This week we celebrate April Fool’s Day in August. Both months begin with the letter “A,” so it’s good enough for gubmint work.

From April, 2010, this was the Radio Free Charleston April Fool’s Day show for that year. This time I decided to do an entire show in the style of the “Fake Rudy” jokes that end almost every episode of Radio Free Charleston. The kindly old schoolteacher who was mouthing my words was the host of “Ding Dong School,” a kid’s program from the 1950s. Many thanks to The Emergency, Simply Sadi and especially Jeff Ellis, who were all very good sports and let me cut music videos using old cartoons with their music for the show. Big thanks also go out to Scott Elkins and Murfmeef for letting me use their short films for the show.

Over the end credits, that is indeed RFC’s resident diva, Melanie Larch, joining WATT4 for their version of the Police classic, “Message In A Bottle.”

This was the show that, I feel, most lived up to our promise of “mind-hurting weirdness.” You can read the Kayfabe production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
August 23, 2024

It’s the first episode after a seven-week hiatus, as Mel Larch returns with a brand-new MIRRORBALL! You can hear this and more cool music Friday on The AIR.

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.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes her hour of Disco to a random assortment of classic dance tracks from the golden age of Disco with a couple of pre-Disco Funk tracks mixed in, just to keep you on your toes. You’ll hear massive hits, deep album cuts and a few rare gems. Mel kicks off the show with a non-Kung Fu track from Carl Douglas.

It’s a tasty collection of Disco goodies, to kick off MIRRORBALL’s return from Summer vacation. Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 104

Carl Douglas “Run Back”
Bobby Marchan “Push The Button”
Donna Summer “Try Me, I Know We Can Make It”
Little Joe & The Latinaires “Funky Soul”
Love Unlimited Orchestra “Love’s Theme”
Thelma Houston “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Kool & The Gang “Ladies Night”
Earth Wind & Fair “Let’s Groove”
Edwin Starr “Contact”

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 Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, it’s encore time on the Big Electric Cat time as Sydney Fileen delivers a special edition of her show that celebrates the quirky legacy of Wall of Voodoo. This show originally aired on July 7, 2023.

That week Sydney presented a split mixtape, with the first hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Stan Ridgeway on lead vocals, and the second hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Andy Prieboy handling the microphone.

Originally consisting of Stan Ridgeway, Marc Moreland, Bruce Moreland, Chas T. Gray and Joe Nanini, Wall of Voodoo cultivated an underground following until their breakthrough hit, Mexican Radio, became an MTV staple in 1982, and the band performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the US Festival the following year…and then Ridgeway, Nanini and auxiliary keyboardist Bill Noland left the band.

In 1983, Bruce Moreland, who had left the band after their first album, returned, and the band recruited singer-keyboardist Andy Prieboy, who also became the band’s primary lyricist.

The band thrived for a short time with Prieboy fronting, then split up for good in 1988.  Ridgeway and Prieboy have both cultivated followings with their superb solo albums since leaving the band.

The band’s name came from a friend of Ridgeway’s, who on hearing him compare his records of keyboards and drum machines (gifted to him by none other than Daws Butler) to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound,” counted with “it sounds more like a wall of voodoo.”  This was when Ridgeway was eking out a living composing scores for industrial films and porno.  It was an inauspicious beginning for a band that would become a mainstay of MTV with their biggest hit, “Mexican Radio” and play for hundreds of thousands of people at the 1983 US Festival.

Check out the playlist…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 105

Wall of Voodoo 1979-1983 with Stan Ridgeway
“Mexican Radio”
“Crack The Bell”
“Tomorrow”
“Two Minutes Till Lunch”
“Full of Tension”
“Spyworld”
“Me and My Dad”
“Ring of Fire”
“Animal Day”
“Red Light”
“They Don’t Want Me”
“Tse Tse Fly”
“Call Box”
“On Interstate 15”
“Good Times”
“Call of The West”
“Back In Flesh”

Wall of Voodoo 1984 to 1988 with Andy Prieboy
“Far Side of Crazy”
“Tragic Vaudeville”
“Big City”
“Chains of Luck”
“Wrong Way To Hollywood”
“When The Lights Go Out”
“Room With A View”
“Elvis Bought Dora A Cadillac”
“Blackboard Sky”
“Back In The Laundromat”
“Country of Man”
“Empty Room”
“This Business of Love”
“Do It Again”
“Mexican Radio (live)”

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.

