Category: Uncategorized (Page 75 of 757)

Mothers Day happens this weekend, and for those of you who celebrate, go knock yourself out (just don’t go knock your mother out…that would be bad), for the rest of us, there is still plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we wonder whatever happened to that lovely spring weather we never got.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

We’re giving an extra plug to The Broken Relics, from Ohio, who make their Charleston debut this Friday at Sam’s Uptown Cafe.  I’ve been playing their songs on Radio Free Charleston for a few months, and if the Myasthenia Gravis allows, I’ll be there. You should go too.

Every May Mel Larch brings her listeners a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to the Tony Award Nominees for Best Musical. Since they were just announced last week, it’s time for the tradition to continue.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear samples of the nominees for this year’s Tony Award for Best Musical as Broadway is back to be saluted once again by Curtain Call.

You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player mere inches away from this text.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call. It’s our annual Tony Awards preview, with songs each from the five nominated musicals,

And those musicals are:

SUFFS with book, music, and lyrics by Shaina Taub, who curiously enough did not get a Tony nomination for her performance in her own show. The show is based on suffragists and the American women’s suffrage movement, focusing primarily on the historical events leading up to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the United States constitution in 1920 that gave some women the right to vote. It approaches the story from the point of view of Black women, who had to struggle harder for their rights. Taub became only the second woman in Broadway history to “to write the book, music, lyrics, and star in her own musical”

Water for Elephants is a musical with music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co. and a book by Rick Elice. This show is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Sara Gruen. In Water For Elephants, Jacob Jankowski, an old man living in an assisted living home, thinks back to his youth. In 1931, after his parents were killed in a car accident, he decides to travel cross-country on a train, where he meets the Benzini Brothers Circus.  He joins the circus, gets involved with the ringmaster’s wife, and musical hijinks ensue.

Illinoise is a dance revue musical with music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens and an original story by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury. The musical was inspired by Stevens’ 2005 album Illinois. The show is directed and choreographed by Peck. After summer festival and regional productions and an off-Broadway tryout, the show debuted on Broadway in April 2024 at the St. James Theatre.With no cast album for this show, we bring you songs from Steven’s original concept recording.

Adapted from S.E. Hinton’s seminal book and Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic film, THE OUTSIDERS features a book by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine, and music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay & Zach Chance) and Justin Levine.  Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1967, Ponyboy Curtis, his best friend Johnny Cade and their Greaser family of “outsiders” battle with their affluent rivals, the Socs. This new Broadway musical navigates the complexities of self-discovery as the Greasers dream about who they want to become in a world that may never accept them.

We’ll close this week’s show with a couple of songs by Alicia Keys. that are featured in the last of our nominated musicals, Hell’s Kitchen. The first of these is the preview single from the show, “Kaliedoscope.” Hell’s Kitchen, which is based on Key’s life growing up in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan in the 1990s does not have a full cast album available yet,so you’ll also hear Alicia Keys singing “Teenage Love Affair,” which is one of the features songs.

Check out the playlist:

Curtain Call 144

“Keep Marching” sung by Shaina Taub,
“The March (We Demand Equality)” “Great American B__ ” “This Girl” from SUFFS
“Wild” and “Silver Stars” from Water For Elephants
“Come On! Feel the Illinoise! Part I- The World’s Columbian Exposition Part II-Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream” “Chicago” “Prarie Fire That Wanders About” from Illinoise
“Soda’s Letter” “Stay Gold” “Great Expectations” from The Outsiders
“Kaleidoscope” “Teenage Love Affair” from Hell’s Kitchen (by Alicia Keys)

The 2024 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Pluto TV and Paramount + on Sunday, June, 16.

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.

We have an epic new three-hour RFC today on The AIR.  We’ve got a load of new music in the RFC cupboard, and plenty of goodies from the RFC Achives. 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.

We open our show with a new song from Mediogres, a preview of their upcoming album, “How Long Do We Have To Stick Around This Hen House.”  After that we have new music from Brian Diller, Jim Lange, The Anchoress, Sean Richardson, Brian Eno, Sierra Ferrell, John Bunkley, Masser Chups and more.

