PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

RFC 17: The Story Behind The Show

Time again for the untold story behind the production of the latest Radio Free Charleston.  This episode is titled “Kung Fu Grip Shirt,” named, as always, after the shirt I’m wearing.  Kung Fu Grip is the famous GI Joe action figure innovation from the 1970s, and you can find this shirt at Hot Topic.  Kung Fu Grip will return on the modern GI Joes this summer.

Our first musical guest is John Radcliff, who is in the midst of the first RFC trifecta.   Originally he was going to have two songs on episode 16 of RFC.  The last-minute arrival of Al Carey’s “Tears Fallin'” bumped Rad’s second song to this show. “Something’s Gotta Give” was another of the bounty of cool songs that Rad recorded for us a few weeks ago, and even though we had to bleep one word, I wanted to use it on the show.  The uncensored version of the song will go up on YouTube in a week or so. 

Radcliff is also hosting our next RFC taping, as we take a road trip to Parkersburg for a departure from our regular format.   We’ll be presenting some of the Parkersburg area’s finest singer-songwriters, and the songs will be used on RFC and posted at the SongPull website. 

Under The Radar returns to Radio Free Charleston with this installment.  After their appearance on episode 4 of RFC, we lost the audio for the other songs that we recorded that day.  I haven’t commented publicly on the great hard drive tragedy until now, but it was truly a soul-crushing experience.   We were lucky enough to have Rusty, Bill and Mark come back into LiveMix Studio, and they re-recorded the songs that were lost, along with a couple of other songs, too.  Under The Radar will perform as part of the Woody Hawley Concert Series at the Walker Theater at the Clay Center on April 7.  We’ll have more details and a song of the week right here in PopCult as that show approaches.

 It’s not just music in the new RFC!  We also have our resident diva, Melanie Larch (who sings our jingle and performed “Ave Maria” so wonderfully in our Christmas Episode).  Mel winds up handcuffed to IWA East Coast Mega Star, Crowza, in a clip from the IWA EC “A Need To Bleed” DVD.  You can order the full DVD here, and see if Mel winds up powerbombing anybody. 

In the new devil cartoon you can see what Timmy is doing, besides drugs, when he’s hanging out in Satan’s camper.

 We shot the host segments in downtown Charleston, while waiting for the Planetarium Show at the Avampato Museum at the Clay Center.  You can read more about my first experience at the Electric Sky Theater later this week in PopCult.  During the shoot, outside the Charleston Post Office, for the first time we were accosted by vagrants.  We’ve finally hit the big time! 

 It would have been funny, except that they kept wandering into the shots, waving in the background.  Still, we cranked out the host segments and made it back in plenty of time to catch “Mars” at the planetarium. 

Music, animation, wrestling, and wandering around town–That’s all in the new Radio Free Charleston. Go watch it, already.