That’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular feature, with fresh content, every day.

It’s another week where I’m inviting my readers to complete this post in the comments. Real world stuff is going on and I’m very distracted, so it’s a very real possibility that I could miss a huge and obvious event or something.  There’s lots of STUFF TO DO this week, even though I’m still somewhat hibernating until the next COVID booster shot is ready. I don’t want to risk exposure after escaping the clutches of the pandemic for so long.  That doesn’t mean you guys have to stay in. I’m immuno-compromised.

Remember, if you are attending an outdoor event, stay hydrated and please don’t smoke or vape around any humans who might find the associated stank to be offensive. Be mindful of your health and of those near you. Look for and offer to aid people who might seem frail, look like they’re about to pass out, or have become dizzy from joyous and positive politics.  With that bit of a caveat, let me tell you about plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we remain in the dog days of August.

As I have been copying and pasting for some time now, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive (especially today when I’m severely distracted), and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. I won’t be offended if you volunteer to do the work I was too busy to do.

Saturday sees the opening of Pumzi’s, a new to Charleston musical concept brought to us courtesy of our old pal, Sean Richardson. It’s a “sober-curious” performance space, which means that it’s alcohol-free (finally!) and therefore suitable for all-ages.  Charleston has been sorely lacking at all-ages venue since before I began writing PopCult, so this is just a godsend. Check out the details here…

We also have a big local festival to tell you about at Valley Park…

Live Music is on tap at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  This week we gots no idea who will be performing, but it’s bound to be great, and you can’t beat the price.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.   Thursday at 5:30 PM Swingstein and Robin return with music for a cause.  Friday Tim Courts and friends will fill the Happy Hour with music starting at 5:30 PM. Later Thursday James Brown takes the stage. Friday Tim Courts holds down the forts for Happy Hour, and then at 9:30 PM, Bluegrass chanteuse, Sequoia Rose delights the Empty Glass audience. Saturday, the East End Ghouls return to The Glass with their wildly fun drag and burlesque show at 10 PM.  Sunday evening at 10 PM, it’s the big ole post-Mountain Stage Jam, which is the stuff of legend and adventure.

Please remember that the pandemic is still not entirely over yet. It’s a going concern with the ‘rona still lurking about all robust and reinvigorated and with a chip on its shoulder. And now there are nasty seasonal allergies, flying ketchup, Paraguayan Kitten-Monkeys, Nutella snobs and other damned good reasons to be careful. 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.

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

Here we go, roughly in order…

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We pause on a Wednesday afternoon on The AIR to salute a landmark act of charity on a fresh new episode of Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast presents highlights from The Concert For Bangla Desh, the first all-star rock concert, organized by George Harrison, which happened in August, 1971.

The Grammy-winning album has just been remastered and made available on streaming services, and a deluxe package that would include a Blu ray of the accompanying concert film is said to be in the planning stages.

This show boasted a band that consisted of Harrison, plus Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Jim Keltner, Badfinger, plus several others. Ravi Shankar also performed, and the highlight of the night was the first live appearance of Bob Dylan after his catastrophic motorcycle accident a few years earlier.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 114

George Harrison  “Bangla Desh
“Wah Wah”
“My Sweet Lord”
“Awaiting On You All”
Billy Preston “That’s The Way God Planned It”
Ringo Starr “It Don’t Come Easy”
George Harrison “Beware of Darkness”
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
“Here Comes The Sun”
Bob Dylan “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”
“Blowing In The Wind”
“Love Minus Zero/No Limit”
George Harrison “Something”
The Ensemble “Bangla Desh”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch serves up  a couple of encore episodes, include a 2016 episode devoted to political songs, which seems appropriate for some reason.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning starting at 9 AM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM, a NEW episode of The Comedy Vault brings the brilliant stand up comedy of Lenny Bruce, with a couple of bonus tracks, one featuring George Carlin doing a parody of Lenny Bruce in 1964, and another of him talking about the influence of Bruce on his own act.

Today your humble blogger and radio host is a wee bit preoccupied with real world things, so we have another hybrid RFC on The AIR.   Radio Free Charleston, is one-third-new, but includes two hours all-local RFC Volume 4, which hasn’t been heard by human ears for more than eight years.  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 tons of replays throughout the week.

Our first hour opens with brand-new music (just seven days old) from Corduroy Brown. The esteemed Mr. Brown will be debuting a video later today, and he’ll be performing at Valley Park in Teays Valley on August 23, and at Heritage Station in Huntington on August 24.

