It’s hot. Really hot. There’s lots of STUFF TO DO this week, but it’s hot. I just stepped out on my porch to get the mail and my shoes melted. So, 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 spontaneously combusted  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 way beyond as we jump headfirst into the devil-dog days of August.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, 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, 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 worn out from the heat to do.

Our featured show this week happens at Folklore Music Exchange, at their new location on Summers Street, and it’s a mix of comedy and the Blues, which might seem to be strange bedfellows, but could be loads of fun…

Far, far afield of the Mountain State, in Atlanta, Georgia, to be exact, Monsterama will be going on, and if you want to do that road trip, or conveniently live nearby anyway, check out the details HERE.

Also, this week, the West Virginia State Fair happens in Lewisburg. If that’s your cup of tea, read more about it HERE.

Live Music is on tap at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Bug Kinder-Schyler. Saturday Minor Swing takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

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 (this week it’s Manna Meal).  Friday Tim Courts and friends will fill the Happy Hour with music starting at 5:30 PM. Later Friday, at 10 PM, Duck City Music brings Charleston’s homegrown Hip Hop to The Empty Glass. Sunday evening at 9:30 PM, The Holy Smokes, AKA James V Brown, holds down the fort at the Glass.  Next Tuesday Spurgie Hankins Band returns to The Empty Glass! Check the graphics below for more weekend shows.

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 now there are nasty seasonal allergies, worm-brained galoots defiling bear cub corpses, HouseRoys attempting to steal credits, bears and tigers fighting in the streets 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…

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

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You guys know the drill. 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.

While we have some great new local music to share this week, we also have a bit of a cloud hanging over RFC this week. Lynne Sandy, a friend and a Charleston music legend passed away over the weekend, and all of her friends are taking the news pretty hard. This week in our third hour, with many thanks to my friend Mark Wolfe (you may know him as Mark Blackwell these days), we bring you an episode of The Real with Mark and Steven Allen Adams interviewing Lynne from, I think, 2016. She tells some stories of her time as the lead singer of The Defectors, and you’ll also hear some classic Defectors tracks.

The first two hours of our show mixes great new local music from John Radcliff, Deni Bonet, Mediogres, Gardenn and more with some great female-lead bands in honor of Lynne, as well as songs I’d personally discussed with her and a set of tunes that The Defectors covered in their live shows. It’s part tribute to Lynne, part listening party. Along the way I explain some of the connections of the songs and artists to Lynne.

We are all really going to miss her. I hope our hastily-assembled tribute comes close to explaining how special Lynne was.

The links in the playlist will take you to the pages for the local and independent artists in this week’s show…

RFC V5 188

hour one
John Radcliff “Chase The Sun”
Deni Bonet “Love Is A Circular Thing”
Brian Eno “We Let It In”
Mediogres “Bad Signal”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Chasing You”
Anti-Nowhere League “Sympathy For The Devil”
Clownhole “Aqua”
Hello June “Honey I Promise”
Nu Mutants “Undertaker”
The Raveonettes “Goo Goo Muck”
Unmanned “Leave That Girl Alone”
Frenchy & The Punk “Hypnotized”
Government Cheese “People Who Died”
Gardenn “Chance”
Poppy “What It Becomes”

hour two
Cherry Poppin’ Daddues  “Take It Off Stella”
The Settlement “Blindman Parts 1 & 2”
David Synn  “Purple Eclipse”
Dr. Curmudgeon “Pregnant Pause”
Tranvision Vamp “Baby I Don’t Care”
X “Smoke & Fiction”
Romeo void “Never Say Never”
Holly & The Italians “Tell That Girl To Shut Up”
Gang of Four “What We All Want”
The Pretenders “Message of Love”
Elvis Costello “Love For Tender”
Pete Shelley “Homosapien”

hour three
The Real with Mark Wolfe, episode 28, Lynne Sandy
including music by The Defectors.

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 special  new episode of The Swing Shift that offers up double shots of tunes by a variety of Swing artists from all over the last century,  starting off with two brand-new tunes from Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.

Check out the playlist…

The Swing Shift 162

Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Kings of Swing” “Hey Goombah”
Dutch Swing College Band “Wolverine Blues” “Ice Cream”
Billie Holiday “Swing Brother Swing” “Them There Eyes”
Swiss Dixie Stompers “Black and Blue” “Basin Street Blues”
Oliver Nelson “Soul Street” “Blues at the Five Spot”
Shelly Manne & His Men “Stop, Look and Listen” “Dearly Beloved”

 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.

Sometimes, when I set aside time to do my artwork, I find that I got nuthin’. I mean, I just don’t really feel like creating anything meaningful. The smart thing to do in this case would be to walk away and do something more productive. However, since I have the added glitch of not having fingers that work consistently, when they are working, I feel sort of obligated to at least make an attempt.

Usually, these don’t come out great, and get tossed in the reject pile, never to be seen again by hoomin eyes.

