For the first time in the same week since last July, The AIR brings you great new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast that are both departure episodes of a sort.  You can tune in at the website, or 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 an hour of Country-fied (or Country Fried) Beatles music.  Ringo Starr has a new Country album, written and produced by T Bone Burnett, and it’s currently sitting at the top of whatever passes for charts these days, so I thought it might be time to explore the influence of Country Music on The Beatles, and vice-versa.

In this show you will hear very Country-sounding tracks by The Beatles, together and solo, plus a selection of Country covers of Beatles tunes, and we open and close with tracks from Ringo’s “Look Up” album.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 117

Ringo Starr “Time On My Hands”
The Beatles “What Goes On”
The Beatles “Honey Don’t”
The Beatles “Don’t Pass Me By”
George Harrison “Sunshine Life For Me”
Paul McCartney with Carl Perkins “Get It”
John Lennon “Crippled Inside”
Yonder Mountain String Band “Think For Yourself”
Dar Williams “You Won’t See Me”
Pickin’ On “A Hard Day’s Night”
Willie Nelson “Yesterday”
Wanda Jackson “Run Devil Run”
Steve Earle “I’m Looking Through You”
Dave Maclean “Ticket to Ride”
Matt Axton “Octopus’s Garden”
Ringo Starr with Buck Owens “Act Naturally”
Paul McCartney & Wings “Sally G”
Ringo Starr “You Want Some”

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 dives into the archives deeper than anyone thought possible, and offers up a mixtape of the best of Broadway…from 1890 to 1920.

This is a collection of tunes from when the Broadway Musical was just beginning to take shape, blending light opera, vaudeville, music hall, minstrel shows and Yiddish theater influences into what we recognize today as the musical theatre experience. The sound quality is not great, since the newest of these recordings is well over a hundred years old, but the historical value is priceless, and the topics of the songs, surprisingly enough, still resonate today.

Check out this playlist…

Curtain Call 152

“Prohibition Blues” from Ladies First
“If You Only Knew” from Star Gazer
“Oh Promise Me” from Robin Hood
“Laughing Song” from An Artist’s Model
“The Purity Brigade” from The Belle of New York
“Gypsy Love Song” from The Fortune Teller
“The Toreador” from The Toreador’s Song
“Moses Andrew Jackson, Goodbye” from Mrs. Wilson
“I’m Tired of Eating In Restaurants” from Bandanna Land
“Adam and Eve” from The Pied Piper
“Young America” from The Jolly Batchelors
“The Aiaihea (Hula Shouting Song)” from Bird of Paradise
“You Can’t Play Every Instrument In The Band” from The Sunshine Girl
“Til The Clouds Roll By” from Oh Boy!
“Becky Is Back In The Ballet” from The Ziegfeld Follies of 1917
“Swanee” from Sinbad
“When The Moon Shines On The Moonshine” from The Ziegfeld Follies of 1919
“If I Knock The L out of Kelly” from Step This Way
“I’ll Say She Does” from Sinbad

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, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM. A marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning and afternoon starting at 9 AM, 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 brings you a brand-new episode featuring highlights of Monty Python Live, in 1982.