Due to a quirk of the calendar and the fact that I only took one week off from producting RFC in 2024, Tuesday sees the fiftieth episode of the show this year….and there are still two weeks left.

The plan, as I write this, is to try to do normal shows on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, even though far fewer people will be tuning in.

So…things might get a little weird.

But let’s not overlook today’s new show.  Your humble blogger is back from his winter vacation/beautiful wife’s birthday trip and that means we are back to what passes for normal. Tuesday is once again “New Show Day” on The AIR.  As such, we have a newish episode of  Radio Free Charleston for you. 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.

This week RFC kicks off with one new hour of our regular RFC local/indie/alternative coolness, followed by a tribute to the late John Wetton that originally aired as an episode of Radio Free Charleston International nearly eight years ago.

The show kicks off with a brand-new song from a brand-new band, as Ghoulbox makes their Radio Free Charleston debut. Following that, I drop in a couple of RFC classics in tribute to my friend, “Tanker” Dave Matteston, who passed away last week. One detail I left out of his obituary here was that Dave was a big supporter of RFC, and I wanted to include songs from Whistepunk and Flare Baroshi, two musical acts he loved so much that I had to burn him CDs of their music.

We also have new tunes from Dinosaur Burps and Duck City Music, plus, courtesy of our Chicago pipeline, Coley Kennedy.  You’ll also find a set of Christmas tunes, including new tracks by Todd Burge, Emmaline and The Anchoress.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show where possible…

RFC V5 206

hour one
Ghoulbox “Rats In The Morgue”
Whistlepunk “Into You”
Flare Baroshi “Phoenix”
The Sneaky Heat Missiles “Girl U Want”
Dinosaur Burps “Hellgrammite”
Duck City Music “We Gets Busy”
Candye Kane “I’m The Toughest Girl Alive”
Todd Burge “This Should’ve Been A Holiday”
Emmaline  “Zat You, Santa Claus”
The Anchoress “All I Want Is Truth For Christmas”
Jethro Tull  “Birthday Card At Christmas”
Wizzard “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”
Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas (live)”
Coley Kennedy “(We Are) Born to Lose”

hour two
Asia “Heat of the Moment”
King Crimson “Easy Money (Live)”
UK “By The Light of Day”
Wetton-Downes “Kari Anne”
John Wetton “Turn On The Radio”
Asia “End of The World”
John Wetton, Adrian Belew, Alan White “Mother”
UK “Danger Money”
King Crimson “Starless”

hour three
Asia “An Extraordinary Life”
John Wetton “The Smile Has Left Your Eyes”
John Wetton “Rendezvous 6:02”
Asia “Video Killed The Radio Star”
Asia “Roundabout”
UK “Nothing To Lose”
UK “Caesar’s Palace Blues (Live)”
John Wetton “Right Where I Wanted to Be”
Asia “Sole Survivor”
Asia “Midnight Sun”
Icon “Meet Me At Midnight”
Asia “The Heat Goes On”

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 we give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

This week’s art is a pastel crayon drawing, smallish, done in a semi-abstract fashion, of Christmas Trees.  This is based on a holiday display I saw last week at Water Tower Place in Chicago (seventh floor, outside Garrett’s PopCorn).  I took a few fuzzy photos on my soon-to-be-retired phone for reference, but to be honest, they looked more abstract than this piece does.

It’s just a holiday painting/drawing knocked out over the weekend so I’d have something appropriate to run in this space.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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. 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.

At 8 PM you can hear a random encore of a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This is the last week that we will be alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, as we will be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus. Later this week, expect some classic AIR holiday programs to turn up.

From 2006 to 2015, I produced ten Christmas episodes (or specials/treats) of the Radio Free Charleston video show. Last year I compiled them all in a handy playlist to embed in this blog so you can watch them all together. With the holiday speeding toward us, it seems like a good idea to turn this into an annual tradition.

