Episode 56.5 of RFC

RFC 56.5: CYAC Presents “Mary”

November 26, 2008 by rudy panucci

Just last night, as I write this, I attended a rehearsal for the 12th production by CYAC of the Dan Kehde/Mark Scarpelli musical “Mary.”  I had the RFC cameras with me, and less than twelve hours later, you get to see and hear two songs from “Mary”-the show opener, “Spin,” and the song that ends the first act, “Lord Of Mercy.” Chances are you’ll get to see at least one more song from last night’s session on our Christmas show in a few weeks.

This is another “half episode” of Radio Free Charleston, stripped down to just the music, so you can get a taste of this wonderful show before it starts its run.

“Mary” is a fun example of locally-created musical theater, and for the full info the show, which opens in two days, follow the jump.

Episode 55.5 of RFC

Sunday Evening Video: RFC 55.5

November 2, 2008 by rudy panucci

  

What you see below is an exercise in guerrilla film-making.  This mini-episode of Radio Free Charleston (number 55.5, for those of you scoring at home) was assembled in less than four hours.  This morning, using footage shot October 25 at the RFC Halloween Party at the La Belle Theater, I cut the two music videos, featuring Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen andStephen Beckner.

After that, I rounded up Melanie Larch, RFC’s resident diva and camera person, and headed to the State Capitol.  We shot the host segments, had brunch at The Bluegrass Kitchen(sitting in a booth next to Congressional hopeful Anne Barth) and then I dropped Mel off at her home and came back to Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor to finish the show.

Episodes 54 and 55 of RFC

Combined into one show for the first time, it’s the 2008 Radio Free Charleston Horror Theater Halloween Specials! In honor of ShockaCon, Charleston’s big, scary Horror and Science Fiction convention (going on now, see all the other posts around this one), we’re going back to a classic pair of Halloween episodes of RFC. Episodes 54 and 55 of Radio Free Charleston were an ambitious attempt at recreating the cheesy horror movie-host vibe, only with short films and music videos instead of actual movies. Host segments were shot at the late, lamented LiveMix Studio.

This remastered version combines them both into one 37-minute show. The sequel episode from the following April Fool’s Day can be found HERE.

 The 2013 RFC Flashback production notes, from which we self-plagarized much of the above paragraph, follow the ad and the video, rather than the complete original notes. The reason is that this set of notes pretty much just combined the two original PopCult posts. These being old, old notes, don't expect all the links to work.

RFC Flashback: 54 and 55

September 21, 2013 by rudy panucci

Combined into one show for the first time, it’s the 2008 Radio Free Charleston Horror Theater Halloween Specials! In honor of ShockaCon, Charleston’s big, scary Horror and Science Fiction convention (going on now, see all the other posts around this one), we’re going back to a classic pair of Halloween episodes of RFC.

Episodes 54 and 55 of Radio Free Charleston were an ambitious attempt at recreating the cheesy horror movie-host vibe, only with short films and music videos instead of actual movies. Hostt segments were shot at the late, lamented LiveMix Studio. This remastered version combines them both into one 37-minute show. The sequel episode from the following April Fool’s Day will be posted soon.

Part one of RADIO FREE CHARLESTON HORROR THEATER features music from Doctor Senator and The Hellblinki Sextet, plus a short film about Jack The Ripper, vintage animation from Wladislaw Starewicz, excerpts from a film by Spike Nesmith, and loads and loads of extra-creepy-coolness.

Part Two of RADIO FREE CHARLESTON HORROR THEATER continues our tribute to old-time-TV horror movie hosts. We’ve got music videos from Under The Radar and Go Van Gogh, a short ghost film by Rich Allen, scary-freaky animation from Wladislaw Starewicz, plus a studio full of Zombies.

This episode was the first starring guest turn on the show by Chelsea Cook, who plays “Celeste, the Zombie Supermodel.” Chelsea is the official Barista of RFC, and had done animation intros on the show before. You may know her now as Kitty Killton, and as Rudy Panucci’s imaginary daughter. And she did the Zombie make-up in these episodes.

