Month: April 2023 (Page 2 of 3)

Good gosh dang, there’s a metric ton of things you can do in and around Charleston and the Mountain State (and beyond) this weekend!  In this week’s edition of STUFF TO DO, we’re going to start off with a very cool comic book that you can Kickstart before we jump into the multitude of cool activities on tap.

Toe & So Long, our Kickstarter recommendation 

With a name like “Toe & So Long,” I’d better start off with the creator’s blurb:

“Toe and So Long” is an oddball/nonhuman sci-ish-fantasy buddy comic series that refuses to scream at you (or not be weird) about indecision, trauma, & addiction. Toe is a big gray guy, and So Long is a cat. I think I’ve cleared things up here for everyone. Oh, you want more? Ok, well, this whole thing got started by Jacob Michael Campbell, who wrote, designed, and is coloring (and will do the lettering) for this comic project. He’s been a professional graphic designer since age 16, as well as a general creative guy. Think music, illustration, and general ideasmithing. Well, Jake’s also got tremors! So he went out to find Alexis Vivasllo, the best comic book artist to translate chicken scratch into pure gold. We hope you’ll support this project and join us for a long time on the Plain of Doors with Toe & So Long!

The Kickstarter page goes on to describe the story…

Toe, a hulking gray humanoid, and So Long, a fluffy black kitty, wander (endlessly) a Plain of Doors that lead to an infinite amount of scenarios for them to experience. It’s a routine that’s left this dynamic duo in an accepting haze. They share many memories from their adventures, but there’s a missing piece to every journey that they’ve always just…ignored. Soon, the pair will find a purpose for their searching impulses, starting a new journey along a path they thought they’d already traveled a dozen times before.

Issue #1 of Toe & So Long is a 34-page romp exploring the routine that the two find themselves in. Magnificent displays of interdimensional power and world-wielding entities abound, but a wash of malaise begs more questions with every otherworldly exhibition. Every answer introduces a new query.

To be honest, they had me at “Plain of Doors.” I love that kind of bizarre existential fantasy. Chances are, if you’re a fan of Adventure Time, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Rick and Morty, Doctor Who, The Forbidden Zone or Grumpy Cat you’ll probably find something to love about Toe & So Long. The book is way past being fully-funded with over a week left to go, and you can get in on the action HERE.

There are a variety of reward options, starting at a mere five bucks for a digital edition, and if you go with a physical copy, stretch goals have already been met that include magnets and stickers. If you want more, you can get additional copies of the comic and sticker plus a bookmark as add-ons.

Check out the video…

And now, onto STUFF TO DO…

A special note: ArtWalk happens again in Charleston Thursday from 5 PM to 8 PM.  This free event is open to the public as art lovers can walk to all the usual suspects and take in the majesty of the art. Some galleries will have music and/or munchies as well. It’s a really cheap way to support the local scene and get out and mingle a bit…if you are so inclined.

Also, Saturday is Record Store Day, and we have graphics for some of the participating stores below.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Sean Richardson & Sea Scout. Saturday Neil Curry entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit.  Later on Thursday, Kenny Booth hosts “Shred Night” so metallically-inclined peoples can come out and jam and not worry about upsetting the folk singers. Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Other shows that have graphics are listed among the images below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu and other ferocious bugs in the mix. 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 suggestions of art, food, theatre, music and just fun in general for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

LIVE THEATRE

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Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a special new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a mixtape of unusual cover versions of Beatles tunes from the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums. I wanted to include a few less traditional and, some would say “bizarre,” versions of these familiar songs, just to keep you on your toes. You’ll hear these beloved songs rendered in Bluegrass, Baroque, Salsa, Jazz, Soul, Alternative Rock, and other wild styles. The end result, hopefully, will be delightfully entertaining.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 092

Dion “Drive My Car”
Pickin’ On “Norwegian Wood”
Henrique Cazes “You Won’t See Me”
John Bayless “Nowhere Man”
Yonder Mountain String Band “Think For Yourself”
Mindy Smith “The Word”
Rita Lee “Michelle”
Sufjan Stevens “What Goes On”
The Truth “Girl”
The Wallflowers “I’m Looking Through You”
The Valium “In My Life”
Nellie McMkay “If I Needed Someone”
MC Iron “Taxman”
Aretha Franklin “Eleanor Rigby”
The Vines “I’m Only Sleeping”
Bill Ramsey “Yellow Submarine”
Ween “She Said, She Said”
Cilla Black “For No One”
Blue Cartoon “I Want To Tell You”
Perry Ferrell “Got To Get You Into My Life”
Billy Idol “Tomorrow Never Knows”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch presents a bit of a tribute to a show that just ended an historic run on Broadway.

