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…

A quick reminder that Radio Free Charleston will debut on Thursday this week. Your humble blogger/radio host took advantage of the holiday weekend to not do any work, and now I’ve got to play catch up.

Speaking of catch up, here are the photos I took of the entries in the custom figure contest at JoeLanta back in August. Sadly, we had to cut out very early Saturday morning because we had to make our way to Columbus for PowerCon, so I was only able to get photos of three figure entries and one diorama.

Also, apologies for the grainy nature of the photos. My trusty digital camera, at fifteen years old, is not as trusty as it used to be, and your PopCulteer was also dealing with an MG flare-up that affected my ability to get clear pictures.

More contest entries showed up after we left, and the contest was in the capable hands of my old buddy, Dave Matteson, seen above.

The plan is to get more video ready for this weekend (the raw footage vids of JoeLanta and PowerCon) and squeeze out another photo essay for Friday.

But for now, here’s a tiny sample of the creativity on display in this cool 1/6 scale hobby…

This diorama depicted a scene from The Battle of Hue City…

…a key battle in the Tet Offensive in early 1968. Though vastly outnumbered…

…US Marines fought house-to-house to retake the city from the North Vietnamese.

There is a tremendous amount of detail in this diorama.

One of the three figures we got to see was this cool “Spec Ops Santa.” You’d better be good…or else!

There was also this nifty 1885 US Army Infantry Dress Uniform figure, again with amazing detail.

A closer look…

“The Fly Lebowski” is a hilarious mash-up of “The Fly” and “The Big Lebowski,” and was my personal favorite, although I think the artist should have called it “The Bug Lebowski.”

The detail was incredible, with the white Russian, shorts, and bathrobe…but it was the rug that tied the whole thing together.

It’s Labor Day in the US, so forgive me if I decided to slack off a bit and share piece that I don’t really think is quite up to snuff. Weekday holidays are among the least-read days here at PopCult, so I didn’t want to run a primo piece here while everybody was off Labor Daying it up or something.

This is a crude pastel crayon drawing on textured paper of a scene I photographed from the L as it was crossing the Chicago River. I loved the way the vibrant blue sky was reflected in the glass buildings that dominated the skyline from this vantage point.

It just didn’t translate well into pastels. I didn’t get the amount of definition between all the reflective surfaces of the buildings and the actual sky, so it just looks like a pretty blue mess. I may revisit this with a high-detailed painting, or I might take the easy route and just run the photo. Either way, that’s what I got for you today. And yes, I know this is the fourth time I’ve used that title for a piece in this space. I like the song, a lot.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, all-day Monday on The AIR, we are going to Swing Into Labor Day with a 31-hour marathon of The Swing Shift that will last until 7 AM Tuesday. It’s our special way of taking the day off. Another special way we’re doing that is by delaying this week’s new RFC until Thursday, since we usually record the show on Monday, and I gots other stuff to do.

Happy Labor Day, everybody!

I don’t like to repeat the videos I post here in Sunday Evening Video very often, but this this has become an annual tradition and hardly anybody reads the blog on Labor Day weekend anyway, so here goes.

If you are of a certain age, Labor Day seems synonymous with The Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon, which the famed comedian hosted for almost sixty years.

The telethon is gone, as is Jerry, but MDA (the Muscular Dystrophy Association) maintains a YouTube page where they still post highlights from the vaults.

Above you see a playlist with over a hundred videos of musical legends like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Toni Basil and many others. Best of all, you can watch these clips without sitting through four hours of corporate spokespeople droning on in a monotone about how much they care about the kids. I mean, no offense to the guy from 7 11, but I’m pretty sure they play those parts on an endless loop in hell. Above you see the good stuff, the cream of the crop.

Seriously, there are some gems in there like Duran Duran, MC Hammer and Charo. There’s lots of Charo. Lots of MC Hammer, too, now that I think about it.

Enjoy!

It’s back to May 2008 in this week’s Flashback of Ten Years of Radio Free Charleston. This one’s called “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Shirt” and featured music from Barrelhouse Bonni, Doctor Senator, and The Synergy Collective.

We also have a brief visit from WCW’s Daffney, who sadly, took her life two years ago this week after years of physical ailments and concussion-related depression.

We met Daffney Unger (real name Shannon Spruill) back in 2008, at one of Gary Damron’s ASW Wrestling shows, and she agreed to appear on this episode of Radio Free Charleston. She did our animation intro. It only took a minute to record, and was only on the show for a few seconds, but she took the time to email me later and thank me for having her on the show.  She later sent nice emails about subsequent episodes of RFC, and was very positive and supportive of what we were doing.

It was a simple, kind gesture, but it’s more than most of the bands we’ve had on the show have done, and it meant a lot to me, and showed me what a sweet, caring person Daffney was. She is still missed.