Our first hour has a set of New Wave-era classics, while the second hour brings you a set of Surf music and a long newly-released cut from The Settlement.

Hour three kicks off with Ohio’s Broken Relics, who make their Charleston debut this Friday at Sam’s Uptown Cafe. Then we launch into a mixtape of Radio Free Charleston archive tracks from  1985 to 2010, or thereabouts. Some of these are from the original broadcast version of RFC, while others are from our video archives.

Links in the artist’s names in the playlist below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music, if they have a website, that is.

Check out the playlist.

RFC V5 175

hour one
Mediogres “Hot Car”
Novo Combo“City Bound (E Train)”
Lene Lovich Band “What Will I Do Without You (live)”
Velez Manifesto “Tongues On The Rail”
Skafish “Secret Lover”
63 Eyes “The Cellular Cellar”
Bongwater “The Porpoise Song”
Brian Diller “Monday and Tuesday’s Child”
Jim Lange “My Peace, My Joy”
The Anchoress “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Sean Richardson “Cold North Wind Blows”
Brian Eno, Tom Rogerson “Motion In Field”
Sierra Ferrell “Chittlin’ Cookin’ Time In Cheatham County’
Mega Ran x 88bit “Dream Master (Piano Version)”

hour two
John Bunkley “Eye Spy”
Messer Chups “Nights In White Satin”
Kitten & The Tonics “Graveyard”
Lords of Atlantis “Atlas”
Guitarmy of One “The Sea and the Seventh Veil of Surveillance”
The Routes “Showroom Dummies”
The Madeira “The Saracen”
The Settlement “Linger (Live at El Gran Sabor)”
Joi “Seven In Seven Out”
Cassius At Best “Devices”

hour three
The Broken Relics “Crosswalk”
Three Bodies “Shingles And Tar”
Amazing Delores “Love Magic”
Blue Million “Lazy Bones”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You”
Hasil Adkins “Big Red Satellite”
Mad Scientist Club “Save The Whales”
Mother Nang “Knee Deep In Wine”
Ghosts of Now “Deathburn”
Ovada “Church of Paranoia”
Strawfyssh “Graveyard Shift”
dog soldier “Blanket”
Flare Baroshi “Vampire Mafia”
The Liquid Canvas “Spirit Molecule”

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, instead of the promised new episode, we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift. The plan was to produce a new show this week, but Myasthenia Gravis has slowed your blogger/radio host down, and I was not able to get it finished in time for the Tuesday airing.  Next week I will be sure to start on it early enough to get a new show ready for you.

 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.

As I mentioned last week, with my Myasthenia Gravis flaring up, I am retreating from producing physical art for the time being. I will be filling this space for the month of May with digital abstracts, rather than try to finish some of my existing sketches and studies while I have impaired hands.

This week’s piece is an exercise in distorting refracted and reflected images and playing with color compostion.  I was going for a psychedelic vibe without using the traditional psychedelic color palette.

I think it came out looking sort of like a 1970’s album cover for third-rate knockoff of the band YES. Expect stuff like this all month as I try to conserve my finger strength for typing.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you encores of a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a recent 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. All times listed are Eastern, so if you’re in another timezone, adjust accordingly.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of George Carlin on a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon We bring you recent episodes of our music specialty shows from the last few weeks since the MIRRORBALL marathon pre-empted last Saturday’s week-in-review spot.

This week’s video was originally posted here fourteen years ago. Since that time, the links in the post have gone dead. Flash video is no longer supported by most browsers, and the original post is a bit of a mess.  So in the spirit of recycling an old post, and also restoring this video to the blog, here it is again, all shined-up, and polished with a nifty new upgraded print.

Duck And Cover, is an infamous educational film from the Cold War era that teaches children how to survive a direct nuclear blast by covering up their head and hitting the ground.

Dan Kehde and Mark Scarpelli, inspired by this camp classic, wrote the song, “Duck And Cover” for their musical, “The Blob.” You can see that song in Radio Free Charleston episode 82, with will be The RFC Flashback next Saturday.

