Friday afternoon we offer up new episodes of MIRRORBALL and 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 collection of the Disco hits of the Brothers Gibb, as Mel salutes the most unexpected hit machine of the Disco era, The Bee Gees. Just check the playlist for this bodacious bit of boogeymania…
MIRRORBALL 021
The Bee Gees
“Stayin’ Alive”
“If I Can’t Have You”
“Night Fever”
“Jive Talkin'”
“Tragedy”
“How Deep Is Your Love”
“Warm Ride”
“More Than A Woman”
“Wind of Change”
“Love You Inside Out”
“You Win Again”
“Grease” (with Frankie Valli)
“Emotion” (with Samantha Sang)
Nights On Broadway”
“You Should Be Dancing”
You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at Midnight and 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Tuesday at 1 PM and Wednesday at 7 PM, exclusively on The AIR.
At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with the first new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat since the latest UK lockdown began a few months ago. This time around, Sydney is so happy that she wants to dance, and that means we get the third Big Electric Cat mixtape of New Wave 12″ extended remixes. Peruse this here playlist for a preview…
Big Electric Cat 068
Men Without Hats “Safety Dance”
Scritti Politti “Wood Beez”
New Order “Blue Monday”
Nena “99 Red Balloons”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Dead Or Alive “You Spin Me Round”
Bananarama “Love In The First Degree”
Soft Cell “Torch”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Two Tribes”
Dollar “Hand Held In Black And White”
Duran Duran “The Reflex”
Howard Jones “New Song”
Propaganda “Duel”
Ultravox “Loves Great Adventure”
Yello “The Race”
Tears For Fears “Shout”
The Communards with Sarah Jane Morris “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
The Specials “Ghost Town”
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.
Details are not settled yet, but next week I plan to tweak the replay schedule on The AIR, so stay tuned for details on that.
That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back because we have a fresh post every day.
Longtime PopCult readers probably know that I enjoy watching professional wrestling. I don’t write about it a lot here, because it’s something I watch to get my mind off of work, and I don’t want to turn it into work. I do cover it occasionally, since it is such a big part of pop culture.
Since I got hooked back in 1998 while watching RAW so I’d know what action figures I was writing about for Toy Trader Magazine, I’ve enjoyed the world of scripted athletics and, especially over the last few years, I enjoy following the business end of things and I really like to follow some of the deep inside goings-on in the industry.
There are some great news sources for this, predominantly Dave Meltzer and Wade Keller, but recently Fightful.com has emerged as their equal, with a well-assembled team of younger reporters and correspondents who do an amazing job keeping track of and sorting out the news, rumors, speculation and revelations of the sport.
Canadian web entrepreneur Jimmy Van owns the site, and he made a very wise choice picking Sean Ross Sapp to be his editor-in-chief. The charismatic Sapp has assembled a very talented team of writers and podcast hosts like Jeremy Lambert, Denise Salcedo, Robert DeFelice and others, and they put out a great product, covering a business that now requires almost constant supervision, with fresh major wrestling shows to report on happening every day of the week, all year long.
The explosion in wrestling lately has made it nearly impossible for one person to monitor every wrestling show that has a national cable outlet, and that doesn’t take into account the many YouTube based shows, indie shows, international feds and programming on streaming services.
For example, Pluto.TV now has three entire 24/7 channels dedicated to professional wrestling, and they don’t have WWE or AEW.
Fightful does a tremendous job covering all this stuff, and even covers MMA, which I don’t keep up with myself. It’s great that Fightful covers it, but there are only so many hours in a day.
The point is, Fightful.com is a terrific source for all your wrestling news, with articles, podcasts, plus they offer exclusive features on their Fightful Select subscription service, to which I will subscribe as soon as they go independent from Patreon (I bailed on Patreon over a billing dispute a few years back, and just don’t trust the service any longer).
Now, I’m not just kissing Fightful’s butt for the sake of plugging them, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this week–just in time for Wrestlemania– Fightful debuted the first issue of Fightful Magazine. The first issue is digital only, and it’s a mere five bucks for an instant download. Luckily for us old folks, future issues will also be available in print form.
