PopCult

Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

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The RFC Flashback: Episode Twenty-Seven

From September, 2007, comes RFC 27 “Trust Me I’m A Doctor Shirt.” Highlighted by music from Comparsa, Doctor Senator and Stephanie Deskins, this show also features animation by Stephen Beckner and a creepy toy commercial. This is yet another RFC Flashback that we just ran in this space about eight months go, but we’re sticking to our chronological presentation, and going forward I don’t plan to keep mentioning it.

This installment, titled “Trust Me I’m A Doctor Shirt,” is crammed full of a diverse assortment of excellent music, plus just a dash of animation and mind-hurting weirdness. We were all over town in this show, at LiveMix Studio, The Sound Factory, The La Belle Theater, and even on the South Side Bridge.

We have great songs from Stephanie Deskins, and Doctor Senator and Comparsa, plus a cartoon by Stephen Beckner and a really creepy toy commercial (about which we will not speak again). Hosted by yours truly from the South Side Bridge, the iconic gateway that leads from downtown Charleston to up where all the user fee money goes to pave roads. The original production notes can be found HERE.

In the above episode of the show we had to do something that we really hate to do on RFC.  We had to edit one of the songs for time constraints.  Comparsa’s wonderful tune, “La Buena Comparsa” wound up missing about 90 seconds, including a way-cool bass and percussion solo. So here, in all its unedited glory, is “La Buena Comparsa,” recorded live at the La Belle Theater in South Charleston.  t

The Problem With MAX, Plus Elvis Costello Lives!

The PopCulteer
May 26, 2023

We have a longish and heavily-rewritten essay and a playlist for Friday’s new Big Electric Cat this week in the PopCulteer.

MAX Factors

A few days ago the streaming servive, HBO Max, became simply “MAX.”

And it’s a damned shame.

This definitely falls under the heading, “First World Problem,” but let me explain. When HBO MAX launched three years ago, it was instantly one of the best, if not THE best streaming service on the planet. Encompassing the libraries of Warner Brothers, MGM, Turner Classic Movies, DC Comics, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Looney Tunes, Sesame Street, Studio Ghibli as well as the vast WarnerMedia library of televison programs and a few acquired gems, like South Park, HBO MAX had just about everything a discriminating viewer could want.

Aside from the technical glitches that any streaming service will experience when getting off the ground, HBO MAX largely justified its high monthly fee.

The best thing about HBO MAX was that it sorted its content into “Hubs.” If you were in the mood for Looney Tunes, you could navigate right to them. If you wanted to watch movies or TV shows or even animation based on DC Comics, they had their own Hub. TCM had a Hub, as did Studio Ghibli and HBO. It made HBO MAX so much easier to use than, let’s say Netflix, where they have a vast library of stuff randomly scattered across a few vague catagories. Most of my time spent watching Netflix is just scrolling around trying to find something worth watching.

A couple of years ago, WarnerMedia merged with Discovery Communications, the folks who run a wide variety of cable channels filled with a gigantic assortment of inexpensive-to-produce reality shows, much of which are just garbage TV. The management of the newly-formed WBD were the folks who had been running Discovery. Since then, pennies have been mercilessly pinched.

They decided that in May, 2023 they would merge their streaming services into “MAX,” so they could jack up the price. Almost immediately after the merger, content started disappearing from HBO MAX. Entire series vanished with no warning. Lately, more than half of the Looney Tunes libary simply went away. Big chunks of Sesame Street are gone, including classic episodes. Even recent HBO original series like Westworld were unceremoniously yanked with no warning.

The plan was to dump all the low-class, garbage shows from Discovery+ and all the high-class content from HBO MAX into one half-assed service that would cost considerably more than either of those services.

That plan didn’t quite happen. Customers of Discovery+ made it clear that they would drop the relatively cheap service if the price went beyond ten dollars a month. Customers of HBO MAX made it clear that they were unhappy with all the lost content and had no interest in the reality shows from Discovery.

