The PopCulteer
September 15, 2023

Your PopCulteer is busy finishing up a magazine assignement, so this week’s PopCulteer column runs the risk of seeming a bit light. Luckily, instead of writing a long essay that would take me away from those duties, My lovely wife has come to my rescue. Mel Larch returns Friday with a new episode of MIRRORBALL devoted to “Disco Mixes” of Disco tunes.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour to extended mixes of classics of the Disco era.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

One of the most creative things to come out of the Disco-era club scene was the extended 12″ Disco Mix of songs, so that the folks enjoying the joyful noise could stay on the dance floor just a little longer, and the DJ’s could have more time between spinning the records.

This week we are going to bring you Disco Mixes of Disco Classics. It’s Disco squared on a full hour that goes twelve inches to heaven on this epic and eminently danceble music specialty program. Mel will likely revisit this topic soon.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 082

D-Train “You’re The One For Me”
The Crusaders featuring Randy Crawford “Street Life”
Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive”
Real Thing “Can You Feel The Force”
Shalamar “Uptown Festival Medley”
Anita Ward “Ring My Bell”
Chic “Everybody 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 an encore of the seventh episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from August, 2016.  This is an early episode of the show that presents Sydney Fileen’s backward glance at the brave new tomorrow that never really came.

This was when Sydney was just beginning to mine the rich vein of New Wave Music that she’s still bringing you today.

Rather than just post a link, here’s the playlist for this one…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 007

Ultravox  “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”
Souixsie and the Banshees  “Hong Kong Garden”
Gleaming Spires  “Art Together”
Comateens  “Overseas”
Video Sex  “Mojo Mama”
The GoGos  “You Can’t Walk In Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep)”
Stan Ridgeway  “The Big Heat”
The Living Daylights  “Sugar Days”
T-4-2  “Outside Your Window”
Talk Talk  “Talk Talk”
The Flirts  “Danger”
Robert Marlow  “Calling All Destroyers”
A Flock Of Seagulls  “Messages”
Split Enz  “Six Months In A Leaky Boat”
UK Viva  “Radio Saviour”
Lene Lovich  “New Toy”
The Fallout Club  “Wonderlust”
Re-Flex  “Keep In Touch”
OMD  “Secret”
DEVO  “Planet Earth”
Naked Eyes  “Emotion in Motion”
Small Affairs  “Back To China”
Sherrie Actor  “Forbidden Fruit”
Ian Dury and The Blockheads  “Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt. 3”
The Stranglers  “No More Heroes”
The Damned  “Neat, Neat, Neat”
Tenpole Tudor  “Swords of a Thousand Men”
Jona Lewie “You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties”
The Slits  “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
Background and close music is Giorgio Morodor’s  “Chase”

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. Two classic episodes can also be heard every Sunday, starting at 10 AM.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content. Things may be back to normal next week.

Longtime readers of PopCult are probably familiar with Robert Jiménez by now.  I’ve been talking about his Fearsome Weirdos trading cards and books for years now. Now Robert has a new project up on Kickstarter, and it’s already fully-funded almost four times over after just a day and there’s still just under three weeks go go.

Polynesian Pulp: The Tiki Art Of Robert Jiménez is a book and a trading card set, and instead of showcasing his monster or wacky parody art, the book and card set collect some of his awesome Tiki Art from the past decade.

You probably know the drill by now…this is where I quote liberally from the Kickstarter campaign page:

Polynesian Pulp is a collection of the Tiki Art of Robert Jiménez. It will be printed as a 50 card set as well as a signed 90 page 8.5 x 11 inch perfect bound hardcover book and will showcase traditional and digital art from the past decade. Included are Tikis, an assortment of Sophisticated Apes, Mermaids, Sea Creatures and more!

The 50 card set will come in a tuck box, along with a promo card and a sticker.

Also, there will be sketch cards by Robert Jiménez available to add on to your set, along with a VERY limited selection of sketch cards by Claudette Barjoud, BigToe, El Gato Gomez, Ken Ruzic and Sheryl Schroeder!

