Tuesday finds a partly-new Radio Free Charleston on The AIR.  Our first hour of  Radio Free Charleston is accompanied by a classic two-hour episode of RFC International, that dates back to April, 2016.

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 is a collection of cool new, and newly-acquired music, leading off with the Ohio-based band, The Broken Relics. They’re looking to expand their touring and will likely wind up playing in the Huntington/Charleston area real soon. I’ll keep you posted when that happens here in PopCult.

We also have new tunes from The Paranoid Style, Novelty Island, Jim Lange, The Anchoress, The Dread Crew of Oddwood, plus some classic local tracks from folks like Strawfyssh, Astrodot, Brian Diller, Velez Manifesto and Tilting at Windmills. And we also bring you the tune we promised last Sunday from Sgt. Van and the Highway Dogs.

Our second and third hours are an early episode of RFC International, where I play a selection of music that defies all logic and laws of nature. Just check out the playlist below and try to figure out how The Residents and Captain Beefheart fit into a show with Neil Young and Cheap Trick, and flow into Emerson Lake and Palmer and Iron Maiden.

The links in the first hour of the playlist will take you to the pages where you can learn more about each artist and buy their music or find out where to see them.

RFC V5 162

hour one
The Broken Relics “Rodeo”
Sgt. Van and the Highway Dogs “Nothing Can Hold Me Down”
Novelty Island “Sage Guitars”
Jim Lange “I’m A Weed”
The Paranoid Style “The Drop Is Steep”
Velez Manifesto “Dream of Life”
Strawfyssh “Mr. Biggs (live)”
Corduroy Brown “Bright Lives (live)”
The Anchoress “Asleep”
Tilting at Windmills “Sic Toons”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood  “Lawful Evil”
Astrodot “Stormy Blue”
Brian Diller “Loneliest Day”

hour two
Cheap Trick “Roll Me”
Neil Young “Sample and Hold”
Dubioza Kolectiv “Alarm Song”
Marc Ribot y Los cubanos postizos “Los Teenagers Bailan Changui”
Weezer “Thank God for Girls”
Red Vox “There She Goes”
The High Violets “Bells”
The Enid “Someone Shall Rise”
The Foreign Films “Sweet Sorrow”
The Hillbilly Moon Explosion “Heartbreak Boogie”
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band “Run Paint Run”
Mike & The Melvins “Dead Canaries”
The Residents “Japanese Watercolor”
St. Vincent “Krokodil”

hour three
The Dandy Warhols “Pope Reverend Jim”
Killing Joke “The Big Buzz”
Brian Eno “The Hour Is Thin”
Escapism “Ship To Shore”
The Range “Superimpose”
Filter “Pride Flag”
Dread Crew of Oddwood “Siren’s Song”
Atomic Rooster “Friday The 13th”
Black Stone Cherry “War”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Toccata”
Hooverphonic “I Like The Way I Dance”
Danielle DeCosmo “Don’t Know What It Means”
The Buzzcocks “ESP”
Operators “Bring Me The Head”
Iron Maiden “The Trooper”

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,  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 classic episode 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 small study on thin wood, using thick acrylic paint.

This is based on a photo I took from the window of our roomette on The Amtrak Cardinal on the way back from New York a few weeks ago. It’s a view of a bridge taken while crossing the Potamac, just outside of Washington DC.

The idea was to try to apply some of the lessons I’ve learned copying Hopper to a different sort of subject matter, and try to create the interplay of light and shadow that Edward Hopper made his stock in trade (and which is a huge influence on me). I’ve been experimenting with thick paint of late, trying it out on a variety of materials.

I liked the way this one came out, but the thin quality of the wood meant that it warped slightly, so I had to put some weights on it to photograph it, and because of that, it’s been cropped a bit.

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 classic 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. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of Canadian improv troupe, The Frantics, on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of our programs that focus on Black artists, as our observance of Black History Month. You’ll hear episodes of Curtain Call, The Swing Shift, The Comedy Vault and Radio Free Charleston.

