Your humble blogger is back from Winterfest 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 new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift 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 almost two hours of our usual mix of local, independent and free-format music, and then a bit more than our third hour recreates an Alternative Rock sampler from 1989 that was heavily played on the original broadcst version of RFC. .

We open with a new tune from Sgt. Van, who I just got to see a couple of days ago at GI Joe Winterfest, and we continue with new music from Falling Stars, Novo Combo, Emmaline, The Polkamaniacs, Rob Moore, The Subjunctives, The Settlement and more.

Our third hour starts about ten minutes early so I can bring you every song from HITS Magazine’s Night of the Living Post Modern CD sampler from 1989. I tell you a little bit about how I had to do RFC back when we were on broadcast radio over 35 years ago, and why CD samplers were like manna from Heaven.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the artists in this week’s show where possible, except in the third hour because I’m lazy…

RFC V5 211

hour one
Sgt. Van and The Highway Dogs “Night Owl”
Falling Stars “Waiting For Love”
Novo Combo“It’s Only Temporary”
Emmaline “Soft Spot”
Massing “Flattery (Rejuiced)”
The Polkamaniacs“The Edgar Allen Poe-ka(Death Deluxe Remix)”
Rob Moore “Chicago Dog”
The Subjunctives “It’s A Shame We Didn’t Get More Time, Lance”
Government Cheese “Single”
Clownhole “Aqua”
Red Audio “Girl From Outer Space”
Unmanned “Arrested”
The Dollyrots “5+5”
Jay Parade  “Hearts And Minds”
63 Eyes “The Cellular Cellar”

hour two
Tony Levin “Turn It Over”
The Settlement “Rainbow”
Mogwai “Fact Boy”
Marillion “Forgotten Sons”
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel “Red is a Mean, Mean Color”

third hour
Depeche Mode “Everything Counts (Live)”
Pere Ubu “Waiting For Mary”
Godfathers “She Gives Me Love”
Love & Rockets “So Alive”
24-7 Spyz “Jungle Boogie”
John Moore & The Expressway “Out Of My Mind”
Xymox “Obsession”
New Model Army “Stupid Questions”
Concrete Blonde “God Is A Bullet”
Human Drama “The Waiting Hour”
Renegade Soundwave “Biting My Nails”
Tom Tom Club “Suboceana”
Third World “Forbidden Love”
Indio “Hard Sun”
The Wonderstuff “A Wish Away”
Rainmakers “Reckoning Day

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 offer up a new episode of The Swing Shift that pays tribute to Chick Webb, an overlooked Titan of Big Band Swing, who sadly, passed away young and does not get his due. In addition to discovering a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald, he led an orchestra that was on the same level as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Count Basie.

This week’s show reminds the world how great his band was.

Check out the playlist…

The Swing Shift 167

Chick Webb and his Orchestra, with Ella Fitzgerald

“Heebie Jeebies”
“Blues In My Heart”
“On The Sunny Side of the Street”
“Darktown Strutter’s Ball”
“I Can’t Dance, I Got Ants In My Pants”
“Stompin’ At The Savoy”
“Blue Minor”
“Lonesome Moments”
“That Rhythm Man”
“Down Home Rag”
“A Tisket A Tasket”
“Harlem Congo”
“Pack Up Your Sins and Go To The Devil”
“Spinning the Webb”
“Ella”
“Wacky Dust”
“FDR Jones”
“I Found My Yellow Basket”
“‘Tain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That Cha Do it)”
“Clap Hands, Here Comes Charly”

 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.

This week’s art is an acrylic still life, on illustration board. It depicts a scene I accidentally grabbed a photo of in Chicago last month.  It’s just two cups, half-filled with coffee, hanging out on Ohio Street, just off Michigan Avenue.

I’ve actually had this on my desk for over a month, waiting to be finished. I got in late Sunday from Winterfest, and decided that it looked done enough, even though I’ll probably go back and tame that blue on the lady’s pants in the background at some point.

And I guess since people and things in the background were moving, it’s not really a still life, but the focus is supposed to be the cups, which were decidely non-animated.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring new episodes of Psychedelic Shack, and 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.