The rest of our first hour offers up great new local and indie tracks from Emmaline, Massing, Nick Lowe, John Radcliff and Sgt. Van & The Highway Dogs. We also have some great vintage tracks and we even sneak in the Post Malone collaboration with Sierra Ferrell, just for curiosity’s sake.

Our second and third hours dig up and resurrect two one-hour episodes of Radio Free Charleston Volume 4 from January, 2017.  These are diverse collections of local and regional artists, and you’ll hear Metal, Hip Hop, Punk, Prog, Trip-Hop, Americana, plain old Rock N Roll and more. It’s a cool kind of “Hamburger Helper” to stretch out this week’s show while I take care of some medical things.

Here’s the playlist for the first hour of the show. Follow the links for details on the artists…

RFC V5 190

hour one
Corduroy Brown “Doin’ My Best”
Emmaline “Strike”
Massing “Flattery (rejuiced)”
Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets “Trombone”
Government Cheese “Face In The Crowd”
Post Malone featuring Sierra Ferrell “Never Love You Again”
John Radcliff “We All Want to Shout”
Novo Combo “We Need Love”
Mediogres “Sleep Fizz Sleep”
Unmanned “Edge of Night/Light The Beacons”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood  “Lost Comrades”
Velez Manifesto “Heart of Steel”
Frenchy & The Punk“Lighting Up The Sky”
Sgt. Van and The Highway Dogs “My Friend Joe”

hour two
HARRAH “Man Alive”
Deni Bonet “Frankenstein”
Miniature Giant “Wendigo”
John Lancaster “Phantom Moon”
Karma To Burn “Waltz of the Playboy Pallbearers”
Embracer “Below”
Mother Nang “Ride”
The Defectors “Easy Target”
David Synn “Battle of Annihilation”
Foz Rotten “Funklips”
South Park Enterprise “Next Level”
Decomposing in Paris “Personal Ad”
Snakebox “Dead Planet”
Watt 4 “Bad Situation”

hour three
The Rose Garden (Diane Derose) “I’m Only Second”
Jeff Ellis and 40 Days “American Dream”
Lady D “Higher”
Spurgie Hankins Band “Dirty Rule”
Donny Iris “River of Love”
Company Stores “Rise”
The Boatmen “Heartbreak Hangover”
Joe Vallina “Year of the Wicked”
John Radcliff “Hanging On”
The Monsoon Band “Don’t Cry”
The Horse Traders “Southbound 65”
The Nanker Phelge “Killer Took A Holiday”
Joseph Hale “Time”

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 may look a bit like detail of a Medievel Cathedral.

But it isn’t. That’s where the trickery comes in.

This is actually last week’s detailed line drawing of the L tracks in the Loop in Chicago, but stretched, squashed, rotated, refracted and knocked into negative. So it’s a digitally-assaulted version of last week’s physical art. Techhnically that makes it mixed media.

I told you I was going to do this, remember?

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a 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 classic stand up comedy from Lenny Bruce on last week’s encore episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of Beatles Blast, the first five hours focus on George, while the second five focus on Ringo.

(Note: This is a restored post of a Sunday Evening Video that appeared here ten years ago this week. The original video had fallen by the wayside,  so we fixed it here and re-present it since it’s just so darn good. The text below is updated to reflect the passage of a decade).

Enjoy The Jam, Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England from 1982. Go back 42 years, when The Jam were a hot young English band that sprung out of the punk/new wave movement and spearheaded a short-lived Mod revival.  Paul Weller’s pre-Style Council band was one of those great musical entities that never quite managed to cross the Atlantic and find commercial success in the US. That doesn’t take away from the excellence of their R&B inflected, sharp British Pop-punk. 

Also, remember to keep checking PopCult for all our regular features. When this post first appeared, it teased “possible top secret surprises this week,” which turned out to be your PopCulteer flitting off to Chicago to marry his longtime love, Mel Larch.

From March, 2010 PopCult’s RFC Flashback brings you Episode 96 of Radio Free Charleston, “Storm In A Teacup Shirt.”

This edition of our local music, film and animation show includes music from one of the RFC favorite bands, WATT 4, and from the then-upcoming CYAC production,”Romeo and Juliet: A Rock Opera.” We also had a movie trailer from director Amy Trent, and the RFC debut of MURFMEEF.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
August 16, 2024

The year keeps zooming by this Friday as we offer up a classic episode of MIRRORBALL and a BRAND NEW edition 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 on this very page.