This was another of our genre-hopping shows, with honky-tonk piano from Bonni, straight ahead rock from Doctor Senator, and music with a message (and dance) from The Synergy Collective. An added treat on RFC this time around was “Iron Man 1930,” vintage animation with a new soundtrack.

You can read the original production notes HERE.

Thirty-four years ago this weekend, the first edition of Radio Free Charleston aired on WVNS FM, 96.1. Let’s recap the story, okay?

The show was a result of my reward for working 100 days straight, often two or three shifts, with no day off while the station was beset with serious staffing problems. I was allowed to go on the air at 2 AM on Sunday morning, and play anything I wanted (within reason) for four hours each week.

This was not just my reward for working myself to death. My real reward was a promotion (in lieu of a raise) to assistant program director. With the title came the responsibility for scheduling the part-time talent to work on the weekends. I couldn’t get anybody reliable to handle the midnight to 6 AM shift Saturday night/Sunday morning, so I went to my boss with the idea of plugging a part-timer into my Friday night, 7 PM to Midnight shift, which was all syndicated programming anyway, and I would take the desolate shift that nobody wanted…IF I could have the freedom to play what I wanted.

My boss agreed to it and thus, Radio Free Charleston was born.

That first show didn’t include any local music. To be honest, it was mainly me digging out the best stuff from our existing playlist and augmenting it with a few choice progressive rock and New Wave tracks from my collection. I also remember being really happy that I could play the extended mix of “Heading To The Light” by The Traveling Wilburys on the first show.  I think it was the third week of the show when I slipped in “Big Red Satellite” by Hasil Adkins, and some single recorded by the teenaged daughter of a local car dealer who was considering advertising on the station.

Two weeks after that, the floodgates had opened, I fell in with the local music scene, and for the remainder of the original broadcast radio run, Radio Free Charleston became a bit of a phenomenon, peaking at over ten-thousand listeners and being featured in The Charleston Gazette. This was with a mix of local music, alternative rock, prog-rock, New Wave, underground tracks and even comedy records.

After the show was strangled in its crib over station politics in the spring of 1990, I couldn’t get hired in local radio. I was told repeatedly that program directors were afraid that if they’d hire me, I’d have their job in six months. I picked up work consulting with stations in other towns. I couldn’t relocate because I was taking care of my ailing parents, but there was a market for my expertise. I also sort of backed into writing and market research after working on local political ads. The whole time I was trying to find a way to revive Radio Free Charleston. I must have recorded a dozen pilot episodes for different stations, but it wasn’t until after I began writing PopCult that Brian Young came to me with the idea of reviving RFC as a video show, and Douglas Imbrogno let me incorporate it into The Gazz and PopCult.

Now, with The AIR operating as the internet radio arm of this blog, and with my video work diminished a bit due to Myasthenia Gravis, I’ve kept Radio Free Charleston going as a radio program once again. Each week on The AIR I bring you three hours of local, independent and mainstream music on Radio Free Charleston mixed into one three-hour free-format radio package. After several iterations of the radio show over the past decade, we’ve finally gotten to the point where it’s almost like I’m doing the same show I was back in 1989/90, only not in the middle of the night, and now with a worldwide audience.

That first RFC happened during Labor Day Weekend in 1989. Nobody knew then that the show would take on a life of its own as a beacon of obscurity. All the big shots in Charleston pretend not to know what RFC is, even if they’ve been on the show. I’m proud of the underground legacy I’ve built over the last thirty-plus years.

Starting Friday afternoon at 3 PM, I will be programming a marathon of episodes of Radio Free Charleston Volume Five, the current three-hour version, all taken from this year. This will run until Midnight, Sunday, when we launch into a marathon of The Swing Shift for Labor Day itself.

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.

The PopCulteer
September 1, 2023

Your humble blogger has been a bit wiped out and buried under other work since returning from his epic road trip three weeks ago, and I’m just now getting around to editing more photos from that cool trip to JoeLanta in Atlanta and PowerCon/MEGO Meet in Columbus.

The trip was exhilerating, but exhausting, and I feel like I didn’t really get to enjoy the full experience of either toy convention.  I will likely never try to do anything like this again.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the hell out of the trip, but I hope the convention organizers NEVER EVER AGAIN schedule their shows at the same time…maybe not even in the same month.

I basically sprinted through JoeLanta and my photos are blurry because of it. I will still probably squeeze one more photo essay out of JoeLanta next week. Likewise, I was dead on my feet by the time we made it to PowerCon, and many of the exhibitors had either left early or sold out of the stuff I wanted to buy long before we got there. I will also have some bonus photos from PowerCon next week, too. I apologize in advance for the image quality.

However, today I’m giving you ten photos from each show, which you can see below this video, which I posted last Sunday when nobody was reading the blog. Here’s the trip video, and then our photo essay…

JoeLanta

David Lane, one of the head muckety-mucks at JoeLanta, and a heck of a nice guy.

