Let’s go back to August, 2015, for an episode of Radio Free Charleston loaded with music from The Company Stores, Farnsworth, ShockaCon, and Jake The Restaurant. This episode also has a 120 second Art Show featuring Michael McKowen’s “The World of the Willing,” a movie trailer for Austin Susman’s Killer Catfish of the Kanawha, and a promo spot for ShockaCon 4.

Just last month, I ran into one of the members of Jake The Restaurant at Record store Day at Budget Tapes and Records, and he tells me he’s working on new music, so that’s pretty cool.

Check out the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
August 13, 2021

Today is my birthday, which is why I’m writing this post on Wednesday.

Your PopCulteer and his wife are off on a mini-trip to celebrate my day of birth, and I’m not taking any cameras or shooting any video or doing anything like that.

I’m not even going to tell you where we’re going. It’s my birthday, and I’m off the clock.

You may notice that we have a lot of special days all grouped sorta close together here at PopCult.

July 4 is officially the anniversary of the Radio Free Charleston video show, which began back in 2006. We marked that occasion this year with a new episode.

Today is my birthday, and in thirteen days, it’s my wedding anniversary. Back in 2014 Mel Larch and I snuck off to Chicago and got married on stage at Steppenwolf Theater. That was August 26.

Two days later, August 28, is the anniversary of this very blog, with my first, rather short and silly post appearing August 28, 2005, back when PopCult was a Gazzblog at The Charleston Gazette.

If that isn’t enough, Labor Day weekend marks 32 years since the premiere of Radio Free Charleston as a radio show, back on WVNS, 96.1 FM.

Had I planned better, I may have spread these events out across the calendar year a bit more.

All of that is my way of explaining why all you’re getting today is this piss-poor example of a PopCulteer column. I could’ve skipped today, but then I’d miss another significant achievement.  On August 18, 2013, I started posting fresh content in PopCult every day, and except for a couple of technical crashes, and two columns that were deleted so that an asshole Canadian millionaire with a fake Batmobile wouldn’t file a nuisance lawsuit, I have had new posts up every day since then.

I didn’t want to break that streak just to take a day off to go eat cheesecake.

So, keep reading the blog. Our regular features will be here. Listen to The AIR. Stay safe and get your own cheesecake. I’m not going to be getting enough for everybody.

There are all kinds of cool things happening in town this weekend, but I’m only going to plug one of them. The reasons for this are A) I’m slacking off because it’s my birthday weekend and B) this is a really cool thing that I would go to, except for the fact that it’s on my birthday, which I will be observing in an undisclosed location.

Friday there’s an all-day show at The Red Carpet, beginning at 1 PM (doors open at noon) and it features several friends of Radio Free Charleston on the bill paying tribute to Friday the 13th.  Among the RFC faves you can see are The Big Bad, The Jasons, Boldly Go and Jerks, and quite a few other notable bands too.

You should know the drill by now. The pandemic is still not over.  In fact, it’s getting worse again. 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 leave you at the mercy of your fellow patrons, and with the Delta variant surging, why risk any exposure? I know there are folks who hate the idea of wearing masks, even if they’re not vaccinated. Those people are why you should wear a mask.

Hell, Jason wears a mask.

So use your common sense and stay safe…and support the local scene. Here’s the flyer for the show…

With her her milestone episode behind her, on Wednesday afternoon Mel Larch returns on  The AIR to brings you a brand-new episode 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 3 PM on Curtain Call, Mel Larch peers into the future of Broadway with a show filled with tracks from recently-released concept albums, streaming projects, West End productions and more new and exciting material from the world of musical theatre.

The show opens with the title song from Edge of the World, a new musical written by Tony nominee Ethan Slater and Drama Desk nominee Nick Blaemire. Slater was nominated for a Tony for his role as SpongeBob Squarepants, and Blaemire collaborated on “Tick, Tick, Boom.” The just-released recording stars Slater, Blaemire, Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz and Tony nominee Lilli Cooper and tells a story about the isolation that comes with moving to the middle of nowhere.