Once in a while, I’ll go through the reject pile and find something that I sort of like.  That’s what this week’s art is. It’s a sloppy thick-acrylic work on a smallish cheap-o canvas, using a lot of bright primary colors. I just threw down a few lines using a Sharpie, then painted over it. At the time, I felt that I had reached peak “meh.” Like it landed somewhere between Kandinksy and Mondrian…with a thud.

Now, it doesn’t look completely worthless to me. Reminds me of a 1950s/60s jazz album cover or something.

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 a second hour of classic stand up comedy from the late Bob Newhart on last week’s encore episode of The Comedy Vault. We’ll run another hour of Newhart this Wednesday.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of our music specialty shows that have some kind of music in them related to the word, “blue.” I’m sorta running out of gimmicks for the marathon.

Sometimes a subject for Sunday Evening Video just appears in some kind of kismet.

Six days ago your humble blogger and his wife were in Chicago, at The House of Blues, to see Thompson Twins Tom Bailey (with Thomas Dolby opening) as an early anniversary trip. It was just about a month shy of the tenth anniversary of Mel and I sneaking off to Chicago to get married. We went early so we could see this show, and another at Steppenwolf, and also so that we wouldn’t be travelling into the Windy City in the immediate aftermath of the Democratic National Convention (when hotel rooms are still sky-high).

So with the music of the Thompson Twins still fresh in my mind, yesterday I got an email from Sydney Fileen, telling me that the next episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat (dropping sometime in the next two weeks on The AIR) will focus on The Thompson Twins’ early 80s music.

And with a different video surprise up my sleeve for next week, I thought that this might be a good time to present the 1984 concert/documentary film, Into The Gap, starring my wife’s favorite New Wave band.

From February 2010 comes Radio Free Charleston 94, “Star Wars Shirt.” This very special episode featured music from Byzantine, The Pistol Whippers and Adrian DeQuiros. There were also promotional announcements for The East End Pet Food Pantry and The Chemical Valley Rollergirls. Lastly we had animation by your humble PopCulteer.

Coincidentally, each of the musical performances on this show were shot with a single camera. I only mention this because it’s possible that you might not have noticed otherwise.

Normally we’ve done multiple-camera shoots on RFC, but this time we just happened to have three great one-camera clips.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
August 2, 2024

We have even more photos from a big toy show this week. The wild thing is, this gigantic, largely captionless, photo essay is not the last of it. You can expect another twenty or so pictures from the weekend before last’s 2024 Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo next week.

Your PopCulteer is still a little train-lagged from our quick trip to Chicago earlier this week, and has to ease back into the blogging routine while getting ready for his first non-travel weekend in four weeks.  Since running huge photo essays makes our blog template cranky, we are about at out limit for this post anyway. Next week we have even more pics of custom figures, rare toys and a few shots of cool Super Joe, Adventure Command and Astro Command figures.

We had a great time at the 2024 Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, and this is our second photo essay. You can see the first one HERE, and the music video, featuring a tune by Sgt. Van & The Highway Dogs can be seen HERE.

I like to try to get the photo essays and video of toy shows online in a timelier manner, but spending consecutive weekends in Wheeling, Louisville and Chicago sorta throws a blogger off their game. That’s why this post is still being written the morning of the day it’ll be posted.

So…without any further blathering, here are tons more photos, with only a few captions…

Many of these photos are from the preview night event, while vendors were still setting up, so don’t freak out over the occasional empty table. By showtime Saturday all the vendor spots were filled.

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Your humble blogger is just off the train, back from Chicago right in time to tell you about  STUFF TO DO in and and around Charleston this weekend. The big thing is MultiFest, but there’s more.

Again, 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.  With that bit of preachery, let me tell you about plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we jump headfirst into August.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, 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, 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 having fun in the Windy City to finish.

As I said, the big thing in Charleston this week is MultiFest. Beginning August 1, MultiFest brings together various cultural and ethnic communities in an atmosphere of tolerance and goodwill through art, music, education, cultural programs and cuisine at Haddad Riverfront Park. This is the 34th year for what started out as a diverse and inclusive alternative to Charleston’s Sternwheel Regatta, and it’s grown into a top-notch event of its own.

The Multi-Cultural Festival of West Virginia, Inc., aka Multifest, is a non-profit organization that seeks to enrich, develop & enhance multiculturalism in the lives of those they serve in the community. This is done by providing a friendly, family-oriented environment, non-violent tolerance & safe venue to celebrate diversity for all citizens through art, music, education, ethnic cuisine, health & wellness and cultural programming. You can see select events listed below, or check out the full schedule HERE.

Live Music is on tap at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Danielle & Steve. Saturday Emmy of the Mountaints takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

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.  Later that evening, Mike Pushkin & The Loyal Opposition, featuring Alasha Al Qudwah, celebrate Jerry Garcia’s birthday.  Friday Tim Courts and friends will fill the Happy Hour with music starting at 5:30 PM. Sunday evening at 8 PM, The Liquid Canvas–John Vernon Acoustic, holds down the fort at the Glass.  Check the graphics below for more weekend shows.

