On May 7, 2015, a German torpedo sinks the British Ocean liner Lusitania off the Irish coast, killing nearly 1,200 people. This remains one of the most horrific acts of violence against civilians from World War One.

The Sinking of the Lusitania is an American silent animated short film made by cartoonist Winsor McCay in 1918. It is a ground-breaking piece of animation re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania. At twelve minutes it has been called the longest work of animation at the time of its release. The film is the earliest surviving animated documentary and serious, dramatic work of animation. McCay, the creator of Little Nemo In Slumberland among many other comic strips from the early 20th century, and the man who basically invented animation as we know it today.

In February, 2010 I created a special music video by The Scrap Iron Pickers (Johnny Sizemore, Jason “Roadblock” Robinson and Matt Wolfe) for Radio Free Charleston. Using the song “Swamp Thing” from their debut double-EP,  I set the music to the vintage animation of the famed maritime disaster by McCay.

You see the end result above: A music video for the song “Swamp Thing” by The Scrap Iron Pickers (featuring guests John Chickogee, Bud Carroll and Jeff Ellis) from their double EP Reedeeming Metal/Union. This video was edited by yours truly, using McKay’s original animation and adding tinting via video. With today being May 7, it seemed like a good idea to share it again.

This week he head back to August, 2007 for “Las Vegas Shirt.” This is a special episode of Radio Free Charleston for a couple of reasons. We feature fantastic music by Seven Minutes Til Midnight and an early line-up of InFormation, and we have a really cool piece of animation by Frank Panucci.  But what makes this show so notable is that it is the only episode of Radio Free Charleston to be rejected and censored by The Charleston Gazette, and it is one of only two shows in which your host, Rudy Panucci, does not wear a hat.

Those two matters, by the way, are unrelated. It’s not like the sight of my un-hatted head is so hideous as to border on obscene, at least I hope not..

The problem content in this episode is a segment called “Cooking With The Atrocity,” a comedy cooking segment brought to us by the fine folks at IWA East Coast Wrestling and the 108 Dragons. The humor in the original piece was that it turned into a disaster, with much unexpurgated cursing along the way. In these early days, Radio Free Charleston was hosted on the Gazette servers and as such, we didn’t want to push the envelope too far for fear that it would be returned containing a pink slip. A running theme of the early days of PopCult and RFC was that we needed to fly under the radar, so as not to attact the attention of the potentially-offended Widder Chilton.

So when I included “Cooking With The Atrocity” in the show, I bleeped the crap out of it. The odd thing was that the bleeping made the already hilarious bit even funnier. Unfortunately, my editor, Douglas Imbrogno, felt that too many remnants of cursing remained, so for the only time, I withdrew the show for further editing.

It turned out that adding even more bleeps made the bit even funnier, so it all worked out well in the end. Sadly, the official, heavily-bleeped version is one of my “missing” shows, so we are bringing you the original cut, which has a bit less bleeping of the words that lip-readers could have figured out anyway.

As for me not wearing a hat…people were asking, so I complied. I have no excuse for the silver shirt, though. The original production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 5, 2023

Your PopCulteer is celebrating Cinco de Mayo by writing this column on Thursday afternoon so he can not worry about writing it when he’ll be resting up to go see The Velvet Brothers at The Red Carpet.

Also, before we go any further, remember that the first Friday of the month is “Bandcamp Friday,” which means that Bandcamp does not take a cut from any sales at their website. All the money goes to the artist. So if you want to support local and independent music, this is the day to do it.

Meanwhile, Friday afternoon we offer up new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player at the top right column of this blog.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! This is the one that we presented as a sneak preview last monday.  For those of you who missed it, it’s the third anniversary show for MIRRORBALL, and it’s the 75th episode, so Mel decided to present classic Disco songs that came out in 1975.