The premiere issue is a fun, 45-page affair, loaded with informative articles which are not so topical as to be rendered useless by the Fightful.com website. There is no “breaking news” here, just great and informative wrestling journalism.
There’s a terrific profile on Charlotte Flair, written by Molly Belle. Brandon Thurston, from Wrestlenomics Radio, offers an in-depth look at WWE’s potential future TV rights prospects. Taeler Hendrix offers up a profile of Taya Valkarie, who is likely to turn up in NXT next week as “Franky Monet” Jimmy Van, himself, turns in a really cool article about a rare Sgt. Slaughter action figure prototype.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Fightful Magazine is a fun and informative treat for die-hard wrestling fans, and I look forward to being able to purchase print copies in the future. It’s cool to see something new coming to print media, and also great to see Fightful covering deeper topics than they get to explore during their regular week of posting scoops and hot news.
You can order the first issue of Fightful Magazine HERE, and if you’re not feuding with Patreon, sign up for Fightful Select HERE.
Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a brand-new episode of Beatles Blast! You can listen at The AIR Website, or on the nifty little player over in the right-hand column of this here blog.
At 2 PM, your humble blogger pays tribute to one of the most influential things in his life, The Beatles’s Yellow Submarine, or a special mixtape episode of Beatles Blast. For nearly the full hour I bring you songs featured in the classic animated movie, either in alternate versions by The Fab Four, or in cover versions by a variety of different artists. For good measure, I also toss in a few of Sir George Martin’s orchestral scroe tracks.
Beatles Blast 069 Yellow Submarine Mixtape
The Beatles “Yellow Submarine (Rockband Remix)”
Andy Timmons Band “Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds”
Jamie Hoover “Only A Northern Song”
Greg Hawkes “Eleanor Rigby”
Paul Westerberg “Nowhere Man”
Journey “It’s All Too Much”
Kula Shaker “Baby You’re A Rich Man”
Courtney Pine Quartet “When I’m Sixty Four”
Oasis “All You Need Is Love”
Alice Cooper/Steve Vai “Hey Bulldog”
Sting “A Day In The Life”
George Martin “Sea of Monsters”
Paul McCartney “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/The End”
Wet Wet Wet “With A Little Help From My Friends”
George Martin “Pepperland Laid Waste”
Younder Mountain String Band “Think For Yourself”
The Beatles “Love You Too”
The Beatles “All Together Now”
Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM, Saturday afternoon, and the following Tuesday at 9 AM.
At 3 PM we bring you two encore episodes of Curtain Call that focus on Jukebox Musicals.
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 for the first time in months, we deliver brand-new episodes of Radio Free Charleston,Psychedelic Shack and The Swing Shift. It’s an Easter resurrection that lets you still support the local scene (and the stoner scene and the Swing scene) here on The AIR. 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.
We have a newish Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. This week we open with the new single from Jim Lange, and bring you one all-new hour of RFC, and one encore of an early RFC International from five years ago. Your PopCulteer has doctor visits this week, and room had to be made in our schedule for that. We do manage to bring you some killer new and vintage local and indpendent music in our first hour.
After the first hour of RFC, stick around because the second hour revives an old Radio Free Charleston International from 2016, which hasn’t been heard by human ears in almost five years. I implore you to use your human ears to give it a listen. The second and third hours are packed with killer semi-obscure, yet very cool music.
Check out the playlist to see all the goodies we bring you this week…
hour two
Iggy Pop “American Valhalla”
Wendy James “Situation Normal at Surfrider”
Avantasia “Mystery of a Blood Red Rose”
Leaf Hound “Growers of Mushroom”
Greenleaf “Golden Throne”
The Cult “Deeply Ordered Chaos”
Elton John “Claw Hammer”
Black Sabbath “Isolated Man”
National Lampoon “Flash Bazbo”
Alice Cooper “Clones”
Ringo Starr “Without Understanding”
Ozric Tentacles “Flying Machine”
Pink Floyd “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving With a Pict”
hour three
Paul Kantner “Blows Against The Empire”
Yoko Ono with Jack Douglas “Move On Fast”
Pallas “Something In the Deep”
Jools Holland “Lady Madonna”
Elvis Costello “Watching The Detectives”
Kate Bush “Violin”
Kraftwerk “Pocket Calculator (live)”
Polysics “Married To A Frenchman”
Plastics “Last Train To Clarksville”
Paul McCartney “Temporary Secretary”
Wall of Voodoo “Hands of Love”
Red Hot Chili Peppers “Circle of the Noose”
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 11 AM and Midnight, Sunday at 11 AM and the next Monday at 8 PM, exclusively on The AIR.