We didn’t do a full-blown holiday episode every year. In 2008 I totaled my car on black ice early in December, and only managed to post a “half-episode” featuring music from the CYAC production of MARY: A Rock Opera from that year.  I don’t remember the exact reason, but in 2011 all we did was a short video of Johnny Compton’s Prank Monkey.

But that’s all in here, and in order.  The 2006 show features Clownhole and Mel Larch. In 2007 we had The Mountain Laurel Ensemble, 60 Fingers and The Android Family. 2009 saw an extra-long show with music from Molly Means, Joseph Hale, Todd Burge, and Melanie Larch with The Diablo Blues Band. In 2010 we presented the talented crew from The Contemporary Youth Arts Company singing Christmas Carols and songs from Mary: A Rock Opera.

2012 saw us back to full-length with a show that features music from the Charleston Gay Mens Chorale, a duet from Lee Harrah and Pepper Fandango, a special “double trio” from the cast of “MARY: A Rock Opera,” and Prank Monkey. Also in this episode, we have the Ghost of Animation Past, a holiday message from Razor Sharp Studios and Burt Flemming, and a quick musical tour of The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, WV.  “Hasa Diga Shirt,” was our 2013 Christmas spectacular, with music from The Bob Thompson Unit and Frenchy and The Punk, plus a message from Santa, and animation from Jake Fertig.

In 2014 it gets a little bittersweet as we had quite a bit of help from the late Mark Scarpelli. Melanie Larch and Mark performed “Christmas Time Is Here,” the classic tune from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” This was our “all female voices” Christmas show as the other musical acts include: Marium Bria performing the Jody Herndon song, “Naughty Christmas.” Lady D — aka Doris Fields — took on the Donny Hathaway classic, “This Christmas.” The Laser Beams wrapped up the show with a rendition of “Up on the Rooftop.”  Also in this episode is the short film “Incomprehensible Words From Santa Claus,” as well as “Death Train,” a charming holiday cartoon about the real War on Christmas, created and animated by Jacob Fertig.

The final show in this playlist is both our least and most Christmas-y one of the batch. Our Christmas show for 2015 captures songs from a benefit show put on at The Empty Glass on December 12 of that year. The Logan-area band, let The Guilty Hang, lost all their equipment, merchandise, instruments and equipment cases in a fire in October. To help raise money for the band, Jeff Ellis, Sheldon Vance, Aaron Fisher, Speedsuit and Farnsworth all performed, with all the proceeds going to help this band get back on their feet. This was the true spirit of the season. Musicians came together, giving their gift of music to help raise money for fellow musicians down on their luck. When I first heard about this concert, I felt that it would make for a Christmas show more appropriate for the season than anything that I could contrive with a holiday theme.

RFC 113 "Jazz From Hell Preview" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we continue our chronological trip through the Radio Free Charleston archives to go back to October, 2010, for a pretty major departure from our usual format. Back in 2010, for some reason, I thought it would be good idea for the RFC Halloween special to make a whole cheesy horror movie, in black-and-white, and present it as an episode of the show.

I had the bright idea to make “Jazz From Hell,” named after a Frank Zappa album, this movie attempted to be a cross between “White Zombie,” “Dragnet,” and “Reefer Madness.”  It’s about a Mad Scientist who creates a mutant strain of marijuana that turns people who smoke it into zombie jazz musicians.

It wasn’t a bad idea. In fact, it was a really good idea. However, the execution fell a bit short. Basically I forgot the number one thing they teach you in film school…don’t start shooting without a script. I thought I could apply my usual guerilla filmmaking techniques to a narrative film, and, well, it’s fourteen years later and the film remains about 60% unfinished. If I ever do get around to finishing it, I’d probably have to resort to using animation to fill in the (many) gaps. The entire cast is 14 years older. Some are way more tattooed now. Mel and I are considerably slimmer, and I don’t really want to go find Marvin the Wonder Pelt, my toupee/co-star.

