PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

LIFE BEGINS AT 40: THE NEW-LOOK RFC!

Radio Free Charleston heads into a bold new direction with episode 40 (ONLINE NOW!). This show features a slick new opening, new regular features and a fresh, upbeat attitude, as we continue to bring you the best local music, comedy, film and animation, but now we’re really getting serious about it!

Host segments for this episode are shot all over the Kanawha Valley, on Charleston’s West Side, in Pinch, outside the La Belle Theater in South Charleston, and alongside the road in Big Ugly.  The hats are banished with this episode! We have great music from Paul Calicoat (filmed at Route 60 Music) and Joe Slack (filmed behind the Kanawha County Public Library). The No Pants Players return with a hilarious April Fool’s Day Message, Award-winning filmmaker Eamon Hardimon graces us with the first of many installments of “Eamon In The Street,” and our animation this episode features Jerry “The King” Lawler in animated outtakes from his recent PopCult interview

The No Pants Players make a special appearance, and it’s even more special because it’s one of the last times that troupe member Duncan Stokes peformed with the Players.  It’s pilot season in Hollywood, and Duncan is off to star in a pilot commissioned by CBS!  It’s a sitcom called “Boner Daddy,” about a single dad struggling to raise his kids and keep his job, all while experiencing a severe case of priapism.  The script was written by two of the producers of “Dharma and Greg,” and early word is that it’s a shoe-in to land on the fall schedule of the Tiffany Network.  The Players are sad to see Duncan go, but they wish him the best of luck, and hope to score guest shots on the series later.

Paul Calicoat is the co-owner of Route 60 Music in Huntington/Barboursville (it’s sort of in the middle).  Every guitar player in the state knows the place, and in its new location, Route 60 is more than a store, it’s a full-fledged musical experience.  Paul performs his song “Guitar Thieves” in the premium guitar room at the store, and you can be sure that we’ll be going back to Route 60 to tape more musical performances in the future. An added note on this song: for the sake of accuracy, we actually hired a thief to run camera two on this shoot. It really lent a powerful irony to the song, and everything went well until he tried to leave the store with a Gretsch in his pants.

Eamon Hardimon, fresh off his mini-OSCAR win at the prestigious South Carolina Film Festival, hosts an exciting new segment on Radio Free Charleston.  “Eamon In The Street” is unlike anything you’ve ever seen on the internet, and you can look forward to seeing it on every episode of RFC in the future!  We welcome Eamon to the RFC family!

For our animation this time, I took an outtake from my recent interview with Jerry “The King” Lawler (read the whole thing here), and sent it off to Pixar to be recreated in glorious full-resolution high definition 3-D computer animation.  This highly-enlightening exchange concerns Lawler’s use of Mussorgsky’s “Great Gates Of Kiev” as his entrace music.   You will be mightily impressed at the way I stay on the topic of wrestling with a laser-like intensity and focus.

Joe Slack wrote his brand-spanking new song especially for the show.  “While My Mom Gets Groceries” is a touching ballad, performed solo behind the Kanawha Public Library at 10:30 at night.  While less than two weeks old, this song has already been nominated for the prestigious Onan Novello Songwriting Award, and there’s talk of it being covered by international rock sensations, The DiVinyls.

That’s the God’s honest, gospel truth about the production of Episode 40 of Radio Free Charleston.  However, due to space concerns, we couldn’t tell you everything about this episode here at PopCult.  You should head over the blog section of the RFC MySpace page, for even more news and information about the BRAND-NEW RADIO FREE CHARLESTON!