As astute readers who picked up on the subtle and not-so-subtle hints over the last week may already know, your PopCulteer was in The Big Apple for a few days last week.
What you may not know is that I came back, finished up a pressing outside assignment, and then promptly found myself under the weather with a narsty non-Covid respiratory crud.
So today, I’m going to take it easy and just share a few photos from the trip. Then I’ll crawl back into bed and resume coughing.
Our main reason for going was that Mel really wanted to see two shows that are having limited runs. One of them was the hilarious “Guttenberg” starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells, from the original cast of “The Book of Mormon.”
The show is presented as two wannabee playwrights from New Jersey, who have booked a Broadway theater to hold a “backers audition,” hoping to attract investors for their musical about the inventor of the printing press, Johan Guttenberg.
The humor comes from the fact that the playwrights perform all the parts themselves, with the aid of ballcaps printed with the character names, and also, since their Google search didn’t turn up much about Guttenberg, they made up most of the story.
Our first hotel (we hotel hopped to take advantage of Hilton Honors points), had this view of The Palace Theater, where we saw The SpongeBob Musical more than five years ago. Since then, they have shut down the theater so they could raise it 30 feet. It’s due to reopen soon, fully restored, but no longer at street level.
I had a weird thing happen during Guttenberg. My eyes uncrossed. So for much of the rest of the trip I didn’t need glassses. Times Square is a cool place to be when you have perfect vision all of a sudden.
We didn’t get a chance to see this show on this trip.
We did get to sit on Father Duffy’s Steps and watch the famous and annoying Times Square mascots. King Kong was impressive, but I took the photos from a distance so that I didn’t get hassled by Spider-man, who I think was acting as Kong’s mascot pimp.
Crap! I think he saw me!
Advertising is everywhere in Times Square. I think these were promoting a Broadway adaptation of the Monkees’ movie.
Finally, we had a view of The Empire State Building from our second hotel. Tomorrow PopCult will bring you STUFF TO DO, as your humble blogger attempts to recover.
Tuesday finds a partly-new Radio Free Charleston on The AIR. Our all-new mixtape first hour of Radio Free Charleston is accompanied by classic two-hour episode of RFC International.
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 mixtape because I actually recorded this show the weekend before last when my voice was mostly shot. The reason for doing that was because Mel and I had a quick trip to New York scheduled, I also had a big magazine deadline the day after we got back, so I was going to be tied up with that on what is probably “yesterday” to my faithful readers. I wasn’t going to have time to record a new show, or write a post about it.
So the only option (besides miss a week) was to record the show the same time as last week’s, on Sunday, January 7, then write the post about it (which you are now reading) on Tuesday, January 9, so that I can hop on the train on January 10, and return on January 14.
So…by the time you’re reading this I’m already back home. I wonder how the trip went?
The first hour mixtape is loaded with treats, and kicks off with the RFC debut of Velez Manifesto, who were a big deal in Morgantown about forty years ago. The lader of the group has passed away, and his bandmates have digitized their albums and put them up on Bandcamp for free.
Our second and third hours are a special double-shot episode of RFC International, where I play two songs in a row from a collection of artists that seems somewhat random.
Because of the deadline pressures, I’m skipping the links this week. Sorry, but your humble blogger is only hooman and something had to give.
RFC V5 159
hour one
Velez Manifesto “Such A Pretty Eye”
Johnny Compton “Until We Meet Again”
Zeroking “Back Off”
All Torches Lit “Crown of Ash”
The Carpenter Ants “Shakin’ Hands with Charlie Tee”
Joi “Dark Eyed Lady”
Corduroy Brown “Who Am I For Now”
Hello June “Sometimes”
Sean Richardson “Magentle”
Rasta Rafiki “Dr. Herb”
The Tom McGees “Enemy Spy Plane Inbound”
Buni Muni “Stay”
Jerks “O High Yo”
63 Eyes “They’re All You”
Miniature Giant “Jale Dunior”
hour two
Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Jimmy Page “Rock and Roll”
Jerry Lee Lewis w/ Buddy Guy “Hadacol Boogie”
Save Ferris “Anything”
Save Ferris “Do I Even Like You”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “Amputation”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “The Two of Us”
Thin Lizzy “Jailbreak”
Thin Lizzy “Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed”
Syd Straw “CBGBs”
Syd Straw “A Million Miles”
Depeche Mode “Where’s The Revolution”
Depeche Mode “Cover Me”
Steve Hackett “Behind The Smoke”
Steve Hackett “50 Miles From The North Pole”
hour three
Mel C “Something for The Fire”
Mel C “Numb”
Koffin Kats “Party Time In The End Times”
Koffin Kats “Black Knight Satellite”
Marc Almond “Bad To Me”
Marc Almond “The Idol (pt one)”
Redbone “Custer Had It Coming”
Redbone “Dancing Bones”
Navarone “Chrome”
Navarone “Snake”
True Sounds of Liberty “Why Can’t We Do It Again”
True Sounds of Libery “Nothing Ever Lasts”
Chuck Berry “Liverpool Drive”
Chuck Berry “Hey Pedro”
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.