I recruited Liz McCormick for the show after seeing her as “Mathilda” in the 2008 CYAC production, “Jack The Ripper.” Liz was great in the show, and was a real trooper coming in and getting zombified on short notice. “Jack The Ripper” which also numbered RFC Big Shot Melanie Larch, Symphony Idol winner Ryan Hardiman, and No Pants Players mainstay Kevin Pauley among its ultra-talented cast, played a big part in this episode of RFC, as you’ll see later.

Liz was also in Robert Haddy’s short film “First Date,” which aired on the Chillers channel on Direct TV. Liz went to contribute to RFC as “Flare Baroshi” and was a big part of our 2010 Halloween special.

Our final zombie in part one is RFC Big Shot Brian Young, co-owner of LiveMix Studio, and one of my best friends for more than the past two decades. Coincidentally, Brian just completed successful open-heart surgery as I write this, and it’s a relief to hear that he came through with flying colors. Brian and I used to do comedy bits for the old radio incarnation of RFC, and it was a kick getting to work in front of the camera with him after all these years. Brian plays “Ron Birkston,” a name I pulled out of thin air while we were doing this bit for the show. “Ron” is the leader of a Kajagoogoo tribute band from Mercer county called “GooGooGaGa.”

That name came from RFC Big Shot Melanie Larch, who you’ll get to see meet up with the zombies in part two. The voice and attitude are pure Brian.

Doctor Senator

Also in part one, we have music from Doctor Senator and The Hellblinki Sextet.

Doctor Senator treats us to “Avenue A Is A B-Side,” recorded at the most recent Bridge event in Davis Park in Charleston. This was the first time Doctor Senator played this song live.

Hellblinki

We last saw The Hellblinki Sextet on RFC 49 a couple of months ago when Valerie tore through the Italian revolutionary song “Bella Ciao.”This time this North Carolina band’s leader, Andrew, sings, and plays guitar and drums (at the same time) on “Don’t Go Down To The Woods,” which is perfect for Halloween.

Our animation on both parts of “Horror Theater” is from “The Mascot,” which we had also edited into older episodes when we had to edit out “Pentagra Flowerbox” to post the episodes at the RFCTV Archives page at MySpace. Now we can restore PF to the show, but all the videos on the Archives page were deleted.

The short film “The Ripper” could not have been made without the kind indulgence of The Contemporary Youth Arts Company, director Dan Kehde, and the cast and crew of the recent (and excellent) musical production of the original Scarpelli/Kehde musical “Jack The Ripper.”This was an incredible show, filled with amazingly talented people, and luckily many of them agreed to let me briefly hijack their production for the sake of a cheap fart joke.

Legendary DJ Spike Nesmith contributes a short film of the former State Mental Hospital at Weston, which you can see during the end credits of part one. Many thanks to The Spikester for letting us use this cool bit of video.

I have to correct a couple of omissions in the credits in episode 54. I accidentally left out the name of our second unit director, Sergei Eisenstein, when I put together the credits. Sergei was invaluable in shooting the baby carriage footage in “The Ripper.” I also forgot to mention that Chelsea Cook, with some help from Melanie Larch, crafted our zombie make-up. I was so impressed by her performance in RFC 54 (and in 55) that my brain was overloaded and I left out her make-up credit.

In part two, now conveniently following part one in a single clip, you won’t want to miss the Zombie chorus line, or the all-star Zombie jam session at the end of the show! In addition to Rudy Panucci as “Count Rudolph, this episode of RFC features Chelsea Cook, Liz McCormick, plus RFC Big Shots Brian Young and Melanie Larch.

The Zombie massacre continues in paart two, as our cast continues to swell the ranks of the undead. One bit of unscripted brilliance that Chelsea and Liz started in our last episode is that the Zombies, after springing back to life from having their brains eaten by other Zombies, are really friendly with the Zombies that killed them. There’s even a Zombie group hug in this show. I was very lucky to have a cast that “got” the material and was able to add to it.

My cast was so good that I only had to do a second take of one segment during both episodes. And that was because Brian came up with a really cool bit of comic timing during the intro to the Go Van Gogh video.

First up in this show is a film by Rich Allen, which I won’t give away the title of, since that’s part of the charm. Rich is a talented singer-songwriter (you may remember him from RFC 35) but he’s also a filmmaker with a sense of humor every bit as twisted as mine.