The rest of the show is filled with tunes from musicals about the 13th century philosopher, Rumi, as well as other new and exciting musical projects, including Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new take on Cinderella. Just check out the playlist:

Curtain Call 101

“Edge of the World” from Edge of the World
“The Moon of Your Heart” from Rumi: The Musical
“The Simple Life” from Bittersummer A New Musical
“How About Tomorrow” from Stay Awake Jake
“Open Your Eyes” from Falling In Love With Mr. Dellamort
“You Can’t Expel Us All” from The Boy In The Dress
“Beauty Has A Price” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella
“I Am With Her” from Soft Power
“You Can’t Tame Me” from Schmigadoon
“Proud Mary” from Tina (original Dutch cast)
“It’s My Life” from & Juliet

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 9 PM, and Saturday at 8 PM. 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 deliver yet another partly brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston. It’s three hours of music that lets you support the local scene and then soak in your PopCulteer’s strange musical inclinations. You simply have to move 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.

Yes, once again we have a newish Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  Your PopCulteer is slacking off because it’s his birthday week and he has a magazine deadline.  This  week on RFC we open with a solid hour of  great local music.  You’ll hear the RFC debuts of Hello June, Static Fur, Cassius At Best and plenty of other new tracks from local artists in one all-new hour of RFC, and then we revisit one of the 2018 episodes of RFC International from before we merged it into the three-hour behemoth you have come to know and love.

So that’s one brand-new, all-local hour, and two classic hours of RFC International from 2018.

Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we bring you this week…

RFCV5 058

hour one
Hello June “Candy Rain”
Static Fur “Illuminated”
Cassius At Best “Alabaster”
Heavy Set Paw-Paws “Minden Holler”
James Townsend “The Great Depression”
Jim Lange “Equinox”
Sierra Ferrall “The Sea”
Emmalea Deal “All My Boyfriends”
John Radcliff “Company Song”
Lost Decades “Come Ruin”
The Swivel Rockers “Interpretive Dance”
The Madison 2 “Indian Summer”
Lady D “Somebody’s Gotta Move”

hour two
Paul McCartney “Come On To Me”
Souixsie and The Banshees “Peek A Boo”
DEVO “Peek A Boo”
Bob Dylan “Stardust”
Jamiroquai “Dr. Buzz”
Mastadon “Roots Remain”
Body Count “This Is Why We Ride”
Blink 182 “Misery”
Goldfrapp “Everything Is Never Enough”
The Blues Swingers “By Friday”
Aimee Mann “Good For Me”
Postmodern Jukebox “Roxanne”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “Los Feliz (Blue and Green)
Depeche Mode “Going Backwards”

hour three
UK “Carry The Cross”
The Beatles “I’m Only Sleeping (Mono)”
The Beach Boys “God Only Knows”
Delta 88 “Boppin’ Little Witch”
Mike Oldfield “Return To Ommadawn part one”
Todd Rundgren “Bang On The Drum All Day”
The B-52s “Party Out of Bounds”
DEVO “Mechanical Man”

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 3 PM. Friday at 7 PM, plus Saturday afternoon, and again at Midnight, and then one more replay Monday at 11 AM. We are going to revamp the schedule at The AIR, probably just after Labor Day, so you should soon have more chances to hear RFC than ever!

As is now the norm, 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 USDA Grade-A Choice encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, Ska Madness at 2 PM and The Swing Shift at 3 PM.

Sometimes when I want to relax, or kill time while a video file is rendering, I’ll just start working on a cosmic-looking digital doodle. I create these using a variety of picture tubes, filters, geometric effects and colorization.  Oftentimes they’ll sit around until I decide to use one as a background, or incorporate it into another piece of art.

This week’s art is an example of this, cranked out Sunday afternoon while I was waiting for the hi-res version of the Kentuckiana video to render.

Click to see it bigger.

Meanwhile, Monday at on The AIR, this week our Haversham Recording Institute friends are still busy providing translation services for The Olympics. We will be running encore plays of recent episodes of Prognosis, Psychedelic Shack and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat until next week, when they are hopeful that they’ll be back with brand-new episodes. This afternoon you can hear Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack at 2 PM and Herman Linte with Prognosis at 3 PM.