Luckily, I had enough footage on hand to slap together an extended trailer, which became our 2010 Halloween Special.  It’s about 13 minutes of the movie, plus a promo spot for HallowEast by KD Lett.  For now you get to see what’s watchable of the unfinished goofball horror epic, “Jazz From Hell,” starring yours truly, with Melanie Larch, Chelsea Cook, Lee Harrah, Kevin Pauley, Craig Auge, Duncan Stokes, Donnie Smith, Abby Rhodes and Steven Allen Adams.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

And you can see an additional short trailer right here…

The PopCulteer
December 13, 2024

Sometimes I hate writing this blog.

Don’t get me wrong, 99% of the time it’s fun and rewarding and I enjoy doing it. But I hate writing obituaries.

And today I have to write one for one of my best online friends, whom I just got to meet in real life eleven years ago. I’m talking about “Tanker” Dave Matteson.

The last time I saw Dave, at Kentuckiana in July

Longtime readers of PopCult may remember Dave because of the custom figure and diorama contests he ran at JoeLanta, ToyLanta and this year, The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo. Dave and I had bonded over our love of the 12″ GI Joe, but we became closer friends trading emails about anything but that.

The hilarious part of this friendship is that many people who witnessed our political arguments in the old alt.toys.gijoe “sandbox” message board thought we hated each other.

We did have some major political differences, but after a couple of spirited back-and-forths in the newsgroup, we took it to email and discovered that we really liked each other. On top of that, we discovered that when we weren’t arguing politics, other people would start, and they would get really nasty.

For a year or so Dave and I had fake arguments to draw the heat and keep other newsgroup members from fighting. At points we were actually writing each other’s insults and coordinating the whole thing. It’s the closest I ever got to being a professional wrestler.

It worked, but it provoked a lot of ill will, and as folks moved on to other message boards, Dave recreated The Sandbox as a Facebook Group. His first rule was, “no politics.”

Which was a huge relief. It can be exhausting pretend fighting with a close friend.

Dave was my go-to-guy when I needed help identifying a weapon or piece of armament from a GI Joe set. And more than once he had me driving to new places to capture photos of rare tanks that he’d located. The feature image at the top of this post is a composite of two drawings, one of the tank he sent me to Weirton to photograph in 2021, and one of Dave, in his element at ToyLanta.

Over the years we stopped talking politics at all. Dave was a true patriot, a veteran and he knew the dangers posed to Democracy by Russia. When we’d meet up at conventions, we’d pretend to start talking politics, which would send folks running out of the room yelling “Tanker and Rudy are fighting again!”

And then, once they’d leave, we’d talk frankly about our various health issues.

Dave was concerned that I was pushing myself too hard after my Myasthenia Gravis diagnosis in 2016, and I was concerned about Dave’s heart. I think it was almost fifteen years ago when I got a call one night from Dave’s wife, Rita. He wanted me to be one of the few people in the hobby who knew that he’d suffered a heart attack and had to have bypass surgery.

That was more important that toys or fake political fights. Dave wanted me to enjoy my long-delayed life with Mel, and I wanted Dave to get to be with Rita and watch his kids grow up and prosper.

Tuesday morning I was sitting in my hotel room in Chicago, preparing to tear down the mobile office so we could check out and hop the train home when I got a message from Dave’s daughter, Maggie. It was a group Facebook message and said that Dave was on life support and that it did not look good.

About half an hour later we got word that he had passed.

This was devestating news. Just last month Dave (apparently having checked himself out of the hospital) walked his daughter down the aisle. He got to meet up with Rob Marshall, an Australian friend of ours who was in town for the wedding, and from all indications things were looking up. The train ride home was pretty somber, and I didn’t feel like writing, which is why yesterday’s post was just fluff.

Dave with Rob Marshall (left) and another good friend of his, Keith Mayo (right) just last month.

Dave told me some time ago that he felt like he was living on borrowed time since the first heart attack. I’d been friends with Dave for nearly 30 years, and this really hurts. Dave loved all his friends, even the ones he fought with, and he’s going to leave a void that won’t be filled. I wish he could’ve borrowed some more time.

