PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

The RFC Flashback: Episode 30

This week we go back to November, 2007, for a show that featured the Radio Free Charleston debut of Mark Bates, who has recently become a full-time member of The Carpenter Ants. In this classic show, he’s heard solo, recorded at the old Unity Church, during one of Ron Sowell’s open mic nights.

It’s cool that this episode just coincidentally popped up six days after I got to see and catch up with Mark at Ann Magnuson’s Sururalism show, where he and his other fellow Carpenter Ants provided the musical back up.  It was great seeing Mark for the first time in ages and we’ll both feel really old because this show is from fifteen years ago.

Our other musical guests were most of The Voo Doo Katz, recorded live at the La Belle Theater in South Charleston, and RFC regular John Radcliff, performing in the kitchen at LiveMix Studio. We also feature animation and the first installment of “The Android Family.”

You can read the original production notes, bum links and all,  for this episode right HERE.

New MIRRORBALL and more STUFF TO DO

The PopCulteer
November 4, 2022

We have a new episode of Mel Larch’s Disco showcase, MIRRORBALL, Friday afternoon on The AIR.  The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player right here…

This week Mel assembled an hour of extended Disco mixes of already-long Disco classics, resulting in a funky hour of danceable, soulful party music that only has a grand total of eight tracks. It’s like a night at the clubs, only it’s just an hour and it’s on at 2 PM in the afternoon.

Check out the playlist…

MB 062

Voyage “From East To West”
Lief Garrett “I Was Made For Loving You”
Dennis Parker “Like An Eagle”
Grace Jones “I Need A Man”
Chic Everybody Dance”
Amii Stewart “Light My Fire/ 137 Disco”
Cher “Take Me Home”
Heatwave “Boogie Nights”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, just to be all copacetc, we’ll be replaying one of Sydney Fileen’s classic “Dance Mix” episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. The playlist is buried in a long post, so I’m just gonna drop it right here…

Big Electric Cat 068

Men Without Hats “Safety Dance”
Scritti Politti “Wood Beez”
New Order “Blue Monday”
Nena “99 Red Balloons”
Heaven 17 “Temptation”
Dead Or Alive “You Spin Me Round”
Bananarama “Love In The First Degree”
Soft Cell “Torch”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Two Tribes”
Dollar “Hand Held In Black And White”
Duran Duran “The Reflex”
Howard Jones “New Song”
Propaganda “Duel”
Ultravox “Loves Great Adventure”
Yello “The Race”
Tears For Fears “Shout”
The Communards with Sarah Jane Morris “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
The Specials “Ghost Town”

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.

Friday at 9 PM you can tune in for a three hours of coke-fueld 1970s conceptual comedy on The Comedy Vault, with The National Lampoon Comedy Hour. At midnight, stick around for an impromptu nine-hour marathon of Beatles Blast. 

More STUFF TO DO

Here’s three more cool things happening this weekend that popped up on my radar since Wednesday….

 

 

 

That is it for this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features and get ready for The 2022 PopCult Gift Guide, which kicks off Monday.

Special note: PopCult may disappear from this location at The Charleston Gazette-Mail soon. Don’t miss out on our new posts at our NEW HOME. Bookmark the new site, and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow PopCult and Rudy Panucci on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Captain Action, Collected

The PopCult Comix Bookshelf

Captain Action: The Classic Collection
by Gil Kane, Jim Shooter, Wallace Wood
forward by Mark Waid
IDW Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1684058907
$29.99 (discounted at Amazon)

I’ve been writing about one of my favorite childhood toys, Captain Action, since the first month of this blog, and I actually first told you about this book more than three years ago. It was finally published over the summer, and your PopCulteer finally found the time to dig into it, so now I get to tell about it all over again in (spoiler alert) this rave review.

Captain Action was a 12″ action figure that could be dressed up as a variety of superheroes, using outfits (each sold separately). Thanks to the less-sophisticated licensing deals of the day, Ideal Toys was able to offer outfits for the Captain featuring heroes from DC Comics, Marvel, King Features Syndicate and more. It was a great gimmick and the toy line did good business until the 1960s superhero boom went bust after a couple of years.

However, during that time DC Comics picked up the license to produced a comic book based on Captain Action. It lasted five bizarre and intriguing issues, and those make up the bulk of this book.

Captain Action: The Classic Collection collects the entire five-issue run of the comic book, complete with covers and bonus material.