Above you see the music video for last week’s Winterfest Toy Show in Louisville, put on by our friends at The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo.  The music comes courtesy of Sgt. Van and the Highway Dogs. In this video you will hear the tunes: “325,” “Strange Ride” and “Dancing Feets.”

Because Sgt. Van was kind enough to allow us to use his music for this video, I’m returning the favor and sharing his brand-new promo video for his latest release here. It’s a snippet of “Nothing Can Hold Me Down,” which you will hear Tuesday on Radio Free Charleston.

As if that second video wasn’t bonus enough, we have another dozen photos from the show for you…

The Paraquet Springs Conference Center, where the fun all happened.

I think I explained that your humble blogger and his wife were under the weather at the show last week, which is why I only got this profile shot of Steve Stovall,  the show’s organizer, and the man behind Adventure Commando (FKA Super Joe Unlimited). I had to pick up the cool Abominal Snowman set.

There were nekkid fellers as far as the eye could see.

Even if it was stuff you didn’t collect, it was cool to see so much vintage toy coolness.

Amazing self-restraint kept these from coming home with me.

This guy had a little bit of everything. I loved seeing so much MEGO at the show.

Mattsquatch Customs, whose work is all over the video this year. I got his Glacier Explorer set.

It wasn’t all Joe and Action Figures. There was some primo vintage Barbie at the show, if you knew where to look.

On the opposite side of the cool AT sets I showed you Wednesday, we find a ton of GI Joe: Classified.

All the tanks in the world.

There was plenty of Modern GI Joe stuff for sale.

We leave you with a rear view of the Inflatable Ghost Tank from Greg Autore. Sometime in the next week or two I will tell you all about this project, once I touch base with Greg for more details.

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Radio Free Charleston 65, “Give Peace A Chance Shirt,” was first posted April 8, 2009 (coincidentally, the day before the first installement of The PopCulteer). This episode showcased two songs performed by Bare Bones, an acapella group consisting of Bill Kimmons, Becky Kimmons, and Mark Davis. We also present the short film “FOOTLUCY”, starring the late Joe McComas. Plus, there’s animation by Wallace Padillo.

Original production notes are here. If it seems odd that I keep saying “Bare Bones Acapella,” rest assured that it’s all in your perception and is not a sign that I thought the word “acapella” was part of their name.

Next week, we will be skipping episode 66 because it’s still one of four “lost” episodes of RFC. Just to give you a heads up.

The PopCulteer
February 2, 2024

We have random short items and the playlist for today’s new episode of MIRRORBALL this week, so let’s dive in…

Self-horn-tootery

To the right you see the cover of the latest issue of Non Sport Update, a magazine for which I have been writing for over a quarter-century now.  I’m sharing it here because this is the big 2024 preview issue, and yours truly is the author of that piece.

It’s not a fun assignment, but I only have to do it once every five years or so. It’ll fill you in on what to expect from almost every non-sport trading card company for the next year.

It’s actually a must-have issue for collectors of non-sport trading cards, and aside from my article, there are several other cool articles, along with five promo cards, which you can see below.

This issue of Non Sport Update should be available now, where ever magazines are still sold.

The essay that wasn’t

It’s time for a little “inside baseball” about how PopCult is made.

Last week, I had a long essay planned for this space (in case you’re new here, The PopCulteer is the Friday “column” that runs within this blog as a bit of a tribute to the late James Dent (AKA “The Gazetteer”) and also as a bit of a writing prompt to force me to produce more content for the blog…or at least it was back in 2009 when I started doing this. Now I have fresh content every day.

Anyway, last week I had a long essay ready to be proofread and revised, and it was all about the changing face of cable television and streaming, as manifested by the blockbuster deal that will see WWE move their flagship show, Monday Night RAW, from the USA Network, to Netflix, in January of 2025.

I was working on that when the news broke about an even bigger blockbuster WWE story–the lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE alleging sexual abuse and trafficking.

There was no way I could write about WWE without mentioning that…and that was a developing story that, one week later, is still pretty freaking disgusting. I spiked the essay rather than do anything that could be seen as promotion for WWE.

