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.

For April Fool’s Day 2009 I decided that I wanted to pull a fairly elaborate, yet profoundly stupid prank.  The plan was to run production notes promising a very special episode of Radio Free Charleston with new music from Paul McCartney and Peter Buck, of REM, plus an exclusive preview of the next animated feature film by Pixar. Only in truth I pulled a bait-and-switch and instead brought loyal fans a third part to our 2008 Halloween Special, Radio Free Charleston Horror Theater.

I don’t think anyone fell for it anyway, but we did manage a fun show. Music is by Whistlepunk and Mark and Steve Beckner with Alan Young.  Mark, Steve and Alan were recorded live at LiveMix Studio at the same time that we shot the host segments, and this was one of the few times in the history of RFC that the show’s host introduced a band “live” with them in the room.

For the host segments, a last-minute schedule SNAFU meant that Kitty Killton could not reprise her role as “Celeste the Zombie Supermodel,” so we had to have a vocal stand-in to explain her absence.  Liz McCormick, Brian Young and Mel Larch return as studio zombies and Rudy reverted to his “Count Rudolf” identity. The episode truly captured the Halloween spirit…in April.

Our Animation is vintage Amiga work by Frank Panucci, and this is also the only episode where a musical guest had to be pressed into running camera because we had too many people on screen at the same time.  Thanks to Stephen Beckner, who went to college to learn how to do this sort of thing. You can read the real production notes HERE. You can see the first two parts of Radio Free Charleston Horror Theater HERE.

The PopCulteer
January 26, 2024

Your PopCulteer is heading to Louisville for some toy fun this weekend, but we aren’t going to abdicate our bloggerly duties! This week’s PopCulteer column reverts to radio notes mode. We have a hot new episode of MIRRORBALL to tell you about, and a very special new artist spotlight episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, both 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 devotes a full hour to a pseudo crossover with The Swing Shift. I didn’t butt in to co-host or anything, but Mel has highlights from two albums by a Disco group called “Tuxedo Junction.” They take their name from the classic Glenn Miller tune, and their mission from the Big Band Swing songbook.

Only, they don’t really Swing.  They run these songs through the Disco-transmogrifyer, and the results are…danceable.  It’s a bizarre little novelty that shows that classic dance music can be timeless.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 089
Tuxedo Junction

“Tuxedo Junction”
“Moonlight Serenade”
“Rainy Night In Rio”
“Chattanooga Choo Choo”
“Fox Trot”
“Volga Boatmen”
“Take The ‘A’ Train”
“Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye”
“Begin The Beguine”
“Night In Tunisia”
“That Old Black Magic”

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 two-hour salute to the exotic New Wave Goddess, Lene Lovich.  Rumored to be of Slavic origins, but really born in Detroit, Lene Lovich emerged from the early Disco/New Wave club scene in Europe before landing at Stiff Records and helping to define the New Wave sound.

Sydney mines Toy Box, the recent Cherry Red Four CD set compiling everything Lene Lovich released for Stiff Records between 1978 and 1983. Toy Box is the ultimate compilation of Lene’s years with Stiff. Lene Lovich arrived at Stiff Records in the summer of 1978, surfing the new wave and the subsequent ‘Be Stiff’ UK tour, and Sydney celebrates her New Wave trailblazing music.

Check out the playlist…

BEC 112
Lene Lovich

“Be Stiff”
“I Think We’re Alone Now”
“Lucky Number (Slavic Dance Mix)”
“Sleeping Beauty”
“Too Tender To Touch”
“Writing On The Wall”
“Telepathy”
“One In A Million”
“Say When”
“Momentary Breakdown”
“Tonight”
“Trixi”
“The Fly”
“Bird Song”
“What Will I Do Without You”
“Angels”
“Lucky Number with intro”
“The Night”
“You Can’t Kill Me”
“Egghead”
“Wonderful One”
“Monkey Talk”
“Joan”
“The Freeze”
“New Toy (extended mix)”
“Cats Away”
“Details”
“It’s You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)”
“Blue Hotel”
“Savages”

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.