Other add-ons available will include original art, coloring books and past Zerostreet card sets.

This set is really exciting for me because I’m a huge fan of Robert’s Tiki art. I even wore one of his shirts on the latest video edition of Radio Free Charleston. I am also on record as being a fan of Tiki culture, even if I’m just a Tiki Poser at the end of the day.

The Polynesian Pulp Art book is a hardbound book measuring 8.5 x 11 inches. It collects the entire card set along with an extra 40 images and comes signed. Completists, like yours truly, will opt for the combination book and card set. I love non-sport trading cards (hell, I’ve been writing about them professionally for more than 25 years), but seeing Robert’s art printed in a larger size is a special treat for my aging eyes. There are several different rewards with this Kickstarter campaign, and among the many add-ons are sketch cards, original art and all of Robert’s previous trading card sets at discounted prices.

The project is way beyond funded and Robert fulfills his campaigns quicker than anybody else on Kickstarter, so you can be confident that you’ll get the reward you choose. And ths art is just absolutely gorgeous.

Robert’s work has appeared on album covers for Gold Dust Lounge and Stolen Idols and in magazines such as Exotica Moderne, Tiki Magazine, PKD Otaku, Gnarly and Pinstriping & Kustom Graphics. His work is also featured in the books, THE THING:ARTBOOK, VISIONS FROM THE UPSIDE DOWN: STRANGER THINGS ARTBOOK, GHOSTBUSTERS: ARTBOOK and has shown in galleries including Disneyland’s Wonderground, Harold Golen, M Modern, Creature Features, and Bear & Bird among others.

You can also see Robert’s work in trading card sets for licenses such as Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, Mars Attacks, Star Wars, DC Comics, Firefly, Ghostbusters, Adventure Time and more. Most notably Robert has recently illustrated cards for the Star Wars Trading Card App.

Check out the trailer for Polynesian Pulp, and kick in today…

As usual, there are loads and loads of cool things happening all over the area this weekend, and yours truly is pre-occupied with a magazine deadline, so this is probably 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 complete.

Sunday from 6 PM to 9 PM we have the world premiere of a very cool documentary at The Clay Center.  HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS: The Artistic Life of Robert Singleton, will be shown on the Clay Center main stage in Charleston W.Va., on Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023. The West Virginia International Film Festival presents the AmpMediaProject documentary by Douglas John Imbrogno and Bobby Lee Messer, tracing the life and times, not all of them easy ones, of notable American artist Robert Singleton, now 85, who has lived and worked on a remote West Virginia hilltop since 1978 in a house he built.

The premiere is at 7 PM, with filmgoers seated on the Clay Center main stage, in homage to the role classical music and creativity played in Robert’s tumultuous, often traumatic upbringing. The screening is preceded by a 6 PM reception in the Clay Center’s Juliet Art Museum, to view the current exhibit “The Possible Dream,” featuring one of his paintings. A Q-and-A on-stage with Robert follows the premiere. Order tickets HERE or call the box office during business hours at: 304-561-3570.

The soundtrack features a host of West Virginia-based musicians, including Spencer Elliott; dulcimer explorer Jim Probst; classical pianist Barbara Nissman (recently inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame; National Flatpick Champion Robin Kessinger and others.

For more on Singleton’s engrossing life and work—and to support the cost of completing and distributing House in the Clouds via an upcoming SEEDandSPARK crowdfunding campaign feel free to subscribe to the documentary website.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday Sandy Sowell and Gerry Collyard take the stage. Saturday Minor Swing brings their Djangoesque melodies to the beloved bookstore/cafe/art gallery.