It’s a lurid and disturbing story.  McMahon is gone from WWE. It took less than 30 hours for sponsors to threaten to drop out of their Royal Rumble event and for him to tender his resignation as a result.  The founder of WWE is gone for good, and deservedly so.

I’m not going to go into details here, but if the texts presented as evidence are real–and no sane lawyer would introduce them into evidence if they aren’t–then McMahon’s behavior displays a mind-boggling intersection of mysogony, racism, kink and power madness. I’m talking Trump-level sleaze here.

And having said that, I’m not going any further this week. I love writing about pop culture for all my readers, but I really don’t want to spend any more time on a story where the basic research makes me want to take a shower.

If you’re not up on what happened, and want to learn more, check out this Timeline created by Brandon Thurston and Wrestlenomics.

We Had To Stop Here

As detailed in a photo essay Wednesday (with more to come), Mel and I ran to Louisville for GI Joe Winterfest last weekend.

Well, on the way back we made a little detour so we could hit up the Buc-ee’s in Richmond, Kentucky.  Here are four photos.

A Mongolian Cluster Buc-ee’s.

The above is a close-up of this. We passed on the die-cast truck, in favor of the die-cast Willy’s Gasser with a flame job (not pictured).

Valentine’s Day merch, since we didn’t make it down for Halloween or Christmas last year.

It’s…..MAGNETS!

Fresh Disco on The AIR

We have a hot new episode of MIRRORBALL to tell you about that’s debuting Friday afternoon 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 brings you a hot and danceable sampling of some great club hits from the classic era of Disco Music. There’s no theme this week, but every track is making its MIRRORBALL debut!

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 090

Zack Ferguson “Skate Board Dancin”
Bionic Boogie “Risky Changes”
Dee D. Jackson “Automatic Lover”
Love and Kisses “Accidental Lover”
Montreal Sound “Music”
T Connection “On Fire”
Sentimental Trumpet “Disco Doble”
Michele “Disco Dance”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM.

At 3 PM we bring you a classic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, where Sydney Fileen salutes the New Wave cinematic classic, URGH! A Music War.

That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day.

Charleston’s Restaurant Week is happening for those of you with no food allergies, interactions or aversions, but aside from that, we have a new batch of STUFF TO DO in and around the Charleston/Huntington WV area (and beyond) this weekend.

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.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Neil Curry. Saturday Chucktown Allstars take the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

Friday from 8 PM to 11 PM, its the monthly talent show at Mountain Roots Community Theatre, located at 2758 E Dupont Ave, Belle (AKA the Quincy Shopping Center, not far from Riverside High). Admission is a mere five bucks.  

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about. Thursday at 5:30 PM it’s the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin.  Thursday at 9 PM the Glass will play host to Evie Schaffer.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday Comedian Andy Conn goes on at 9 PM, with support from Andy Frampton.  You can check below for the graphics for other cool weekend shows at The Empty Glass.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern with the ‘rona surging again. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, Popstar/Football Player romances, drugs that cause infected perineums, Cocaine Bear’s brother Viagra Bear 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.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the weekend, roughly in order…

Last weekend your PopCulteer made the trek to Louisville, Kentucky, for the Winterfest show, put on by the folks who bring us the Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo every July.

We had a lot of fun, and I’ll be bringing you a few more photo essays and video over the next couple of weeks, but today we’re going to take a quick look at some of the fun we had.

I should also explain here, and this is probably not news to anybody who listens to our shows on The AIR, your humble blogger and his wife have been a bit under the weather for several weeks. It’s mostly that lingering cough that folks all over the country seem to fighting right now. We fought this before we went to NYC earlier in the month, but then it came back during that trip, and we’ve been juggling sick days and the like ever since.

So Friday, I was feeling pretty good, and Mel seemed to be on the mend. The preview night was great. Saturday the weather took a turn for the worse, and we went along with it. We exited the show after getting plenty of video and photos, and spent the rest of Saturday shopping our way to Lexington.