Since the character was pretty much a blank slate, much of his mythos had to be created out of thin air by the writer of his first two issues, a teenaged Jim Shooter (later to be a controversial editor at Marvel and Valiant Comics). Shooter, under the guidance of editors Mort Weisinger and Julie Schwartz, came up with his secret identity (Clive Arno), his job (Archeology Professor with a Museum named after him) and a source of super powers (magic coins imbued with the power of the gods).

Shooter also gave him a super villain, Krellik, because he didn’t have a nemesis in the toy world (Dr. Evil hadn’t showed up yet). The series featured spectacular art, with the first drawn solo by the legendary Wally Wood, and the second with Wood’s inks over the equally legendary Gil Kane.

Wood was one of the premiere EC Comics artists and had just come off a run as a major part of the creative team of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Kane was a major player in DC’s Silver Age revival, having designed and drawn the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, The Atom and many others. Both men had long, illustrous careers that have warranted multiple books, so I’m not going to go into greater detail.

After the first two issues, which told the origin of Captain Action and gave us a great Silver age super hero action story, Shooter was gone. With the third issue, Kane took over as both the writer and penciller (and he even inked the fourth issue himself). It was at this point that the series took a turn toward the psychotronic.

With Gil Kane in charge (under the editing of Julie Schwartz), Captain Action became one of the first truly psychedelic superhero comics. Dr. Evil was introduced, but instead of simply being his “enemy from Alpha Centuri,” as the toy was identified, Dr. Evil in the comics was an alturistic scientist mutated by an accident who becomes a god-like blue-skinned alien with an exposed brain and telepathic powers…who now hates humanity.

Captain Action is very much a work of its time, and when Kane took over writing the book, the influences of Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, and a culture that was experimenting with all kinds of ways to expand your mind were in the air. Kane’s stories are cosmically aware, yet are still filled with superhero action and great comic book melodrama.

Kane would later co-create Adam Warlock for Marvel, with Roy Thomas.

I don’t want to spoil these stories for anyone who hasn’t read them yet, so I’ll just say that the presentation is fantastic here. The color recreation is perfect and the reproduction crisp and clear. Some pages were originall printed with half-page ads, and rather than leave those blank new clever fake ads for Captain Action products take their place.

Letters pages from the original comics are included, and we see fan letters from future professionals Martin Pasko, Klaus Janson and more.

A short section at the back of the book includes samples of the full-page comic book ads for the toys and some of the mini-comics that were included with the figures and outfits. Plus we get a few pages of original art and pencilled pages.

This review is a bit pointless for collectors of Captain Action, because the book was released in June and they probably all have it already, but anybody interested in late-1960s cutting-edge mainstream super heroes should own a copy of this terrific and long overdue collection. It’s a real gem of a short-lived superhero comic, and this is the first time it’s ever been reprinted or collected.

Captain Action: The Classic Collection can be ordered from any bookseller and most comic shops by using the ISBN code, or go with Amazon for a discounted price.

The First STUFF TO DO of November

We have a few suggestions for STUFF TO DO in Charleston, and points all over WV for the next few days,and this week we’ll probably have some bonus suggestions on Friday because a lot of folks haven’t bothered to post graphics or create event pages for their shows this early in the week.

Now might be a good time to mention that, if you create a simple graphic that includes the details of your event–what’s happening, where it is, age restrictions and admission fee–then I’m far more likely to include it in a post like this in PopCult. It’s free advertising. Just meet me halfway and put your information where I might find it on social media. Even better, email it directly to me at rudypan@protonmail.com.

Our lead item this week is The International Film Festival in Huntington, part of The Marshall Artists Series. From Thursday through Saturday you can see six critically-acclaimed films from around the world at the historic Keith-Albee Theater. And check this out, they have a website AND a graphic!

If you’re into Live Theater, don’t forget that you can still see Our Town at The Alban and Music Man at The Clay Center this weekend.

 

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Brandon Costello. Saturday sees Johnathan Sartin at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Thursday at 8 PM Florida’s Dial Drive, Charleston’s Hurl Brickbat and other bands will be at The Empty Glass. They didn’t do a graphic or mention a cover charge, but they did create an event page.

This weekend Art Emporium celebrates thirty years in Charleston. Saturday, November 5th from 5 PM to 7 PM. they’ll have snacks, drinks and live music from Grant Jacobs. This is a free event to the public. So stop by and enjoy some music and check out their newly renovated space filled with art and gifts.  More details can be found HERE.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. 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 more suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

 

 

 

 

 

Free, The Radio of Charleston!