Wednesday from 7 PM to 9 PM The VB4 (AKA part of The Velvet Brothers) will play at Fife Street Brewing in Downtown Charleston.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Wednesday night Gabby’s Lo Fi Lounge happens at 9 PM. Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin return with Swing for a good cause. Later Thursday, at 10 PM One Love Rising brings Reggae to The Glass (graphic below).  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday RFC faves Blue Twisted Steel play at 10 PM. Saturday we have a graphic, which you can see below. Sunday, at 7 PM Dan Spencer, Charbelle, and RFC faves Heavy Set Paw Paws play an early show, then at 10 PM it’s Empty Glass Got Talent. Next Monday it’s Open Mic Night at 9 PM.

In Dunbar, aside from the Fall Festival, at Live at The Shop, Wednesday night the musical duo Southerland takes off at 8 PM.  Thursday, at 8 PM The Dirty Grass Players with Chandler Beaverts stir things up.

Saturday The Mothman Festival happens in Point Pleasant, and all over the area, public libraries are observing Cryptid Day with special events. It’s also Batman Day, which will be celebrated at many area comic book and game shops. You can celebrate either of those days, or if you’re Kirk Langstrom, maybe both.

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, unindicted co-conspirators, boys named Sue, miniature K-Pop musicians getting into everything 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…

Radio Free Charleston replays the episode that debuted last week on The AIR  on Tuesday.  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.

With a looming magazine deadline, and last week’s show debuting late due to the holiday last week, I set things up so that you can hear our latest show in its regular timeslot at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. The show is loaded with lots of new music plus a classic episode of Radio Free Charleston International that hasn’t been heard in over five years. In case you missed it last week, let me re-present our notes for this show.

Kicking off this cool edition of our show is a newly remastered song from Mark Beckner’s Nashville band, Hitchcock Circus. Back in 1992 Mark recorded this tune with his then-new band, which included Lee Hendricks on Bass, Mark Mingrone on Keyboards, and Jeff Noland on Drums in addition to Mark on vocals, guitar and songwriting.  Mark’s been revitalizing his back catalog and archives (and the Go Van Gogh archives as well) and while we’re waiting on a new album from his current band, Nixon Black, I’m wondering if we’ll get a retrospective compilation.

I am in the mind to consider retropsective compilations because Brian Diller has just released a new collection of songs spanning his 45 years making music.  Dear Boy is available on CD and Vinyl, and I  interviewed Brian for The PopCulteer last Friday. I play a couple of tracks from Brian’s album in this show’s first hour.

I could have just coasted with that, but because I recorded this show later than usual, I had the honor of playing a new song by Hello June. “Honey I Promise” which is available now at Bandcamp and other streaming services, and it’s another preview track from the long -awaited new album, Artifacts. Artifacts is due out October 6 from 31 Tigers records.

We also had an advance single from Chicago’s Ron Lazzeretti.  “Count Down By Threes” will be on his album Fat Head, Sunday Paper, which is due out September 29.  He’ll be playing a record release show in Berwyn at Fitzgerald’s on September 30. That’s in Chicagoland, but if you’re a Svengoolie fan you already knew that.

Hour one is also loaded with great stuff from Buni Muni, William Matheny, Logical Fleadh, Test Subject 17, Guitarmy of One and more.

Our second and third hours bring back a legendary episode of Radio Free Charleston International from 2017 that treats listeners to a free-format playlist where every song has at least one thing in common with the song before it. It was pretty tricky making this idea work, especially with the last song leading back into the first, but it makes for some incredible listening, and you can even try to guess the connections along the way. I do spill the beans and connect the dots at the end of the show.

As I said at the time…

In a special show that took way too much time to program, your humble host and PopCulteer brings you two hours of music where every song has something to do with the song that comes after it. Your challenge is to figure out just exactly what that is. It might be that the two songs are written by the same person, or share a producer, or a member of one band produced the song by another. It might be a tenuous connection, like both musical artists appearing on the same television show, or it might be a rock-solid tie, like two groups that share members.