Please remember that the pandemic is still not entirely over yet. It’s a going concern with the ‘rona still lurking about. And now there are nasty seasonal allergies, Weird people who aren’t fun like Weird people used to be, giant balloons, susbstitute postmen 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…

As we mark the last day of July on Wednesday afternoon on The AIR , we still manage to bring you a fresh new episode of Beatles Blast filled with great new cool stuff.  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 takes an hour to enjoy what is a great year to be a fan of the Beatles. We bring you tracks from the John Lennon Mind Games Box Set, Paul McCartney’s One Hand Clapping, Ringo Starr’s Crooked Boy and we spice things up with some rarities from George and an encore listen to “Now and Then.”

Mind Games sounds like a whole new album with its updated remix. One Hand Clapping sounds great in its first official release after decades of being bootlegged. Ringo’s latest EP is another gem, and the rest of the show flows, mixtape-style, like a lost Beatles album.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 113

John Lennon “Out The Blue”
Wings “Maybe I’m Amazed”
Ringo Starr “Adeline”
George Harrison “Miss O’Dell”
The Beatles “Now and Then”
George Harrison “Writings On The Wall”
Paul McCartney “Let Me Roll It”
John Lennon “Bring On The Lucie (Freda Peeple)”
Ringo Starr & Paul McCartney “Grow Old Along With Me”
Wings “Live and Let Die”
Ringo Starr “Crooked Boy”
George Harrison “Lay His Head”
Paul McCartney & Wings “Soily”
John Lennon “Mind Games”

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 recent encore episodes, just to keep you on your twinkle-toes.

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,  The Comedy Vault brings you classic episode that presents a totally different hour from last week’s show, made up of classic stand-up from Bob Newhart.

With your PopCulteer returning from Chicago tomorrow, we have a prepared-in-advance archival show Tuesday on The AIR.   Radio Free Charleston, is a time capsule of three episodes of RFC Volume 4 from August, 2019.  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.

This week I went back and dug out three consecutive episodes of our all-local, one-hour incarnation, RFC Volume 4, and combined them into one big supershow. The first hour (RFC V4 117) is a “normal” episode, loaded with great local tracks, while the second and third hours (RFC V4 118 and 119) go back to the 2012 Tribute To The Troops show, put on at the Saint Albans City Park Amphitheater.  And yes, I get the year wrong in the introduction to this compilation show.

Some of these songs were heard on a three-part series on the RFC video show, while others were heard here for the first time when these shows first aired. We have previously recycled the two Tribute to the Troops shows, but that was 138 episodes ago, and this time we’re running three shows in consecutive order.

We don’t have links this week, nor do we have a complete playlist for the second and third hours. Your humble blogger is attempting to produce this show, write six days worth of PopCult posts, edit a big photo essay and a short music video, pack and get over a sinus infection before we hop the train on Friday (the 26th). So, let me know if I pulled this off in the comments.

And also check out what we have of the playlist…

RFC V5 187

hour one
The Bounty “Big Love”
Mediogres “Cream Hole”
John Radcliff “Dreaming”
Dead For Decades “Mr. Mouth”
The Big Bad “Bat Repellant”
Fletcher’s Grove “Virgil Burgess”
Emmalea Deal “Everything I’m Not”
Spencer Elliott “Folding Space”
Beggars Clan “Turn It Around”
Rasta Rafiki “Today’s Slop”
The Heavy Editors “Alien Lover”
Kevin Scrabrough “Middle School”
Speedsuit “Roller Coaster of Booze”
Dog Soldier “Blanket Number One”
Corporate Orange “Stay Listening”

hour two
This hour goes back into our video vaults for the first of two shows that bring you highlights of the Tribute To The Troops II show, held at Saint Albans City Park back in the summer of 2012. Some of these songs were heard on a three-part series on the RFC video show, while others are being heard here for the first time. This week we bring you performances by HARRAH, Deck of Fools, The Under Social, Remains Unnamed, Candace Weaver, Breedlove,Point of Jerus and Johnny Compton.

hour three
This hour brings you performances by Everpulse and Point of Jerus. For some reason we had audio recordings of two entire sets by these bands, so we made them the second part of this series.

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. New episodes will return next week.

 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.

Our titie is fairly self-explanatory.

I found a piece of black construction paper in my office, and doodled on it with White Out. I was just using it to get a clear line flowing from the brush while I was doing other pieces with it. When it dried, the mess of lines in the middle looked a bit like the female form.  I added some grayscale markers to it, and it looks almost like I did that on purpose.

Go figure.

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 an hour of classic stand up comedy from the late Bob Newhart on last week’s new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you ten hours of our music specialty shows from the beginning of 2024, just as a sort of random throwback.