We told you all about that HERE, but if you’re too lazy to click, here’s the playlist again…

MIRRORBALL 075

Van McCoy “The Hustle”
Brass Construction “Movin’”
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Gloria Gaynor “Never Can Say Goodbye”
KC & The Sunshine Band “That’s The Way (I Like It)”
Barry White “What Am I Gonna Do With You”
The Blackbyrds “Walking In Rhythm”
Gary Tom’s Empire “7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Blow Your Whistle”
Tavares “It Only Takes A Minute”
Salsoul Orchestra “Tangerine”
Silver Convention “Save Me”
MFSB “Sexy”
Hot Chocolate “You Sexy Thing”
The Bee Gees “Jive Talkin’”

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 once again salutes the proud women who infiltrated New Wave music and made sure that it didn’t turn into yet another old boy’s club. Every song in this week’s show is spearheaded by feminine creativity, and it kicks off with newly-minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Kate Bush.

As Sydney explains in the show, the artists making up this show are a mix of huge mega-stars and New Wave Women whose stars did not get to shine quite so brightly. Sydney also explains that our friends at Haversham Recording Institute have been tied up doing international media support for some kind of big shindig happening over London way, and that’s why we didn’t have any new programs from them in April.

Check out the playlist…

BEC 103

Kate Bush “Sat In Your Lap”
Pretenders “Mystery Achievement”
Plasmatics “Monkey Suit”
The Selecter “They Make Me Mad”
The Creatures “A Strutting Rooster”
Debbie Harry “Chrome”
Go-Gos “Lust To Love”
Angela Werner “Ausgeflippt”
Mobiles “Long Time”
Renaissance “Camera, Camera”
28th Day “Pages Turn”
RAF “Stop Her On Sight”
Threshold “Believe In Me”
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
Joan Jett “Crimson and Clover”
Unit 5 “Mental State”
Laurie Anderson “From The AIR”
Kim Wilde “Tuning In, Tuning Out”
Toyah “War Boys”
Rachel Sweet “Who Does Lisa Like”
Tracey Ullman “Breakaway”
Berlin “Sex”
Missing Persons “It Ain’t None Of Your Business”
Marianne Faithfull “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”
Inker & Hamilton “Innocent”
Kirsty MacColl “A New England”
Hazel O’Connor “Top of The Wheel”
Velvet Monkey “You’re Not There”
Lene Lovich “Joan”

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. I’m gonna go see The Velvets tonight!

According to the Weatherpeoples we’re going to veer from unseasaonbly cold to unseasonably hot here as we enter the first weekend of May. But fear not, there’s still a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we find ourselves rapidly barrelling through 2023.

We start with a new show by Charleston’s most prolific playwright.

Charleston’s Contemporary Youth Arts Company opens a new gothic horror drama by playwright, Dan Kehde, “The Good Ship Barnacle” at 7 PM this Friday, May 5th and will be running it May 5,6,12,13 at 7 PM and 2 PM on Sunday May 7.

To say it’s a different kind of play is an understatement. It’s the story of a young woman’s apparent battle with her dark past as she is furloughed by her brother from a mental institution and taken to the isolated cabin of her childhood. Haunted by the voice of a kidnapped and murdered childhood playmate, Allie Burroughs, with the often unwilling aid of her older brother, relives the darker moments of her troubled life as she unravels the truth among twenty five years of lies and delusions.

The play features the extraordinary talents of local veteran actors Amanda Skidmore, Matty Connelly and Abby Connett. Not recommended for anyone under the age of twelve, this intense drama would probably be considered “PG 14” for adult language, situations and implied violence.

$15 Adult. $10 Student/Senior. Tickets are available at the door or online.

Friday is Cinco de Mayo, but not too many places had graphics available for this big day. Yours truly will appear at the Red Carpet to see The Velvet Brothers, but if there’s smoking on the patio, I may not be able to stick around too long.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Steve Himes. Saturday Gary Hays entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery (details in the graphic below).

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.  Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour, then Static Fur and friends take over for Cinco De Mayo.  Saturday Kenny Booth hosts another SHRED NIGHT.  Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Plus there are shows listed below.

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.