Duck and Cover is a Civil Defense film, demonstrating the “Duck and Cover” technique of minimizing harm from a nuclear blast. The techniques have been widely ridiculed, although experts still support them. Some critics believe the film was meant to serve a dual purpose of propagandizing against communism. That theory makes sense because this film is about as absurd as current GOP political ads.

If you’ve been following our chronological trip through the video episodes of Radio Free Charleston, you probably noticed that we have had to skip over the final two of our four missing episodes. Someday I may be able to retrieve and restore them, but for now we’ll just jump ahead to September, 2009, for the second Beatles tribute show that we produced. This one features a lot of Rubber Soul, and it’s a little bittersweet to see our late friend, Mark Scarpelli, but it’s also great to see him healthy and playing the music he loved.

In this episode we bring you rehearsal footage of Charleston’s Beatles tribute band, Rubber Soul tackling a pair of Fab Four songs, plus we captured Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen doing a Beatles tune at Taylor Books, and we have my animated take on Under The Radar’s version of “Eleanor Rigby.” Our animation is the promo video for Beatles Rockband, which was thing, back in the day.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

From now on the plan is to bring you the episodes of RFC in order, now that we’ve filled in the huge gap we had from a few years back when a big chunk of our online archives disappeared along with everybody else’s MySpace videos. After we finish the full run of video episodes of Radio Free Charleston (In late 2026, I think) I’ll dedicate this space to The RFC MINI SHOW, our spinoff show that featured a single artist each episode. That ought to take us into 2028.

The PopCulteer
May 3, 2024

Welcome to a stream-of-consciousness edition of The PopCulteer.

It’s been a while since I’ve flown into my weekly Friday columnish post (which I’ve been doing in this blog for fifteen years and four weeks now) with no plan, so I’m just sitting down on Thursday evening with a blank page to fill.

There are no detailed radio notes this week because we are about halfway through our four-day marathon of my wife’s much-loved music specialty show, MIRRORBALL. That’s happening on PopCult‘s sister internet station, The AIR, which you can listen to at the website, or on the nify little player embedded elsewhere on this page.  The marathon is to mark four years and one-hundred episodes of Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL.  You can read all about it and see the playlist in THIS POST from Wednesday, and you can hear replays of episode 100 Friday at 2 PM, Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 10 PM, Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM, (all times Eastern) exclusively on The AIR.

But enough about our MIRRORBALLs…how about we talk a little bit about Myasthenia Gravis?

I have it. I was diagnosed with it just over eight years ago, although I had severe symptoms of it for eleven years before that. You can read all about that HERE.  The point being that it’s an auto-immune disorder that can be a bit of an impairment, and mine has been flaring up for a couple of months now.  Even with my mild case, it sucks. Hot weather makes it worse, so this has been a pretty miserable week for me. It affects my fingers so making art is more difficult. Typing is also a pain in the ass, so excuse any typos that get past me. I was hoping to get out to do some stuff this weekend, but I don’t know if I’ll manage more than a quick visit to the KVRA Model Railroad show at the Charleston Civic Center Coliseum.

As for what this means for my loyal readers…well, I have a stack of books, toys and music to write reviews of for you, but I haven’t been able to do all things required to make that happen. Between MG and outside assignments (AKA “paying work”) I haven’t had time to do things like catch up on all the reading, or open and photograph the new MEGO DC figures or the Longbox Heroes or new Super Powers action figures.

So, consider that a preview of what you can expect in the coming weeks.

Hopefully.

Like all of us here in WV I pray for the sweet release of primary election day, when the constant barrage of hideous, repulsive, hateful and moronic campaign ads for Republican candidates will leave our airwaves.  It’s disheartening that in a state with SO MANY serious problems–crumbling infrastructure, myriad health problems, rampant pollution, underfunded health agencies, young people leaving in droves–the only selling point most GOP candidates have is “Hey, I hate vulnerable people and support the traitorous criminal who tried to overthrow the government!”

I do have to wonder, would Kristi Noem have shot Babydog if given the chance?

On the bright side, come primary day, at least three god-awful candidates for governor and one absolutely horrid candidate for senate may be out of politics for good…regardless of who wins.

