It snuck up on me, slowly, over the course of three-and-a-half decades, but today (September 3) is the 35th anniversary of the very first broadcast of Radio Free Charleston, over the air, on 96.1 FM, which at the time was an oldies station with absentee owners, which is the only reason I got away with doing free-format radio at 2 AM once a week.  To mark the occasion, in the middle of a 35-hour marathon that began Monday night, we will bring you a new, three hour episode of RFC today in its long-established timeslots, 10 AM and 10 PM.

Of course we have to dig into the archives today on The AIR.  We also mix in some new stuff and some very rare records on this special new episode of  Radio Free Charleston, it’s a load of nostalgia but we still look to the future.  To listen to The AIR, 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.

I open the show with new music from David Synn. I told David I’d open this week’s show with his music before I realized it was an anniversary show, but it’s a killer track and I didn’t want to make the show a complete throwback, so I have new tunes from David and Bad Keys of the Mountain this week before we jump into the backwards-looking navel-gazing (which hurts, when you think about it).

This episode includes some recordings from the legendary Charleston Playhouse, which was demolished late last year.

Because I was busy with a few other anniversaries last week, it didn’t even hit me that I needed to put this show together until late last week. I ordered a cassette dubbing machine (a cheap one) and it got here Saturday, so I was able to dig out a few archival gems for this show. The insterstitials are all from the third-ever episode of RFC, and the jam session tapes had only be listened to once, if that many times.

Our first hour digs deep and brings you local music from the 1960s to the 1980s, with one track from the 90s.

Our second hour opens with a new recording of “Heads On Fire” by Clownhole, which was widely requested on the broadcast version of the show even though I only had a crappy bootleg recording of it performed live. I even had it remixed and paired with a video by my brother, Frank Panucci, back on the first Halloween episode of RFC volume 2, our long-running video show.

Our second and third hours each include long (possibly too long) excerpts from Charleston Playhouse jam sessions. They are presented for historical and/or hysterical purposes, depending on your point of view. Among the performers you’ll hear are an ersatz line up of The Defectors with Jack Griffith instead of Lynne Sandy; The Hepcats, including Gary Price and Tommy Medvick; the incredible Johnny McIntyre; a extremely drunk girl, and more.

The non-local music this week includes a lot of tracks that I played way back on WVNS on the original incarnation of the show. I hope you folks don’t mind me wallowing in a little nostalgia on this milestone anniversary of Charleston’s longest-running local music radio program.

There are only a few links in the playlist this week. With this many archival recordings, not every artist has a website to send you folks to.

Check out the playlist.

RFC V5 192

hour one
David Synn “Hypomania”
Bad Keys of the Mountain “Free Ride”
Rose Garden “Next Plane To London”
Mind Garage “Reach Out”
Hasil Adkins “She Said”
Amazing Delores “One On One”
Stark Raven “Whiter Shade of Pale”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You”
Three Bodies “Shingles and Tar”
The Swivels “Cinnamon Girl”
Some Forgotten Color “High Chair”
Big Money “Words On The Street”
Brian Diller “Don’t Stop At Anything”
The Defectors“Nightlife In Tokyo”
Velez Manifesto “You’re Too Dark”

hour two
Clownhole “Heads On Fire”
Wolfgang Parker “The Father, The Son”
Government Cheese “Camping On Acid”
Tilting At Windmills “Serve Him Whiskey”
Strawfyssh “Graveyard Shift”
Charleston Playhouse Jam Excerpt #1
Pete Townshend “Rough Boys”
Bill Nelson “Flaming Desire”
The Call “The Walls Come Down”

hour three
John Radcliff “It’s Not A Dream”
Novo Combo “Up Periscope”
Mother Nang“Fuggin'”
Wall of Voodoo “Mexican Radio”
Red Hot Chili Peppers “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes”
Charleston Playhouse Jam Excerpt #2

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  Sunday at 8 PM 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 the rest of the 35-hour marathon, which will wrap up Wednesday morning.