The problem is, I’ve been gone all weekend, and had a message that they will send the episodes to me, along with descriptions, Monday by Noon, my time. And that means I have no idea what will be on either show until hours after this post goes live.

So tune in for the FUN OF DISCOVERY!

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 some funny stuff on a random classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of live local music from The AIR archives.

This week we are going to re-present an animated film that we previously featured in this spot twice over the last twelve years or so.

Originally I posted this in the middle of a series of snow storms in January, 2014. Then six years later I was being all aging-hipster ironic and presented it at the tail-end of a month-long series of heat waves. This weekend, because I really did have a couple of readers request this recently, and also because I’m trying to get the blog written in advance before I leave for GI Joe Winterfest,  we’re bringing you the classic animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ children’s book, “The Snowman” for a third time.  Luckily, it’s really, really good. I mean, if it sucked I wouldn’t have even shared it once.

This version has the original opening, featuring a spoken word intro and brief appearance by Briggs himself. The OSCAR-nominated “The Snowman” was produced by John Coates and directed by Dianne Jackson, both of whom worked on The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” It’s a classic of 1980s animation, and it might just help take your mind off of some of the awfulness permeating the world at the moment.

We take you back to February, 2011 for Radio Free Charleston episode 119, “Transformer Shirt.” This episode featured the RFC debut of Sasha Colette, a song from “Norman Rockwell’s An American Love Story,” a special surprise song from Symphony Idol winner Ryan Hardiman and DEVO/Valentine’s animation by Frank Panucci.

This is a bittersweet show, with host segments shot at Hubbard Hospice House, just hours before Mel’s mother, Betty Larch, passed away. Making it even more bittersweet is the presence of Mark Scarpelli on two of the songs in this show. It’s a great time capsule of theatre and music from early 2011, but it’s tinged with a bit of sadness.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
January 24, 2025

Your PopCulteer and his lovely and healthy wife are on the way to Louisville for the GI Joe Winterfest show, but  we do have some radio shows to tell you about Friday on The AIR. This afternoon we serve up a new episode of MIRRORBALL and an encore episode of 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 found elsewhere on this page.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch brings you a major departure from her normal classic Disco era fare. This time you’re going to get highlights from a new release by a classic Disco artist. In fact, this is a preview of an album that doesn’t come out until almost a month from now.

It’s a new record by France’s top Disco artist of the 1970s, Cerrone, and it’s his classic Disco hits, but they’ve been re-recorded with a symphony orchestra.

With “Disco Symphony” Cerrone revisits twenty-one of his greatest hits performed with the Symphony Orchestra of Cannes (+50 musicians) directed by the legendary Randy Kerber. You’ll also hear Cerrone himself on the drums, plus an additional bass-guitars-keyboards band playing with the orchestra. Merging the power of electronic music, the groove of Disco and the unique touch of a symphony orchestra.

For this show, you might want to pull that bellbottom tuxedo and sequined evening gown out of the closet, and do the baroque boogie like Bach, Beethoven, Boney M and the Bee Gees. It’s the mash-up you didn’t know you needed.

Check out this very danceable playlist…

MIRRORBALL 110

Cerrone with Symphony:
“Love In C Minor”
“Look for Love”
“Cerrone’s Paradise”
“Rocket In The Pocket”
“All We Are”
“The Impact”
“Je Suis Music”
“Give Me Love”
“Love Is Here”
“My Desire”
“Africanism Gimme Some Loving”
“Drum Symphony”
“Hooked On You”
“Took Me So Long”
“Supernature”

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

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Enters A Forbidden Zone

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM, it’s Big Electric Cat time as Sydney Fileen delivers a special mixtape edition of her show that pays tribute to one of my favorite bands, Oingo Boingo. Truth be told, Sydney called on me to recommend a few tunes for this playlist when she put it together last fall.

Before Danny Elfman was an Oscar and Bafta nominated and Emmy Winning soundtrack composer, he helped mutate the theatrical troupe, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, into the trailblazing New Wave band, Oingo Boingo, and before his career as a film composer became his main creative outlet, his band was one of the definitive examples of West Coast New Wave Music.