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 all that fun, at 2 PM we offer up a new episode of Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack, loaded with trippy music from the trippy era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nigel, ever the upright gentleman, has even sent along a playlist…
Psychedelic Shack 040
Camel “Never Let Go”
David Bowie “Letter To Hermione”
Elvis Costello “…And In Every Home”
King Crimson “Cadence and Cascade”
Peter Gabriel “Strawberry Fields Forever”
4th Cekcion “Find Yourself Another Way”
Ancient Grease “Mother Grease The Cat”
Broth “I’m A King”
Czar “Tread Softly On My Dreams”
Forever More “Promises of Spring”
The Third Power “Gettin’ Together”
Sainte Anthony’s Fyre “Chance of Fate”
Psychedelic Shack alternates weeks with NOISE BRIGADE Tuesdays at 2 PM, with replays Wednesday at 10 PM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 1 PM, Saturday at 8 AM, Sunday at 9 AM and Monday at 7 PM.
We top off our trifecta of Tuesday music specials with today’s all-new episode of The Swing Shift at 3 PM. This week it’s a mixtape, with the full hour devoted to Enoch Light and his Light Brigade, who, after many years as a pioneering record label czar and experimental stereo composer, returned to his roots and release four Big Bad Swing albums before his death in 1974. We have selections from those records, digitized directly from the original vinyl, so you can hear Light’s recreation of the top hits of the Big Band era, with a band stocked with sidemen who actually played on the original tunes.
The Swing Shift 112
The Enoch Light and the Light Brigade
Big Bands of the 1930s
“Begin The Beguine”
“A String Of Pearls”
“I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”
“Well Git It”
“Woodchoppers Ball”
“One O’Clock Jump”
“Moonlight Serenade”
“Let’s Dance”
“In The Mood”
“Ciribiribin”
“Snowfall”
“South Rampart Street Parade”
“Take The A Train”
“Stardust”
“American Patrol”
“Sugar Blues”
“Solitude”
“Boogie Woogie”
“Bugle Call Rag”
You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 2 PM, Saturday at 5 PM and Sunday at 10 AM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.
This week is part two of a set of concept sketches for a short animated music video project that I’m hoping to make happen soon. Part one ran here last week. This time it’s a watercolor over a pencil sketch from a life-drawing session, and it’s looking like I can find filters to mimic this look so I can apply it to video. I’ll tell you about that as plans solidify.
If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.
Meanwhile, Monday at 9 AM on The AIR, we bring you three episodes of Prognosis, Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century. This is to celebrate the return of Prognosis with an ALL NEW episode at 3 PM. This is a killer show, just check out the playlist…
Prognosis 068
Liquid Tension Experiment “Rhapsody In Blue”
Transatlantic “Return of the Giant Hogweed/Nights In White Satin (live)”
Blue Oyster Cult “Godzilla (live)”
Roger Waters “Us & Them (live)”
Vand Der Graaf Generator “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers/Sleepwalkers”
Steven Wilson “Personal Shopper”
Jon Anderson “Earth Mother Earth”
Connection Theory “Drumlins and Dropstones”
Starcastle “Fountains”
Mallory Champan & The Mystics “Cool Ade”
Anders Buass “Requiem”
Old Fire “Bloodchild”
Due to the lockdown in the UK, the Haversham Recording Institute programs has been in rerun mode Sinice February, and it’s a treat to have them back..
You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, Saturday at 10 AM and Sunday at 2 PM.
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.
Okay, since hardly anybody is going to read the blog today due to Easter, I’m just going to drop a fifty-year-old Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated special here for you. Enjoy, and Happy Easter!