JoeLanta’s Dave Matteson and Buddy Finethy being media superstars

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One of the coolest (out of many cool things we saw) at JoeLanta a few weeks ago was the Raise The Flagg project by Chris Dortch.

The USS Flagg is probably the largest action figure accessory/playset ever sold. Designed for the GI Joe: A Real American Hero line in 1985, this gigantic aircraft carrier was eight feet long when fully assembled.

While that was awfully impressive, the Flagg did not have a lot going on below deck. What Chris has done is remedy that with a range of upgrades and additions. He literally raises the Flagg and puts in meticulously-detailed lower decks with lighting, 3-D printed additions, new paint detail and more.

Chris has written a book filled with tips and instructions on how to upgrade the USS Flagg, and his website is filled with additional details and resources.

The brief video above shows you some of the majesty of this epic DIY playset revision. Below, you’ll find more photos, presented without comment because your humble blogger is trying to get this post finished between frequent short power outages. The first photo you’ll see was taken Friday afternoon, before Chris had the entire custom USS Flagg assembled. The remainder were taken the next morning and show the Flagg and it’s detail in their full glory.

Visit Chris’s website for more details on how you can Raise The Flagg (and his ministry), and order his book from Amazon.

And now, the photos…

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We enter into Labor Day weekend here at PopCult with a whole bunch of suggestions for things you can get into this weekend in and around West Virginia and a few points more distant.

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 more time and effort than this into compiling a huge list of things that folks can do is 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 RFC faves, Blue Twisted Steel take the stage. Saturday it’s more RFC faves, as Bad Keys of the Mountain with Aaron Fisher entertain the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend to tell you about. Thursday at 5:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin return with Swing for a good cause. Later Thursday evening you can hear the country stylings of Oklahoma’s Seth Reid at 10 PM.  Other shows at the Empty Glass include: 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.

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, Peruvian Murder Fleas, anti-science maniacs screaming about vaccines, the reanimated corpse of Alice Moore revived by the Koch Foundation to ban more books 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…

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

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Radio Free Charleston comes your way with an intellectually-curated collection of local and independent music this week on The AIR  as we premiere three full hours of new RFC! 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.

Rather than once again revive some of our pre-2020 programming this week, we decided to just build a new three-hour show that you can hear at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. We have lots of new music, lots of local and independent stuff and some mystery bonus tracks at the end that have to be heard to be believed.

We open our show with a song from the new album by Aristotle Jones, Mountain Doo Wop and The Streets of Osage, and over the course of the next three hours, we bring you brand-new music from The Paranoid Style, Skyflake, The Struts, Test Subject 17, TAFKAVince, Buni Muni, Old Crow Medicine Show with Sierra Ferrell, Pere Ubu, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Cindy Wilson, Matt Mullins & The Bringdowns, William Matheny and Jerks.

That’s mixed in with classic tracks from local, independent and international artists, with everything mixed together in lovely free-format clumps of musical excellence.

And a quick correction to what I announce in the show: A Problematic Opera, the new album by TAFKAVince is out now, and you can get it from Bandcamp. For some reason I thought it was due to be released shortly.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFC V5 144

Aristotle Jones “Breathe”
The Paranoid Style “I Love The Sound of Structured Class”
SkyFlake “Encompass”
Supergrass “Evening Of The Day”
The Struts “Royals”
Test Subject 17 “Stratospheric Tendencies”
TAFKAVinceBand “Expiration Date”
Spurgy Hankins Band  “Nature’s Rhythm”
Buni Muni “Sunday”
Alabaster Boxer “Never Be The Same”
The Royal Beggars “My Evil Ways”
Ringo Starr “Love Don’t Last Long”
Old Crow Medicine Show with Sierra Ferrell “Shit Kicked In”
Pere Ubu “Crocodile Smile”

hour two
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Kingsized”
Cindy Wilson “Hold On”
Sean Richardson “Magentle”
Inception In Black “Voyeur (Tetrahedral Kites Remix)’
Novelty Island “Bootlegs”
Ann Magnuson “Sex With The Devil”
Galen and Paul “It’s Another Night”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “Beginning of The End”
Bud Carroll “Thinking Only Of You”
William Matheny “Every Way To Lose”
Crazy Jane “Lemonade Song”
Feast of Stephen “Watch Me Plow”
Pale Nova “I Don’t Believe In Your Love”

hour three
Jerks“Forever and a Day”
69 Fingers “Captain Fear”
Mother Nang “Fuggin”
The Science Fair Explosion “Cosmic Girls”
The Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
Public Image Ltd. “North West Passage”
Three Bodies “Shingles and Tar”
DEVO “Shout”
The Monochrome Set “They Call Me Silence”
Midge Ure “The Man Who Sold The World”
Elvis Costello “Tramp The Dirt Down”
Kate Bush “Love And Anger”
Pallas “The Executioner (Bernie Goetz A Gun)”

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.