You will hear the New Wave era hits, misses and deep album cuts from Oingo Boingo, and some tracks from Danny Elfman’s “So-Lo” album, in this fast-moving and mind-blowing mixtape special. I even tipped off Sydney to a few pre-fame rarities by the band.

Check out this killer playlist…

Big Electric Cat 120

Oingo Boingo
“Violent Love”
“Forbidden Zone”
“Ain’t This The Life”
“You Got Your Baby Back”
“Ballad of The Caveman”
“Only A Lad”
“Little Girls”
“On The Outside”
“Controller”
“Private Life”
“Nothing To Fear”
“Grey Matter”
“Who Do You Want To Be”
“No Spill Blood”
“Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me”
“Good For Your Soul”

Danny Elfman
“Gratitude”
“It Only Makes Me Laugh”
“Everybody Needs”

Oingo Boingo
“Just Another Day”
“Dead Man’s Party”
“No One Lives Forever”
“Stay”
“Weird Science”
“Not My Slave”
“Cinderella Undercover”
“Wild Sex (In The Working Class)”
“California Girls”
“Goodbye, Goodbye”

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.

Check PopCult for fresh content every day and all our regular features. Thanks for reading this week’s PopCulteer!

The PopCult Toybox

Before I get into this figure review I have a confession to make.

I never watched Voltron. I was a 22 year-old newlywed (married to someone who did not like for me to have toys) when the show premiered in 1984, and while I was aware of it because the toys looked cool, I was not allowed to have such things in my life at that time. All I know about the show was that it was adapted from a Japanese cartoon, which like many others, featured a group of kids in vehicles that joined together to form a giant robot.

Despite that undeniably cool premise, I had other things going on at the time.

The timing was off for me to really get into the show. After I was freed from that marriage and able to collect toys and enjoy life, other classic toys took priority.  So I hardly know anything about Voltron that I didn’t mention above.1980s TV animation, at least up until Ralph Bakshi’s New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, is pretty much what I consider to be the low point of the art form. Voltron was just not something even remotely near my wheelhouse.

So it was a bit of a shock late last year when the 40th Anniversary Voltron Robeast Dieklops showed up on my porch. I had totally forgotten that I’d ordered it, more than a year earlier, and had to wrack my brain (and go through old PayPal statements) to remember what had happened.

Basically, I got an email with an insane pre-order discount on this very expensive figure, and had just been paid quite a bit from a client who had been late with their payments, so I pre-ordered it before they had even decided on the production run and final retail price. I was only mildly acquainted with Voltron, but I thought the figure looked pretty cool, and would fit in with my giant Outer Space Men, and could make a good alien adversary for my monster-fighting Adventure Team GI Joe diorama that I’m sure I will finally build once I have all the time, space and money in the world.

He arrived early in the Christmas rush, and sat on a pile of stuff in my living room until I finally had time to open and examine him this week. Since mine arrived, he’s pretty much sold out everywhere but from the company that made him.  He’s $150 plus shipping from Panosh Place.  They only made 500 of these, and on eBay and other third-party sites he’s selling for twice that price and more. I noticed that Panosh Place says he has five points of articulation, but when shooting the photos I discovered that he actually has seven. His arms swivel at the shoulder, but also at the elbow. This is in addition to his neck and his legs (at the hip).

Keep in minid that this is a limited-production designer toy, meant to be displayed. It’s not a cheap toy for a kid. It’s an expensive toy for an overgrown kid.

For a large designer toy, the price is pretty much fair market value. My massive discount was quite a bargain. The year-plus wait for him to arrive allowed me to completely forget that I’d ordered him, so it actually made it even more of a cool thing for me. It’s not often I get to surprise myself with a toy purchase.

Let’s look at the photos and see how he checks out…

The back of the box is very informative for those of us who are largely ignorant of the show.

Fresh out of the box, still in his tray, and I’m struck at how much he looks like somebody asked Alex Toth to redesign GWAR for animation.

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Your PopCulteer has wrapped up this week’s medical obligations and is heading out to GI Joe Winterfest in Louisville this weekend, but if you aren’t going there, here’s PopCult‘s weekly guide to things you can get into in and around Charleston, West Virginia.