This week we go back to a special episode of The RFC MINI SHOW that premiered in February, 2015, but which featured archive footage originally shot back in 1990 at The Empty Glass (when their stage was up front, where the soundboard is now). This show stars Three Bodies, AKA Jon “Kris” Cormany, Brian Young and Brian Lucas.
For our mini-milestone I wanted to do something out of the ordinary, and revisiting one of the top bands from the original radio run of Radio Free Charleston seemed to fill the bill. Let me quote the original notes from 2015…
Originally the plan was to end The RFC MINI SHOW with episode fifty, but as time progressed, it became apparent that there was simply too much great music in Charleston to simply let this show go away. I don’t think I ever officially mentioned this, but on The RFC MINI SHOW we don’t repeat any of the musical artists. We might have musicians on solo and later as part of a group, but each episode of the show features an act that hasn’t been on yet. We’ve got a long list of folks that haven’t turned up on The RFC MINI SHOW yet, so expect us to stick around for the long term.
To observe our little milestone we decided to mine the rich RFC Archives and bring you footage shot at The Empty Glass twenty-five years ago. Three Bodies was one of the top bands of the first RFC era, and we captured them doing a soundcheck at The Glass in the fall of 1990. They perform the songs “Gardens of Hope” and “Shingles and Tar,” which they later recorded at SoundTracs studio in South Charleston with the production team of Spencer Elliott and Rudy Panucci. Here you get to hear the songs in their raw form.
Back in the day, The Empty Glass was laid out in quite a different manner than it is now. The stage was in the front of the bar where the soundboard is now. The kitchen was behind a wall where the stage is now. It’s pretty weird watching this footage if you’re familiar with The Empty Glass as it is now.
Anyway, we hope you enjoy this look back at the Charleston Music Scene, as Radio Free Charleston continues to look forward, too.
Pretty cool, huh? Just think how this footage is now more than thirty years old, and everybody involved is at least in their 50s. Or maybe don’t think about that. It’s a little depressing.
It’s hard to believe that we’re in the fourth month of 2021 already. Maybe it’s the pandemic-induced time-fog, but for a year that’s already seen an attempted coup, a successful stimulus program and here in West Virginia an experiment in kakistocracy as performance art, the year seems to be flying by at an insane pace.
Since this is a pop culture blog, and these days you can’t get much more pop culture-y than streaming services, I’m going to play a little catch-up this week and offer some of my brief observations of new and old streaming services in which I have been indulging.
Last week I gave you my first impression of how well the WWE Network’s move to Peacock is going. I appear to be in a tiny minority, but I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth for the first time in years. I never used the pause or rewind functions, and didn’t search by wrestler before, so losing that didn’t really affect me. I have been struggling with getting a decent stream from WWE Network for years, so being able to watch the Fastlane PPV uninterrupted was a delight.
Likewise, Peacock going back and editing all the blackface and bad attempts at race-based comedy doesn’t really bother me either.
The rest of Peacock is a nice bonus. Having access to every episode of every season of Law & Order: SVU is sort of like having free24/7 delivery of crack to the house, and it’s cool to go back through all the seasons of Saturday Night Live to see how many times it was obvious that their old shows were better. There’s more stuff there than I’ll get around to watching, and at five bucks a month (with ads) AND the WWE Network included, it’s one of the best streaming values around.
The WWE Network goes away in the US on April 4, and since I really only watch the PPVs, special events and documentaries, I won’t miss it. It’s a little bittersweet, since I only got a Roku streaming device in the first place so I could watch WWE Network, but time marches on, and I will have a much more pleasant viewing experience now.
By the same token, I mainly wanted HBO Max to replace DC Universe, which Warnermedia gutted last year. I have access to most of the DC Universe video content that I want, plus I have HBO and the excellent new Looney Tunes cartoon shorts. I’ve had HBO on and off since 1977, but I dropped it from my DirecTV account about five years ago. It’s cool to have it back again.
Theatrical movies on the day they open in theaters are a bonus (for the rest of this year), and it’s cool to get to see Last Week Tonight live now. It’s odd that they bought the rights to show South Park, but seeing it uncensored is a revelation.