Some of the songs you’ll hear in Radio Free Charleston International this week are by cutting-edge underground artists, some of them are from ultra-hip cult artists, while other tunes are by high-profile artists and may have been major hit records. But every song has something in common with the next.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Where possible in the first hour, live links 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 145

Hitchcock Circus “Shakespeare’s Inspiration”
Brian Diller & The Ride “Don’t Stop At Anything”
Buni Muni “Don’t Look Back”
Sgt. Splendor “Heavy Be Thy Borrowed Crown”
Dave Gahan & The Soulsavers “I Held My Baby Last Night”
William Matheny “Heartless People”
Ron Lazzeretti “Count Down By Threes”
Logical Fleadh “The Pile”
Tony Kaye “Sweetest Dreams”
Test Subject 17  “Go Mortals”
Guitarmy of One “Jack Lord of the Sea”
Qiet “Pet Driftwood”
Miniature Giant “Dawn”
Hello June “Honey I Promise”
Brian Diller “Dear Boy”

hour two
Nu Tra “Superhuman”
The Aquabats “The Controller”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Dear Joy”
Surf Punks “Welcome To California”
Size 14 “Superbabe 2000”
Pink Floyd “In The Flesh”
Paul McCartney “On The Way”
The The “This Is The Day”
Rip Rig and Panic “Sunken Love”
Madness “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”

hour three
Suggs “I’m Only Sleeping”
Alice Cooper “Eleanor Rigby”
Hollywood Vampires “Come and Get It”
Badfinger “Baby Blue”
Todd Rundgren “Terra Firma”
XTC “Dear God”
Shriekback “Nemesis”
The Veils “Lavina”
Julie Cruse “Falling”
Sparks “I Predict”
FFS “Johnny Delusional”
Franz Ferdniand “Take Me Out”
The Cardigans and Tom Jones “Burning Down The House”
The Firm “Satisfaction Guaranteed”
DEVO “Communication Break Up”

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 two classic episodes of The Swing Shift arrive.

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.

This week’s art is a small acrylic study that is here basically because it cracks me up.

It’s another of my attempts to emulate the technique of Edward Hopper, but it’s also a bit of an in-joke. You see, last July Mel and I made a quick trip to Chicago to see a couple of plays, and for part of our trip we stayed at the Canopy by Hilton in Chicago’s famed Loop district. We had a beautiful suite with multiple rooms and a really nice living room area as soon as we walked in.

Our room was situated in an odd corner of the building (a completely refurbished former railroad HQ) and our suite spanned the entire width of this part of the building. As a result, our bedroom had a large window that overlooked West Jackson Boulevard. Being in the middle of a city, it did not have an expansive view, but it was interesting enough to warrant a painting of its own, which you will see in a few weeks.

But the living room window, being pointed in the opposite direction, had a totally different view. This window offered a view of what can best be described as “a mysterious void.” I thought it was an alleyway of some sort, but looking at it via satellite images shows that it’s merely a blank space in between where three buildings don’t quite meet. I guess it would be considered a courtyard of sorts, but it’s not one that gets much in the way of sunlight, and from our room, you couldn’t even see the ground. I’m assuming that it must be accessible from the ground floor of at least one of the three buildings, but I know that, after walking around the block, there is no way to get there from the outer streets.

Still, it made for an amusing view, and was a good place to practice my Hoppering while my fingers were working. It’s acrylic on thick illustration board.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you 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 Neil’s Heavy Concept Album on last week’s episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of purly random audio joy, taken from our vast collection of cool stuff.

Another radio note: Tuesday’s Radio Free Charleston will be an encore of the show we debuted last Thursday. Your PopCulteer is taking the week off from making radio so he can work on a magazine article. We do plan to return to newness with a new edition of Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL on Friday.  Until then, we are going to showcase the seventh episode of each of our music specialty programs this week, except for RFC. The plan is to return with new episodes of everything, including our shows from the UK, next week.

For the die-hard fan, here’s the raw video we shot for our PopCult Road Trip clip. The audio has been replaced with stock music from the YouTube library for the most part because we don’t want to accidently broadcast anybody’s private conversations that might have been picked up by our microphones. What you have here is random shots of cool toys, featuring but not limited to GI Joe, plus the folks walking around looking at and buying them. It’s just under 35 minutes of toy show immerssion.

