What you see above is an exercise in guerrilla film-making. This mini-episode of Radio Free Charleston (number 55.5, for those of you scoring at home) was assembled in less than four hours. This morning, using footage shot October 25 at the RFC Halloween Party at the La Belle Theater, I cut the two music videos, featuring Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen and Stephen Beckner.
After that, I rounded up Melanie Larch, RFC’s resident diva and camera person, and headed to the State Capitol. We shot the host segments, had brunch at The Bluegrass Kitchen (sitting in a booth next to Congressional hopeful Anne Barth) and then I dropped Mel off at her home and came back to Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor to finish the show.
This show is going up via YouTube for a couple of reasons.
First, there’s the immediacy of being able to post this show before Tuesday. I’m wearing a shirt that sort of has an expiration date, and I didn’t want to wait to use it on the show. With our busy schedule of Halloween programming, this was the only way I could wear the Obama/Biden shirt before the election.
The second reason is that we can include cover songs on a YouTube version of RFC. Since we’re not putting TheGazz.com at any liability for ASCAP-inspired terror tactics, we can sneak in a good cover this way. Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen, seen right, perform the Bon Jovi song from which they took their name. It’s a great song and they do a killer version of it.
Stephen Beckner, seen left as an Adventure Team GI Joe, performs his original tune, “Lie Down,” which is further evidence as to why Steve is one of my favorite songwriters.
At some point you may see some of the others songs by Stephen and the kids from the RFC Halloween Jam on a “real” episode of RFC, but this was a fun way to get them out there while they’re only a few days old, and bring you a special bit of “instant video fun” here at PopCult. Speaking of fun, over the end credits I dropped in some outtakes from the Radio Free Charleston Horror Theater shoot. We don’t do many outtakes here at RFC, since we so nearly approach perfection on such a regular basis, but these are funny enough that you ought to enjoy them.
Having delivered two-and-a-half shows in less than two weeks, we’ll probably take a little break, then return in the middle of November with new RFC wonderment. Until then, enjoy “Obama/Biden 2008” an apocryphal episode of Radio Free Charleston.
Thanks for the half episode of Radio Free Charleston. The streaming/player works better with YouTube as well.