What say that, since this is one of the least-read days of they year for PopCult, we take a look back at the damnable collection of odd months that was 2025.

It wasn’t all bad, of course, but the loss of several close friends, coupled with the current cancerous political climate definitely put a damper on things.

This was a year when we said goodbye too soon to Brian Young, Lee Harrah, Steve Fesenmaier, Greg Miller, Non Sport Update, American Science & Surplus, BOOP! The Musical, Fruth Pharmacy, Diamond Previews, several amendments and too many other things to list.

Yet, it was a good year for this blog. In 2025, PopCult had 423 posts. Those posts contained over 235,000 words, the most ever (even counting years where we had close to 600 posts). I can be wordy, sometimes.

There were 45 audio episodes of Radio Free Charleston on our sister internet radio station, The AIR.. Plus we had one video episode.

The AIR also featured close to 100 new episodes of our other original internet radio programs.

PopCult posts were viewed millions of times by a record number of unique visitors. Readership was up 110% over 2024. Listenership at The AIR also more than doubled. I’m pretty sure that PopCult now has more readers than our former home, The Charleston Gazette-Mail (I know that’s not a fair comparison, since their content is behind a paywall, but give a guy a chance to enjoy a small victory). It’s nice that, in our twentieth year, we can say that we have millions of readers. If only I weren’t too lazy to monetize this blog.

I am actually writing this in the late morning of January 1, 2026. I just wasn’t in the mood to write yesterday, and this morning my wife and I slept in, and then got mesmerized by the Twilight Zone marathon, so I got a late start.

To round things out and continue a new tradition, here are my ten favorite header images from the last year…

This STUFF TO DO header from February was adapted from a news photo of efforts to extinguish a house that exploded two blocks from where I live a few years ago.

This RFC header is a digitally-altered photo from The Embassy Suites Hotel in Lexington.

This header, swiped from a post by Bad Spit, on Twitter, just looks cool.

I ran this STUFF TO DO header while Charleston was hosting some kind of bicycle event. It amused me.

I just like the way this header for a review of the Gargon action figure looks.

One of the low-key headers based on photos I took at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum.

One of several cool headers mutated from photos I took at the American Sign Museum in Cinncinnati.

Another Sign Museum shot for STUFF TO DO

Okay, so the phone number is for The White House. Caller ID is more accurate than ever these days.

And finally, a heartwarming image for STUFF TO DO from just a few weeks ago.

That is our quick and half-assed look back at 2025. Check back tomorrow and every day for fresh content and hardcore reporting on whatever the hell it is that we’re supposed to be writing about here.

Happy New Year!

It’s the last day of a year that is best forgotten, and your humble blogger has still not re-written the boilerplate for this feature, so with a focus on events happening on New Year’s Eve, here’s some cool STUFF TO DO all over the state, noted as briefly as possible.

Keep in mind that Winter weather and drunken revelers may make going out a very poor life choice, so be careful out there, even though it’s supposed to warm up this weekend, maybe. There is no sin in staying at home and watching people’s balls drop on the television.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

We are very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

Most weekends you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Bugswrrld on Friday, and Toby Announced on Saturday.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Most of the graphics below are for NYE, but the weekend can be loads of fun, too, especially for aficionados of mouth sounds.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening Wednesday night and this weekend that I was able to scrounge up online…

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It is the final Tuesday of 2025, and Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and reassure you that life is worth living. This week we have a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!  Making things even better is the fact that both shows were recorded Monday despite constant interruptions, loud wind, and heavy traffic going right through my yard.  Actually that doesn’t really make it better. I sound like I’m talking a mile a minute to squeeze in the announcing between catastrophes, but I’m trying to be optimistic here. 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.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show with three full hours of newly-assembled music. We have great new tunes from David Synn (pre-order his new EP tomorrow!), Parry Casto, The Heavy Hitters Band, Heavy Set Paw Paws, Gardenn, The Black Keys, Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Men Without Hats, The Settlement, A Different Scene, Moron Police and more…and that’s just in the first hour!

The rest of the show is loaded with tons of great local, independent and just plain cool music, all tossed into our free-format blender, and processed to s smooth consistency.