We had a blast at the show, but it was part of an exhausting weekend as we attended two major toy collector conventions on the same weekend, some five-hundred miles apart. I’ve been writing about that trip since we got back, four weeks ago.  This week we’re sharing the raw video from JoeLanta, the toy convention in Atlanta devoted to GI Joe. Next week the plan is to share our raw footage from PowerCon in Columbus, recorded that same weekend.

You can find our previous coverage of JoeLanta in the archives by searching for “JoeLanta,” or scroll down the recent posts list elsewhere on this page for our more recent videos and photo essays.

Just yesterday, our pal Ricky from Radio Cult posted a cool “Walk Through” video of JoeLanta, and you can watch it HERE.

This week we reach back to June 2008 for “Holden Caufield Shirt,” the forty-third edition of Radio Free Charleston. With this puppy we featured music from The Clementines, InFormation and Melanie Larch, plus the classic Troma Trailer for Daniel Boyd’s Strangest Dreams: Invasion Of The Space Preachers and the educational cartoon “Drugs Are Bad.”

We shot our host segments on the lawn at The University Of Charleston during Symphony Sunday, where it was hot enough to bake a person’s brain if they were stupid enough to wear a heavy felt hat. Other locations in this episode of RFC include The La Belle Theater in South Charleston, Taylor Books on Capitol Street, and lots of backwoods boondockery from two decades ago. Plus there are the Catfish, gathering in anticipation of FestivAll.

Full production notes can be found HERE.

Brian Diller, circa 1989

The PopCulteer
September 8, 2023

When I first got involved in Charleston’s music scene back in the late 1980s it was vibrant, colorful, surging with creativity and there was one guy who was pretty much the head of the table. Brian Diller and his band, The Ride, were Charleston’s kings of Rock ‘N’ Roll.

Before I started Radio Free Charleston I knew who Brian was. Everybody in town knew the name, whether they were into music or not. I met Brian at the legendary Charleston Playhouse, and I was struck by the fact that, despite all the success and local acclaim, he was a nice, humble, down-to-Earth guy who was genuinely grateful that people liked his music. We’ve been friends ever since.

Rudy and Brian, June 2010

His music was requested often on the old broadcast version of RFC, and around the time of his “farewell” show at the Playhouse, before he disbanded The Ride and made his way to Nashville, he happily agreed to come into the commercial production room at WVNS/WCHS Radio and record his song, “Hey Mister Auctioneer.” We aired it about nine hours after it was recorded back in January, 1990. It was a great way to wish him well on his new adventures.

When the broadcast RFC ended, and with Brian in Nashville, we lost touch until 2009, when we reconnected through the wonders of Facebook. Brian sent me some archival video for the video version of Radio Free Charleston, and in 2010 I was lucky enough to record Brian and a reunited Ride at Haddad Riverfront Park during FestivALL. This footage wound up on our seven-part RFC FestivALL 2010 series.

Just a couple of days ago, Brian released a new collection of songs spanning his 45 years making music.  Dear Boy is available on CD and Vinyl, and I played a couple of tracks from it on this week’s episode of Radio Free Charleston.

I’ve scheduled an extra replay of this week’s RFC Friday at 9 PM,  plus you can hear it at Noon and Midnight Saturday onThe AIR.

Again, thanks to the modern miracle of Facebook, I did a brief interview with Brian about the new CD and LP, and here it is…

PopCult: At the risk of making us both feel old, how long have you been making music?

Brian Diller: I have been playing professionally for 45 years. I got my first gig when I was 18 years old at a club called Cheers, which is now Bar 101. I was scared to death, but the show must’ve gone well because they asked me to play another again the following week. My first real band was the Toasters (with my dear friend Sandy Sowell,) which formed the following year, in 1979. A couple of years later I formed Stubby Dill. After we folded, I then played in a band called The Daily Planet. I then went back to playing solo shows for about a year. In 1984, I became friends with Greg Wegmann. (The Weg!) We began writing and performing together as a duo. Within a few months we gathered our close friends (Dave Pearcy, Jeff Wooley, Steve Burgess and Jim Kranz) and formed Brian Diller and The Ride. We played together for 5 years until Steve and I moved to Nashville in 1990.