However, the navigation of the app on Roku is garbage. It takes three minutes for the main screen to load, and each section after that loads slowly. I would love it if streaming services would give me the option of skipping the “Who’s Watching” profile screen, and also let me flip a switch that would keep the credits going at full-screen without the next show starting with a countdown.
I’m a credit-reading nerd. Don’t make me have to work hard to enjoy that part of the show. I can’t be the only person who hates having the credits lopped off or shrunk down to an unreadable size. HBO Max is hardly the only offender, but since they really need to rebuild their entire technical interface to bring their app up to acceptable standards, they might as well fix that, too.
The whole idea of having separate profiles is useless when you’ve only got two people in the house. It’s just a longer wait and another hoop through which to jump to get to the main screen… which as I pointed out, takes forever to load.
The content is great, but we knew that already. How about making it easy to get to it? HBO is a quality brand, but they really need to iron out the bugs, reprogram their index pages and stop rotating out movies and shows so frequently. Also, it would be nice if some of the movies didn’t freeze or just stop with no warning. At fifteen bucks a month, the technical interface shouldn’t be the worst among the streaming services.
Mrs. PopCulteer has signed us up for Paramount + so she can indulge her SpongeBob habit, and, perhaps because they had practice under their previous name, CBS All Access, they have their navigation act together. The stream is solid and everything is easy to find. They have almost every episode of every cartoon in the Nickelodeon library, plus they have tons of Paramount movies, and every episode of every Star Trek show,
They also have current episodes of every CBS show from daytime, late night and prime time, and all their news programs, which would be great if I watched anything on CBS. They also have all the classic TV shows produced by Paramount, from The Twilight Zone to Happy Days to Cheers, Twin Peaks and more. They also have plenty of sports programming, but I won’t hold that against them.
Again, it’s more than I’ll ever have time to watch, but for seven bucks a month, it’s a good deal.
These are just my quick observations. In the coming weeks and months I’ll take deeper dives into some of the individual programs on these new streaming services.
That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular features and fresh content every day.
I first heard Tautologic three years ago when Herman Linte played a track from their album, Re-Psychle on The AIR‘s progressive rock program, Prognosis, and the band caught my ear. I was pleasantly surprised to learn they were from Chicago. I started following them on Facebook, and in the Summer of 2019 I happened to be arriving in the Windy City via Amtrak on the same day they were playing an outdoor show at one of my favorite hangouts, Giddings Plaza in Lincoln Square.
Mel and I managed to get into town, get checked in to our hotel and jump on the L in time to catch the band performing live–on one of the hottest days of the year. Of course Mel and I shot video for Radio Free Charleston, but since the RFC video show is basically an annual event these days, the footage remained unedited, on my hard drive, until late in 2020, when I put together our latest video episode. When that show debuted I sent links to the band and got in touch with their leader, Ethan Sellers.
Tautologic was first formed in 1997 by Ethan Sellers and Pat Buzby, and their current line-up was settled in 2010. The band has an eclectic sound, heavily influenced by progressive rock, but also with diverse elements in the mix that make them really stand out in an era where so much pop music has a sameness to it. Tautologic makes true progressive pop, and it’s a joy to listen to.
It turns out that Tautologic has a new album coming out April 2, 2021 (that would be tomorrow, if you’re reading this the day I post it).
I’ve been previewing tracks from Wheels Fall Off on the RFC radio show on The AIR for a few weeks now, and when I was offered the chance to do a quick interview with Ethan (seen left), even though I don’t often do interviews in PopCult, I jumped at the chance and this is how it went…
PopCult: Your new Album, Wheels Fall Off, is due out April 2. How much was this album shaped by the pandemic, lyrically and musically?
Ethan: Lyrically, it was not at all influenced by the pandemic. The last of the album’s lyrics was probably written in 2015 – so any resemblance to current events is either a matter of resonance, circular history, or perhaps clairvoyance (haha).
Musically, the primary influence of the pandemic was that the absence of gigs turned my musical focus exclusively towards studio work, teaching lessons, and general wood-shedding/self-improvement. Most of the album’s tracking was already completed before the pandemic, but I used the time in isolation to perfect the vocals and tinker with synth/keyboard sounds.
