Month: August 2023 (Page 4 of 4)

Opening officially on Broadway August 3, Back to the Future: The Musical is a musical adaptation of the beloved 1985 film of the same name, which was directed by Robert Zemeckis. The musical features music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard and a book by the film’s screenwriter, Bob Gale. BATF: The Musical sports a combination of original music, as well as songs featured in the film, such as “The Power of Love” and “Johnny B. Goode”.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR,  at 3 PM Mel Larch devotes the entire hour of Curtain Call to highlights from Back to the Future: The Musical.  You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay here and listen to the convenient embedded radio player elswhere on this page.

Mel brings you highlights of the UK original cast album, to whet your appetite for time travel on the Great White Way. The musical received its world premiere at Manchester Opera House in February 2020, ahead of a 2021 West End transfer. It starred Olly Dobson as Marty McFly and Roger Bart as “Doc” Brown. The production received rave reviews in London and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 2022. The Broadway production retains Bart.

Let’s quote liberally from the Broadway hype:

Welcome to Hill Valley! When Marty McFly finds himself transported back to 1955 in a time machine built by the eccentric scientist Doc Brown, he accidentally changes the course of history. Now he’s in a race against time to fix the present, escape the past and send himself… back to the future.

Set your destination time, New York and get ready to make musical theater history.

Get your tickets yesterday!

Check out the show’s website for more info.

You may have seen a cool bit of news last week as cast members of the movie, including Michael J. Fox,  Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson, attended a preview performance. The show has already been seen by more than half a million people in the UK, which is really something when you consider that it opened during the pandemic.

The show’s composers are Alan Silvestri, a noted Hollywood film composer and long-time collaborator with Zemeckis, who counts the BTTF movies among his many other big hit movie scores, and Glen Ballard who wrote and produced songs for Michael Jackson, Alanis Morrisette, Aerosmith, Ringo Starr, Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks and dozens of other major artists.

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 evenings starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Tuesday afternoon happens again this week, and on The AIR 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.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.  This week we have one all-new hour, and two hours of a 2019 episode of RFC International that hasn’t been heard since the week it originally aired.

Kicking off this cool edition of our show is a new song from Cassius At Best. I believe this is a harbinger of a forthcoming album, which will be quite a long-awaited treasure.

Elsewhere we have a first hour that contains brand-new music from Aristotle Jones, Buni Muni, Brian Diller, Jeff Ellis and The 3 Clubmen, which is Andy Partridge’s laest project.  We close out our first hour with a new single from Chicago musician/actor/playwright Matt Tiegler. His song “Dreams” will be released on all major streaming platforms on Friday, and it’s a teaser for his upcoming album, Hands Free Down Hill.

Our second and third hours bring back a Ska-centric episode of Radio Free Charleston International from 2019 that acted as both a tribute to the late Ranking Roger and a quick primer on cool Ska music. Roger’s on every tune in the second hour of this week’s RFC, and he also kicks off the third hour, which is a Ska-filled treat for the ears.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. Where possible in the first hour, live links 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 140

hour one
Cassius At Best “Kiddo”
Aristotle Jones “You”
Garland Jeffreys “Rough And Ready”
The Earl Slick Band “Games”
The Amazing Delores “Ship of Slaves”
Sheldon Vance “Same Old Story”
Brian Diller “Carnival”
Buni Muni “F-”
Toccata Nosferatu “Anubis”
Ann Magnuson “Whatever Happened to New York”
Novelty Island “Eureka, I Can See”
The 3 Clubmen “Aviatrix”
Jeff Ellis “Home 2”
Matt Tiegler “Dream”

hour two
The English Beat “Ranking Full Stop”
The Beat “A Good Day For Sunshine”
Ranking Roger “One Minute Closer (To Death)”
General Public “General Public”
The English Beat “Doors Of Your Heart”
Ranking Roger “Wingmaker Dub Pt 3)
The Beat “Long Call Short Talk”
The Beat “Skank Away”
Ranking Roger “They Know”
General Public” As A Matter Of Fact”
The English Beat “Spar Wid Me”
The English Beat “Stand Down Margeret/Whine & Grind”
The Beat “Public Confidential”

hour three
The English Beat (2018) “Redemption Time”
The Specials “A Message To You, Rudy”
Desmond Dekker “The Israelites”
The Skatalites “Lucky Seven”
Madness “Night Boat To Cairo”
The Toasters “Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down”
Bad Manners “Lip Up Fatty”
Save Ferris “Lies”
Operation Ivy “Take Warning”
Goldfinger “You Think It’s A Joke”
Reel Big Fish “It’s Not Easy”
No Doubt “Blue In the Face”
The Selecter “Big Badoof”
The Aquabats “Idiot Box”
The Science Fair Explosion “Before It Ends”
Gogo 13 “House Ape”

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 two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.  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.