The PopCulteer
July 7, 2023

We have some short items and radio notes this week in The PopCulteer, so let’s dive in…

Kickstarter Reminder

There are only a few days left in the Super Joe Unlimited. comic book Kickstarter campaign, and they’ll have to sprint to the finish to make their goal.

This is a really great project, with several Bronze Age comics greats contributing to the first full-length story featuring the 1978 Super Joe toys.

I told you about this Kickstarter campaign last month, and time is running out. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do, and new add-ons have been announced in the last few days to help them meet their goal. They are less than 1800 dollars away, so they’re very close to making this happen.

Originally introduced in 1977 as “…a new team: the SUPER JOE ADVENTURE TEAM answers the call anywhere in the galaxy,” Super Joe was the amazing, but short-lived follow-up to the 12 inch G.I. Joe.

It consisted of eight different figures: Super Joe Commander (white and black); Super Joe Adventurer (white and black); The Night Fighters (Shield and Luminos); and Darkon and Gor (the enemies of the Super Joe team). Each figure came with features new to action figures at the time, the “1-2 Punch” and “light-up action.”

I’ve been telling you about the toy revival of Super Joe for months, and I’ve mentioned the comic book, back when the preview poster of the cover of the first issue was sold at ToyLanta. Now the time has come to launch the campaign to get this book into the hands of the collectors. From Power Comics, the folks who brought us The Masters, comes Super Joe Unlimited.

I know I plan to increase my pledge to include one of the Randall Wall (get well soon) diorama kits, and if you have kicked in already, you might want to go back and revisit the Super Joe Unlimited. campaign to see what else they’ve added.

(UPDATE: This campaign just funded, hours before this post was set to go live. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go support it, though. It’s going to be a great comic!)

Tap Or Die

I’ve been telling you about Anthony Stokes’ comics for over a year now. He’s one of the most exciting young storytellers to turn up on the scene, and now he has a new project, an adult-oriented black-and-white comic book about professional wrestling called Tap Or Die.

TAP OR DIE is a new wrestling series that is chockful of action. It’s about perseverance, battling adversity, and REVENGE.
Wrestling fans will get a bonus from seeing references to classic wrestlers and non-wrestling fans will enjoy the high-octane action and character drama. There’s something here for everyone.

After Decay and Intrusive Thoughts, I was sold just seeing Anthony’s name on the book.  The fact that I follow pro wrestling is just gravy.  If you missed out on those books, you can snag the first issue of Tap or Die and then catch up with digital or physical copies of his earlier series as add-on rewards.

This book was already fully-funded before I had a chance to tell you about it. If you want to see another great project from Stokes, Kick in while you can.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour to Disco Hits from the legendary Casablanca Records label.   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.

Casablanca Records, run by Neil Bogart, despite being the home of KISS, made their mark on the music industry with their disco hits.  Mel has put together a salute to this amazing roster of Disco stalwarts.  Mel decided to take a pass on Casablanca’s biggest Disco stars, Donna Summer and The Village People, because she recently devoted entire shows to those artists. Instead, you’re going to hear the heart of this amazing collection of Disco hitmakers.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 079

The Ritchie Family “Put Your Feet To The Beat”
Paul Jabara “Pleasure Island”
Cameo “I Just Want To Be”
The Sylvers “Don’t Stop Get Off”
Nightlife “Dance, Freak and Boogie”
Gloria Scott “Just As Long As We’re Together”
Patti Brooks “After Dark”
Teri DeSario “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Keep Me From You”
D.C. LaRue “Let Them Dance”
Liquid Gold “My Baby’s Baby”

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

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Salutes Wall of Voodoo

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney presents a split mixtape, with the first hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Stan Ridgeway on lead vocals, and the second hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Andy Prieboy handling the microphone.

Originally consisting of Stan Ridgeway, Marc Moreland, Bruce Moreland, Chas T. Gray and Joe Nanini, Wall of Voodoo cultivated an underground following until their breakthrough hit, Mexican Radio, became an MTV staple in 1982, and the band performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the US Festival the following year…and then Ridgeway, Nanini and auxiliary keyboardist Bill Noland left the band.

In 1983, Bruce Moreland, who had left the band after their first album, returned, and the band recruited singer-keyboardist Andy Prieboy, who also became the band’s primary lyricist.

The band thrived for a short time with Prieboy fronting, then split up for good in 1988.  Ridgeway and Prieboy have both cultivated followings with their superb solo albums since leaving the band.

The band’s name came from a friend of Ridgeway’s, who on hearing him compare his records of keyboards and drum machines (gifted to him by none other than Daws Butler) to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound,” counted with “it sounds more like a wall of voodoo.”  This was when Ridgeway was eking out a living composing scores for industrial films and porno.  It was an inauspicious beginning for a band that would become a mainstay of MTV with their biggest hit, “Mexican Radio” and play for hundreds of thousands of people at the 1983 US Festival.

Check out the playlist…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 105

Wall of Voodoo 1979-1983 with Stan Ridgeway
“Mexican Radio”
“Crack The Bell”
“Tomorrow”
“Two Minutes Till Lunch”
“Full of Tension”
“Spyworld”
“Me and My Dad”
“Ring of Fire”
“Animal Day”
“Red Light”
“They Don’t Want Me”
“Tse Tse Fly”
“Call Box”
“On Interstate 15”
“Good Times”
“Call of The West”
“Back In Flesh”

Wall of Voodoo 1984 to 1988 with Andy Prieboy
“Far Side of Crazy”
“Tragic Vaudeville”
“Big City”
“Chains of Luck”
“Wrong Way To Hollywood”
“When The Lights Go Out”
“Room With A View”
“Elvis Bought Dora A Cadillac”
“Blackboard Sky”
“Back In The Laundromat”
“Country of Man”
“Empty Room”
“This Business of Love”
“Do It Again”
“Mexican Radio (live)”

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 it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular feature, with fresh content, every day.