THEATRE

 THURSDAY

FRIDAY

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Every May Mel Larch brings her listeners a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to the Tony Award Nominees for Best Musical. Since they were just announced yesterday morning, it’s time for the tradition to continue.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear samples of the nominees for this year’s Tony Awards for Best Musical as Broadway is back to normal, ready to be saluted by Curtain Call.

You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player mere inches away from this text.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call. It’s our annual Tony Awards preview, with three songs each from the five nominated musicals,

Shucked is a countrified musical about corn in more way than one. With songs by the Nashville songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and a book by Robert Horn, Shucked traffics in a humor that’s been called “low but hard not to laugh at.” This homespun story of a marriage put on hold until the corn crop can be saved has come out of nowhere to become a contender for Broadway’s top prize.

The musical comedy Kimberly Akimbo stars the 63-year-old Victoria Clark as a teenage girl with a medical condition that causes rapid aging. Based on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, the show features music by Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of Fun Home; a book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Rabbit Hole; and direction by Jessica Stone, a longtime actress making her Broadway directing debut.

& Juliet is a jukebox musical inspired by the Shakespeare tragedy, and it features songs by the Swedish hitmaker Max Martin (Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and many others), a book by David West Read and direction by Luke Sheppard.  It doesn’t seem like a natural fit, but somehow they make it work.

Some Like It Hot is a tap-infused adaptation of the 1959 Billy Wilder film about two musicians on the run, and it’s this year’s breakout show, with 13 total nominations. The musical stars Christian Borle, J. Harrison Ghee and Adrianna Hicks, with songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who previously wrote the Tony-winning score for Hairspray. Casey Nicholaw, the Tony-winning director of The Book of Mormon, directs and choreographs.

New York, New York, is a new musical very loosely based on the 1977 Martin Scorsese film about performers making it in the big city. The show juxtaposes new songs John Kander wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda, like “Music, Money, Love,” with older ones set to lyrics by Fred Ebb. The show, which is directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman,has been praised by The New York Times for it’s tap number staged on high beams and “the visceral thrill of watching a big band rise up to the stage.”

The 2023 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Pluto TV and Paramount + on June, 11 (barring any delays caused by the WGA strike), so you can tune in and see who won this year’s prize.

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.

Once again it’s Tuesday on The AIR  and 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.

We have three full hours of new stuff on Radio Free Charleston this week, with loads of new music, tons of old music–some of it local, some not. Much of the show is a deep dive into the RFC Archives, but the new stuff is bright and shiny, so it should keep your attention for the full three hours.

Our new local tracks this week come from Golden, Payback’s A Bitch, Massing and more. New Indie music is courtesy of Novelty Island, Dave Strong, Andy Prieboy, Nervous Twitch, The Anchoress, Ian Hunter and more.

On top of that, we have quite a few gems from the past forty years of The RFC Archives.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Live links (where available) 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 129

hour one
Golden “Wrong Way”
Weedhaven Laughing Academy “Fight Song”
Abandon The Ship “Burning The Night”
Dave Strong “Katie Is A Chainsmoker”
The Dollyrots “Still Holding On”
The Dirteez “Talisman”
Law Biting Citizens “Selective Memory”
Andy Prieboy “Five Simple Rules”
Garbage “Cities In Dust”
The Long Lost Somethins “Voyeur”
Byzantine “Purity”
Nervous Twitch “More Than Enough Warning”
The Company Stores “Ways”
Cassius At Best “Spearate Identity”

hour two
Payback’s a Bitch “Get Up…Go”
Safetybelt “Look Down”
Rain May Fall “Remember Everything”
Feast of Stephen “Chemical City”
Hazel O’Connor “Will You”
City Boy “The Blind Leading The Blind”
Under Social “Dead Inside”
Treasure Cat “Battle of Britain”
The Mars Volta “Graveyard Love (acoustic)”
Ian Hunter “I Hate Hate”
The Melvins “Stop Moving To Florida”
Farnsworth “American Dream”
Bad Keys of The Mountain “Don’t Think Twice”
Todd Rundgren, Geoff Downes, Zoot Horn Rollo, Scott Connor “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)”