Under The Radar

Under The Radar is Rusty Marks, Bill Robinson and Mark Lanham, and as soon as I heard “Mothman Prophecy #1″ I knew I had to have it on the Halloween show. We shot UTR at St. Albans City Park in September, and I did the animation and synched the live performance up to the studio version of the song on Monday, October 27, 2008–one day before this show was originally posted.

I’ve wanted to see Go Van Gogh’s video for “Planet Of Psychotic Women” finished since I first saw the unfinished version in the early 1990s. Stephen Beckner had done an incredible job of recreating the look of a low-budget sci-fi movie from the late 1950s, but he’d never managed to edit in footage of the band performing the tune. When I found an old video tape of the band performing the song at The Levee, I decided to put together a “finished” version.

Go Van Gogh

One other note on this video. While the recording features the classic four-piece line-up of Go Van Gogh, the performance we captured on video was by the expanded “Traffic-like” line-up, which included Mark Mangrone on keys and either Bane or Jason on percussion (Stephen, if you can, set the record straight in the comments). This was in addition to Stephen and Mark Beckner and Johnny and Tim Rock. And, yes, the alien women are Amee Beckner and Libby Rojas.

This was our most ambitious production of Radio Free Charleston at the time, and it’s cool to have it restored and available again in one piece.

Episode 37 of RFC

This week we are going back to March 2008 for “Fantastic Four Shirt,” episode 37 of Radio Free Charleston. This is a very special episode because it features two acts who were alumni of the original RFC radio program, but were just making their first appearance on the video version of the show.  Lady D is, of course, Doris Fields,a legend of the West Virginia music scene. Blue Million was also an RFC radio vet--Their front-man, Alan Griffith, appeared performing solo on one memorable night, backing up me and The Stunning Janice as we butchered Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.”

Also on the this episode is an installment of “The Android Family,” and part four of Frank Panucci’s series of enlightening animation, this episode is called “Porky Bang.”  Host segments were shot at LiveMix Studio's Quarrier Street home.

You can read the orignal production notes below the show, and remember, many of the links are deader than crap.

Production Notes for RFC 37

March 12, 2008 by rudy panucci

The latest Radio Free Charleston, “Fantastic Four Shirt” isonline now.  This is a very special episode because it features two acts who are alumni of the original RFC radio program, but are making their first appearance on the video version of Radio Free Charleston.  Lady D is Doris Fields, and I first played her music in the fall of 1989 back when 96.1 FM was WVNS, and I got to run wild for a few months in the middle of the night. Blue Million was also on the show back then.  Their front-man, Alan Griffith, also appeared performing solo, and on one memorable night, backing up me and The Stunning Janice as we butchered Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.”

Episode 31 of RFC

The RFC Flashback: Episode 31

August 9, 2014 by rudy panucci

Episode 31 of Radio Free Charleston, “GI Joe Shirt,” is now fully remastered. Originally from late November, 2007, this episode, hosted from the La Belle Theater, features music from Raymond Wallace and Doctor Senator, plus animation from Frank Panucci and news about then upcoming events in South Charleston, which are now many years in the past.

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This episode of Radio Free Charleston is loaded with promos for upcoming events that, of course, already happened. You’ll see host, Rudy Panucci, give heartfelt plugs for The No Pants Players annual Christmas Show and IWA East Coast’s double-show, where they ran a high-flyer’s tournament and the first Masters of Pain show on the same day. This show also includes a promo clip for the “Best of Radio Free Charleston Night” at the LaBelle and a brief appearence of Kitty Killton before she was Kitty Killton. We never did get around to doing “Mad Man Pondo’s Celebrity Run-in” though.

Our musical acts were Raymond Wallace, recorded in the lobby at LiveMix Studio, and Doctor Senator, recorded at The Sound Factory. Those two venues, sadly, are no longer with us. You can read the original production notes for this show, complete with dead links and junk, are posted below the jump.

Episode 30 of RFC

We go back to November, 2007, for a show that features the Radio Free Charleston debut of Mark Cline Bates, who will be performing Friday, August 8, at Live on the Levee at Haddad Riverfront Park, starting at 6:30 PM. For that show Mark will be backed by 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.

