It’s all repeats today on The AIR  as your PopCulteer is too besieged by other work to make new episodes of The Swing Shift orRadio Free Charleston. However, we have some primo encores for you.  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 elsewhere on this page.

As I warned you last Thursday, we are running last week’s delayed Radio Free Charleston again Tuesday and you can hear it at 10 AM and 10 PM . If you want to know what’s in this episode go to THIS POST and read all about it. You can even listen to it on demand.

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays 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 episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Then at 1 PM we have an encore of a classic episode of MIRRORBALL. At 2 PM tune in for last week’s episode of Curtain Call. Both of those shows are hosted by my lovely wife, Mel Larch.

At 3 PM I’d planned to run a new episode of The Swing Shift, but there just weren’t enough hours in the day to record one. Instead check out these two classic shows from three years ago…

The Swing Shift 078

Duke Robilliard with Elizabeth McGovern “Me, Myself and I”
Mojo Juju And The Snake-Oil Merchants “Scat Song”
Glenn Miller “String of Pearls”
Jimmy Hamilton and his Orchestra “Blues For a Prince”
Bart & Baker and Kitten On The Keys “Whoopee”
Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Peter Muller, Dani Gugolz “Rhythm Boogie”
Benny Goodman Orchestra “Sing Sing Sing”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Axeman Jazz”
Tommy Dorsey “I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You”
Vaughn Monroe “Rum and Coca Cola”
Hetty and the Jazzato Band “Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano”
Chris Grant Company “Stop My Boogie Blues”
Kansas City Jazz Orchestra “Corner Pocket”
Helen O’Connell “Take A Tip From The Whippoorwill”

The Swing Shift 082

Sir Jay and his Orchestra “Everything I do Is Wrong”
Junco Shakers “She’s Red Hot”
Fred Astaire “Top Hat”
Queen Bee and the Honeylovers “Cornelia’s Masquerade”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Bigger Life”
The Speakeasies Swing Band “Cash Or Check”
Frank Crumit “Abdul Abulbul Amir”
Cab Calloway “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”
Megan and her Goody Goodies “Come’s Love”
Sassy Swingers “Ferry Man”
Geroge Formby “Leaning On A Lamp Post”
Marcella Puppini “Let’s Stay In Bed”
Louis Prima “Angelina”
Echoes of Swing “Disorder at the Border”
The Gentlemen’s Anti-temperance League “Tango of the Living Dead”
Swing Ninjas “Nancy”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 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 real-world small acrylic painting. I decided I wanted to try to replicate my “high detail” work as a physical piece, instead of as a digital painting, which is where I perfected my style. This was done with acrylics on heavy illustration board, and it took the better part of two months since I was only working on it when my fingers would co-operate.

It’s inspired by a series of photos I took in Chicago in 2018. I photographed it under very bright lights, cropped the sloppy borders and color-corrected it a bit once it was in the computer.

This isn’t much bigger than the small studies I’ve been doing for other paintings this year. I wanted to see if I could handle working in this style before I tried doing it on a real canvas. The summer was very rough with my Myasthenai Gravis, and I’m still trying to teach myself the basics again while also learning a few new tricks.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent 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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

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.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic stand up from George Carlin on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Ska Madness, as we bid farewell to Dexter Checkers’ showcase of Ska classics, for now.

Tonight for our Sunday Evening Videos we are going to take one more look at the music and video of one of the most popular of the original Radio Free Charleston bands, Go Van Gogh.

Go Van Gogh were: Johnny Rock, Tim Rock, Stephen Beckner and Mark Beckner. Occasionally the band is augmented by Mark Mingrone, Jason Ashworth and Bain Ashworth. The videos at the top of this post were directed by Tim Rock, Johnny Rock, Stephen Beckner, Melissa Beezley and yours truly.

A bit more than five years ago, we lost Johnny Rock, who was a true legend and a beloved character on the local scene. With the permission of the surviving band members I compiled and posted these videos in his memory. Tonight I thought it’d be nice to go back and take another look at a band that was this close to making it big.