The newly-merged WBD (Warner Brothers/Discovery) decided to drop the idea of shutting down Discovery+. Unfortunately, they proceeded with stripping HBO MAX of its identity and a large part of its libary, vowing to fill in the gaps with cheap reality shows from the bottom of Discovery’s barrel.

They shortened HBO MAX to “MAX,” jettisoning one of the most respected brands in entertainment, and then, to add insult to injury, they threw away the Hubs. They did not fix the glitch where, no matter what you’re watching, twenty to thirty seconds in, the picture will freeze for half a minute while the sound continues.

{A Late Update: Following tens of thousands of customer complaints, Thursday evening the former Hubs from HBO MAX were added back to the Search page, under the heading, “Brand Spotlight.” Give them credit for responding swiftly. So you can ignore the rant I’ve now italicized and stricken through below. Now you can directly access TCM, DC, Adult Swim and everything else, but it’s not as easy to find as it used to be. That was my second-biggest complaint about MAX. They still removed so much content that the service is a shadow of its former self.}

They even had to add “HBO” back to some of the graphics because so many people didn’t bother to update to the new app.

After having to delete and reinstall MAX on the Roku, I was stunned to find that, instead of the familiar Hubs, there were only four major Hubs: “Movies,” “Series,” “HBO,” and “New and Notable.”

If I want to watch, let’s say, Doom Patrol, I have to go to “Series” and then figure out that it’s an “Action” show, and then scroll down to the alphabetical list, and find it there.

And getting there I have to scroll through a hell of a lot of stuff that isn’t what I’m looking for. It took over five minutes to find my show.

If I want to see what TCM offers this month…I’m out of luck. I have to go to “Movies” and scroll through the whole damned list and guess which ones are classics. There is no “Classics” or “TCM” catagory. I think it’s a safe bet that Space Jam is not a TCM offering, but I had to scroll past that movie five times before I gave up.

And I hate that movie.

What has happened is that MAX, has become just another streaming service. I have no loyalty to it. I’ll drop it and save my sixteen bucks a month for now. Once or twice a year, I’ll sign back up and keep it for a month so Mel and I can catch up with what we missed. That’s what I did with Disney+ and I’ll probably get around to dropping Netflix sooner rather than later.

It’s ironic that the streaming services I’m keeping are the least expensive. Peacock is worth the five bucks a month just for the WWE content that I enjoy, and their original series are much, much better than some of the highly-touted shows on other streamers. Likewise, Mel enjoys having access to the SpongeBob Squarepants library on Paramount+, and I don’t mind the Star Trek content. It’s only seven bucks or so each month.

It seems that the problem with MAX and all the churn among streaming services is that, thus far, it’s not a sustainable business. The whole idea of a media company like Warners or Disney keeping all their best material for their own service, rather than licensing it out to other companies seemed smarter in theory than it was in practice.

In truth, Disney and Warners have lost billions of dollars on Disney+ and HBO Max, and the problem is that the revenue streams they had from licensing out their shows to Netflix or cable channels or premium movie networks dried up right as they were investing tons of money into the digital infrastructure needed to support a streaming service.

On top of that, they overestimated how loyal their viewers would be.

I only ever signed up for Disney+ to see The Beatles Get Back, and once I (finally) got my copy on Blu Ray, I pulled the plug. My main reason for signing up for HBO Max was to watch the further episodes of Titans and Doom Patrol, once they eliminated video from DC Universe. With Titans done, only six episodes of Doom Patrol left, and John Oliver’s show shut down due to the WGA strike, the end is near for MAX in my house.

I’ll sign up again in a few months when they bring back The Gilded Age. Then when that show’s second season is done, I’ll drop it again.

And to be honest, I think I’m late to this game. It’s why the “churn rate” is so high. I suspect it’ll only get worse in the future as more people get tired of paying ever-raising prices while watching less and less.

If this keeps up, the movie and TV business will see its content devalued to the point where it’s practically worthless, like what happened to the music industry.

Declan McManus Day

Meanwhile, Friday afternoon on our internet radio station we offer up a new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. 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.