Brian Diller & The Ride

Brian and Eliska

PC: Tell me a little bit about “Dear Boy.” How long have you been planning this release?

BD: We started planning the album release a little over 8 months ago, but some of these songs date back to 1988. It’s a mix of Ride Band music and solo material that I wrote while living in Nashville. Over the years, I have had many, many requests to release the music. Thanks to the encouragement and unbelievable organizational skills of my wife, Eliska, the album has finally become a realization.

PC: What can your long-time Charleston fans expect on “Dear Boy?”

BD: I think that longtime listeners will be pleased to hear that almost half of the material is from Brian Diller and The Ride. The rest of the songs were written and recorded in my home studio. After I moved to Nashville, I made a conscious effort to stretch myself as a songwriter, experimenting with different genres. I developed a more melodic style that allowed me more freedom to work with different tempos and lyric content. I feel the album shows my growth and maturity as a writer and performer. Hopefully, listeners will enjoy the variety and mix of the material as well. My wife helped me edit the content almost daily for 8 months. We are both exceptionally pleased with the result. In essence, I consider this a thank you gift to everyone who supported my music over the years.

PC: What do you feel is your most personal song on the album?

BD: “The Secret Chord”. I’ve wrestled with depression much of my life. Often depression results in isolation. In hindsight, I have found the best way I can deal with my depression is to reach out and connect with others. The lyrics are all about the need for connection and harmony and the strength we gain from making these connections.

PC: And which is the most fun for you?

BD: “Understanding Jane,” the only cover on the album. The Ride Band recorded it live in the studio, and it really captures the joy we experienced working together. It brings back countless wonderful memories of nights spent collectively playing our hearts out. This energy in the song really represents the bond between the band and our audience. Because no matter how much joy we gave to the audience on any given night, we received that same joy back tenfold from them. Every show was truly a communal event, where the lines between the performer and audience disappeared.

PC: I know you have a few obstacles in your way, but when can we see you on stage again in Charleston?

BD: We are already in discussions about a series of acoustic and full band shows within the next few months. I am really looking forward to playing again. Over the past 2 years, I have faced considerable health challenges. I underwent two full knee replacements and in February of this year, I had a serious abdominal surgery. Two and a half weeks later, I suffered a heart attack. Thankfully,I am on the mend and I feel happier and healthier than I have been since I was a young man. I can’t wait to come home and play!

Way back in the Stubby Dill days.

PC: Is this really the first LP you’ve put out on vinyl? How is that possible?

BD: Yes, it really is! The only other vinyl cut The Ride band released was “Don’t Stop at Anything” from the First Steps benefit album in 1988. The song became a regional hit and dramatically expanded our audience throughout the mid Atlantic region. Based on the airplay the song received, we were being asked to play in Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, Columbus and other major markets. The only formal commercial release The Ride band ever put out was a cassette in 1986 called “Trouble In Town.” I grew up in the era of vinyl, where there was something both comforting and exciting about the ritual of placing a needle on the grove of a new record and hearing it for the very first time. At the same time you are listening to the music, you’re pouring over the album cover artwork and liner notes for clues about the magic contained inside. To me, releasing this collectible vinyl makes everything come full circle. From the inception of this project, we always planned on offering it on vinyl.

PC: What might we expect in the future? Now that you’ve released this career retrospective, do you plan to treat us to some new songs?

BD: The great thing about releasing a collection is it gives you an opportunity to clean your slate and begin a new project. My goal is to continue to write and start performing again on a regular basis. I’ve got a number of new songs that have never been recorded or performed in public and I would like those to see the light of day. I am really looking forward to reconnecting with my audience again and continuing the dialogue we have had for the past 45 years. I may not be able to jump as high as I used to or play 5 hour marathon sets, but whenever I do perform I will give it every ounce of energy and commitment I have. I can not express the amount of gratitude I feel for the opportunity to have grown up in Charleston. The lifelong friends I made there are one of the cornerstones upon which I built my music career. I am very excited to share the album with everyone and to bring the music to life on stage!

