To put you all in the spirit of Halloween, tonight we’re going to look back at five videos that we made of the first four HallowEast Zombie Walks, plus one extra Zombie Walk from the Charleston Town Center. HallowEast abandoned the Zombie Walks when they couldn’t figure out how to use the event to sell beer, but it was fun while it lasted, as you can see here. Happy Halloween, folks!

This week we go back six years to the most recent Halloween episode of Radio Free Charleston. This is a nice coincidence, because for the next two weeks we are going to suspend our normal chronological journey through the past of RFC to bring you some of our Halloween specials.

“Count Rudolf” is your host for Blood Red Shirt which is chock-full-o good Halloween-y stuff. We had music from Hurl Brickbat, The Renfields with Ari Lehman and HARRAH, plus we a plugged Kanawha Player’s production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and showed footage from the prior weekend’s Zombie Walk. We even had a batch of “weird stuff” that revisited the Pentagram Flowerbox cartoon from our first Halloween special.

Next week week and the week after, we will present all of the Radio Free Charleston Halloween episodes, and we’ll probably devote one or two of our Sunday Evening Video slots to other spooky-holiday-appropriate videos that we’ve made over the years.

The PopCulteer
October 15, 2021

Your PopCulteer is tied up with magazine work again today, so all I got for you is the notes on Friday’s new episode of MIRRORBALL, on The AIR.

Friday afternoon we offer up a new episode of MIRRORBALL and encore a recent Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents a solid hour of some of the danciest hits of the classic disco era. It’s a great show, and I’m just going to drop the playlist right here…

MIRRORBALL 034

The Trammps “The Night The Lights Went Out”
Lace “Can’t Play Around”
Blue Magic “Look Me Up”
Stargard “Wear It Out”
George McCrae “Love In Motion”
Mass Production “Love You”
Norma Jean Wright “Sorcerer”
The Undisputed Truth “You + Me = Love”
Janice McClain “Smack Dab In The Middle”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  8 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Tuesday at 1 PM and Wednesday at 7 PM, exclusively on The AIR.  This week’s new MIRRORBALL will kick off our weekly Disco Marathon Saturday night running from 9 PM until Midnight.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with an encore of an episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat devoted to the quintessential hits of the New Wave era.

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. The Haversham shows will return with new episodes next week. YAY!

You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the Sunday morning and afternoon Haversham showcases, which begin at 9 AM with Psychedelic Shack, and include double shots of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis.

And that is all I got for this week’s PopCulteer. I will be in full PopCult mode next week, with new radio shows, book reviews and maybe even more. This week, thanks for bearing with me while paying work beckoned.

Aside from what I’m posting below, there are tons of things in and around Charleston to keep you busy this early-autumn weekend.  However, I am not confident in suggesting anything that happens indoors because I’m still freaked out over the pandemic. So here are some things you can get into starting Friday that don’t actually involve you getting into a building.

You should know the drill by now. The pandemic is still not over.  In fact, it’s getting slightly better, but it’s still really bad. If you are fully vaccinated and ready to do your best to stay safe, you should go check this stuff out. Outdoor shows were okay for vaccinated folks to go maskless, but maybe not at the moment. Indoor shows I am not ready to plug at the moment. I hate it, but I’d also hate losing any more readers to COVID.

So use your common sense and stay safe…and support the local scene.

Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a brand-new episode of Beatles Blast and a couple of encores of recent episodes of Curtain Call!  You can tune in at the website, or or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking over in the right-hand column of this blog.

At 2 PM, yours truly returns to introduce a special episode of Beatles Blast devoted to the birth of Apple Records.

In May, 1968, John Lennon and Paul McCartney traveled to New York City to officially announce the Beatles’ newly-formed and very non-traditional company, Apple Corps.

This episode of Beatles Blast, after a quick intro, opens with the audio from an interview that was recorded by New York educational television station WNET on May 14th for the program Newsfront. The interview was conducted by host Mitchell Krause.

This interview is a really interesting artifact, and at many points it’s glaringly obvious that the interviewer isn’t very familiar with The Beatles.