That is this week’s PopCulteer, and I really wish I didn’t have to write it. Check back for fresh content every day in PopCult

Dave with Buddy Finethy at the 2023 JoeLanta show. Buddy is the person who insisted I go to the show back in 2013, and a big reason I agreed was the chance to meet so many online friends, especially Dave, in person.

Sometimes, you just gotta tap out.

As you may know, if you’ve been reading this blog for the last week, your humble blogger and his stunning wife spent a week in Chicago to celebrate her birthday. We had a lot of fun on the trip, but got some bad news about a dear friend right as we were leaving, and after the overnight train ride home, I’m finding myself too tired to write. Like painfully tired.

There will be a long post in this space Friday, but yours truly is so tired that the luggage is still hiding in the trunk.

So I apologize for today’s “fresh content,” being an explanation of why there’s no fresh content.

But…just so this post isn’t a total waste, here’s a few photos I took on the trip…

We went to the Art Institute to see one of Mel’s favorite pieces, which is not displayed often.

Of course, we had to visit another of Mel’s favorites.

And I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to see Nighthawks.

Another mandatory stop–Mel’s rainbow birthday cake at The Goddess and The Baker.

We also checked in to Mel’s other holy land.

This cool statue was on Michigan Avenue, and she didn’t look like she was too cold.

The view from the upgraded hotel room. It’s good to be married to Diamond Mel.

Above you see a not-safe-for-work video travelogue, wherein you humble blogger wanders through the Spirit Christmas Store in Erie, Pennsylvania for about fifteen minutes, making snarky comments (many of them off-color) while shakily shooting video of the massive holiday retail overload.

I’m sure all my readers are familiar with Spirit Halloween stores, which move in like a hermit crab and occupy vacant storefronts for a few months each year to hawk their fine Halloween wares.

This year they’re taking baby steps toward bringing the concept of seasonal retail to Christmas. They only opened ten stores, nationwide, and the closest one to us is in Erie, Pennsylvania, a six-hour drive.

We turned it into a three-day trip, visiting Sir Troy’s Toy KIngdom, the Grove City Outlet Mall and my sister, Debbie, along the way. And we did this all the week before Thanksgiving.

You probably saw the short video I put together for our return trip to Sir Troy’s.  I decided to do something slightly more ambitious for the Spirit Christmas store. I basically just turned the camera on and rambled an ad-libbed narration as I walked through the store for the first time.

What you see in the above video is lightly edited.  I sped up some of the dead spots but didn’t edit them out completely. I’m also uncensored, so maybe you don’t want to blast this loud at work. There’s one f-bomb, and a harshly-scatalogical reference to poo a couple of times. There are also some obscenities displayed on the ugly sweaters and one reference to buttplugs.

In all fairness, we were pretty much caught up in the irreverent spirit of the store, which had more cynical, goofy, alcohol-fueled and profane celebrations of the holiday than wholesome or religious ones.

And to be honest, that was a bit refreshing. It’s sort of like when you get burned out on “Oh, Holy Night” and want to hear “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”

‘Tis the season, I guess. This is our third PopCult Video Christmas Card this year.

It’s all meant in the spirit of good fun and if you are offended by any of it, after reading this, then I am so sorry you are offended by that.

Below are a few still images, in case the shaky video induced motion sickness…

You enter the store through Gingerbread Lane. I still don’t know why the snowman is bleeding chocolate from the neck and torso.

Maybe I should’ve run this nice photo of the mall entrance to the store before going dark with the previous caption.

Letters to Santa, along with an instant declaration of whether you’re naughty or nice. Prepares kids for instant credit checks when they get older.

Impulse buys as you check out.

A selection of not-obscene light-up ugly sweaters.

They had tons of inflatables

Your PopCulteer, looking like Salad Fingers thanks to the gingerbread house behind him.

