Your humble blogger is still hard at work on The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide, which is now going to run an extra week, and that’s not really why, but we are going to tinker with the Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear today on The AIR.  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 boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Today’s show is the first of three “Best of 2025” episodes. I open the show with a new song, plus a new set of six tunes, and then we go back to earlier this year for chunks of previous shows–the best chunks–I’m talking USDA Grade A chunks of internet radio–so you can revisit the vital and thriving local and independent music scene that our free-format show brings you each week. Also, I’m going to be out of town and this keeps me from having to just schedule reruns.

We open our show with the opening track from the newly-released and highly-anticipated debut album by Charleston’s own Gardenn, and then we mix in six more new tracks from Jim And The Sea Dragons, Corduroy Brown, The Capenter Ants, Cheap Trick and more.

And then we check out some of the best segments from Radio Free Charleston from the first two months of 2025. We don’t do the hourly breaks clean at the top of the hour, so the playlist is just one long stream.

Check out the playlist. Links will take you to pages for the artists…

RFC V5 249

hour one
Gardenn “Hello Gardenn”
Corduroy Brown “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”
Jim And The Sea Dragons “Whale Shark”
Ed-g-Mary-A “Still Hurting”
The Carpenter Ants “Sending My Love”
Custard Flux “Opportunity Knocks”
Cheap Trick “The Riff That Won’t Quit”
Novo Combo “E-Train Revisited”
Shining Glass “Three Died”
The Polkamaniacs “Dream Water Wheel (Death Deluxe Remix)”
Hellaphant “In Between Days”
SPACE FREQ  “Open Your Mind”
Lene Lovich “Cats Away”
Tonto’s Expanding Headband “Timewhys”
Kate Fagan “Go Faster”
Ringo Starr “Rosetta”
Blue Million “No Man’s Land”
Deni Bonet  “Red Dog”
Raymond Scott “Powerhouse”
The Bible Beaters “Can’t Get To Heaven”
Ghoulbox “Rats In The Morgue”
Tony Levin “Turn It Over”
The Settlement “Rainbow”
Mogwai “Fact Boy”
Marillion “Forgotten Sons”
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel “Red is a Mean, Mean Color”
Hello June “Dance (M.Walker Remix)”
The Heavy Editors “Same Ole Way”
The Subjunctives “We’re Not Friends Anymore”
Camouflage “Laughing”
Annie Lennox “Train In Vain”
Brian Diller “Sooner or Later”
Scott Collins & The Sovereignty “Lament for the Loss”
Saycouth “Magic”
The Heavy Hitters Band“Come Dance With Me”
Madeline Peyroux “Dance Me To The End Of Love”
Massing with Shelem “Shabby”
Gyasi  “23”

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, 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 encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM  The Swing Shift is an encore of two recent episodes.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 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 Thursdays and Sundays.