In this conversation, Lennon and McCartney are especially candid on the topic of racial issues, and also about the royal family.

Later that evening, following this afternoon interview, Lennon and McCartney also dropped in for a special appearance on TheTonight Show, with guest host Joe Garagiola. We also bring you the audio from that interview before wrapping up with a short interview with David Frost, back in London a couple of days later.

It’s a departure episode, with no full songs, but it’s an absolute treasure for die-hard Beatles fans.  

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM on Curtain Call, we bring you a couple of recent episodes, including the 100th episode, which attempts to cover ten decades’ worth of musical theater in one hour.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 9 PM, 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.

Tuesday on The AIR  we offer up yet another patchwork edition of Radio Free Charleston. A double shot of magazine article deadlines is eating up much of my workday, and even on Columbo Day, when we pay tribute to the late Peter Falk, I was not able to carve out enough time to make new radio.

So instead we’re going back to 2017 to slap togther a show that’s jam-packed with three hours of great local and not-local music. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.

At 10 AM and 10 PM you can hear this combination of RFC volume 4, episode 43 with RFC International number 34, both from early 2017. Both shows are loaded with great music, and neither has been heard anywhere for over four years. I do apologize for not providing any brand-new content for the show this week, but paying work beckons, and these are two great lost gems.

Check out this playlist.

RFCV5 065

hour one
Deni Bonet “A Perfect Storm”
Time And Distance “Live A Lie”
The Swivels “Panama”
The Company Stores “Bottom Out”
Linnfinity “Molly Marr of Rome”
Paul Calicoat “Dylan Stole My Life”
Billy Matheny “I Won’t Be Around”
The Big Bad “Shadowbrook Road”
Wolfgang Parker “Whisper Something German in my Ear”
Frenchy and The Punk “Why Should I?”
QiET “Get Found”
Go Van Gogh “Planet of Pyschotic Women”
Red Audio “Girl From Outer Space”
WATT 4 “I Don’t Deserve You”
The Concept “Guitar Pick In My Kool Aid”

hour two
Oingo Boingo “The Controller”
Neil Young “Sample and Hold”
Dubioza Kolectiv “Alarm Song”
Marc Ribot y Los cubanos postizos “Los Teenagers Bailan Changui”
The Cure “Let’s Go To Bed”
Red Vox “There She Goes”
The High Violets “Bells”
The Enid “Someone Shall Rise”
The Foreign Films “Sweet Sorrow”
The Hillbilly Moon Explosion “Heartbreak Boogie”
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band “Run Paint Run”
Mike & The Melvins “Dead Canaries”
The Residents “Japanese Watercolor”
St. Vincent “Krokodil”
The Dandy Warhols “Pope Reverend Jim”

hour three
Killing Joke “The Big Buzz”
Brian Eno “The Hour Is Thin”
Escapism “Ship To Shore”
The Range “Superimpose”
Filter “Pride Flag”
Dread Crew of Oddwood “Siren’s Song”
Atomic Rooster “Friday The 13th”
Black Stone Cherry “War”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Toccata”
Hooverphonic “I Like The Way I Dance”
Danielle DeCosmo “Don’t Know What It Means”
The Buzzcocks “ESP”
Operators “Bring Me The Head”
Spoon “Hot Thoughts”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can 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.

After RFC, stick around for encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and NOISE BRIGADE at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

My deadline commitments end Friday, so I should be back with a new three-hour episode of RFC next week. If I can squeeze it into the schedule, there might even be a new Beatles Blast tomorrow, too.

This week’s art is my second entry in Inktober. The idea is that I’ll post a pen and ink drawing each Monday this month. This is all dependent on my hands holding up well enough to hold a pen that long. So far, so good, but for today’s art I used a brush pen. I think that still counts.

The above drawing is brush pen on paper for pens, and it’s just a very rough drawing of a pin-up pose with very little detail. To be honest, I’m crunched for time this week, and only had a few minutes to spare to jot this down. There’s nothing phenomenal about this. It’s just the kind of doodle I’d normally knock out while warming up to so a more complex piece.