Above you see a compilation of nearly two-and-a-half hours of primo Go Van Gogh. Included are:

“All Over The Road” A document of their tour to Morgantown, WV.
“The Sad Truth” (Excerpt) Part of their mockumentary.
“Live At The Levee: 1991” Half an hour of the band in concert at The Levee (later known as The Boulevard Tavern).
“Coalfinger” What happens with a Southern West Virginia community college Drama department makes a James Bond Movie?
“Live At WVSU” Performing the song, “Stripes with Stains” at West Virginia State University.
“Make The Money” A Comedic Short Film.
“Roll” Music Video.
“Planet of Psychotic Women.” Music Video

Below you’ll find the entire half-hour version of “Go Van Gogh: The Sad Truth.” This mockumentary was the brainchild of Tim Rock, and you’ll see the band and friends (including yours truly) perpetrating a mythical history of the rise and fall of Go Van Gogh.

Enjoy the fun times with Go Van Gogh.

This week we start to go back and fill in the gaps where early episodes of Radio Free Charleston that were once (or twice) online have since gone missing.

From August, 2007, this episode of RFC, “Flaming Skull Shirt,” has been missing in action for thirteen of the last fifteen 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
September 9, 2022

It’s bounced around a bit this week due to the holiday, but we have some suggestions for STUFF TO DO in Charleston, Huntington, and other Mountain State locations over the weekend, so let’s just dive in.

Our feature event is something that, sadly I couldn’t work into my schedule.  JoeLanta, the very cool GI Joe-oriented Toy Show in Atlanta grew into ToyLanta a few years ago, but now it’s grown even more and come full circle as a second show, which returns to its roots as a dedicated GI Joe show. It’s happening today through Sunday at the Hilton Atlanta Northeast, and in addition to the great JoeLanta events like the custom figure and diorama contest, the concert by Radio Cult and the terrific GI Joe vendors from around the country, two very special guests will be there: Sgt. Slaughter and Keone Young, the voice of Storm Shadow on the classic GI Joe cartoon. Check out their website for more details. We will try to make it down that way next year.

RibFest is happening at Shawnee Park, between Dunbar and Institute through Sunday. I would tell you all about it, but I hate ribs and BBQ, and can’t even stand the smell of that stuff. Check out their Facebook Event Page for details if that sounds like something you’d be interested in attending.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Lil Bren. Saturday sees Ryan Smith at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. 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 some suggestions for the rest of this weekend.  We’re grouping them together by day again…

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

That is this week’s PopCulteer.  We’re still going to be operating in “lite” mode for a few more days while I take care of some other assignments, but you can still check PopCult for all our regular features, with fresh content every day.

Between the Labor Day holiday and looming magazine deadlines, it’s time for a rare Thursday premiere of Radio Free Charleston on The AIR . For just the second time we’re debuting  another one-third-new, three-hour  episode of Radio Free Charleston outside of our regular Tuesday timeslot. 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 elsewhere on this page.

It’s one more hybrid edition of Radio Free Charleston debuting at 2 PM Thursday.  This week we open with a full hour of  local and independent music, and then we hit you with two hours of classic Radio Free Charleston International from late in the run. This time our second and third hours are a mixtape of my favorite music of all time, originally transmitted over The AIR back in January, 2019. I was having deadline issues then, too.

Our first hour, opens with new music from The Heavy Editors.  You’ll also hear cool new music from J. Marinelli, Golden and Catbite . We also have some new tunes from Chicago artists, Al Rose and Nice Motor. We get a little proggy in the last half of the first hour, with music from Six by Six, The Settlement, Chuck Biel and more.

The second and third hours of our show re-present a cool episode of Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2019, when your humble host Took the easy way out and just compiled a mixtape of some of his favorite music of all time.

