Episode 80 of RFC

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20 Years Of RFC, with Blue Million, Go Van Gogh, and GI Joe

September 7, 2009 by rudy panucci

RFC 80 “No Pants Players Shirt” from RFC Archives onMyspace.

Above, you may take a gander at Radio Free Charleston’s 80th episode, “No Pants Players Shirt.” This edition of our local music and animation program has a bit of a nostalgic feel to it. We recorded our host segments outside of WV Radio Corp, which is the building, from which the RFC radio show debuted, twenty years ago, this week.

Our musical guests are both veterans of the radio days. Go Van Gogh, Stephen Beckner, Timothy Rock, Mark Beckner and Johnny Rock, appear via a vintage video for their song “Shut Up, I Love You.” While Blue Million is seen in a performance recorded just a couple of weeks ago here in Charleston.

We also have “Digitally Assaulted Charleston #2,” a short animated bit by yours truly. You’ll also get to see The GI Joe Adventure Team and you still have time to enter The First Great Guitar Giveaway from Radio Free Charleston and Route 60 Music. If you don’t see the video player at the top of this post, that means that Don Blankenship has hacked this website and is trying to keep you away from the good music. Go here to see the show.

This show does mark 20 years of Radio Free Charleston, even if 16 if those years were spent plotting the return, once the show got canceled on radio. Over the next few months we’re going to go back and revisit some of the great music that we first brought you “back in the day.”Also, The No Pants Players were guests on our very first video show, so it was only natural that I wore their shirt for this look back. Well, it’s also because they threw shirts into the audience last Saturday, and Mel caught this one. Since Mel won’t wear anything green, I got to snag it for the show. We shot our host segments in front of 1111 Virginia St. East, the building where Radio Free Charleston was first unleashed on the world. If I can ever remember to ask permission, we might get to shoot inside there sometime.

Up first in the show is a vintage video by Go Van Gogh. You may remember RFC 69 featured this legendary band back in May. That entire episode was an edited version of the documentary “Go Van Gogh, The Sad Truth.” One of the things we trimmed from the film so we could cram it into an episode of RFC was this video.

We ran a different video for this song way back in RFC 14. That one was directed by Stephen Beckner. This video was directed by Timothy Rock, a fact that escaped my brain while I was ad-libbing the host segments. Sorry about that, Tim. As I write this, less than ten hours have passed since we shot our host segments, and the show is encoding right at this moment. Sometimes in the haste of guerrilla online video, you work faster than your brain does.

“Shut Up, I Love You” was the most-requested local song on the old radio broadcast, and it holds up twenty years later.

Our animation this week is by me. It’s part two of “Digitally Assaulted Charleston.” Part one ran in episode 24. Look for part three in episode 136.

Blue Million is the powerhouse rock group centered around Alan Griffith’s amazing songwriting and singing. Back on the old radio RFC (I’m starting to sound rather geezer-esque, aren’t I?) we featured Blue Million and Alan solo, and on one memorable night we aired a recording of Alan trying to sing Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” while saddled with additional vocals by The Stunning Janice and a certain blogger/webshow host who was trying and failing to imitate Mr. Zimmerman.It is a testament to Alan’s patience that he did not break his guitar over my head on that night.

We recorded Blue Million just a couple of weeks ago at Bruno’s (formerly O’Kay’s) on Leon Sullivan Way. It turns out that, once the sun sets, that’s a great place to record a band. Alan and the gang treat us to two songs on this show, Alan’s own “Lazy Days, Lazy Bones,” and Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley.” It’s always great to hear Blue Million, and we’ve got some more of the show from that night coming up in next few weeks.

You also need to keep your eyes out for the First Great Guitar Giveaway, courtesy of Route 60 Music and RFC. This is your chance to win a Danelectro 1963 reissue guitar with twin lipstick-tube pick ups. All you have to do is watch the show and fire off an email to enter. The contest ends on September 30.

That’s it for this week’s show. Next week come back for our second Beatles tribute episode.