April 16, 2023 saw the final performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of The Opera, after 13, 981 curtain rises and chandelier’s falling. With lyrics by Charles Hart, and a libretto by Richard Stilgoe, Phantom had a record-setting run at the Majestic Theater, where it has been a fixture since it opened on Broadway in January, 1988.

This week fills the hour with performances of some of the songs from Phantom of The Opera from all around the world. Phantom of The Opera is guaranteed to be the longest-running show in Broadway history for at least another nine years.  Its closest competitor, Chicago, still has a few thousand performances to go before they catch up.

Mel begins the show where it all started, with the preview single of the title song performed by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, and with additional lyrics by Mike Batt. During the rest of the show you’ll hear performances from the original Broadway cast, the London cast, a concert version from The Royal Albert Hall and even a Spanish-language version from Madrid.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault  presents a classic episode featuring comedy songs from Garfunkle and Oates.

We have once again arrived at Tuesday on The AIR  and that means it’s time for a new  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 found elsewhere on this page.  This week it’s yet another of our hybrid shows, combinging a new hour with a classic throwback.

We do indeed have one brand-new hour and two hours of RFC International from 2017 today on Radio Free Charleston this week.

Our first hour opens with Frenchy and The Punk, who will be performing at The Empty Glass Wednesday night. {Update: Sadly, Frenchy and The Punk had to cancel due to illness. We’ll let you know the next time they’re in town}

Following that we have a couple of tracks from Jamie’s Pawnshop Guitars, a new ongoing jam-session project that has local all-star bands covering classic tunes. This is spectacular stuff and accomplishes something that I tried, but was never able to pull off on the RFC video show. You should check out and subscribe to his YouTube page so you don’t miss any of the upcoming songs.

Here’s one of Jamie’s videos that you’ll hear in the show…

Inspired by Jamie’s project, I put together a whole set of cover tunes, with additional tracks from The Anchoress, Brian Diller, Byzantine and All Torches Lit.

After that we have a set of great music that starts with a brand-new song from David Synn, and wraps up with a brand-new song from Bane Star.

We even toss in a classic local track and a little-heard, latter-day oddity by The Cars.

Our second and third hours revive an old Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2017, and it’s a great mix of free-format stuff. The full show is just a valentine to free-format radio, and weaves all over the freaking map with everything from solo Beatles to DEVO to Frank Zappa, Kate Bush, Screaming Jay Hawkins and more.

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 so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 127

hour one
Frenchy And The Punk  “If The World Doesn’t End First”
Jamie’s Pawnshop Guitars featuring Mark Beckner “Just Like Heaven”
Jamie’s Pawnshop Guitars featuring Justin Johnson “Outshined”
The Anchoress “Bizarre Love Triangle”
Brian Diller “Understanding Jane”
Byzantine “Red Skies”
All Torches Lit “Strangelove”
David Synn “Spaghetti Western”
Metallica “Too Far Gone?”
Holden Caufield “Welcome Home”
The Red Book “Other Worlds”
The Cars “Keep on Knocking”
Bane Star “We Don’t Go There”

hour two
John Cale “Changes Made”
They Might Be Giants “Black Ops”
Dirty Heads “Oxygen”
Green Day “Bang Bang”
John Anderson “Midnight Dancing”
Frank Zappa “Uncle Remus (Mix Outtake)
Peter Garrett “Homecoming”
DEVO “I Love Ur Gun”
No Doubt “Snakes”
Kate Pierson “Guitars and Microphones”
Neil Young “Vampire Blues”
Mi Sex “Not Such A Bad Boy”
Sabaton “Camoflauge”
The Who “Cook’s County”
A Day To Remember “Bullfight”

hour three
DGM “Animal”
Placebo “Twenty Years”
Faith No More “Why Do You Bother”
Paul McCartney “Check My Machine”
Ultravox “There Goes A Beautiful World”
Shakespeare’s Sister “Catwoman”
Screamin” Jay Hawkins “Frenzy”
King Grizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Mr. Beat”
George Harrison “Party Seacombe”
Kate Bush “James And The Cold Gun”
The Temptations “Ball Of Confusion”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Blues For A Young Girl Gone”
The Radio Department “The Thing Was Bored”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 3 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.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we offer up a couple of early episodes of The Swing Shift. Every week yours truly strives to bring you the best of over 100 years of Swing Music on one of our most-listened-to programs. This week we’re going to encore some of the formative episodes. These two shows orignally aired in October, 2016.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 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.