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

Amid a break from the narsty winter weather, 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.

Remember that this weekend GI Joe Winterfest is happening in Louisville, Kentucky. You can read about it HERE.

In the realm of the real-world and virtualosity, it’s time to plug an art exhibit in Los Angeles, in which you can participate online. HERO COMPLEX GALLERY is hosting their first in-gallery show in a very long time.  CHERRY BOMB is a Pinup Trading Card Art Show by old PopCult buddy, Glen Brogan and Mona Collentine.

Best yet, the art will be sold as prints AND as trading cards, and if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that your humble blogger has been a contributing writer to Non Sport Update, the trading-card bible, for more than a quarter-century.  You can see the graphic at the head of this post, and visit the gallery HERE.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s the enigmatic Toby Announced. Saturday Brandon Costello takes the stage at the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery. Sunday at 6 PM, they have this special show…

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 10 PM the Glass will play host to John Colby Elswick (The Kind Thieves) with help from Bradley Turner, Isaac Clowers, & TC Simpson. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday Southern WV songwriters Dalton Boggs Kyle Arthur Hunter Chambers Zach Elmore perform at the Glass.  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, wayward OSCAR snubs, Mongolian squirting pickles, people who are still playing football 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…

With a lingering case of Winter Crud hanging around stately Radio Free Charleston Mannor, we have hit Wednesday afternoon, and The AIR still manages to bring you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast that are both mixtapes so that your respective hosts won’t have to talk much.  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 brings you a one-hour mixtape  comprised of covers of all the songs from Meet The Beatles and Introducing The Beatles, both of which were released in the United States sixty years ago this month.  You’ll hear a wide assortment of artists doing their versions of the songs that brought Beatlemania to America.

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 mixtape of shows that recently closed, or announced their closings on and off-Broadway.

You will hear songs from How To Dance In Ohio, Shucked, Some Like It Hot, Harmony, Guttenberg, and a few other recently shuttered productions. Opening the show is an audience recording provided by The Shed for their limited engagement of Stephen Sondheim’s final work, Here We Are.

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 six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, 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 I haven’t chosen yet, as I write this.

Tuesday finds your humble blogger and radio host weak of voice but strong determination on The AIR.  We have new episodes of  Radio Free Charleston and The Swing Shift. Both shows “cheat” a little to conserve my voice.

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 “String,” a very cool track from 2003 that was in a batch of music recently gifted to me by Chuck Biel, who is the composer in question. It was a blas to receive so much cool music from Chuck that I never had before, and you can expect to hear muh more from his various musical projects in the coming weeks.

The rest of our first hour continues with great local and independent music, including an additional track from one of Chuck’s other musical projects, Dr. Curmudgeon.

Our second and third hours this week revive the second 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 160

hour one
Tilting At Windmills (Chuck Biel) “String”
Velez Manifesto “Carousel”
Skafish “Victims of the Night”
Buni Muni “Kick Rocks”
Disco Biscuits “Shocked”
Sleater-Kinney “Needlessly Wild”
Green Day “Strange Days Are Here To Stay”
XTC “Dear God (Band Demo)”
The Settlement “Cycles (Live at Sam’s Uptown)”
Wall of Voodoo “Far Side of Crazy (Live)”
Dr. Curmudgeon “Lucabration”

hour two
Kenneth Brian Band “Goodbye, West Virginia”
HarraH “Blood Moon”
The Big Bad “See You In The Shadows”
Tofujitsu “Winged Cyclops”
Doctor Curmudgeon
Spencer Elliott “Battle of Wonderland”
Eduardo Canelón y su Comparsa “La Nueva Comparsa”
Stark Raven “Irrational People”
A Story Told “Fall Back”
Crack The Sky “Maybe I Can Fool Everybody”
Bongwater “Mystery Hole”
The Tom McGees “Country Roads”
Weedhaven Laughing Academy “Glue”
Astromoth “Son of a Vampire”
Ona “World At War”