Next week, this episode will appear in the regular Tuesday timeslot, to lighten the workload of your PopCulteer a bit.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFC V5 102

hour one
The Heavy Editors “Remember”
Golden “Better Weather”
Nice Motor “Overstated”
J Marinelli “Antifa Grandpa”
Audrey Smiley “Baby”
Al Rose “Shooting Straight”
Catbite “Spiral”
Six by Six “Reason To Feel Calm Again”
The Settlement “Extinction”
Joanna Newsom “Cosmia”
Chuck Biel “The Other Side”
Andy Prieboy “Take Her Where The Boys Are”

hour two
Art of Noise “Close (The The Edit)”
YES “Arriving UFO”
ELO “Mr. Blue Sky”
The Beatles “All You Need Is Love”
DEVO “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA”
Elvis Costello “Green Shirt”
Kate Bush “Suspended in Gaffa”
Oingo Boingo “Nasty Habits”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Tarkus”

hour three
Mike Batt “Love Makes You Crazy”
Lene Lovich “What Will I Do Without You”
Joe Jackson “Soul Kiss”
Hazel O’Connor “Breaking Glass”
Elvis Costello and Glenn Tilbrook “From A Whisper To A Scream”
The Stranglers “The Raven”
The Aquabats “Play Doh”
Frank Zappa “Flakes”
Franz Ferdinand “Take Me Out”
The Beatles “Hey Bulldog”
Madness “Rise and Fall”
DEVO “Gates of Steel”
Kate Bush “Army Dreamers”
Gary Numan “Cars”
Royal Crown Revue “Hollywood Tale”
Oingo Boingo “Goodbye, Goodbye”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Monday at 11 AM, and  next Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different 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.

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a classic episode of Beatles Blast and a new and very special episode of Curtain Call!  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM Since we brought you an hour of awful covers of Beatles songs last week on Beatles Blast this week we decided to cleanse the pallette with a show that collects some particularly nifty covers of Beatles songs. In this mixtape show you’ll hear everyone from Manfred Mann’s Earth Band to Willie Nelson and all the musical styles between, all doing their versions of Beatle songs.

At 3 PM on Curtain Call, Mel Larch presents an hour that lets you sample four brand-new examples of musical theatre.

Mel opens the show with music from Fantastically great Women Who Changed The World. Based on the picture book by British author Kate Pankhurst, and developed by Kenny Wax, the producer of SIX, this self-described “smash hit kickass-pirational pop musical” is currently touring Britain and is expected to run in London’s East End and possibly transfer to Broadway later.

With numbers by songwriter Miranda Cooper and Jennifer Decilveo, book by Chris Bush and lyrics by the three aforementioned creatives, the piece follows a young woman who leaves class to meet a variety of iconic women from history such as Frida Kahlo, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Emmeline Pankhurst to name just a few.

The Visitor is a stage musical with music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey and a book by Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah, based on the 2007 film of the same name. It premiered at The Public Theater in October 2021. Negotiations are underway for a run on Broadway, Hopefully with its off-Broadway star, David Hyde Pierce, again in the lead role as Walter.

The film focuses on a lonely man in late middle age whose life changes when a chance encounter with an immigrant couple forces him to face issues relating to identity, immigration, and cross-cultural communication in post-9/11 New York City.

Next up is Emma Rice’s musical adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. This daring new take on the classic novel is currently running at The National Theater in London, and a transfer to Broadway is possible in 2023 or 24.

Finally, from Chicago, Mel has a small sampling of Ed Rutherford’s adaptaion of J.M. Barrie’s spooky stage play, Mary Rose.  Barrie, most famous for creating Peter Pan, tells the story of Mary Rose, a girl who vanishes twice.As a child, Mary Rose was taken by her father to a remote Scottish island. While she is briefly out of her father’s sight, Mary Rose vanishes. The entire island is searched exhaustively. Twenty-one days later, Mary Rose reappears as mysteriously as she disappeared…but she shows no effects of having been gone for three weeks, and she has no knowledge of any gap or missing time. Years later, as a young wife and mother, the adult Mary Rose persuades her husband to take her to the same island. Again she vanishes: this time for a period of decades. When she is found again, she is not a single day older and has no awareness of the passage of time In the interim, her son has grown to adulthood and is now physically older than his mother.

