‘RFC’ 47

Episode No. 47 of “Radio Free Charleston” continues one of the show’s main missions: capturing live music by local bands while it’s happening in area clubs.

West Virginia’s only music and animation webcast serves up a song from The Diablo Blues Band — “The Price of a Broken Heart,” written by Johnny “Hurricane” Compton on the anniversary of his mother’s death. It was recorded live at The Empty Glass on July 11.

Next up is Mark Bates and The Vacancies. If you’ve heard Bates in his solo singer-songwriter mode, this is a whole, rocking, big, new sound with a full band. The group performs Bates’ tune “The Shell,” recorded live at The Blue Parrot on July 11.

There’s also a sampling of a song from next week’s tribute show to Quick and Dirty’s late lead singer, Randy Lee Walden. There’s a new animation, “Drunk Toy Robot,” from Frank Panucci. And there’s a look at what’s going on at The Blue Parrot this weekend. That includes a shout-out for the last show for a year by Chuck Biel’s Underdog Blues Revue there on Saturday.

View the show at the PopCult blog at thegazz.com.

Coffee and melons

Food blogger Brooke A. Brown weighs in with two recent posts at There’s a Blog in My Soup. One notes the recent news that Starbucks is closing 600 outlets, including one in Triadelphia:

“Our little slice of Almost Heaven is feeling the pinch, which is kinda tough to take considering the little mermaid from Seattle only recently, relatively speaking, set up shop in our fine state. (I’m sure she thought she had us covered since there are several locations in Roanoke ...)”

The other poses this questions to readers: “Whatever happened to non-seedless watermelons? And then I continued wondering: Did they taste better than seedless watermelons?” Answer back on these and other posts in the blog’s comments section.

Digi-gazz

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E-mail feedback and story ideas to gazz at gazz@wvgazette.com