Of note, David’s tune is a preview of an EP which will go up for pre-order tomorrow. Parry’s song is one of two that benefit recovery programs in the state. The second one will open next week’s show.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 253

hour one
David Synn “All of My Heroes Are Dead”
Parry Casto “I Just Want To Be Alive On Christmas Day”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Light Fight”
Jim & The Sea Dragons “Kringle All The Way”
Heavy Set Paw Paws “Commoner Boogie”
Gardenn “I’m HER”
The Black Keys “Down To Nothing”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Rhinoplasty”
Men Without Hats “Run Away”
The Settlement “Riff Destroyer”
Moron Police “Giving Up The Ghost”
A Different Scene “Sounds”

hour two
Stone Ka Tet “Ronin”
Mother Nang “Fuggin'”
They Might Be Giants “Istanbul Not Constantinople (live)”
Jethro Tull “Aqualung (Live)”
Ona “Tornado Rider (live)”
Toyah “Broken Special (live)”
Government Cheese “Cattle Prod (live)”
Dream Theater “Stream Of Consciousness”

hour three
Frank Zappa “The Man From Utopia”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Ornithology (The Story of Icarus)”
Custard Flux “Tomorrowland”
Aliza Hava “The Invitation”
Into The Fog “Sore Loser”
Corduroy Brown “Getting Older”
Julian Lennon “Keep On Searching”
John Radcliff“Look Smart”
Stephanie Adlington “Pick Your Poison”
Todd Burge “This Should’ve Been A Holiday”
Mediogres “Electric Sex”

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 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic 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 last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM get ready for a new edition of The Swing Shift. This one covers the Swing waterfront and as a bonus, some of the artists in this playlist will also have live links that will take you to pages where you can buy their music.

The Swing Shift 177

Hot Pants & Tony “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”
Gina Marie & The Golden Bucks “Snake Around”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Thrill Thing”
Katie Melua “Blues In The Night”
Tyler Pedersen “Hamming It Up”
George Benson “Without A Song”
SWR Big Band “St. Thomas”
The Andrews Sisters “Sing Sing Sing”
Gene Krupa & His Orchestra “Drum Boogie (live)”
Tim Timebomb & Friends “Choo Choo Ch’boogie”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Memphis Exorcism”
Swing Ninjas “My Blue Heaven (live)”
Dave Stuckey & the Hot House Gang “I Never Knew”
Pink Turtle “We Will Rock You”
June Christy “It Don’t Mean a Thing”

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM,  Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursdays and Sundays.

Our final piece of art for the year is another sloppy watercolor, this time on a new textured illustration board, depicting a view of Chicago’s famed L tracks as they turn a corner in The Loop.

This is based on a series of photos I took out of the hallway window at The Wit when we were in the Windy City for Mel’s birthday a few weeks ago. My reference pics weren’t great because there were reflections marring all of them, so I had to keep jumping between them to see what stuff looked like. It was pretty dreary and overcast, and that didn’t help matters any. It will be a challenge, but I may try to tighten this one up considerably and maybe try to change the lighting, eliminate the snow and do it in a Hopperesque style in the future.

Or I may just try to get better reference pictures from a slightly different angle and do a whole new painting. Who knows what the future and new year will bring at this point?

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we kick off our Christmas programming with 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. 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.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute.

Above you see “Popeye Shirt/Yankees Cap,” a new video edition of Radio Free Charleston, and a special show devoted to Lee Harrah, who passed away on Thanksgiving night.

Lee was a close friend of mine (you can read about that HERE) and he was a beloved member of the RFC Family, both in front of, and behind, the cameras.

He appeared on our show in the bands, The Ghosts of Now, WATT 4, Bad Blood and his own band, HARRAH. He also leant his vocals to other bands and even turned up in the odd duet or two.

Plus, he was featured in the unfinished RFC movie, Jazz From Hell, and would turn up on camera several times to plug upcoming shows, or toss in a throw-away gag.

Lee was also our go-to guy when we needed a third cameraman for one of our shoots. He worked behind the scenes on dozens of episodes of the video show.

This episode of the show collects nearly an hour of Lee Harrah being Lee Harrah. You will see him owning the stage with his powerful vocals in all of the above-named bands and more. You’ll also get to see Lee acting in Jazz From Hell, including a couple of scenes that have never been seen before.

It’s been over a month since we lost Lee, and putting this show together was part of the mourning process. You will see Lee’s first appearance on RFC from episode 19, back in 2007, and you’ll get to see just a taste of Lee’s talents.

If you want an indication of how important Lee was to Radio Free Charleston and PopCult, just type his name into our search window. It brings up 22 pages of results.