It’s a new November day on The AIR  as we premiere new a episode of 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 right here…

We’ve created another new/old hybrid for you this week that you can hear at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. The first hour is filled with new, local and independent music, mixed with a few mainstream releases. It kicks off with new music from Bane Star, and continues with some exciting new stuff from the Chicago band, Custard Flux, plus new music from Paul Weller, Simple Minds, Frenchy and The Punk, Robyn Hitchcock, David Synn, Todd Rundgren with Thomas Dolby and Panic at the Damn Disco.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links for the first hour will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFC V5 107

hour one
Bane Star “I’m Beginning To See”
Paul Weller “How Sweet It Is”
Custard Flux “The Gardner”
The Company Stores “Savannah”
The Paranoid Style  “Love and Demotion”
Slate Dump “Honey, Watch For Deer”
Panic At The Disco “House of Memories”
Robyn Hitchcock “Noirer Than Noir”
Corduroy Brown “Better On The Ground”
Frenchy And The Punk “Temple of Sleep”
Simple Minds “Who Killed Truth”
Todd Rundgren/Thomas Dolby “I’m Not Your Dog”
David Synn “Inside These Walls”

hour two
Wall of Voodoo “Do It Again”
Pretty and Twisted “Dear Marlon Brando”
Parov Stelar “Chambermaid Swing”
Regina Spektor “Small Bills”
Robyn Hitchcock “Let Me Roll It”
Depeche Mode “Enjoy The Slience”
Elvis Costello “The Other Side of Summer”
The Who “Long Live Rock”
Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Blank Generation”
Paul McCartney “Flaming Pie”
George Harrison “Hottest Gong In Town”
John Lennon “Serve Yourself”
Ringo Starr “I Don’t Believe You”
The Aquabats “The Baker”
Kate Bush “Sexual Healing”

hour three
Cheap Trick “The Dream Police”
Pete Townsend “A Little Is Enough”
Lady Gaga “Pokerface”
Donovon “There Is A Mountain”
Johnny Marr “The Messenger”
Jellyfish “All Is Forgiven”
Iggy Pop “Michelle”
Julian Cope “Beautiful Love”
Joe Jackson “Soul Kiss”
Madness “My Girl 2”
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes “Nothing Compares 2 U”
Oingo Boingo “Mary”
No Doubt “Tragic Kingdom”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 2 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.

 

Then at 1 PM we have MIRRORBALL, followed at 2 PM by Curtain Call. At 3 PM two great recent episodes of The Swing Shift arrive.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 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.

Special note: PopCult may disappear from this location at The Charleston Gazette-Mail soon. Don’t miss out on our new posts at our NEW HOME. Bookmark the new site, and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow PopCult and Rudy Panucci on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Monday Morning Art: The Braxton County Mobster

I first made this pun over 40 years ago, and I kept meaning to do a drawing, but it never got further than a quick doodle in a sketchbook.  Years later, Mark Wheatley did a great comic book called “Frankenstein Mobster,” which was basically the same pun, thought up independently, and executed with much better artwork and a great story.

However, Sunday I went to see Ann Magnuson’s Sururalism show at the WV Music Hall of Fame Museum, and Braxxie came up and I remembered both that, I’d made that joke years ago, and also that I didn’t have anything ready for the last “spooky” Monday Morning Art for October.

So I painted this real quick (it’s small) with the internet for visual reference (I’m never going to naturally know how to draw a gun, and fabric folds are tricky), and you see the quick and sloppy results above. And now I can schedule the post so that I can go watch The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horrors. Maybe someday I’ll do a bigger version and clean up all the sloppiness in this one, and maybe give him a background or something.

If you want to see it bigger, lean in real close to your screen, or try clicking HERE.

Next week it’ll be that watercolor I promised you.

Meanwhile on The AIR, we bring you one final day of Halloween programming Monday. You’ll hear Halloween-themed episodes of our music specialty shows along with radio drama, concerts, specials and other spooky stuff  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player found right here…

Special note: PopCult may disappear from this location at The Charleston Gazette-Mail soon. Don’t miss out on our new posts at our NEW HOME. Bookmark the new site, and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow PopCult and Rudy Panucci on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Sunday Evening Video: Strangling Dr. Caligari

Above, you see me basically scratching a 40-plus-year itch.