This week’s artistic greeting is a simple, smallish, figure sketch, done very roughly with pastel crayons on Paper For Pens. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I started this one during the same session as the figure sketch I posted here a couple of weeks ago.

This was another attempt to do a figure study with no reference. It’s sort of a collision of Impressionism and Expressionism, only not really because it’s just a product of my imagination. The idea was to depict a strong female form, crouching because I didn’t take the time to properly compose the drawing before I began sketching it. Having her skin blend in with the background in places was intentional. I can’t remember exactly why, but I meant to do that.

She could be a superhero or a barbarian queen or just a very angry lady who’s not at all happy to be stuck in the desert with hardly any clothes on.  I plead artistic license here.

Of course, as with the earlier sketch, it might just be considered a crude drawing of a naked or nearly-naked lady. This one was also scanned with a layer of acetate protecting the scanner bed, and a little color-correction in the computer to compensate for that. I also had to add the black border you see above because the WordPress theme I’m using won’t let me run graphics that are more than 1000 pixels high, so it was either give it a border or squoosh it.  Squooshing would not have been respectful of my artistic integrity.

To see it bigger, and without the border, try clicking HERE

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a classic edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic stand-up from Eddie Griffin on an encore episode of Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of music recorded live, beginning with an all-live Radio Free Charleston, then continuing with a live concert by Go Van Go, and live episodes of Prognosis, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and The Swing Shift.

Next Saturday is Record Store Day! Locally, that means you need to get to Budget Tapes & Records or Sullivan’s Records in Charleston, Orbits in Barboursville, Cheap Thrills in Princeton or any of the other cool record shops participating in this neat retail stunt.

The playlist of videos above will show you how records are pressed, until you get to the last video, which shows how the records are mastered at Abbey Road Studios.

This is all to get you in the proper mindset to go out and spend tons of money on cool vinyl records. Record stores will have limited numbers of several special exclusive or first-day releases. You can see the list for next Saturday’s event HERE.

This week we go back to May, 2007, for an episode of Radio Free Charleston that has been rarely seen for the better part of the last decade. “Carmen Shirt” featured music by Whistlepunk 2.0 and Josh Buskirk, as well as animation and other cool stuff.  After it debuted on the Charleston Gazette servers in 2007, it went offline for years until it briefly resurfaced at MySpace, before that now-obsolete social media site went into a serious decline and deleted everything that had been uploaded there. We managed to upload it to YouTube about three years ago.

Sadly, the show that we should run next week, with The Ghosts of Now and Voices of Anatole and other cool stuff, is still “lost,” buried somewhere in my archives. It’s the first of four episodes of RFC that are MIA. On a similar note, this is an edited version of the show because we can’t find the original cut, which included the Pentagram Flowerbox cartoon that caused all the drama.

The main event of this show was a performance of “Satellite” by Whistlepunk 2.0, a band that included Spencer Elliott, Karen Allen from Crazy Jane, as well as current members of Superfetch and Speedsuit. Karen later recorded the song for a solo album.  We also had a great performance by 12-string virtuoso, Josh Buskirk, and some vintage bizarro replacement animation. The secret weapon of this show comes after the end credits, with a sneak preview of Episode 23 starring Feast of Stephen.

Host segments were shot by your host using a tripod in his “White Room.” Original production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
April 14, 2023

After a week filled with car repairs, internet upgrades, assorted aches and pains and a few outside projects, we’re a little PopCulted out. So all we have to share today is the playlist for a new episode of MIRRORBALL, on The AIR, for you Disco fanatics.   The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Getting right to that, at 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents a look at Disco in the Movies.

While Disco took over the Hot 100 and the dance clubs in the 1970s, its influence on pop culture didn’t stop there. Disco also went Hollywood! In the next hour we’re going to bring you the Disco Hits that crossed over and found success on The Silver Screen. You’ll hear Disco classics from Car Wash, Roller Boogie, Thank God It’s Friday, Can’t Stop The Music, Saturday Night Fever and more! But it wasn’t just musical movies that co-opted the Disco beat. Mel also mixes in Disco classics that turned up in everything from Eyes of Laura Mars to Shaft to Priscella, Queen of the Desert.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 072

Michael Zager Band “Let’s All Chant” (From Eyes of Laura Mars)
The Village People “Can’t Stop The Music” (From Can’t Stop The Music)
Love and Kisses “Thank God It’s Friday” (From Thank God It’s Friday)
The Village People “Milkshake” (From Can’t Stop The Music)
Rose Royce “Car Wash” (From Car Wash)
Bob Etsy “The Roller Boogie” (From Roller Boogie)
Isaac Hayes “Theme From Shaft” (From Shaft)
Heatwave “Boogie Nights” (From The Stud)
Donna Summer “Last Dance” (From Thank God It’s Friday)
Alicia Bridges “I Love The Nightlife” (From Priscella, Queen of the Desert)
Cher “Hell On Wheels” (From Roller Boogie)
The Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive” (From Saturday Night Fever)

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM.