Our art this week had more complicated origins that you might initially think.
This is a scene of the Belmont platform on Chicago’s L Train system. I liked the way things looked there, but rather than snap a photo, I whipped out my phone and stylus (yours truly has a very hard time operating a touch screen due to Myasthenia Gravis) and did a very quick and sloppy sketch in Notes, and then made color notations for future reference.
After I got home, I transferred the file to the computer and printed it out in light gray on paper for pens. Then I worked it over with watercolor pens, pastel crayon and acrylic paints until it looks like what you see above. It’s smaller and more abstract that much of my recent work. This style is not exactly new for me, but it’s a tad different. I don’t know if I’m going to try to do more work like this in the future or not. I’m happy with the way this came out, but I don’t know if the world needs any more like it.
Maybe later I’ll redo it, but with ultra-high realistic detail.
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.
PsychedelicShack 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 the stand-up of Patton Oswalt on a recent episode of TheComedy Vault.
Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents the first ten hours of a twenty-episode mixtape series of The Lost Beatles on Beatles Blast. We’ll run the second ten of these next week.
This week PopCult brings you “Aisles of Doom,” an early short film by Alex Winter (with Tom Stern), who went on to co-write and direct and star in the Bill and Ted movies and the film, “Freaked.”
Longtime readers with incredible memories may recall that, just under ten years ago, I posted this same video in this spot. The reason for doing it again is that it’s really good; it’s something I first saw on Night Flight; and your PopCulteer is cranking out a ton of posts in advance because, as you read this, he’s on a train coming back from NYC.
From March, 2009, it’s Radio Free Charleston episode 62. This installment featured music from Tofujitsu (that was Sean Richardson and Karen Allen) and The Bible Beaters. We also brought you a trailer for Butch Maier’s feature film The Bride & The Grooms, which debuted at Park Place Stadium Cinema in April 2009. Our animation is vintage stuff, with a cow rescuing two ducks from a racial stereotype.
Host segments were shot on an unseasonably hot Monday afternoon in March. This show is called “Action Comics Shirt,” and this episode is notable for me completely screwing up the title of Tofujitsu’s song–totally. I misidentified it even while editing and mixing and introducing it. The song in this show is “Pop Up,” and it is a lovely song, but it’s not “Clap On, Clap Off.” That was the song I was supposed to include in this episode.This is worth noting because it set up a very elaborate series of gags in the next episode, which we will bring back next week.
You can find the sort of original production notes (with a tacked-on apology) right here!
With your humble blogger coughing his way through a quick trip to New York City, all we have for you this week is notes on our Friday radio programming on The AIR.
Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch does a 180 from the previous episode of MIRRORBALL and devotes a full hour to intricately curated classics of the very early, some would say “prehistoric” Disco era, in 1975, when “Disco” was just beginning to become recognizable as a musical style. 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.
Just like last time, every song on this week’s show is making its MIRROBALL debut, which is getting really tricky to pull off as Mel prepares to hit her 100th episode sometime in the new year. The focus this week is on the big club hits from very early in the Disco era, before Donna Summer, The Bee Gees or KC and the Sunshine Band had their first chart-toppers, when Disco was just another word for “danceclub” and nobody had time to be threatened by it yet.
It’s a cool collection of dance classics from the beginning of the Golden Age of Disco, when funk and soul mixed with Latin and techno and gelled into what became a dancefloor sensation. This is a big slab of fossilized funk that shows you just a hint of what was yet to come.