Forty or forty-one years ago, when I was a communications major at what was then West Virginia State College, I was taking a film appreciation class called “Horror and Fantasy in Film.” Because it was so long ago, I’m not certain who the professor was. My fuzzy memory says it must have been Bart Weiss, but my heart tells me it was my old friend, Danny Boyd.

The reason I think it was Bart was because I’m pretty sure that this was prior to the time Danny started teaching at State. However, the characteristics of this story sound more like something Danny would do.

One night early in the semester, we were to watch the silent horror classsic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It was being shown with a silent, 16mm print (that I have since learned was a tad butchered).  Since there was no sound, the professor asked if anybody had any appropriate music handy (this was in the days before the internet, wifi and Spotify).  I remembered that I had a recently-released album by The Stranglers on a home-made cassette in my car. A quick run to the parking lot at Wallace Hall and I retrieved the C-90 with the full album on it.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a very influential 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. Some folks consider it a zombie movie, but it really isn’t. It is dripping with style and without this movie, we likely would not have had Nosferatu, Dracula, Frankenstien, Freaks, or any of the other major works of cinematic horror. You can see visual cues swiped from this film in everything from Forbidden Zone to Edward Scissorhands.

It’s an extremely influential film. Even 102 years after its release it served as the inspiration for the second half of this year’s Halloween episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, which featured “Dr. Calimari” and lots of German Expressionism.

Back to our story: With a cassette player set to go, the film was started and, in my memories and other people who were there, it synced up perfectly. Even some of the songs with lyrics fit.

The only problem was that, even in its butchered form, this print of the film ran nearly an hour, but The Strangler’s album, The Gospel According To The Men In Black, only ran about 42 minutes. At the very end of that side of the tape, with three minutes to fill, I’d dropped in a song from Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive album, which did not fit the mood of the movie at all.  A mad dash to the cassette player and a quick rewind, and we had our unexpectedly appropriate music back.

Flash forward to 1990.  Among my many friends made at the Charleston Playhouse was one John Estep (Sham Voodoo to his friends), who had been in both The Defectors and Clownhole, two legendary Charleston bands. We were hanging out one night, talking about horror movies, and Sham brought up Dr. Caligari.  He started telling me about this weird film class he was in that showed it, and that they’d set it to music by The Stranglers. It was at that point that we realized that, even though we first met in 1989, we had been in the same class together at State eight or nine years earlier.

Flash forward again, this time to last Friday. I’d just gotten home from my guest stint with Ann Magnuson on Josh Gaffin’s Afternoon Show on Status Quo, and I had some time to kill before dinner, so I grabbed a copy of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari off of Archive.org, and pulled up a folder of Stranglers music, and slapped ’em together in my video editing program. This was rendered very quickly and is pretty low-res and blocky, but that sort of adds to the charm.

This is not a perfect recreation of the experience that night in 1981 or 82.  The copy of the film I downloaded was painstakingly restored to its original length, and had color tints added to it to replicate the original film experience. That night so long ago that it lined up with The Stranglers’ album,  it was with a stark black-and-white print, and big chunks of it were missing.  So I supplemented this version with cuts from other Stranglers albums and repeated a few tracks. I also eliminated one song that didn’t work too well.  I’d been planning to do this since probably 2007, when I learned to edit digital video.

While at first blush this may seem a little elaborate and obsessive, I only spent about half an hour on it, so don’t expect a freaking masterpiece. If you haven’t seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari yet, it’s probably not a good idea to make this the first version you watch.  Think of this one as a bizarre fan edit that will only be truly appreciated by one or two living people.

Happy Halloween!

The RFC Flashback: All The Halloween Shows

Above you see a compilation of (almost) every Halloween episode of Radio Free Charleston’s video show, plus a few other holiday-appropriate clips. You can see the episode we left out of this playlist compilation at the bottom of this post. I know we’ve been dribbling these out all month, but here’s the whole shootin’ match in one post.

Tomorrow, PopCult’s Sunday Evening Video will be a very, very special holiday-appropriate video that hasn’t been seen like this anywhere in over 40 years.

And don’t forget, we still have Halloween programming all day Saturday and Sunday and Monday on The AIR!

The PopCulteer
October 28, 2022

Your PopCulteer is going to make his first-ever appearance on WSTQ-88.1 FM (Status Quo to their friends) Friday between Noon and 1 PM. As I write this, I have no idea what I’ll be talking about, but it’s going to be the first time my dulcet tones have gone out over the local radio airwaves since, I think, 2008.It’ll be cool to visit their newish digs at the People’s Building, which has been the subject of Monday Morning Art more than once.