At 2 PM, We present an encore of a classic episode of Mel Larch’s Disco-era showcase, MIRRORBALL.

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This week Sydney devotes the entire two hours of her show to the New Wave-era music of Elvis Costello. With such legendary albums as My Aim Is True, Armed Forces, Get Happy, Imperial Bedroom and many others, Elvis Costello exemplified the spirit of New Wave’s melting pot, mixing punk with country, pop, classical, jazz and singer-songwriter sensibilities.

Join Sydney as she takes a non-chronological jaunt through the music of Elvis Costello during the New Wave era, from his first album, in 1978 to the mid-1980s. Elvis, of course, has never faded from relevance as an artist, releasing vital and vibrant music to this day, but this show is all about his early career, as backed by the band Clover, and with his first regular backing band, The Attractions.

Check out the playlist…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 104

Elvis Costello
“Accidents will Happen”
“Welcome To The Working Week”
“Love For Tender”
“From A Whisper To A Scream”
“…and In Every Home”
“(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea”
“Less Than Zero”
“Everyday I Write The Book”
“Tears Before Bedtime”
“The Only Flame In Town”
“Uncomplicated”
“High Fidelity”
“Lover’s Walk”
“Jack of All Parades”
“You Little Fool”
“Senior Service”
“Mystery Dance”
“Pills And Soap”
“Radio Radio”
“Pump It Up”
“Alison”
“Opportunity”
“Human Hands”
“Shipbuilding”
“Goon Squad”
“Clubland”
“Blame It On Cain”
“What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding”
“Beaten To The Punch”
“Tokyo Storm Warning”
“Luxombourg”
“Girl’s Talk”
“The Comedians”
“Moods For Moderns”
“This Year’s Girl”
“Hoover Factory”
“Peace In Our Time”
“Watching The Detectives”

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, and prepare yourselves for a special RFC marathon that begins next Monday Morning and runs all next week!

A Long Weekend’s Journey Into STUFF TO DO

As we pay tribute to those who gave their lives so that we can have STUFF TO DO, PopCult reminds you of events happening in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond for the next week.

A special note: The Vandalia Gathering is back at the WV State Capitol Grounds this weekend, and you can find out all about it HERE.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s The Wildwood Players. Saturday That Hgh Country Revival entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit or worthy cause. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Friday at 8 PM the Glass is the place for a Vandalia Gathering Bluegrass Jam with Josh and Jakob Thomas.  Saturday, taking advantage of all the great pickers in town, there’s a Bluegrass Jam with Jeff Haynes at 8 PM. Sunday it’s time for EMPTY GLASS GOT TALENT at 10 PM.  Next week they’ll have an open mic hosted by Unmanned on Monday night, and June Star returns on Tuesday.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

Friday May 26

Saturday May 27

Continue reading

George & Ira On Curtain Call

George Gershwin was born 125 years ago, and this week Mel Larch brings her listeners a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to 1990s recreations of three Broadway musicals that Gershwin wrote with his brother Ira back almost one hundred years ago.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear highlights from Lady Be Good, Pardon My English and Strike up The Band.  You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay here and listen to the convenient embedded radio player elswhere on this page.

At 3 PM Mel Larch devotes the entire hour of Curtain Call to songs that George Gershwin wrote for the stage, performed by a reperatry company that includes Jason Alexander, John Pizzarelli, Lara Teeter, William Katt, Arnetta Walker, Rebecca Luker and more. It’s a mixtape show, so you’ll want to check the playlist to see what comes up next…

Curtain Call 129

“Strike Up The Band”
“Fascinating Rhythm”
“In Three Quarter Time”
“Oh, Lady Be Good”
“The Luckiest Man In The World”
“Yankee Doodle Rhythm”
“A Wonderful Party”
“The Man I Love”
“Dancing In The Streets”
“Oh, This Is Such A Lovely War”
“The War That Ended War””
“So What”
“Mademoiselle In New Rochelle”

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 evenings starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Remastered Go Van Gogh Kicks Off A New Radio Free Charleston

Tuesday afternoon happens again this week, and on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston. 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.  This week we have one all-new hour, and two hours of a 2019 episode of RFC International that hasn’t been heard since the week it originally aired.