Check out the playlist…
MIRRORBALL 088
Archie Bell & The Drells “Dance Your Troubles Away”
Astor & The Potentials “Give Me What I Want”
Black Stash “Mighty Love Man”
Brass Construction “Movin'”
Brooklyn People “Boogie Man (Parts One and Two)”
Citizen Samuel Cain “Burnin’ Cab”
Mahattan Express “Bad Girl”
Loleatta Holloway “Only A Fool”
Pino Presti “Smile”
The Duprees “Delicious”
Eddie drennon & B.B.S. “Let’s Do The Latin Hustle”
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 an encore of a claasic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from 2017, loaded with crunchy New Wave Goodness.
Check out the playlist…
BEC 020
Oingo Boingo “Private Life”
Missing Persons “Hello, I Love You”
INXS “Need You Tonight”
Vivabeat “Man From China”
Go West “We Close Our Eyes”
Fad Gadget “Back To Nature”
Erasure “The Circus”
The Clash “Straight To Hell”
Toyah “Blue Meaning”
Ultravox “Rockwrock”
Fear “Let’s Have A War”
Biizarre Leidenschnatt “Plasticpuppen”
The Nerves “TV Adverts”
Stiff Little Fingers “Nobody’s Heroes (Live)”
Blitz “Youth” Mi Sex “21-20”
Yoko Ono “Move On Fast”
The Cure “10:15 Saturday Night”
The Distributors “T.V. Me”
Kraftwerk “Tour De France”
Simple Minds “Someone Somewhere In Summertime”
Ian Dury and the Blockheads “What A Waste”
The Saints “Know Your Product”
Aerial “Cold War Love”
Siouxsie and the Banshees “Suburban Relapse”
Berlin “Sex (I’m A)” (extended version)
Blue Me “Berlin”
The Jam “Going Underground”
Generation X “King Rocker
Yellow Magic Orchestra “Cosmic Surfin’”
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. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.
For New Year’s Eve this year, The AIR will play our usual overnight marathon of The Swing Shift, but rather than bring you our episodes in order, for this week we’ll cherry-pick the very best for youso you can dance into the new year in style. That begins Sunday at Midnight, immediately following an encore of today’s new MIRRORBALL!
That’s what’s new on The AIR Friday, and that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features every day, and try not to blow up Charleston while I’m out of town.
Today we have a reminder that, just twelve days ago, we dropped a new episode of Radio Free Charleston (volume two: the video show) right here into this blog.
Rather than send you scrambling to scroll down to find this great show that has music from Brian Diller, The Velvet Brothers, Trielement and Elektro Biscuit, plus animation and a cool movie trailer from Jake Fertig, how about I just drop it right here?
Wasn’t that easy. Now you don’t have an excuse not to watch it, and I have a blog post for today, which is pretty cool considering that I’m in New York City trying to enjoy a couple of shows with my lovely wife even though I’m bedeviled by seasonal crud (not COVID).
BTW, except for a technical glitch or two, and two posts that were deleted under the threat of a frivilous lawsuit, we’ve had a fresh post in PopCult every day since August 18, 2013. I missed the tenth anniversary last August because so many other anniversaries happen in August.
Anyway, some of our efforts are…lesser than others. But that’s no reason not to enjoy the show!
It’s a still a new year, and we have a new batch of STUFF TO DO in and around the Charleston/Huntington WV area 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 Khegan McLane takes the stage. Saturday Maddie Starcher & Riely Imlay perform at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.
The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week to tell you about. Wednesday evening Schaefer Ball happens. I’m not sure what or who that is, or what time, but it’ll happen. Thursday at 5:30 PM it’s the Helping Hour with Swingstein & Robin. Thursday at 10 PM Justin Shaw Steele, Sugarbelli and Nolan Collins rip up the stage. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Later on Friday Laid Back Country Picker, Luna and The Mountain Jets and Amos Steele Company shower the Glass with fine Americana. Saturday it’s a punk showcase, and you can check below for the graphics for this and other weekend shows.