I want to thank Josh Gaffin for the invite, and I expect to have a lot of fun. Unlike on The AIR, I will be watching my mouth and not using the fun words. You can listen in over the air if you’re in their listening area, or at their website, anywhere in the dang world.

Since I wrote that first sentence, I have heard from Josh, and we’ll be talking about Radio Free Charleston and cool stuff happening this weekend.

And that makes a great segue, because one of  the cool things happening this weekend, Saturday in Lewisburg and Sunday afternoon in Charleston, is that Ann Magnuson will be presenting Spooky Songs and Stories with Halloween Sururalism, which I told you about Wednesday, but I’m gonna run the graphic again right here…

 

…making that an even better segue, Ann is scheduled to be on Status Quo at 1 PM, right after yours truly, so it’s sort of like one-stop shopping, only without the shopping part. Mel and I will be at her show at the WV Music Hall of Fame in the Charleston Town Center Sunday afternoon,  so it all ties together with serendipity and stuff. Plus admission is free Sunday, at least.

Meanwhile, on The AIR

Back in the world of internet radio stations that happen to be part of this blog, PopCult’s internet radio arm  is going to get an early start on Halloween Friday afternoon on The AIR.  You can hear a lot of Halloween music  on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player right here…

In the past I have gone overboard with Halloween video and audio content for PopCult and The AIR and I have no problem warming up those cold dishes this weekend.  With sneak previews all day Friday, and full marathons running from Midnight Friday/Saturday  through Tuesday morning, we’ll be flooding our little internet communications platform with special Halloween programming that includes Scary episodes of Prognosis, Curtain Call, MIRRORBALL, Radio Free Charleston and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat plus some classic radio drama and a three-part special of music inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. Also in the mix, you’ll have multiple chances to hear two different versions of War of The Worlds, plus Oingo Boingo’s Halloween Farewell Concert and tons of other cool spooky and novelty music and comedy.

More STUFF TO DO

Wednesday I told you about a whole bunch of cool events happening this weekend, but since then I’ve uncovered graphics for a few more, plus the news that Travis Vandal will be at Taylor Books this Saturday. Check out these other things happening in the Mountain State this weekend…

 

 

 

 

That is it for this week’s PopCulteer. For some reason I feel like I’m a bit written out this weekend. Still, check back for our regular features, including a special treat on Sunday, plus listen to me on Status Quo Friday afternoon and check out The AIR for spooky fun all weekend.

Special note: PopCult may disappear from this location at The Charleston Gazette-Mail soon. Don’t miss out on our new posts at our NEW HOME. Bookmark the new site, and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow PopCult and Rudy Panucci on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Mental Health Awareness

This has not been an easy post to write. I wanted to do my part for World Mental Health Awareness Day by telling my personal story. However, that happened on October 10, and I wasn’t ready yet. And Mental Health Awareness Month isn’t until May, and I didn’t want to wait that long. So think of this as a pre-Halloween Mental Health Awareness bonus, okay?

I am not going to load this post up with PopCult‘s usual flashy graphics, and be warned it’s a long slog to read the whole thing. This has been brewing in my head since July.

I actually would’ve done this years ago, but my story is intertwined with someone else’s, and that person did not choose to be a public figure. I didn’t feel it was fair to tell our story when there was a chance that it might cause her some mental anguish, or worse. Out of respect for her privacy, I will only refer to her by the initial “K.”

Regular readers of PopCult may remember that, over the past summer, I wrote an obituary for my first wife. I mentioned that our marriage was brief and rocky and didn’t end well, and also said that parts of it were not at all pleasant.

This is about the unpleasant parts. I’m not telling this story to villify K. She had her own very real problems. It is my hope that sharing my story might convince someone to get help they need, when they need it. Maybe my story might spare somebody else some pain.

I have to start with my solo story. I was a wiry, rambunctious kid who loved to be the center of attention. Then I started elementary school, and that changed completely. I hated school. I hated being thrust into social situations that were not of my choosing, and I hated having teachers who seemed to single me out for higher expectations.

So I was pretty socially awkward, but I did manage to fit in and hide it pretty well. I had a very small circle of friends in high school, but none of them went to the same college as me, at least not at the same time.

Continue reading…