All this week  have brought you marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.

Beatles Blast is another show hosted by yours truly. I am a true Beatles fanatic, and putting together an hour of music by The Beatles, together and solo, along with cover tunes, songs by their relatives and music on which they guested is a complete labor of love for me.

Today’s marathon will be a bit shorter, only 17 hours, because we run The Swing Shift every Sunday at midnight. To make up for that, we’ll bring you ten more hours of Beatles Blast a week from tomorrow in The Monday Marathon. You can hear Beatles Blast every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week and a mini-marathon Sunday afternoons.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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. 

Our newest Music Specialty Program, and one of the most well-received, Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL celebrates the classic era of Disco music from the mid 1970s into the early 1980s. If it seems like we’re going to dance to the end of the world, why not do it while you’re shaking your booty?

MIRRORBALL can be heard every Friday at 2 PM with replays throughout the following week. In addition there is a weekly mini-marathon which will be changing nights in the near future,  but for now can be heard Saturday nights at 9 PM.

For the last several and next couple of weeks The RFC Flashback is going 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.

FestivALL 2011 had wrapped, but it still lived on here in the PopCult blog with part six of our exhaustive coverage.  In this week’s installment we revisit “Saint Stephen’s Dream: A Space Opera,” which was staged by WestVirginiaVille.com at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation last weekend. That is Douglas Imbrogno in the photo accompanying this post.

We bring you a bit of the beginning of Douglas Imbrogno’s magnum opus, and we mix in Austin Susman’s entry in the Silent Film Competition.  The show wraps up with Kentucky chanteuse Sasha Colette, performing in Davis Park. Our march through these eight FestivALL 2011 episodes of RFC continues next week as this year’s FestivALL is already a fond memory, having delighted audiences last weekend.

The PopCulteer
June 6, 2025

The reason this is not “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” is because I’m still doing it.

If you’ve been wondering where our regular features, like a new RFC or STUFF TO DO have been this week, well…I’m writing this in Chicago. Last Saturday we were in Louisville, for WonderFest. The original plan was to go to Lexington for shopping after WonderFest and then drive home Sunday.

However, Mel got invited to attend a tech rehearsal at Steppenwolf Theater the following Tuesday…in Chicago, so plans were changed. I cranked out ten days worth of PopCult posts and scheduled marathons on The AIR, and had them all done by May 29th.

Saturday we got to see Greg Nicotero and Joe Alves talk about a little project that Alves was in charge of fifty years ago…building Bruce The Shark, from JAWS,, and then we high-tailed it straight home Saturday night, hopped the Amtrak Cardinal to Chicago Sunday evening, and we are still enjoying the holy heck out of the City of Wind.

Tuesday night we got to see part of a very complicated tech rehearsal for a play called You Will Get Sick, starring one of Mel’s acting heroes, Amy Morton.

In fact, we were to go back to Steppenwolf Thursday night to see the first preview performance of You Will Get Sick, but it was postponed, so we will see it Friday night, and because I now have time to blog from the road, you fine folks are getting a PopCulteer this week.  The tech rehearsal was only for part of the show, so I only have a tiny idea of what to expect. I’m sure it’ll be incredible, and I’ll likely write a little abouut it next week, but since it’s a preview performance, I won’t be doing a full review.

I will be sharing some photo essays over the next week, in addition to our regular features (including a new Radio Free Charleston, loaded with new music).

And speaking of photos…how about we share a few of them from the trip so far?

Expect a bunch of photos of cool people and custom models from WonderFest

Dennis Prince, Greg Nicotero and Joe Alves, jawing about JAWS.

Meanwhile….in Chicago.

We finally made it back to Rotofugi, and you can expect a photo essay of the wonders of designer toy coolness.

We leave you with some of the booty I scored at Rotofugi and Laurie’s Planet of Sound. You could probably guess my age from this picture.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. We’re back in town Sunday and back to normal Monday. Check back for all our regular features.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.   

Legendary London DJ Sydney Fileen presents our second program from the Haversham Recording Institute, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This two hour weekly megadose of pure New Wave music will whisk you back to the days of neon, skinny ties, big hair, Swatch watches, and Farfisa organs.  Sydney’s Big Electric Cat can be heard every Friday at 3:00 PM, with repeats throughout the following week.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.   

Today our marathon is devoted The Swing Shift. After two very well-received episodes of Radio Free Charleston International devoted to Swing Music, I decided to go all-in and do an all-Swing program. This also tied in with some nice synergy involving our music license, and now The Swing Shift is among our most-listened-to programs.  The Swing Shift is a weekly one-hour show that mixes together the best swing music from the last century into a concise, swinging, blast of jumpin’ music. We mix Swing hsitory with brand-new music and even some genre-bending experiments…but they all still Swing.

can normally be heard Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays throughout the week and overnight marathons Thursday and Friday beginning at midnight.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.   

Mel Larch presents a weekly hour of the best of musical theatre with Curtain Call.  Running the gamut from the early days of Broadway to today, Curtain Call will bring you the entire history of the world of musical theatre in weekly one hour doses.  Curtain Call can be heard  every Wednesday at 3:00 PM, with replays throughout the following week. You can also hear an overnight marathon every Wednesday at midnight, and six more hours of classic episodes Sundays beginning at 9 AM.

All this week we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM today you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.   

Today the honors go to our flagship program, Radio Free Charleston. Hosted by your humble blogger, this show has been around in radio and video form since 1989.  You can expect a wild mix of local, independent and excellent and/or bizarre music, presented in a free-format radio style for three hours of crunchy sonic delightfulness.

Normally, RFC premieres Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays throughout the week, and a classic episode running every weekday at 5 PM.

What you see above is a very small acrylic study, based on a phone photo I snapped Wednesday night at the Three Things event. I grabbed the photo because the early evening sunlight was so drastic and dramatic.

I tried to capture that in paint.  In the picture you see Mark Davis and Larry Groce, who should need no introduction for fans of West Virginia music.  I’m not sure who the other two folks are. This was done on illustration board, but I will probably take it to a larger canvas some time in the future.

To see it bigger, click HERE.

You can find out about today’s programming on The AIR in a separate post today, since it’s a special marathon week.

For the next week, we are going to treat you to marathons of The AIR‘s music specialty programming. Beginning at 7 AM Monday, you will be able to immerse yourself in a solid day, that’s twenty-four hours, of one particular program. 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.   

Our first marathon comes from our overseas production partner, the Haversham Recording Institute, Prognosis is two hours of progressive rock, presented by acclaimed recording engineer and musicologist, Herman Linte.  In every episode Herman treats us to “Prog’s greatest hits,” with classic tracks from YES, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and more classic and new progressive rock titans.

Normally, Prognosis airs every Monday at 3:00 PM, with repeats throughout the week.