This episode’s title comes from my wardrobe (as it usually does) and in honor of Lee I wore a Popeye shirt, and one of my New York Yankees caps. Lee was a huge fan of both…and I don’t think I have a shirt with The Hulk on it, so this was the next best thing.

We shot the host segments at Coonskin Park, outside the bandshell where you will see Lee performing a few songs in this show.

This is the second video show in a row devoted to the memory of a friend who’s passed away and left us way too soon. Last year we paid tribute to Lynne Sandy, from the Defectors. Unfortunately, this streak will continue in a couple of weeks, as our next video show will collect the music (and some comedy) from RFC Big Shot, Brian Young, who died suddenly early this month.

I’m a bit shell-shocked by losing two very close friends in such a short amount of time, but I hope by doing these shows I can do something to pay tribute and show how much I loved these guys.

This week we go back to September, 2012 for the middle of our trilogy of episodes devoted to The Wood Boys production of “Tribute To The Troops II.” Originating from the amphitheater at Saint Albans City Park, this benefit show included a ton of great local talent. This week you will hear music from Breedlove, The Under Social, Remains UnNamed and Johnny Compton.

Before the music starts, we brought you a short film that showed the work of one of the beneficiaries of Tribute To The Troops II, The Wounded Warrior Project. This is a great cause that helps our wounded and maimed soldiers segueway back into society after their service.

Remains Unnamed perform their original song, “Flatline.” They are followed by Under Social and Breedlove. Johnny Compton plays us out with an acoustic cover of “Highway Song.”

Next week, we wrap up our flashback coverage of Tribute To The Troops II with Deck of Fools, Point of Jerus, and more from In The Company of Wolves and HarraH, plus a short film about The West Virginia National Guard Foundation.

The PopCulteer
December 26, 2025

Boxing Day On The AIR FRIDAY!

It may be the day after Christmas, and a lot of folks may be sweaty and lethargic following a day of Yuletide cheer, but Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to special themes to close out this Godforsaken year. Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM we present a brand-new edition of Mel larch’s Disco Music Showcase/.  For the first time since  the fourteenth edition of MIRRORBALL, we devote a show to the music of Chic. Our second one-hour salute to one of the biggest-selling and most-influential Disco bands of all time is well-deserved because. It’s been five years since we’ve bowed down at the altar of new York’s Disco Magicians. This episode salutes the brilliance of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards and their band Chic, with the following tunes…

MIRRORBALL 122

CHIC

“Everybody Dance”
“Chic Cheer”
“At Last I Am Free”
“Savoir Faire”
“My Feet Keep Dancing”
“Real People”
“Stage Fright”
“Chic Mystique”
“Flash Back”
“Hangin'”
“I Want Your Love”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a mini-marathon that includes the latest episode Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that salutes Dave Ball, the instrumentalist half of the seminal New Wave Band, Soft Cell, who passed away in October.

Sydney opens her show with the song, “Floatation” by The Grid, the band that Ball formed with Richard Norris and Sascha Souter during a hiatus from Soft Cell.

For the remainder of her program, Sydney pays tribute to Dave Ball with the music he created with vocalist Marc Almond in Soft Cell. Together, they created a sound that some say was definitive of the New Wave era.

This is a mixtape presentation so you can resort to the songlist below.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 134

The Grid “Floatation”
Soft Cell “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”
“Memorobilia”
“Say Hello Wave Goodbye”
“Sex Dwarf”
“Torch”
“Baby Doll”
“Heat”
“Martin”
“Kitchen Sink Drama”
“Forever The Same”
“Where The Heart Is”
“Hendrix Medley”
“Numbers”
“Soul Inside”
“The Art of Falling Apart”
“Down In The Subway”

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. Classic episodes can be heard Overnight late Monday/early Tuesday.

Your PopCulteer and his wife had a peaceful, quiet and relaxing holiday at home, which was much-needed following a year that, to put it in rather tame terms, sucked ass. Check PopCult every day for fresh content and all our regular features.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and whatever good tidings fill your bill from PopCult and the Larch-Panucci household.

2025 has been a year best left on the trash heap of history.  We began the year writing obituaries for good people, and we ended it writing obituaries for good people. I’d really like to take a year off from doing that.  We’ll try to stay positive while running our traditional holiday greeting. What really sucks is that I just copied and pasted that from last year’s Christmas Day post, and things got even worse on that front this year.