At 3 PM we bring you an encore of a classic episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat from September, 2016.  This was the show where Sydney Fileen delivered a a collection of cover songs performed by New Wave bands.  Rather than send you to a link, we’ll just re-post the playlist here…

The playlist:

Missing Persons  “Hello I Love You”
Joe Jackson  “The Harder They Fall”
The Ramones  “Surfin’ Bird”
The Clash  “Police On My Back”
The B 52s  “Downtown”
Erasure  “River Deep, Mountain High”
The Creatures  “Wild Thing”
DEVO  “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”
Flying Lizards  “Summertime Blues”
Elvis Costello  “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down”
Lene Lovich  “I Think We’re Alone Now”
Klaus Nomi  “You Don’t Own Me”
Rockpile  “When Will I Be Loved”
Thompson Twins  “Revolution”
Robert Palmer  “Not A Second Time”
Souixsie and The Banshees  “Dear Prudence”
New Musik  “All You Need Is Love”
Soft Cell  “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”
The Stranglers  “Walk On By”
Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone  “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”
Eurythmics with Green from Scritti Politti  “Wrap It Up”
The Beat  “Can’t Get Used To Losing You”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood  “Born To Run”
The Bangles  “Hazy Shade of Winter”
Marianne Faithfull  “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”
Pretenders  “Stop Your Sobbing”
Oingo Boingo  “You Really Got Me”
The Stranglers  “All Day and All of The Night”
Art of Noise  “Peter Gunn”
The Dickies  “Knights In White Satin”
Echo and The Bunnymen  “People Are Strange”

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. Two classic episodes can also be heard every Sunday, starting at 10 AM.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content because it tastes good AND it’s good for you!

I realize that I’m not the boss of you, so please consider this a list of suggestions, not orders.  There’s a ton of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State as we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of April.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s James Townsend. Saturday Ginger Wixx entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit.  Sunday sees the return of the Post-Mountain Stage Jam.  Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. And of course, our old friends Frenchy and The Punk will be at the Glass next Wednesday with Unmanned opening the show at 8 PM.  Other shows that have graphics are listed among the images below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet, despite what the authorities are saying. 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 suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

FRIDAY

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Wednesday afternoon The AIR brings you a special new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or if you’re on a laptop or desktop, you could just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast tackles a topic we haven’t done yet, ballads by the Beatles (group and solo). We open with a special mash-up song performed live by Mike Batt (of Wombles, Zero Zero, and Katie Melua fame), which combines two classic Beatles tunes with one John Lennon standard and is very clever and amusing.  Batt, in addition to his own legendary career, has some Beatle connections.  Sir Paul McCartnery tapped him to serve on the board of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, and his “Hunting of the Snark” album included contributions from George Harrison and Julian Lennon.

Inspired by his mash-up, I decided to put together an entire show of Beatles ballads. Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 091

Mike Batt “Imagine Something Yesterday”
The Beatles “Let It Be”
George Harrison “Isn’t It A Pity”
Ringo Starr “Imagine Me There”
The Beatles “Cry Baby Cry”
Paul McCartney “My Love”
John Lennon “Woman”
The Beatles “And I Love Her”
John Lennon “Oh My Love”
Paul McCartney “Maybe I’m Amazed”
George Harrison “Learning How To Love You”
Ringo Starr “As Far As We Can”
The Beatles “Real Love”
John Lennon “Imagine”
The Beatles “Something”
The Beatles “Yesterday”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM(EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch presents a bit of a tribute to a show we just saw a couple of weeks ago. I wrote about the Signature Theater production of Pacific Overtures HERE, but on this week’s new Curtain Call, you can hear for yourself how wonderful this rarely-performed Sondheim masterpiece is when Mel brings you highlights of the original cast album from 1976 (starring the great Mako). Pacific Overtures features music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by John Weidman, with “additional material by” Hugh Wheeler.

Set in 19th-century Japan, it tells the story of the country’s westernization starting in 1853, when American ships forcibly opened it to the rest of the world. The story is told from the point of view of the Japanese, and focuses in particular on the lives of two friends who are caught in the change.