First, at 2 PM, Mel Larch goes back to January, 2023 for a classic MIRRORBALL. This was the week that The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents the first of two episodes devoted to the music of The Trammps.

Emerging from the ashes of the 1960’s R&B band, The Volcanos, vocalists Jimmy Ellis and Earl Young teamed up with the Wade brothers, from MFSB to form a Disco Music powerhouse. In this and the following episode of MIRRORBALL(running in this space in two weeks, following next week’s new episode), Mel brings you their hits along with important album tracks and a few oddities from their career. Disco wouldn’t have been the same without “Disco Inferno,” but there is so much more to The Trammps than that one iconic hit.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 067

The Trammps

“Trammps Disco Theme”
“Penguin At The Big Apple/ Zing Went The Strings of My Heart”
“Sixty Minute Man”
“Rubber Band”
“Disco Party”
“Can We Come Together”
“Starvin “
“People of The World, Rise”
“Disco Inferno (long mix)”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively 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 a classic New Wave band that we’ve been talking about a lot in PopCult lately, Thompson Twins.

You may remember from all the way earlier this week that I posted video of Tom Bailey of Thompson Twins fame recorded in Chicago at the end of July.  As Sydney reveals in this episode of Big Electric Cat, the day before we were to see the show, Sydney told me that this mixtape edition of BEC was in the works. Be it kismet, coincidence or wayward Karma from a Magic Eight Ball, it worked out that her show featuring the band would be ready to run now.

Thompson Twins were one of the definitive New Wave acts, primarily as a trio consisting of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway. Their hits were numerous and legion and you can’t really talk about the music of the 1980s without mentioning their name.

With Leeway leaving in 1987 to eventually become a hypnotherapist, and the remaining duo mutating into the Dub band, Babble before splitting up, Sydney decided to stick with the hit albums of their peak. She does start out with their first album, from when they were a seven-piece band, and throws in a few post-Leeway hits. You can expect a few deep album cuts and extended remixes along the way.

This episode of BEC is a great reminding of one of the lost treasures of New Wave. It’s time for a fresh appreciation of Thompson Twins.

Check out this killer playlist…

BEC 119

Thompson Twins
“Squares and Triangles”
“She’s In Love With Mystery”
“Perfect Game”
“In The Name of Love”
“Living In Europe”
“The Rowe”
“Lay Your Hands On Me”
“King For A Day”
“Roll Over”
“Doctor Doctor”
“You Take Me Up”
“Sister of Mercy”
“Storm On The Sea”
“Hold Me Now”
“The Gap”
“Funeral Dance”
“Passion Planet:
“Love On Your Side”
“Lies”
“If You Were Here”
“Fast Food”
“Love Lies Bleeding”
“All Fall Out”
“Long Beach Culture”
“Get That Love”
“”Dancing In Your Shoes”
“Bombers In The Sky (12″ Remix)”
“Sugar Daddy”

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.

That’s what’s on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer.

Check PopCult for all our regular features, with fresh content every day.

Your PopCulteer, attempting to blend in with the wallpaper in the hotel bathroom

Regular readers ought to know by now that, late last month, your humble blogger and his lovely wife took a quick trip to Chicago as an early anniversary jaunt.  I shared photos of our trip to Replay Lincoln Park to see the SpongeBob pop-up bar, and I also dropped “Radio Free Chicago,” an ersatz episode of my video show with music from Thompson Twins Tom Bailey and Thomas Dolby.

However, today I’m going to share more photos from this quick trip with you, and that includes a few bonus shots of Replay and more photos of the bands we saw.

I didn’t take any photos at Steppenwolf, where we saw an amazing play, Little Bear Ridge Road, because they will kick your ass out of the theater for doing that. I did buy a hat there, though.

I’m also tossing in a few pictures of Chicago and stuff we saw.  We went early (our anniversary is actually August 26) because the stuff we wanted to see was happening in July. This year’s anniversary plans are up in the air, and may not result in a photo essay, so enjoy this one instead.

Anyway, here’s some of the fun we had in the Windy City…

City Views (Random)

The view from the thirteenth floor of The Canopy, by Hilton.

LOOK! A PARTY BUS!

Just one of the many big ole streets they have in Chicago

The view of Willis Tower is not so great from across the street.

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