hour three
Massing “Go Away”
Novelty Island “Stitches”
The Anchoress “This Is Yesterday”
Audrey Smiley “Peppermint and Innocence (Pie Mix)”
Bottle and Bride “Snake Oil”
Blue Twisted Steel “Fight For Your Life”
Hello June “Fight, Don’t Fight”
The Defectors “Johnny”
Laser Beams “Patrick Morrisey”
Keith Hell “Paranoia Swing Swing”
Under The Radar “Dog Day Dallas Doo Dah Demons”
The Ghosts of Now “Patton’s Blues”
Hasil Adkins “If You Want To Be My Baby”

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 3 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.

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’re going to bring you the first two parts of the History of Swing, which ran from episode 99 to episode 103 on The Swing Shift. We’ll bring you the final two parts next week, then the plan is to return with new episodes after that.

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.

It’s a big day for fans of Disco Music today on The AIR.  Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL marks three years of flying her freak flag high while shaking her groove thing Monday at 9 PM with a special preview airing of this Friday’s new episode of the show.  It’s actually a double celebration because tonight Mel also marks 75 episodes in addition to her third anniversary by jumping in the Disco time machine and heading back to 1975 with a special mix of classic dance tracks from one of the key years of the Disco era on MIRRORBALL!

Mel celebrates both of these milestones with an hour of music from the year right before the Bicentennial of these United States of Disco America.

For an “Air Music Special” that nobody involved thought would ever get a second episode, MIRRORBALL proved to be a hugely successful surprise, and is one of The AIR’s most-listened-to programs.

Fans can tune in tonight at 9 PM for The Monday Marathon, which kicks off with a preview of Friday’s new episode. Following that,  you can dance all night as we bring you nine more great episodes of MIRRORBALL from the last 12 months. You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

It all begins with the “75 Special” program. Check out this playlist…

MIRRORBALL 075

Van McCoy “The Hustle”
Brass Construction “Movin'”
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Gloria Gaynor “Never Can Say Goodbye”
KC & The Sunshine Band “That’s The Way (I Like It)”
Barry White “What Am I Gonna Do With You”
The Blackbyrds “Walking In Rhythm”
Gary Tom’s Empire “7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Blow Your Whistle”
Tavares “It Only Takes A Minute”
Salsoul Orchestra “Tangerine”
Silver Convention “Save Me”
MFSB “Sexy”
Hot Chocolate “You Sexy Thing”
The Bee Gees “Jive Talkin'”

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. This special episode won’t be replayed again until this coming Friday.

Before we kick off the all-night Disco party, we offer up two new episodes of our AIR Music Specialty shows Monday afternoon as Nigel Pye’s Psychedelic Shack  and Herman Linte’s Prognosis present their first new episodes in over a month. Seems our friends at Haversham Recording Institute in London have been preoccupied with some sort of moderately-sized shindig coming up over there.

Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we do indeed bring you a new episode of Psychedelic Shack  

On Psychedelic Shack, Nigel Pye collects and collates an hour of great psychedelic bands. Nigel has put together a killer assortment of mind-expanding songs. Just check out the playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 076

Flo & Eddie “Marmendy Mill”
The Flowers “Combination of The Two”
The Move “Sunshine Help Me”
Jimi Hendrix “All Along The Watchtower”
Loose Sutures & Marcos Neiddu “Sunny Cola”
Rural Tapes “Reddal”
MC 5 “Starship”
Grombira “Civilization One”

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.

Our afternoon of new programming continues at 3 PM. On a split topic edition of Prognosis, Herman Linte presents one hour of double-shots of BRAND-NEW music from prog-rock stalwarts, YES, Peter Gabriel, Jethro Tull and Hawkwind. YES and Gabriel are represented by tracks from their upcoming albums, Mirror To The Sky and i/o, while the Tull and Hawkwind tracks are from the just-released albums, RökFlöte and The Future Never Waits.