If you want to see it a bit bigger, just click on it.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent encore episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent encore 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 at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Our friends at Haversham are otherwise occupied with paying work again this week, and I can sympathize, because I am too. I might be able to squeeze out a new Radio Free Charleston this week if I pad out the last two hours with a rerun of RFC International, but everything else is on hold while I work on a couple of magazine articles.  There will be fresh content every day this week here in PopCult, but it might be a little skimpy.

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.

At 8 PM, stick around for an 11-hour marathon of Dexter Checker’s Ska Madness program, from about four years ago.

As longtime readers may know, I have been slowly (very slowly) restoring this blog since I moved it out from under the auspices of The Charleston Gazette-Mail. One of the latest posts I fixed was from 2014, and it was the movie, Gorgo, the video of which had been taken down by YouTube shortly after. It has since resurfaced, but instead of expecting you to wander back seven years in my archives, I’m bringing it to you once again here, as well as in the archives.

In 2013 I reviewed a very nice collection of comics by Steve Ditko that were based on the 1961 monster movie, Gorgo. The consensus is that the comics are way better than the movie, which was a British-made cheesy knockoff of Godzilla.

Now you can see for yourself as we present the entire movie, here in PopCult. It’s a good way to kick off the Halloween season which I’ll be stretching out here in the blog for the next few weeks.

This week we go back six years to an RFC MINI SHOW starring guitar master, Ryan Kennedy

This was recorded live at the much-missed Third Eye Cabaret in August 2015. Kennedy performs the theme from the movie “Black Orpheus” by Louis Bonfi, and two pieces by Antonio Lauro, “Tatiana” and “Natalia.”

Ryan, of course, is still active all over Charleston’s music scene, and it was an honor to have him on the show.

The PopCulteer
October 8, 2021

Friday brings a brand-new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat to The AIR. The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog if you’re reading on a desktop.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a very special mixtape episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that salutes the modern instrument that became identified with the New Wave sound, the synthesizer. A necessary ingredient in what I call “blippy, farty music,” the synthesizer had evolved beyond the Moogs that dominated progressive rock, and became cheaper, lighter, less complicated and infinitely more colorful in terms of the sounds they produced.

Beyond making experimental sounds, these instruments were played on hit records, and in this special mixtape episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, you’ll hear a number of massive, worldwide number-one hit records. It’s cool to hear the synth before it evolved to the point where it’s used for almost every song you hear nowadays, and you can’t even tell. These were hits back in the day when new sounds were welcome, not just new technology sampling old sounds. It’s a pretty epic two-hour thrill-ride.

Just check out the playlist to see for yourself…

BEC 078

Yaz “Don’t Go”
Depeche Mode “Enjoy The Silence”
New Order “Bizarre Love Triangle”
The Human League “Don’t You Want Me”
Tears For Fears “Pale Shelter”
The Cure “Let’s Go To Bed”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Rational Youth “Saturdays In Silesia”
Thompson Twins “In The Name of Love”
John Foxx “Underpass”
Kon Kan “I Beg Your Pardon”
Fad Gadget “Collapsing New People”
Kraftwerk “The Model”
Real Life “Send Me An Angel”
Gary Numan “Cars”
The Normal “Warm Leatherette”
Glass Candy “Digital Versicolor”
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams”
The Postal Service “Such Great Heights”
The Associates “The Affectionate Punch”
Druan Duran “Planet Earth”
DEVO “Planet Earth”
The Units “Go”
Men Without Hats “Safety Dance”
Bronksi Beat “Smalltown Boy”
Erasure “A Little Respect”
A Flock of Seagulls “Wishing”
Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me With Science”
Altered Images “Don’t Talk To Me About Love”
Orchestra Manoeuvres In The Dark “Enola Gay”
M “Pop Musik”

Rest assured that all the musicians you hear on this show are much more accomplished than this guy…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer.   Check this blog for fresh content every single freakin’ day. I’m cool like that.