Sunday, as we made our way home, we pretty much felt like we’d been beaten with baseball bats.  I would’ve posted this photo essay earlier, but I needed a couple of days to recover.

I am feeling much better now, and will be writing full captions for the photos.  Over the next couple of weeks you can expect a music video of Winterfest, with music from Sgt. Van and the Highway Dogs, plus a post with photos about Greg Autore’s extremely cool inflatable “Ghost Tank” project,  and at least a few more photos from the show, along with a look at some cheesy knockoffs we found on the way home.

But now….it’s time for Winterfest photos…

Greg Autore is producing a very cool and historically accurate 1/6 scale GI Joe accessory–it’s an inflatable Sherman Tank, like those that were used to decoy the Germans prior to D-Day. I’ll be telling you more about this in a few days.

Just a shot at what you see when you walk in the door.

Continue reading

Tuesday finds your humble blogger and radio host still weak of voice but willing to sacrifice to give you a new RFC on The AIR.  We have a partly-new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston this week.

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 Jim Lange’s “Everything’s Alright,” which is a version of that song that he recently re-released on the tenth anniversary of the great WV Water Crisis.  The rest of our all-new first hour is loaded with great stuff like Chicago artist, Jared Rabin, who lets us preview his upcoming single (due out February 9), “Remind Myself To Breathe.”

Jared started learning music at age five from his grandfather, who was the first chair violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He became a proficient multi-instrumentalist, went on to study jazz composition and has traveled the world performing an array of music. His songwriting has been recognized by international competitions and his albums have been praised by American Songwriter, NPR and more. He is a longtime fixture on the Chicago music scene and can be found performing around town and across the US.

The rest of our first hour mixes great local music with great indie music, and a few classic tracks from decades gone by.

Our second and third hours this week revive the fourth episode of RFC V4, from February 2016. This was in the days before The AIR became “The AIR” and officially became part of PopCult. At this time, we were “OnTheAIRadio,” which thankfully, we are not anymore. These two hours are filled with local, regional and tangentially regional acts, and it’s a fun listen.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links in the first hour will take you to the artist’s pages  so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live.

RFC V5 161

hour one
Jim Lange “Everything’s Alright (The WV Water Crisis of 2014 Edition)”
Jared Rabin “Remind Myself to Breathe”
Hello June “No Easy Answer”
Sleater-Kinney “Don’t Feel Right”
Slade “She Did It To Me”
Soul Trash “The Last Word”
Novelty Island “Johnny’s”
Astrodot “Can’t Hide It When You’re Fried”
Eels “Fresh Blood”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “Elastic”
Law Biting Citizens “Breaking”
Velez Manifesto “Crack In The Face”
Lene Lovich “Faces”
Le Travaillant “Gumbo De Mon Père”
Joi “I’ll Come Up With Something”
The Tom McGees “Smile”

hour two
Under Surveillance “Savannah Moon”
Tape Age “Baby I’m Lost”
Ona “Sleep, Rinse, Repeat”
Blue Million “Adam Bit The Apple”
Ann Magnuson “Falling For An Actor”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “The Party’s Over”
Mark Wolfe “The Valley Peaked”
Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen “Incomplete”
Sheldon Vance “Tonight We Sing”
Whistlepunk “Outshine”
Granny’s 12-Gauge “Step On The Gas”
Todd Burge “The Kids Are Getting Out Of Hand”
Stephanie Deskins “The Fall”
Time And Distance “There Is Nothing I Hate More Than The DMV”
Time And Distance “Hell to pay”

hour three
Big Money “Face The Flood”
Sasha Colette “You Had Me”
Groove Heavy “Don’t Stop Believin'”
Total Meltdown “Pictures of You”
The Brothersisters “Can’t Be Lost”
Doktor Steamly “The Needle Goes In”
DEVO “Clockout”
J Marinelli “Lockdown Town”
The Company Stores “No Middle Name”
Mike Morningstar and Rick Roberts “Queen of Hearts”
Martyranny’s Collective Pulse “Banshee”
Wolfgang Parker “To Say You Love Me”
John Radcliff “To Say You Love me”
Go Van Gogh “I Am The Walrus”

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,  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 classic episode 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 thick acrylic paint-on leftover floor tile still life, based on the view in our roomette on The Cardinal, on our way back from New York a couple of weeks ago.