And that’s our quick interview with Brian Diller on the release of his new album, Dear Boy. Dear Boy is available on CD and Vinyl, and you can purchase downloads of the individual songs (and more) at his Bandcamp page.  When Brian and I find ourselves in the same state in the near future, the plan is to hook up and do a long-form radio interview for RFC, hopefully in advance of his Charleston shows.

It’s always great to catch up with an old buddy from the Charleston Playhouse days, and it’s very cool that Brian’s music is finally making it into the hands of his fans, who have been eagerly awaiting this day for a long time.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Remember to check this blog every day for fresh content, and to listen to The AIR , our internet radio station, which you ought to be able to find elsewhere on this page.

Another delayed Radio Free Charleston happens again this week, and on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  RFC on Thursday! 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 2 PM and 8 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.  This week we have one all-new hour loaded with greatness, and two hours of a 2017 episode of RFC International that hasn’t been heard for more than five years.

Kicking off this cool edition of our show is a newly remastered song from Mark Beckner’s Nashville band, Hitchcock Circus. Back in 1992 Mark recorded this tune with his then-new band, which included Lee Hendricks on Bass, Mark Mingrone on Keyboards, and Jeff Noland on Drums in addition to Mark on vocals, guitar and songwriting.  Mark’s been revitalizing his back catalog and archives (and the Go Van Gogh archives as well) and while we’re waiting on a new album from his current band, Nixon Black, I’m wondering if we’ll get a retrospective compilation.

I am in the mind to consider retropsective compilations because Brian Diller has just released a new collection of songs spanning his 45 years making music.  Dear Boy is available on CD and Vinyl, and I will tell you more about that tomorrow, when I interview Brian for The PopCulteer. I play a couple of tracks from Brian’s album in our first hour.

I could have just coasted with that, but because I’m recording this show later than usual, I have the honor of playing a new song by Hello June. “Honey I Promise” is out just today at Bandcamp and other streaming services, and it’s another preview track from the long -awaited new album, Artifacts. Artifacts is due out October 6 from 31 Tigers records.

We also have an advance single from Chicago’s Ron Lazzeretti.  “Count Down By Threes” will be on his album Fat Head, Sunday Paper, which is due out September 29.  He’ll be playing a record release show in Berwyn at Fitzgerald’s on September 30. That’s in Chicagoland, but if you’re a Svengoolie fan you already knew that.

Hour one is also loaded with great stuff from Buni Muni, William Matheny, Logical Fleadh, Test Subject 17, Guitarmy of One and more.

Our second and third hours bring back a legendary episode of Radio Free Charleston International from 2017 that treats listeners to a free-format playlist where every song has at least one thing in common with the song before it. It was pretty tricky making this idea work, especially with the last song leading back into the first, but it makes for some incredible listening, and you can even try to guess the connections along the way. I do spill the beans and connect the dots at the end of the show.

As I said at the time…

In a special show that took way too much time to program, your humble host and PopCulteer brings you two hours of music where every song has something to do with the song that comes after it. Your challenge is to figure out just exactly what that is. It might be that the two songs are written by the same person, or share a producer, or a member of one band produced the song by another. It might be a tenuous connection, like both musical artists appearing on the same television show, or it might be a rock-solid tie, like two groups that share members.

