in various local venues, and then I’d turn those trips into bits of the show, but when I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis back in 2016, the meds they put me on sort of put an end to staying out late bar-hopping to capture video.

Hello June’s Sarah Rudy, who is the reason we made it out last night

Last night was a perfect storm of events that got me out of the house. First, the venue was The Shop, in Dunbar…a mere ten blocks or so from my house. I’ve been curious about this place since they opened a few years ago, but never had the time to check them out.

Second, I’ve been a big fan of Hello June since the late Lynne Sandy turned me on to them years ago, and they’ve been mainstays of the RFC radio show on The AIR ever since, but I’d never actually met them in person. When their frontwoman, Sarah Rudy, sent me a Facebook message inviting me to go see them, it was a bit of a no-brainer.

Black light art at The Shop

The bonus third factor is that The Shop has not fallen into the late-starting trap that bedevils most of the Charleston music venues. We were able to go hear three terrific musical acts and still made it home before 11 PM. That’s about half an hour before the first bands tend to go on stage in Charleston.

This was the first time we’d been in building where The Shop is located in probably more than a dozen years. Back in another life it was “The Tank” and we’d go there after IWA East Coast Wrestling shows to hang out with our friends, and meet the guest wrestlers like The Blue Meanie, Spike Dudley, Eugene and Johnny Fairplay.

Nolan Ellis Collins

The building has been completely redone and looks nothing like it used to. It’s a pretty great performance space, with black light, cool wall decor, a fantastic stage and sound system, and actual seating…which is a big selling point for your aging blogger.

The show it’self was a blast. Nolan Ellis Collins, whom I’d never had the chance to hear before, despite me plugging him several times in STUFF TO DO, is a great singer/songwriter, and his slacker/stoner between song banter had the crowd in stitches. He offered up some clever originals and choice cover or two to a very receptive group of fans.

Later in the show he was harrassed by the audience for not having any merch for sale.

June Swoon, redefining “bar-hopping”

June Swoon is a Los Angeles based singer and songwriter with a killer band, and you will be hearing them in the future on the Radio Free Charleston radio show on The AIR.

Her backing band was incredible, and sounded to me like the classic  early 1980s Pretenders line up of James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon and Martin Chamers. Swoon’s songwriting and voice is powerful and original and I’m looking forward to hearing the new music they have in the pipeline for release later in the year.

They made it to the show and captivated the audience despite having a flat tire in Kentucky eariler in the day. June even hopped on the bar near the end of her set.

June Swoon and band

I was already a big fan of Hello June. Sarah Rudy is a true WV original, on par with the best songwriters this state has produced, and a powerful singer and guitarist. Hearing her perform live is quite a treat, and I recommend anybody see Hello June if they get the chance.

The headliners, Hello June

It was wonderful to finally get to meet Sarah in the real world, even though my annual summer cold has me going around telling people “Hey, it’s great to meet you…this is not my real voice.”

I sound sort of like a cross between the old Men’s Wearhouse announcer and Lurch. If that doesn’t clear up in a day or so, this year’s Marx Toy Show video will be narrated by my lovely wife, Mel Larch.

Back to last night’s show…it probably reignited my desire to shoot video of bands again. To be honest, that never really went away. Whenever I hear live music, I feel sort of naked without a video camera. Last year when we went to Chicago to see Thompson Twins Tom Bailey and Thomas Dolby I couldn’t resist whipping out the phone, and that resulted in the apocryphal “Radio Free Chicago” episode we did.

Even Mel spent much of the night thinking about the logistics of where we’d stand if we were shooting video at The Shop. I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll be going back.

It does feel weird not have shot any video last night, though.

Cool event in Huntington

Coming in over the transom too late to be included in STUFF TO DO this week is a show happening during Huntington’s Art Walk, tonight from 5 PM to 8 PM. Our old friend, Douglas Imbrogno, has a new musical project with Jim Probst and Ray Garnett: Through The Trees: An Electrified Folk-Chamber ensemble.

You can hear them at The Gazebo at Heritage Station, with the details in this handy graphic…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features and fresh content every day, even when your humble blogger is bedeviled by vocal issues.

Next week’s radio shows should be really interesting.

Originally I had planned to bring you a massive photo essay and the annual Marx Toy Show video today, but the fates conspired to delay that a few days.

Today we’re bringing you ten quick photos, and the plan is to have the video ready on Sunday, hopefully after my power stops going out every five minutes and I regain enough of my voice to narrate it. Three weeks of ducking in and out of air conditioning finally caught up to me and I have the type of summer cold that drops your voice three or four octaves. If this doesn’t clear up by the weekend, expect the Marx video to sound like it’s narrated by Thurl Ravenscroft.

We had a lot of fun at this year’s Marx Toy Show at Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, and we’ll be sharing much more of it with you this weekend.

I did remember take plenty of photos of the folks at the event, as well as the toys, plus we’ll have our usual video recap.  after that, with any luck, I can dig into the huge backlog of cool stuff I’ve done, photographed and shot video of over the last month.

For now, here’s ten random pics from the event, carefully selected and captioned while your humble blogger is coughing his head off and chugging Ale 8 One.

It’s always cool to catchup with Dave Roth and leave him with some of my money in exchange for cool vintage Johnny West Stuff. This photo was swiped from his FB page.

Just a fraction of the cool toy trains for sale.

A candid shot of Allen, from the Kruger Street Museum, in conversation with Jay Horowitz, the current owner of Marx Toys, in the Johnny Room at the show.

A small part of Dave Roth’s Johnny West goodies.

Rick Provence created these incredible “Ghost Johnny” figures, animals and accessories.

A look at the contents of Glen Ridenour’s Cape Canavral playset.

Another cool train set

A tiny sliver of the cool stuff Mark Hegeman had for sale.

Things to ponder when you have unlimited money and space.

We leave you with an impressive stack of playsets. We will have a much more extensive photo essay and video on Sunday.

There’s a bunch of cool events happening this weekend, between Juneteenth, West Virginia Day, Charleston’s ArtWalk, the Summer Solstice and tons of other Summer-beginning gems, so here’s a few cool things you can can find this weekend if you’re looking for STUFF TO DO  in and around Charleston, West Virginia.

Things start out big on Thursday. It’s Juneteenth and despite our backwards Governor refusing to give State Workers the day off, there will be observations all over the place, and some will also bleed over into West Virginia Day the next day.  Charleston’s ArtWalk begins at 5 PM, Thursday.  Then at 7 PM, it’s a show I plan to attend at The Shop, in Dunbar…

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 Twitter.  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 it 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 don’t have anybody listed for Friday, but Saturday Minor Swing will bring Hot Jazz to the Taylor Books coffee shop. Sunday there’s bonus music from 1 PM to 4 PM from Jazz duo, Ray + Jon.

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. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

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.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

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. This Friday at 7 PM you can hear Better From Here, Roy F. Bush and McKenna Hope.

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.

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…