Kicking off this cool edition of our show is a newly-remastered recording of “Stripes With Stains,” a classic tune from Go Van Gogh, one of the original “RFC Fave” bands from back when there were giants in those days.  This comes courtesy of band member, Mark Beckner, who is in the process of digitizing the Go Van Gogh archives, and promises big things in the coming year. We don’t have a webpage to link to GVG in our playlist below, but we can guide you to all the other bands we play in our first hour.

And that first hour contains brand-new music from Buni Muni, Golden, Shake The Dead, Abigail Fierce, Ke$ha, The Korgis and more, plus I explain how I got the title of a song by Payback’s A Bitch wrong last week, and make good by playing the right song this time.  Plus, The Heavy Hitters Band make their RFC debut!

Our second and third hours are freeform music radio on steroids, and you’ll hear everything from a member of XTC covering The Bonzo Dog Band, to then-new music from the surviving Beatles to horror punk, post-punk psychedelica, Polish satirical prog-rock and more.

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 132

hour one
Go Van Gogh “Stripes With Stains”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Blame It On The Groove”
Buni Muni “Tennessee Walker”
The Korgis “Cold Tea (unplugged)”
Abigail Fierce “I Just Wanna Feel Okay Again”
Softeeth “Trainwreck”
Ke$ha “The Drama”
The Wearing Hands “Sieta Lunas”
Overvue “Overview Effect”
The Settlement “Stars”
Shake The Dead “Withered and Decayed”
Golden “Defeated”
Payback’s a Bitch “Get Up…Go (Live–for real this time)”
Dave Strong “C’mon Everybody”

hour two
Andy Partridge “Humanoid Boogie”
Moron Police “Beware The Blue Skies”
The Hatters “Обижен”
Wax “Right Between The Eyes”
Argyle Gooslby “Blood Cave”
Hans Gruber and the Die Hards “American Hero”
The Beautiful South “36D”
Residente “La Sombra”
Cherie Currie & Brie Darling “Something In The AIR”
Mark Knopfler “The Boxer”
Hollywood Vampires “Heroes”
PP Arnold “Different Drum”
The Pretenders “Stop Your Sobbing”
Buck O Nine “Tuff Rudeboy”
Ringo Starr “We’re On The Road Again”

hour three
Julian Cope “Psychedelic Revolution”
Waddy Wachtel “Wadraga”
Billy Sherwood “Sailing The Seas”
Terry Draper “Everything Will Be All Right”
Rupert Hine “Anvils In Five”
Paul McCartney “Dominos”
The Gift “Long Time Dead”
Fish On Friday “Godspeed”

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 two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.  Over the summer,  I intend to ramp up production of new editions of The Swing Shift by producing spotlight episodes that will present a solid hour of music by Swing pioneers like Cab Calloway, Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Lester Young and more.

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.

Monday Morning Art: Southside

This weekend, I set aside some time to paint. Close to twenty hours over three days, to be exact, plus another hour or so photographing the piece and then color-correcting it on the computer.

This is an acrylic painting on heavy watercolor paper I did of the Southside of Chicago, using dozens of photographic references, none of which were actually from this perspective. I wanted to do something different than just another depiction of the famous skyline (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Obviously, the style I employed here is an impression of an impressionist. My fingers weren’t up to working in high detail, and while I am in a years-long fascination with the work of Edward Hopper, I wanted to take a different approach to this one. I thought it might be interesting to apply a Claude Monet-derived vision to Hopperesque subject matter. In this case, an industrial part of a city, complete with the “L” running through it.

I’m sort of happy with taking a Hopper-type subject matter, but composing and rendering it in a more organic, less technical, finished painting. Not aiming for precision was a bit liberating.