A bit later on, when we were more confident about going into the recording studio, Pat Buzby re-recorded a few drum tracks at Rax Trax in Chicago to insure that the whole album has a unified sonic character.
Rick Barnes at Rax Trax mixed and mastered most of the album on his own. I came in for an afternoon or so to do in-person tweaks once he’d gotten it most of the way, and we did a few minor touch-ups after the fact.
PopCult: When did you begin work on this album? I know that some of the songs date to before the pandemic.
Ethan: Without looking at the file creation dates, I’d say that some of the very earliest performances were recorded a decade ago – but much of that was built upon and then replaced as the arrangements evolved and line-up of the band changed. Four of the ten songs were recorded mostly-live at a full-band session in late 2013.
To be frank, I didn’t work consistently on the album. During the period 2009-2013, I struggled financially, was doing a lot of other musical projects to cobble together an income, and my father went through a series of health problems and passed away in 2012. It wasn’t an easy time. Things started to get on track financially around 2014, but I needed a few years to earn some money to finance the previous album, Re:Psychle, this album, and some other projects I have in progress. All of these albums were financed primarily through a combination of gigs and recording work I did for other musicians/clients over the course of several years.
PopCult: Your lead single, “That’s What I Hear,” was released as a benefit for the ACLU, and has decidedly political lyrics. How hard is it to try to craft an upbeat song with political themes in what can be such discouraging times? Is this sort of what “Memo To Yourself” was about?
Ethan: Contrasts are useful for balance – otherwise a song with serious lyrics gets too dour or an upbeat song with happy lyrics ends up too treacly. I remember Sting talking years ago about using the dark lyrics/light music contrast on his song “All This Time,” and that stuck with me as a good idea. In the case of “That’s What I Hear,” both the lyrics and the vocal melody went through a couple iterations before the final version. It started with the title, which I had envisioned as part of a then-imaginary medley of soul classics whose titles would read in sequence like a brief dialogue: “What’s Going On?,” “Freddie’s Dead,” “That’s What I Hear….” – so the obvious task after that was to write a song that could keep company with classics by Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. I’ll leave it to others to decide how I did at that….
With regards to “Memo to Yourself”…Sting/The Police rear their heads again as a musical influence here as well, I suppose. The lyric is loosely based on an imaginary seduction I never had the nerve to attempt. The ending rant was a free association that somehow stuck – so the politics there come from my subconscious, I guess.
PopCult: In the song “High School Reunion” (heard on this week’s Radio Free Charleston) you sing about not wanting to attend your school reunion. When you wrote this song did you realize how many people share the sentiment?
Ethan: At the time when I wrote it (coming up on 20 years ago), I had no idea. Now I know it. At 10 years post-high school, it’s still too early for many of us to re-visit the traumas of our teen-aged years while we’re still trying really hard to figure out and/or become who we’re going to be.
It’s really been in the last 10 years as I’ve re-connected with some of my high school classmates on Facebook, and I’ve seen that we’re all kind of going through the same stuff in terms of having kids and all of that. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised that many of my high school classmates have turned out to be better and/or more interesting people than I would have predicted at the time. Some turned out pretty much exactly as predicted, too.
Probably the biggest thing that I’ve realized is that everyone in high school is not only dealing with their developing brains and bodies, but they’re also saddled with all of the garbage their parents programmed into them. If kids are lucky/smart enough to leave town and have different experiences – college, the military, Peace Corps, whatever – they get a chance to re-evaluate, un-learn, and re-program.
Maybe I’ll write a kinder sequel – one that acknowledges that most of us were trying our best.
PopCult: As with your other albums, ‘Wheels Fall Off’ has such a delightful mix of musical influences–I hear hints of everything from Jethro Tull to Kansas to Madness, Zappa and other acts that combine musical intricacy with sharp pop sensibilities. What are the five “go to” albums in your record collection?
Ethan: Thanks! A lot of that’s in there, for sure. Picking five… that’s hard. I could use up five albums each on some artists I like. I listen to a lot of different music and basically try to reverse engineer it and mash it up with other stuff. The one thing I’ve noticed about the streaming era is that my tastes are broader, but I listen to everything far fewer times. You can binge an entire artist’s catalog and get a sense of their vibe/approach, but your relationship with the music isn’t as deep.