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. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky or Twitter. I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late tend to bring in live musical acts as well.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side.  This Saturday at 7 PM, Pumzi’s plays host to Minor Swing and The Jordan Dyer Trio. You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues.

For cutting-edge indepent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online…

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I had my annual dilated eye exam Monday (about three hours before I’m writing this), and looking at the computer monitor feels like staring into the sun.

That means that today you get this brief reminder that all day Tuesday on The AIR, running until Wednesday morning at 7 AM, we are bringing you a marathon of some of the best episodes of Radio Free Charleston from the last half of 2024.

The main reason is, I usually record the show on Monday, but at the moment doing so would feel like smacking my eyes with a ballpeen hammer for a few hours.

Since we are in a marathon-y mood, Wednesday will bring you two more Air Music Specialty show marathons of the best of 2024. From 7 AM to 7 PM, you can hear yours truly host Beatles Blast, devoted to the fabbest of four, The Beatles.  Then at 7 PM, and running overnight until 9 AM Thursday, it’s Curtain Call, hosted by my lovely wife and chauffeur for Monday, Mel Larch. This is, of course, Mel’s long-running survey of the best musical theatre on the planet.

With any luck, we’ll be able to return to form here in the blog tomorrow with a new edition of STUFF TO DO.

BTW, our above-the-headline feature image today is what it looks like to me glancing out the front door right now.

This week we are not doing art based on Chicago. In fact, we’re bringing you an abstract acrylic painting, a tiny one in fact, inspired by a series of digital paintings I did around fifteen years ago.

To be honest, the piece you see above, which was done on a six-by-six inch piece of illustration board, started out as a scrap I was using to test paint mixes. Once it was too filled to be of use for that, I realized that the splotches could be doctored a bit to look sort of like some of the digital artworks that I posted in this feature back in the early days of PopCult.

So it just took a little more paint and the judicious use of some straight-edges and my new flexible curves, and then you get the deep, introspective and highly intellectual abstract that you see above.

Really it’s just a doodle. Part of the reason you’re seeing it is that a week of clearing snow left me with fairly useless fingers, so this was all I could muster. it’s sorta purty, though, doncha think?

To see it bigger try clicking HERE. If you look at this one on a computer screen, you’redefinitely seeing it larger than it was painted.

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.

Starting Monday night at 7 PM and running until Wednesday morning at 7 AM, we are bringing you a marathon of some of the best episodes of Radio Free Charleston from the last half of 2024. We’re taking the week off from doing a new episode because of some medical appointments we have clustered in the beginning of the week, so I figured going full-tilt RFC for a day and a half might take some of the sting out of that.

GI Joe Winterfest, the January show put on by the folks who do The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, happens next weekend, and above you see a fun preview video they have this year.

Weather permitting, your PopCulteer and his lovely wife will be heading West (it’s really a pleasant drive) to just South of Louisville, Kentucky for the GI Joe Winterfest, a toy show produced by the fine folks being The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo (which happens at the end of July). Check out the Facebook Event Page for full details and preview photos. Reportedly, the snow will be gone by the time we head down there, so it should be pleasant all around.

This will be our third Winterfest, and it’s back at the new home of The Kentuckiana show.  GI Joe Winterfest happens at the Paroquet Springs Conference Centre, at 395 Paroquet Springs Drive, in Shepherdsville, KY.  It’s not far at all from the South Louisville Antique Toy Mall, so most toy collectors ought to have an easy time finding it. Check out how cool it looks…

Kick off the new year with a a celebration of over 60 years of GI Joe. Find old and new 12 inch and 3 3/4 inch GI Joes, plus Star Wars, Super Hero figures, Marx, TMNT, Transformers and much more. In addition, There will be dozens of vendors  and the show promises lots of old and new Megos, Big Jim, Pop Culture items and much more.

GI Joe Winterfest is Saturday, with a Friday preview. Here’s the hours and details:

Saturday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Admission Just $8.00
Early Bird Admission at 9:00 AM for $15.00

Friday Night Preview (5:00 PM-8:00 PM) for $30.00
(Preview includes Early Bird admission on Saturday)

All admissions payable at the doors.

Below we have music videos for the previous two years…