As usual, I am not thrilled with the sky, and considered cropping it out for the blog, but then the aspect ratio would make sharing it on social media annoying, so I left it as is.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland we have new stuff this week. You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack,  As always, Nigel Pye has compiled a collection of creative cacophonic concoctions, designed to expand the mind and free the soul.  Check out the playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 077

Cream “Sunshine of Your Love”
Inner Thoughts “Smokestack Lightning”
The Kids “Jordan Land”
The Impact Express “A Little Love”
The Ranch “A Little While Back”
Yellow Brick Road “When Fall Arrives”
The Razor’s Edge “Baby’s On His Way”
Elephant Stone “L.A. Woman”
Sons of Hippies “Soul Kitchen”
Kinetic “Suddenly Tomorrow”
The Matadors “Get Down From The Tree”
Russ Alquist “The Laughing Man”
Virgin Sleep “Haliford House”
L.A. “Nine to Five”
The Unknown Group “Out of My Head (Over You)”

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.

Then at 3 PM a new edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis brings you two hours of classic Progressive Rock bands with substitute vocalists.  These are tunes released by the biggest bands of Prog after their most famous vocalists have departed.

The show opens with the title track of the just-released album by YES, and continues with post-lineup-change vocal turns by Marillion, Pallas, Styx, Kansas, King Crimson and more. You’ll also get to hear Genesis with lead vocalist Ray Wilson, and the show concludes with more from YES, this time featuring the vocals of Benoit David, who since leaving the band has exited the entire music industry.  There’s even a local connection as he includes a track by Renaissance, featuring Grafton, WV native, Stephanie Adlington, taking over behind the microphone from Annie Haslam.

Check out the playlist with the Legion of Substitute Vocalists (with the vocalists in brackets)…

Prognosis 104

YES “Mirror To The Sky” (Jon Davison)
Genesis “One Man’s Fool” (Ray Wilson)
Marillion “The Lap of Luxury” (Steve Hogarth)
King Crimson “Lizard” (Jon Anderson, Gordon Haskell)
ASIA “Crime of The Heart” (John Payne)
Renaissance “Somewhere West of Here” (Stephanie Adlington)
Pallas “Rat Race” (Alan Reed)
3 (Emerson, Berry and Palmer) “Desde La Vida” (Robert Berry)
Styx “Crash of the Crown” (Lawrence Gowan)
Queen + Paul Rodgers “We Believe” (Paul Rodgers)
Kansas “Crossfire” (John Elefante”
YES “Fly From Here (excerpts)” (Benoit David)

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 Polka-heavy music from Weird Al Yankovic on a new episode of Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, with two-hour blocks devoted to each year of New Wave Music from 1978 to 1982.

Sunday Evening Video: Mike Batt’s Zero Zero

{This week’s Sunday Evening Video is an encore of a post I’d written almost exactly ten years ago. In that time, the video link went bad, but the video remains online. So since this is one of my favorite works, and if all goes according to plan I’ll be reviewing a new graphic novel/music project by Mike Batt next month, I’m repeating this entry with some minor tweaking and the video properly back in place. }

Back in December, 2010, I brought you several music videos by Mike Batt, a composer and performer of whom I have have been a fan for a very long time.  When I posted that item, I lamented the unavailability of my favorite work of his, a “Video Fantasy” called “Zero Zero” in the US.

Zero Zero is a New Wave/orchestral hybrid of a ballet with a long-form music video. It tells a story set in a futuristic dystopian society where love has been declared a mental disorder and is systematically eliminated. I discovered it among the many treasures aired in the early days of the USA Network program, “Night Flight.”  I was familiar with the music, but the visuals, including dance, animation and a wild set design, were mind-blowing. I hadn’t seen Zero Zero since it last aired on Night Flight around 1982 (back in the days before I had my first VCR).

Luckily Mike Batt graciously posted the entire work, in remastered form no less, to YouTube. That’s it you see at the top of this post.  Please enjoy Mike Batt with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, performing Zero Zero.

The RFC Flashback: Episode Twenty-Six

This week we go all the way back to September, 2007, for a “Back to School” episode of Radio Free Charleston.  We have music from Whistlepunk and Sean Richardson, a short film by Stephen and Amee Beckner’s kids, a preview of a series we never got around to filming with Mad Man Pondo and animation from yours truly. I just restored and uploaded this last fall and posted it here then, but we’re going in order here, so this is going to happen a lot over the next two or three months.