At 7 PM tune in for a Monday Marathon of the first four three-hour episodes of Radio Free Charleston, from January of last year.

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.

Above you see our video wrap-up of the 2021 Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo from last weekend. Set to YouTube-friendly background music, you’ll see the people, the toys, the custom figures and dioramas and more.

We had a great time and I want to thank Stevel Stovall and the Kentuckiana crew for putting on such a wonderful show.

Next Sunday in this space, we’ll bring you video from our trip to The South Louisville Antique Toy Mall. We went there right after leaving Kentuckiana, and it was a bit of an overwhelming experience.

We jump back six years, to August, 2015 this week, for a show loaded with virtuoso talent and progressive jazz.

Recorded live at The Empty Glass,  this episode of The RFC MINI SHOW presents Chuck Biel’s Jazz Lab One. This talented line up of Chuck’s students showed off their mind-blowing chops while tearing through progressive jazz. We’ll hear the band performing the tune, “Sea Journey.”

This iteration of Chuck’s Jazz Lab included Dillion Gaal, Joey Lafferty, Sean Casey, Will Taylor, with Chuck Biel himself on drums instead of his usual stringed weaponry.

One of these days I need to go see if I have any leftover footage from that night.

The PopCulteer
August 6, 2021

We have a new episode of MIRRORBALL, our Disco Music showcase on The AIR plus we have Stuff To Do and a short photo essay of the custom figures and dioramas at last weekend’s Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo in Louisville, so let’s get started…

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 shation. 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 best club hits of the classic disco era. It’s a great show, and I’m just going to drop the playlist right here…

MIRRORBALL 030
Pat Lundy “Party Music”
The Moments “Jack In The Box”
Charo, The Salsoul Orchestra “You’re Just The Right Size”
Sparque “Let’s Go Dancin'”
Carrie Lucas “Dance With You”
Double Expousure “My Love Is Free”
Shalamar “I Owe You One”
Dazzle “Walk Before You Run”
Narada Michael Walden “I should’ve Loved You”
Citi “Roller Disco”
The Rimshots “7-6-5-4-3-2-1(Blow Your Whistle)”

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 a Disco Marathon Saturday night until Midnight.

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

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 are currently in reruns while the crew there handles translation services for The Olympics.

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.

More stuff after the jump…

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One of my shortcomings as a chronicler of cool toy shows is that I often get so overwhelmed by all the cool toys that I forget to take photos of people.

This year at The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, I made a concerted effort to do better in that regard. Yesterday I brought you a bunch of photos from the show.  Today I’m going to share with you a few pictures I took of people at Kentuckiana, some are posed, some are candid, some are blurry (sorry about that).

I did not remember to snap a photo of everybody I knew at the show. In fact, the folks I hung out with and talked with the most are the folks whom I forgot to get on film (or virtual film, anyway).

I did remember to take a photo of Charleston area expatriot and former Holden Caulfield frontman, Dana White You’ll see that down below. It’s always cool to go to WonderFest and Kentuckiana because we usually run into Dana when we’re in Louisville.

There are a couple of photos below that I took, then forgot to ask who the person was. Chalk that up to something I need to do better in the future.  If you know them, feel free to clue me in down in the comments.

Without any further ado, here we go with the photos again…

These are members of the cosplay/charity group, The Finest, and not the former administration’s anti-terror advisors.

Noted GI Joe collector and dealer Dean Morrison, who complimented me on losing some weight by motioning to my stomach while he said, “Lookin’ good.” I misunderstood, and started explaining in a rambling manner that the shirt I was wearing was based on the monster sweatshirts from “Leave it to Beaver.” This gave Dean a confused look on his face. We had that all sorted out by the time I took this blurry photo. Sometimes I don’t take compliments well.

ToyLanta friends, Steve Charlton, the back of Charlotte Beckmann, part of Brian Becker and Ace Allgood.

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