As is our tradition on Christmas Day, we bring you Melanie Larch singing “Ave Maria” from the very first Christmas episode of Radio Free Charleston. This is the twentieth consecutive Christmas that we’ve brought you this clip. It never gets old.

Let’s follow that up with the 2014 Christmas treat that saw Melanie backed by the late and much-loved and missed, Mark Scarpelli…

And we’ll continue with Mel’s 2009 Christmas song with Diablo Blues Band…

Let’s go back to Chicago, in 2019, for one more…

Wishing you and yours the best-

Rudy Panucci and Melanie Larch

Ten days ago we brought you PopCult’s 2025 Holiday Video that brings you sights from a visit we made last month to Kraynak’s Santa’s Christmasland in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. You’ll get to see it again at the bottom of this post.

That was the first post of our “12 Posts of Christmas” this year, where the idea was that we’d bring you on Holiday post every day to help get you into the proper mood to enjoy the Christmas season (or whatever particular Yuletide celebration you wish).  For the penultimate entry this year, we are going full circle and bringing you a giant photo essay from Kraynak’s, with all photos shot by my beautiful wife, Mel Larch, while I was shooting my shaky-cam video on my phone.

Mel’s photos will let you take a closer look at the fine detail and intricately-designed trees than you get in the video. There were dozens of trees and animatronic figures, and this gives you a better sample of how awesome and immersive the experience is.

Kryanak’s is a Western Pennsylvania institution, located roughly an hour Northwest of Pittsburgh. For most of the year it’s a a huge store filled with floral supplies, seasonal items and toys and general retail items of a particularly cool nature. At Christmas and Easter, a 300 foot long corridor on the side of the building is transformed into a holiday wonderland, filled with lights, trees, decorations and animatronics. You can visit Santa’s Christmasland until December 31.

Let me quote from their website:

Kraynak’s was established 1949 in Hermitage, Pa. There are three divisions of the Kraynak business. The first is the main retail store which is the home of Santa’s Christmasland and Easter Bunny Lane. These walk through displays have become a tradition for many families. This location sells Christmas and Easter decorations, toys, gifts, potted plants from the greenhouse and fresh cut flowers from the floral department.

The second division is the Kraynak’s Lawn and Garden center, located 1000ft behind the original store. At this location you may purchase trees, shrubs, garden supplies, and outdoor furniture.

The third division comprises of six nurseries where trees and shrubs are grown for retail and wholesale sales.

Kraynak’s is a family owned business that promotes fair pricing and quality products. Many families over the years have made Kraynak’s their store for all seasons.

That humble description does not do justice to the elaborate psychotronic and delightfully bizarre holiday displays, which are fully dismantled each year, with completely-new attractions designed and built the next year.  To be honest, our video and photos just scratch the surface of how wild and exciting the Christmas display is. We showed up on a Sunday in November, and if you can go on a weekday, that is probably a much wiser choice. The place was packed, with the line snaking its way through their impressive toy department.

You can see videos of their displays from this year and many previous years HERE.

Here are Mel’s photos, presented without captions so you can just take in the wonderful visuals (and I can get this thing posted because I’m working on it on Christmas Eve Morning)…

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Today’s entry in The 12 Posts of Christmas is a photo essay (with a bonus video that I decided to do on the spur of the moment) of the PopCult Christmas Trees.

Yeah…”Trees.”  Plural.  Mrs. PopCulteer has bought so many ornaments over the years that we ran out of space on the one tree long ago and had to start rotating them. Couple that with us finding the flaming red tree that we missed out on buying last year, and me having the feeling that, if we do two, why not three, and we wound up with three trees crowded into our cozy living room.

And even with that…we probably left more than two-thirds of the ornaments in the closet this year.

Now that we  have set the dangerous precedent of having multiple trees, things might even get more bizarre next year.

When I made my annual incursion into the attic here at Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor, I took inventory…and and there are half a dozen other trees up there.

God help us.

Anyway, we will kick off this year’s photo essay (in lieu of sending Christmas cards) with the smallest tree, a pre-lit four-footer that dates back to the time when your PopCulteer was not yet married to the love of his life, and just wanted something low-maintenance. I brought this one down to be the host of our tiny ornaments. Just so you don’t think we’re being extravagant here, the topper was a Dollar Tree find.

It occurs to me that some folks might be more interested in the cool stuff in the background than they are in the tree. That’s just rude. Don’t you be lookin’ at our stuff!

This tree was ideal for our tiny, nearly weightless, ornaments.

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