The second hour is a mixtape of music by the sadly-forgotten, Queen-inspired prog-pop group, City Boy, whose music has largely been forgotten for the past four decades. Herman hopes to raise the profile of these unsung heroes who sort of got lost in the New Wave/Music Video world of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Check out this split playlist of brand new and sadly overlooked Progressive Rock on today’s Prognosis…

Prognosis 103

YES “All Connected”
YES “Cut From The Stars”
Peter Gabriel “The Court”
Peter Gabriel “I-o (Bright Side Mix)”
Jethro Tull “Wolf Unchained”
Jethro Tull “The Navigators”
Hawkwind “They Are So Easily Distracted”
Hawkwind “Rama (The Prophecy)”

City Boy Mixtape
“Oddball Dance”
“5000 Years-Don’t Know, Can’t Tell”
“Dinner At The Ritz”
“The Sound of The Bell”
“State Secrets- A Thriller”
“Mr. Shoes”
“Dear Jean (I’m Nervous)”
“Bordello Night”
“The Man Who Ate His Car”
“Cigarettes”
“5-7-0-5”
“The Day The Earth Caught Fire”
“Beth”
“The Blind Leading The Blind”

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.

This week we have a digital piece that started out as a pencil drawing.

I’d decided to limber up my fingers by doing a quick doodle of a young lady in a classic pin-up pose. Unfortunately, my fingers never did become limber, and I got frustrated with the drawing and wound up just blacking it all in.

At that point, I decided that the silhouette looked pretty good, so I grabbed a Sharpie and inked it in. However, I thought it would look much better with a background, and since my MG-afflicted fingers were not co-operating, I just scanned it and composited it over a psychedelic background I’d created in the computer.

Actually, there are two backgrounds there. I superimposed the image over two different backgrounds and pasted one as a new layer over the other.  Then I cut away chunks of the top layer. I did a bit of digital painting and ran it through several filters until it looks like it does now.

To see it bigger,  try clicking HERE

Over in radioland, Monday on The AIR, we have new programming in the afternoon, and we’re also going to give you a sneak preview of Friday’s new MIRRORBALL at 9 PM.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page. Check back with PopCult before Noon, and I’ll have full details and playlists and tell you why MIRRORBALL gets the Monday Marathon.

Above you see an alternate episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which ran online only three weeks ago. That week, his HBO show covered a topic about home ownership, but since he figured that nobody under the age of 35 will ever be able to own a home, he created an alternate episode for younger viewers, which was not aired on HBO, about Chuck E. Cheese, the kids pizza palace.

He covers the history of the company, the controversies, the decidely non-family-friendly content in some of the shows and the bizarre way the company was taken over by Showtime Pizza, which as a result, had to jettison their own robot band of musical mascots, The Rock A Fire Explosion. You’ll get the full story of Chuck E.’s evolution from nasty rat to gormless mouse, and all the crazed depcitions of the character along the way.

And he does this all with his trademark not-safe-for-work, absolutely hilarious delivery. And I felt compelled to share it here because it’s that damned good.  Set aside half an hour and prepare yourself to laugh out loud.

Radio Free Charleston’s 23rd episode was a major departure. Delayed more than a month from its intended debut due to the death of my aunt, this episode featured the reunion of The Feast Of Stephen, who hadn’t played together in 14 years when we managed to corral them all in the studio on May 12, 2007. This was nearly sixteen years ago, so it’s been longer since this reunion than it had been before.

It was a magic night as Bob Miller, Joey Fabulous, John Radcliff, Dan Jordan, Tommy Medvick and Fred Tyler came together to play music for the sheer joy of it. The energy at LiveMix Studio that night was amazing, and I still rank this show among my best work.

This show has become bittersweet to watch after the deaths of Tommy Medvick and Jerry Fugate, but it’s a great way to remember our fallen friends.

This was a four-camera shoot, with Jerry Fugate joining me on handheld, in addition to our two stationary cameras. Melanie was busy with tech week for the WVSO production of “Carmen.” There were good times.Original production notes are HERE.