Some of the songs you’ll hear in Radio Free Charleston International this week are by cutting-edge underground artists, some of them are from ultra-hip cult artists, while other tunes are by high-profile artists and may have been major hit records. But every song has something in common with the next.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Where possible in the first hour, live links 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 145

Hitchcock Circus “Shakespeare’s Inspiration”
Brian Diller & The Ride “Don’t Stop At Anything”
Buni Muni “Don’t Look Back”
Sgt. Splendor “Heavy Be Thy Borrowed Crown”
Dave Gahan & The Soulsavers “I Held My Baby Last Night”
William Matheny “Heartless People”
Ron Lazzeretti “Count Down By Threes”
Logical Fleadh “The Pile”
Tony Kaye “Sweetest Dreams”
Test Subject 17  “Go Mortals”
Guitarmy of One “Jack Lord of the Sea”
Qiet “Pet Driftwood”
Miniature Giant “Dawn”
Hello June “Honey I Promise”
Brian Diller “Dear Boy”

hour two
Nu Tra “Superhuman”
The Aquabats “The Controller”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Dear Joy”
Surf Punks “Welcome To California”
Size 14 “Superbabe 2000”
Pink Floyd “In The Flesh”
Paul McCartney “On The Way”
The The “This Is The Day”
Rip Rig and Panic “Sunken Love”
Madness “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”

hour three
Suggs “I’m Only Sleeping”
Alice Cooper “Eleanor Rigby”
Hollywood Vampires “Come and Get It”
Badfinger “Baby Blue”
Todd Rundgren “Terra Firma”
XTC “Dear God”
Shriekback “Nemesis”
The Veils “Lavina”
Julie Cruse “Falling”
Sparks “I Predict”
FFS “Johnny Delusional”
Franz Ferdniand “Take Me Out”
The Cardigans and Tom Jones “Burning Down The House”
The Firm “Satisfaction Guaranteed”
DEVO “Communication Break Up”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Thursday at 2 PM and 8 PM on The AIR, with replays Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. We are also going to run this episode in our normal timeslot next week so that your humble blogger/radio host can step away and write a magazine article. 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.

Labor Day weekend is in the rear-view mirror and here at PopCult we still have a whole bunch of suggestions for things you can get into in and around West Virginia.

There are loads and loads of cool things happening all over the damn place this weekend, so this is probably a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  I do the best I can by jumping over to Facebook and grabbing existing graphics for cool events, but past experience has taught me that putting too much time and effort than this into compiling a huge list of things that folks can do can be a bit of an exercise in futility. These posts are the least-read things in this blog. It’s the same reason that “entertainment calendars” at news sites tend to wither and die. People would rather read about one single event, or they’d rather read about new radio shows or comic book and toy reviews.

But, I like to support the local scene, so here’s what you can get into if you’re local, starting with my boilerplate paragraphs.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday singer-songwriter Megan Bee takes the stage. Saturday iwe have a graphic, so you can read about it below.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this week  to tell you about.  Wednesday night Gabby’s Lo-Fi Lounge happens at 9 PM. Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin return with Swing for a good cause. Later Thursday evening Kenny Booth hosts yet another Shred Night, filled with metallic jamming at 10 PM.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday The Charleston Rouges mark the half-way mark to St. Patrick’s Day at 10 PM. Saturday at 10 PM, there is a poetry jam that you can read about below. Sunday, The Redbloods bring their jam-band sound to The Glass at 9 PM. Next Monday it’s Open Mic Night at 9 PM. Tuesday Pepper Fandango lights up the stage at The Glass.

Saturday Afternoon you can celebrate fifty years of THE MYSTERY HOLE at said hole, located in Fayette County. There will be light refreshments and weird shit going on, but the celebration is from 11 A to 1 PM. After that, celebrating is VERBOTEN!

September 9th from 7-9 PM at City Center Slack Plaza there’s a special showcase by Black Empire Productions featuring poetry, spoken word, a reading of the play, “Things Are Good” by DeJuan James, and music by DJ Big L. It’s free and should be great.

Friday and Saturday we have some favorite RFC performers heading to Rendesvous River Lodge at Adventures on the Gorge in Lansing. Shows start at 8:30 PM each night. Friday it’s Red Audio with Matt Deal, and Saturday it’s Threes Company Blues.

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, radioactive wild boars, lunar tardigrades, icky political candidates roaming 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.

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