hour three
World Without Fear “Here’s To You (I Love You)”
Highway Jones “Another Man”
Hitchcock Circus “Jealousy Pill”
Underdog Blues Review “Come Back Baby”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “You Wiped Your Ass With My Heart”
Foz Rotten “Ordinary Guy”
The Science Fair Explosion “Kornchipz”
Time And Distance “That Girl”
Bobaflex “Mama (Don’t Take My Drugs Away)”
Superfetch “28 Punks”
The Company Stores “Street Corner Blues”
Linnfinity “Holy Rain”
DEVO “Satisfaction”
The Renfields “Invisible Man”

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 new mixtape episode of The Swing Shift.  This is again a mixtape show because my voice is shot from coughing for several weeks.

However, it is rather a nifty collection of Swing from the last century’s worth of Swinging tunes, so check out the playlist…

The Swing Shift 153

Duke Ellington “Loveless Love”
Bill Evans “The Washington Twist”
Bobby Keys “Honky Tonk”
Bing Crosby “Tomorrow’s My Lucky Day”
Maria Muldaur “Walkin’ One and Only”
Frank Sinatra & Count Basie “I Wanna Be Around”
Checkerboard Lounge “Rollercoaster”
Keith Emerson Trio “Teenie’s Blues”
Robbie Williams “Ain’t That Kick In The Head”
Ella Fitzgerald “The E and D Blues”
Bix Beiderbecke “At The Jazz Band Ball”
Benny Goodman with Billie Holiday “Your Mother’s Son-in-law”
Fletcher Henderson “Wha Cha Call ’em Blues”
Harry Parry “Boogie Bounce”
Bill Elliott Swing Orchestra “I Wanna Talk About Love”
The Speakeasies “Liquid Paradise”

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 sloppy watercolor/ink wash based on a blurry photo I took about ten days ago out of the window of our hotel in New York City.

We were on Eighth Avenue, hence the title. A block and a half to the left (or our side of the street) is Two Brothers Pizza. Four blocks to the right (also on our side of the street) is the Moyinahan Train Hall, where we get on the Cardinal to come home. All of which made our hotel room very handy, despite its tiny size. Basically, it was a king-sized bed, with nearly nine inches of floor space surrounding it.

This painting was done on paper for pens.  To start, I was using cheap watercolor brush pens, but then switched to traditional watercolors with a little bit of Winsor Newton inks in the mix. After a day of drying, I was able to scan it for use here.

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 Allen Sherman on a recent episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents the second ten hours of a twenty-episode mixtape series of The Lost Beatles on Beatles Blast.

Above you see a music video showcasing the sights of last year’s Kentuckiana’s GI Joe Winterfest.  This year’s show takes place January 27 in Louisville, Kentucky (with a preview night on the 26th). You can find my photo essays devoted to last year’s show  HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

As always at a Kentuckiana GI Joe event, we had a great time, and it was a wonderful toy show. I turned Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, loose with the video camera, and for reasons I can’t quite explain, I decided to edit what she shot to Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All admissions payable at the doors.

From March, 2009, Radio Free Charleston 63 is “Bauhaus Shirt.” This was yet another music-packed episode, featuring then-new tunes from Stephen Beckner, The Buttonflies, and returning for a second week in a row Tofujitsu. We also have a five-second appearance from Pat McAfee–back in the days before he became a pro-football star and then went on to host a popular sports talk show that platforms the poster child for CTE, Aaron Rogers–and by popular demand we also have the return of vintage beer commercial animation.

Host segments were shot in an undisclosed location in the hills surrounding Charleston. There are reports that this undisclosed location bears an uncanny resemblance to the deck behind the house where Sean and Karen from Tofujitsu lived, but we are sworn to secrecy. Also, it was raining that day.

This episode picks up my major SNAFU from the previous week, where I ran the wrong song by Tofujitsu. This episode really does have “Clap On, Clap Off” in it, and we milked the situation for some humor. Original production notes are here.