I took a few photos for reference, but basically just liked the way the tray looked against the windows when it was folded away.

A person can get bored on a 14-hour train trip.

I used brushes, bits of foam, broken plastic utensils and just a bit of my fingers to push the thick paint where I wanted it to go. The I photographed it in overcast daylight and color-corrected it once it was in the computer.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have brand-new episodes of  Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack and at 3 PM,  Herman Linte’s Prognosis, and we have the playlists for each show right here…

Psychedelic Shack is Nigel Pye’s usual mix of mind-expanding music from throughout the timestream…

Psychedelic Shack 085
Arthur Brown “Child of my Kingdom”
Surya Kris Peters “Mode Azul”
Ellesmere “Stranger Skies”
Astral Magic “The Vibrating Dream Worm”
The Dukes of Stratosphere “Brainiac’s Daughter”
Paul McCartney “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”
White Witch “Class of 2000”
Saturna “Your Time Is Gonna Come”
The Gurus “Blue Snow Night”
The Turtles “Cat In The Window”

Herman Linte tells us that this week’s Prognosis is a career-spanning mixtape of the band, Gentle Giant.

Prognosis 112
Gentle Giant
“Schooldays”
“Peel The Paint”
“The Advent of Panurge”
“The Boys In The Band”
“River”
“Way of Life”
“In A Glass House”
“Playing The Game”
“The Power and The Glory”
“Just The Same/Proclamation (live)”
“Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It”
“Memories of Old Days”
“Words From The Wise”
“It’s Only Goodbye”
“Number One”
“I Am A Camera”
“Free Hand (live)”
“Giant For A Day (live)”
“Inside Out (live)”
“Knots (live)”

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 next week 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 next week 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 Stan Freberg on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents alternating episodes of MIRRORBALL and The Swing Shift, so you can take turns dancing in different styles all night.

This is a encore of a Sunday Evening Video from over five years ago. It was so bizarre that I decided to run it here again, just to remind myself that it’s real.

In 1974, famed daredevil, Evel Knievel was at the height of his fame, and it was decided that this folk hero stuntman should have his own television show. Of course, Knievel himself was too busy and too disinterested in acting to star in such a show. In a movie on his life a few years earlier, George Hamilton, he of the famed suntan, starred as the motorcycle legend, with Knievel himself performing the motocycle stunts.

When it was decided to try to bring Evel Knievel to the small screen, the task fell to a then-unknown, Sam Elliott, many years before he reached the full heights of his own stardom in Tombstone, Gettysburg and The Big Lebowski.  Commissioned by Viacom for CBS, the pilot was not picked up, and instead flamed out and missed the landing-ramp.

This pilot was directed by Michael O’Herlihy, a veteran of Star Trek, Gunsmoke and MASH, and it was written by Richard Admas, who’d scripted shows like Combat and Kojak. In this pilot, Evel has to face off against a female daredevil in a “Battle of the Sexes.” The cast is rounded up by recognizable TV veterans Gary Barton and Nobile Willingham, and the female daredevil is played by Karen Philipp, a former singer for Brasil 66.

It’s not hard to see why the show wasn’t picked up. It’s goofy as hell, especially in that it shows Knievel as a law-abiding citizen. Three years after the production of this pilot, he was convicted of assaulting Shelly Saltman, one of the producers of the failed Snake River Canyon jump, with a baseball bat for writing an unflattering book about the daredevil. That stunt cost Knievel all his endorsements and toy deals, and eventually lead him into bankruptcy.

Despite that dark period, the man rebounded and recovered, and by the time he passed away in 2007, was a celebrated pop culture icon. Evel Knievel remains a beloved folk hero and this unsold TV pilot is a wild reminder of just how big a star he was in the 1970s.