The 1976 Broadway production of Pacific Overtures was nominated for ten Tony Awards, and the show includes Sondheim’s personal favorite tune that he’d written, “Someone In A Tree.”

Here’s the playlist…

Curtain Call 124

Pacific Overtures

“The Advantages of Floating In The Middle of the Sea”
“There Is No Other Way”
“Four Black Dragons”
“Chrysanthemum Tea”
“Poems”
“Welcome to Kanagawa”
“Someone In a Tree”
“Please Hello”
“A Bowler Hat”
“Pretty Lady”
“Next”

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault  presents a classic episode featuring the stand-up comedy of Eddie Griffin.

We have come to Tuesday, which almost always lands somewhere between Monday and Wednesday, and on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston and a new edition of The Swing Shift. 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 found elsewhere on this page.  

We have one new hour and two hours of classic RFC International  from 2017 today on Radio Free Charleston. Our first hour is loaded with new releases from West Virginia and independent artists, plus a couple of cool indie tracks that I just discovered.

Our new hour opens with newly-released music from Abandon The Ship, and then brings you homegrown WV stuff from Jim Lange, Verdeant, Softeeth, Massing and Mountain State expatriot, Deni Bonet.

We also have a couple of tracks from our Chicago pipeline–Lilla Sky comes to us from Denmark by way of Nashville, and Austin Grimm returns with another cool cover tune from an EP that’s coming out this fall.  We also have a track from a benefit release for Mike Stobbie, the former keyboardist for prog-rock’s Pallas, who lost a hand to flesh-eating bacteria.  I’ve been a fan of Pallas since their first release forty or so years ago, and I’ll never pass up a chance to plug a benefit to raise money for someone to get a robot hand.

Our second and third hours revive a classic all-live-recordings episode of Radio Free Charleston International from January, 2017, and it’s a weird collection of what appears to be randomly-assembled tunes.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Where possible, live links for the first hour will take you to the artist’s pages so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 126

hour one
Abandon The Ship “Secrets”
Deni Bonet “Off The Record”
Lilla Sky “Patience”
Novelty Island “Magnificent Advertisement”
Verdeant “Peter Pan”
Jim Lange “Question and Answer”
The Anchoress “Climbing Up The Walls”
Weedhaven Laughing Academy “Close the Book”
Softeeth ” “6 & 6th”
Massing “Flattery”
Austin Grimm “Rainbow”
John Bunkley“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday”
Frenchy And The Punk “Church of Sound”
Mike Stobbie/Pallas “All I Need Is You”
Dave Strong “The Nightcrawler”

hour two
Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill”
Pete Townshend “Behind Blue Eyes”
Greg Lake “Nuclear Attack”
The Cars “Let’s Go”
Neil Innes “Shangri La”
The White Stripes “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
Bob Dylan and Tom Petty “Justine”
Gary Numan “Down In The Park”
Dream Theater “Learning To Live”
Guns N Roses “Welcome To The Jungle”

hour three
The Beatles “She’s A Woman”
John Lennon “Come Together”
Paul McCartney “Get Back”
George Harrison “Old Brown Shoe”
Ringo Starr “With A Little Help From My Friends”
The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”
Eric Clapton “Layla”
Kansas “Carry On My Wayward Son”
David Bowie “Changes”
Elvis Costello and the Attractions “Watching The Detectives”
Kate Bush “Rolling The Ball”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  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 classic 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.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we offer up a brand-new episode of The Swing Shift. This time it’s a solid hour of great Swing tunes from any era of Swing Music I felt like grabbing off the shelf. We have classic Big Band Swing, new independent Blues/Swing and even Swing bands from Spain and Russia.

Just check out this seemingly random playlist…

The Swing Shift 141

Mike & Vax Ron Ramm “Cornet Chop Suey”
Little Charlie & The Nightcats “Handle With Care”
Anita O’Day “Let Me Off Uptown”
Fletcher Henderson “Sugarfoot Stomp”
Robbie Williams “I Wanna Be Like You”
Dudes “Blues of The Sea”
Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra “Well Git It!”
Mijares “Triiste Cancion”
Beverly Kenney “You Make Me Feel So Young”
Eric Andersson, Kingen & Borje Andersson “Boogi Woogie Beat”
Dave Stuckey & The Hothouse Gang “Tain’t No Use”
Ronnie Lane & Pete Townsend “Catmelody”
Mike “Mudfoot” McDonald “Lean On Me Mama”
Benny Goodman “Benny Rides Again”
Pete Rugalo & His Orchestra “California”
Jimmy Heath Orchestra “The Picture of Heath”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 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.