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, we revisit the premiere edition of The Comedy Vault from back in 2016, when the show presented a wide variety of comedic performers, all mashed into one funny hour. The Comedy Vault can be heard every Wednesday at 11 PM, with the new episodes replayed a couple of weeks later, Monday at 8 PM.

It’s Tuesday, and since we’re wrapping up the Labor Day Radio Free Charleston marathon on The AIR, I don’t have a new episode of the show to tell you about here. We are going to premiere a new episode on Thursday, which will run in its usual timeslot next week.

But…I do have a few photos from my recent anniversary excusion up North with Mrs. PopCulteer. Since Amtrak was sold out and we couldn’t celebrate our anniversary with a trip to Chicago, we went low-key and just drove up to the Northern tip of West Virginia. Mel got to visit her new holy land, the FiestaWare Factory Outlet Store (seen right), and I got to enjoy the scenery, witness a roadside attraction, buy some toys and bask in the company of my beloved.

I also took a ton of photos at The Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex , which I will share with you next week so I can plug a special event they have coming up.

Aside from that, I didn’t take a lot of pictures. It was supposed to be a non-working trip, after all, but here are a few sights from the weekend before last…

I love this cool view of Ohio from the FiestaWare parking lot.

We decided to make the drive even further North from Newell, to Chester, so we could see the freaking teapot. Are you happy now?  You have to forgive me. I was very disappointed that Nandor, from “What We Do In The Shadows” wasn’t standing in front, like he was on the show.

A view of the Ohio River, just moments after driving around the teapot. They don’t tell you that it’s located in the middle of a highway entrance ramp.

The next day we made a return trip to the Grave Creek Mound. It’s for when you don’t feel like a nut.

Signage contains Mound bragging.

Your PopCulteer, seen in his feral state, posing near the Mound, with The West Virginia Penitentiary in the background. Mel didn’t want to be in any photos, as usual.

This week’s art is a work in progress, sort of. This is a very rough small-scale study for a future painting. I’m calling this one “Sketchy on State Street” because it’s a very sketchy pastel crayon depiction of North State Street in Chicago, based on about a dozen reference photos I took in 2018 and 2019.

This was just slapped out quick to try to get the composition down. I’ll probably rethink the colors, and it’s probable that the finished painting, which I’m hoping to do in high-detail acrylics on a much larger canvas, will not look too much like this.

But it works as a quick sketch, in sort of an expressionistic sort of way.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday on The AIR, we bring you the rest of the Labor Day weekend marathon of Radio Free Charleston. You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

The plan is to run this marathon until Tuesday afternoon. If I get back from my holiday excursion in time, I may have a new episode of RFC ready to premiere next Thursday, instead of on our regular day.

I don’t like to repeat the videos I post here in Sunday Evening Video very often, but this this has become a tradition and hardly anybody reads the blog on Labor Day weekend anyway, so here goes.

If you are of a certain age, Labor Day seems synonymous with The Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon, which the famed comedian hosted for almost sixty years.

The telethon is gone, as is Jerry, but MDA (the Muscular Dystrophy Association) maintains a YouTube page where they still post highlights from the vaults.

Above you see a playlist with over a hundred videos of musical legends like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Toni Basil and many others. Best of all, you can watch these clips without sitting through four hours of corporate spokespeople droning on in a monotone about how much they care about the kids. I mean, no offense to the guy from 7 11, but I’m pretty sure they play those parts on an endless loop in hell. Above you see the good stuff, the cream of the crop.

Seriously, there are some gems in there like Duran Duran, MC Hammer and Charo. There’s lots of Charo. Lots of MC Hammer, too, now that I think about it.

Enjoy!