Our other musical guests are 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 Below the jump.

Episode 27 of RFC

From September, 2007, comes RFC 27 “Trust Me I’m A Doctor Shirt.” Highlighted by music from Comparsa, Doctor Senator and Stephanie Deskins, this show also features animation by Stephen Beckner and a creepy toy commercial.

RFC 27: Production Notes For A Music-packed Show

September 26, 2007 by rudy panucci

Episode 27 of Radio Free Charleston is online now! This installment, titled “Trust Me I’m A Doctor Shirt,” is crammed full of a diverse assortment of excellent music, plus just a dash of animation and mind-hurting weirdness. We’re all over town in this show, at LiveMix Studio, The Sound Factory, The La Belle Theater, and on the South Side Bridge!

We have great songs from Stephanie Deskins, Doctor Senator, and Comparsa, plus a cartoon by Stephen Beckner and a really creepy toy commercial (about which we will not speak again). Hosted by yours truly from the South Side Bridge, the iconic gateway that leads from downtown Charleston to up where all the user fee money goes to pave roads.

Episode 26 of RFC

In episode 26, your host was knocked unconcious by then-twelve-year-old Cadance Young, who took over the show and introduced music by Whistlepunk and Sean Richardson, plus a short film by Audrey and Mia Beckner, animation by Rudy Panucci and a cameo by Mad Man Pondo. Tofujitsu fans should take note that Sean and Karen are both in this episode, peforming separately. From September, 2007, it’s “Back To School.”

RFC 26 from RFC Archives on Myspace.

Behind The Scenes At Radio Free Charleston 26

September 5, 2007 by rudy panucci

“Back To School” is the title of the latest episode of Radio Free Charleston, and it’s appropriate because this installment of RFC is hosted by 12-year-old Cadence Young (right), a student at John Adams Middle School, and the daughter of RFC Big Shot Brian Young. That makes this our second consecutive show with second-generation RFC contributors, following Joe Slack’s performance in episode 25. Cadence graciously agreed to step in and host after I was mysteriously injured during the “Hello” segment. She did a great job, introducing our musical guests,Whistlepunk (with her dad on drums) and Sean Richardson.

We also have a short film by Audrey and Mia Beckner, ages 10 and 9, who are also second-generation RFC contributors. Their dad, Stephen Beckner has been on the show as a solo performer, a member of Go Van Gogh, and an animator. Stephen and his wife, Amee, have these really cool movie nights in their front yard in Elkview and showed “Chins” at one of them. I quickly asked if I could use it for the show.

Episode 25 of RFC

The accompanying notes for this show may include deadlinks or embeds.


RFC 25 from RFC Archives on Myspace.

RFC: “Flaming Skull Shirt” with The Amazing Delores and Much More!

August 21, 2007 by rudy panucci

The brand-spanking-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, “Flaming Skull Shirt,” is online for your viewing pleasure now! This episode features a video by the late, legendary darling of Dunbar, The Amazing Delores.  You’ll also get to see a performance by Joe Slack, our first second-generation guest on RFC.  Over the end credits we play one of the most-requested songs from the old radio incarnation of RFC.  We have a very special movie trailer, and animation from Frank Panucci’s movie, “Reperkussionz.”   The host segments were shot at the Charleston Town Center, just two days ago. 

The host shoot was noisy but uneventful.  It was as though Delores herself was looking down when I did the show intro, since you can see the lights coming on behind me as I say her name. Actually, it was because we were shooting right at noon, just as the stores were opening, but it’s nice to pretend. We shot in a few recognizable places around the Town Center Mall, and we may go back later and do another show from there.  Heck, we might even ask permission next time.

Episode 23 of RFC

Production Notes, RFC 23: The Feast Of Stephen

July 30, 2007 by rudy panucci

Episode 23 of Radio Free Charleston,The Feast Of Stephen Reunion Show, is online now!  This is a document of one truly amazing night of musical magic at LiveMix Studio.  On May 12, members of a band that hadn’t played together in fourteen years gathered at LiveMix to kick out the jams one more time. Radio Free Charleston was on hand, and here’s the story behind the music.