The show was hosted by then-12-year-old Cadence Young, the daughter of RFC Big Shot (and Whistlepunk drummer) Brian Young.  She took over as I was mysteriously attacked during the “Hello” segment. Sixteen years later I still have no idea who perpetrated this savage assault.

Most of this show was recorded in or around the much-missed LiveMix Studio on Quarrier Street, and you can read the original production notes HERE.

Celebrate The Legacy of Donna Summer On MIRRORBALL

The PopCulteer
May 19, 2023

Saturday, May 20th, HBO premieres a new documentary about the legendary singer, Donna Summers, just days after the eleventh anniversary of her passing.

Love to Love You, Donna Summer is an in-depth look at the iconic artist as her voice and artistry takes her from the avant-garde music scene in Germany, to the glitter and bright lights of dance clubs in New York. A deeply personal portrait of Summer on and off stage, the film features a wealth of photographs and never-before-seen home video footage – often shot by Summer herself. Through a rich window into the surprising range of her artistry, from songwriting to painting, Love to Love You, Donna Summer explores the highs and lows of a life lived on the global stage.

The documentary was directed by Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s own daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, and it debuts tomorrow on HBO and the soon-to-be-renamed, HBO Max.

In honor of this new documentary, Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch presents her second tribute to Donna Summer on the Disco Showcase, MIRRORBALL. 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.

Mel first paid tribute to the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, back on the fifteenth edition of MIRRORBALL and this week she goes back to the well and brings you another solid hour of dance classics from the woman who was the female voice of the Disco era. Rather than simply rerun that earlier episode, Mel decided to put together an all-new collection, with no songs duplicated from her previous tribute.

Donna Summer was the first artist to get the MIRRORBALL spotlight with a solo show, and she created so much iconic Disco music that it was easy to put together a second tribute show. Who knows, maybe someday Mel will grace us with a third tribute to Ms. Summer.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 076
Donna Summer Tribute #2

“With Your Love”
“Walk Away”
“Spring Affair”
“Journey To The Center of Your Heart”
“Try Me, I Know We Can Make It”
“Take Me”
“Could It Be Magic”
“Happily Ever After”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM.

Friday and Saturday evenings at 9 PM, this week you’ll get a mini-marathon with the new MIRRORBALL followed by an encore of the previous tribute to Ms. Summer and a show devoted to the soundtrack of her movie debut, Thank God It’s Friday.

At 3 PM we bring you an encore of a classic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from April, 2017.  This was another show where Sydney Fileen educated the masses on the finer points of New Wave history.  Rather than send you to a link, we’ll just re-post the playlist here…

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. 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 because it makes you metaphorically larger than the average human.

 

STUFF TO DO Without A Clever Headline

It’s that time of the week when we tell you that there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves tearing through 2023 at the speed of light.  This week our suggestions cover everything from music to writing workshops, retail festivals and more, and we plug events in Charleston, and everywhere from Morgantown to Fayettefille to Marietta to Huntington and even in exotic and alluring Dunbar!

A special note: ArtWalk happens again in Charleston Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM.  This free event is open to the public as art lovers can walk to all the usual suspects and take in the majesty of the art. Some galleries will have music and/or munchies as well. It’s a really cheap way to support the local scene and get out and mingle a bit…if you are so inclined.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Megan Bee. Saturday Josiah Whitley entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit or worthy cause.  Thursday at 10 PM Harper and Midwest Kind come to town.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour. Friday at 10 PM Luke Trimble has a full band show. The East End Ghouls have an open stage at 10 PM. Sunday it’s time for EMPTY GLASS GOT TALENT at 10 PM.  Next week they’ll have an open mic hosted by Unmanned on Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday.

Extra note: The Graveyard Mafia show, which you’ll see a graphic for below, happens at Sam’s Uptown Cafe. I was unable to find the full poster with the venue listed.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

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