PopCult: Tell me a little about the grant from the Illinois Arts Council that helped finance the completion of this album. What was the grant application process like?
Ethan: The Illinois Arts Council was my first successful grant application. I honestly didn’t expect to get it, because I hadn’t had any luck with some other grants for which I’ve applied. You need to prove that you’re a resident of Illinois and put together an artist statement, artist bio, a budget, and obviously samples of your work. Having a few albums’ worth of self-promotion under my belt, I had a fair amount of “language” drafted, but it can be an exhausting process to try to explain yourself and your art. The process forces you to really think about what you’re doing and why it matters, and sometimes that line of thinking takes you to some dark nights of the soul where you start to ask, “Well, does anyone actually really need my art?”
PopCult: The pandemic has torpedoed so many band’s live performance routines. Are there any plans for Tautologic to perform live any time soon? What does the future hold for Tautologic?
Ethan: No plans to play live until we’re all vaccinated. By the time that happens, it’ll have been almost a year and a half since we’ve all played together – so there will be some rust-scraping to do. Also, I’ve been writing – so we might just head straight into pre-production rehearsals for the next one. We’ll just have to see…
I want to thank Ethan Sellers for his time and August Forte, who made this interview possible. Wheels Fall Off by Tautologic will be available April 2 as a download from Tautologic’s Bandcamp page, or as a physical CD from Turtle Down Music. Check their website for more details on their recordings and when they might be able to perform in front of audiences again.
I really recommend their new album. It’s such an original work, but the band wears its influences on its sleve, so I’d recommend this to fans of XTC, Kansas, YES, Jethro Tull, and to be honest, at times they even remind of Charleston’s own Stark Raven. Wheels Fall Off is a pretty epic album, one of the best independent releases of the year, so far. Check out this short video trailer…
Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a brand-new “normal” episode of Beatles Blast! You can listen at The AIR Website, or on the nifty little player over in the right-hand column of this here blog.
At 2 PM, your humble blogger returns with what appears to be the first “normal,” non-themed episode of Beatles Blast, possibly in two years. I mean, we’ve just come off of four episodes that were mixtape specials devoted to each Beatle’s solo career. We had a few more themed episodes before that, and then before those we had twenty episodes of The Lost Beatles Project, so welcome back to what passes for normal around here.
We do have a fun show for you. We open and close with tracks from Ringo’s new EP, Zoom In, Zoom Out, and then we also have a track from McCartney III, one from the remixed and remastered Plastic Ono Band and a gem from George’s posthumous album, Brainwashed.
After our solo Beatles fix, we bring you cover tunes, with prog-band, Transatlantic, taking on the Abbey Road Side Two Medley and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” from their recent live album. We have a couple of covers of solo John tunes, and Mr. Phil Collins takes on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from his first solo album, which is forty-plus years old now.
Check out the full playlist…
Beatles Blast 068
Ringo Starr “Waiting For The Tide To Turn”
Paul McCartney “Deep Deep Feeling”
John Lennon “Well Well Well”
George Harrison “Any Road”
Transatlantic “Side Two Medley (live)
“Strawberry Fields”
Average White Band “Imagine”
Phil Collins “Tomrrow Never Knows”
Ringo Starr “Here’s To The Night”
Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM, Saturday afternoon, and the following Tuesday at 9 AM.
At 3 PM on an encore episode from last December, Curtain Call and Mel Larch bring you three tracks from three recent solo albums by musical theatre stalwarts, Lauran Benenti, Tim Minchin and the late Nick Cordero. Then, in a minor departure, Mel brings you the entire soundtrack album from a classic movie musical that never made it to the stage, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz,a thinly-veiled autobiography in the form of a movie musical. After the main title theme, you’ll hearclassic songs that he felt defined his life, like “On Broadway,” “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” “After You’ve Gone” and “Bye Bye Love,” along with original songs, incidental music composed by Ralph Burns and more, all presented mixtape-style for the final 49 minutes of the show.
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.
The PopCulteer
Big Electric Cat 068
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