Somehow Tuesday has happened once again on The AIR.  As such, we have a new episode of  Radio Free Charleston for you. 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.

Today we have another episode that combines a new first hour with two hours of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three, from May, 2015, as originally broadcast on Voices of Appalachia Radio.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because I did the same thing last week. In fact, I recorded this show right after that one because I’m in Chicago now celebrating my wonderful wife’s birthday.

Our first hour includes new music from Dinosaur Burps, Emmaline, The The, William Matheny, Yonder Mountain String Band, Rick Wakeman and The Polkamaniacs.

Hours two and three start out with one set of then-new music (from 2015), and then brings you four-song sets by six different bands (and a two-song set by one more). It’s a fun show that hasn’t been heard by anyone in more than nine years.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages for the local and independent artists…

RFCV5 205

hour one
Dinosaur Burps “Space and Time”
John Radcliff “Goodbye”
Emmaline  “Everything’s Breezy”
The The“I Want To Wake Up With You”
William Matheny “Mind For Leaving”
Corduroy Brown “Getting Older (live)”
Yonder Mountain String Band “Wasting Time”
Rick Wakeman “Yessonata”
The Polkamaniacs  “She’s My Little Pierogi”

hour two and three
Byzantine “Agonies”
Talented “Put Ya Gloves On”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Firest of Dreams”
QiET “Cosby Sweater”

The Company Stores
“Street Corner Blues”
“Dear Universe”
“Pocket Change”
“Lips”

Highway Jones
“I Get Numb”
“Cigarettes and Liquor Stores”
“Beautiful and Grace”
“Gimme Back My Radio”

Total Meltdown
“Silverine”
“Bad Bad Leroy Brown”
“Country Roads”
“Wake Me Up When September Ends”

Andy Park and the True Lovers
“I Got Some Swag”
“Drones”
“Black Chicken”
“A Little Attention”

Zeroking
“Dead Rock Star”
“Love Is Dead”
“Girls of California”
“Showtime Revolution”

Hillbilly Deathride
“I Am”
“Necessities”
“Bilderburger”
Weaponized”

Tape Age
“Tell me Why”
“You Need Me To Need You”

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 we give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 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 Thursday and Sunday evenings.

This week’s art is in the spirit of our last two weeks of Monday Morning Art.  Unlike the first two in this sort-of series, it is not  based on photos I took during a return trip from shooting video in Canton and Erie. This time, having perfected my technique of drawing winter trees, I just did a bunch from scratch, still using my mixed-media polyglot approach.

On thick illustration board, this painting was created using acrylic paint, watercolor, Winsor Newton ink, white-out, razor blades and X-acto knives, a variety of brushes and straight edges. I didn’t use the GI Joe hand on this one.

I’ve got one more winter scene, not yet finished, but I might hold off on that and finish it next summer, when we might need a reminder that it can get cold.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also 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. 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.

At 8 PM you can hear a random encore of a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we devote ten hours to five more episodes of Prognosis.  For the rest of this year we will be alternating between Prognosis and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, because we’re going to be pulling the early episodes of those shows from the server soon to make room for newer programs. After they’ve been offline for a year or so, we’ll bring them back into rotation but for now, you can hear them Monday evening into Tuesday morning, and then those episode will go on hiatus.

Above you see our second PopCult Video Christmas Card for this year.

A couple of weeks ago Mel and I went to Light The Night at Charleston’s Go Mart Park. It’s a wonderful light show, underwritten by several generous corporate sponsors, and I decided to shoot some shaky video on my soon-to-be-replaced phone.

I had enough footage to cut together a brief music video, and for the music I decided to re-use a song that was recorded for a Radio Free Charleston Christmas episode a dozen years ago.  It’s Mel singing, accompanied by our dear, late friend, Mark Scarpelli.  The song is the Vince Guaraldi classic, “Christmastime Is Here” from the first Charlie Brown Christmas special.

And we send it along to you with our fondest holiday wishes while we are celebrating Mel’s birthday in the City of Wind.