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, falling ieces of Boeing aircraft, Winter Storms dancing around the area, nasty little Congresswomen throwing punches 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…
We pay tribute to Kai Haynes this week on The AIR as we premiere an all-new episode of Radio Free Charleston. It’s a bittersweet, and a little downbeat episode, but his music was so filled with life that you can’t stay sad when you hear it. To tune in 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 elsewhere on this page, or scroll down for the embedded lo-fi version.
This three-hour show brings you two hours of our usual mix of local, independent and downright nifty music, plus a special third hour that is mostly the music Kai made. You can hear it at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.
You can hear Radio Free Charlestonevery Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.
Repeating what I wrote last Friday, Kai Haynes, a titan among Charleston musicians, died after suffering a brain-bleed shortly before Christmas.
Kai’s musical accomplishments, from being a key part of the early Mountain Stage band to performing with too many local musical acts to list here, as well as his expertise in audiophile sound systems and his partnership in LiveMix Studio are only part of a life well-lived.
Kai was a great friend, a devoted father, a man who was extraordinarily kind and generous with his knowledge and just an overall quality human being. Kai was one of the three partners in LiveMix Studio, without whom the 2006 revival of Radio Free Charleston never would have happened. Kai appeared on several episodes, and ran camera on several early episodes of the video show.
We open every hour of the show this week with a track from the 1978 album, “First Impressions” by the band, JOI, which included Kai, along with Bob Thompson, Louise Pearson, Jim Pearson and Gordon Cupit. This rare album is blissful progressive and soulful jazz fusion, and the first song you hear this week features Kai singing lead on “WV Blues.”
Our third hour also opens with a track from JOI, but also includes the full performance by Elektro Biscuit at LiveMix Studio in 2009. Elektro Biscuit was Kai’s band with Greg Wegmann and Brian Young. Recently, with the addition of vocalist, Nicole AC, they’ve been performing as The New Old Souls Band. We brought you one song from this EB set on the latest RFCvideo show. We wrap up the hour with a track by The Bob Thompson Trio, which included Kai on bass, and a tune by Hot Chocolate that Kai and I had talked about years ago at LiveMix.
A musical memorial to Kai is planned for March, and PopCult will have full details as soon as they become available.
In addition to Kai’s music, we also have our usual eclectic mix of songs, but you may notice that my voice is fairly well shot this week. I’ve picked up a nasty bug, and it’s lowered my range about three octaves. Making matters worse is the fact that, due to a looming magazine deadline, I had to record next week’s show right after this one, so Mr. Froggy voice will be around for another week.
Despite my voice and the sadness of losing Kai, I think this show is a pretty solid example of the kind of high-quality music we bring you on a regular basis. We have a tune from a brand-new Chicago-based Zydeco band, Le Travaillant, plus newly-released music from The Settlement, Skafish, Wall of Voodoo, Todd Burge, Novelty Island and more.
Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…
hour three
Joi “Seven In, Seven Out”
Elektro Biscuit live at LiveMix 2009
“Crawfish Boogie”
“A Latin Thing”
“Wasp In The Room”
“The Elephant and the Butterfly”
“The Original”
“Rio”
“Dysfunctional” Bob Thompson Trio “Forbidden Fruit”
Hot Chocolate “Heaven Is In The Backseat of My Cadillac”
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 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.
Then at 1 PM we have MIRRORBALL, followed at 2 PM by Curtain Call. At 3 PM we bring you two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.
You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 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.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure what today’s art is supposed to be. It’s fine-line Sharpie on paper for pens, with more than one ruler and straight-edge in play, and I think at one point I was going to try to draw a building or five, but it’s really just an elaborate, mindless doodle with pointless shading, iffy perspective and way too much time invested in it.
It’s almost a half-assed third-rate imitation of M.C. Escher but it’s unfinished if that’s what it was supposed to be.
Which it wasn’t, really. I just started with a blank sheet of paper and by the time I decided that I wasn’t terribly inspired, it was filled.
To see it bigger try clicking HERE. Maybe you ca figure out what it was supposed to be.
Meanwhile, Monday on The AIR, All day Monday we are running episodes of Herman Linte’s Prognosis because he hits a milestone birthday today, and we didn’t have time to get him a present and mail it to London. It begins at 7 AM Monday, and runs for 24 hours, bringing you the twelve most recent episodes of our Prog-rock showcase.
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