To lighten the column up after that dark dip into politics, we could see a major change in the entertainment landscape as SONY and Apollo (the private equity firm, not the Roman God of rocketships) have teamed up to make a bid to buy Paramount, which includes the movie studio, tons of cable channels, the CBS Network, Star Trek, Paramount + and SpongeBob Squarepants.  Paramount has been in play for a few months, but there are weird ownership issues stemming from the daughter of the late Sumner Redstone, who ran the company until his recent death at the age of 132.

Even though we are talking about a merger/acquisition worth tens of billions of dollars, the most important point here is that finally…FINALLY…somebody might restore and exploit and make available to the public the vast animation libraries of Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle) and Screen Gems (Lil’ Abner, Krazy Kat). Those cartoons hardly ever get shown anymore. Even if they don’t do that, they’d be hard-pressed to mess up Paramount as bad as David Zaslav did with Warner Brothers.

{IMPORTANT EDITORIAL NOTE: After proof-reading this column and putting it to bed, I found out that METV is launching a new digital sub-channel called METV TOONS, which will be programmed with classic animation from Warner Brothers, Hanna Barbera, MGM, Paramount and…Terrytoons and Columbia Pictures.  More details can be found HERE. Ask and ye shall receive, I guess.}

Now how about a couple of  quick recommendations?

The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin is streaming on AppleTV +, and it’s loads of fun. Absurd, hilarious and anachronistic adventures of the famed 18th-century highwayman, this series, starring Noel Fielding (The Mighty Boosh, The IT Crowd) is a real treat.

Fielding is surrounded by a top-notch cast of the UK’s top young comedic talents.  It’s right up the alley of fans of What We Do In The Shadows and Year of the Rabbit. All six episodes of the first season are streaming now at the evil empire’s streaming channel.

The EC Archives, published by Dark Horse, is a new series of trade paperback collections of previously-published hardback collections of classic runs of EC Comics, now at a much more affordable (and readable) price of twenty bucks. Each volume contains six issues of a classic EC Comic like Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock Suspensestories or Vault of Horror, and you can order them from any bookseller, or directly from Dark Horse.  These contain comic book stories that moved the artform forward dramatically with stories by Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison, Jack Oleck and adaptations of Ray Bradbury, and art by Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta and many other giants of the industry.  We are still seeing the influence of EC Comics in comics, movies and television today, and…since most of the stories are under nine pages, these make great bathroom reading!

BTW, both Apple and Dark Horse stole their names from record labels started by The Beatles and George Harrison, respectively. That’s my nerdy Beatles trivia for the day.

With that pleasant note, Imma gonna wrap this up and head out. With any luck I’ll be able to rest up over the weekend a bit and finally get around to writing some reviews for you folks next week, along with all our regular features, notes on our radio shows, and lists of STUFF TO DO. Remember, even with Myasthenia Gravis, PopCult has fresh content every day.

Shockingly enough, we are at the start a new month. It seems like this happens every few weeks now. This particular month kicks off with two big events that irritate the piss out of me, so we will largely ignore them, but aside from those, there is still plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and all over the Mountain State and beyond as we avoid fake holidays based on unfunny puns and giant celebrations of animal cruelty.

As I have been copying and pasting of late, this a good time to remind you that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments.

The Bridge Road Bistro is closing this weekend, and our old friend, Brian Diller will be there Saturday to provide the music for their closing night of this Charleston  restaurant institution. The msuic begins at 6PM, and Brian will be like a one man dance band on the Titanic…only the restaurant isn’t sinking or anything.

We have dueling model railroading events this weekend. The KVRA Model Train and Craft Show happens 10 AM. to 6 PM Saturday and 10 AM to 4 PM Sunday at the Charleston Coliseum. Tickets are $6 for adults, children 12 and younger admitted free. For more information, visit The KVRA website. We’ll probably be there to shoot some video on Sunday.

Meanwhile, in Saint Albans, The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society will be showing off their new O Scale layout at the Historic Saint Albans Depot at 400 4th Avenue. Visitors can see the progress being made on the operating layout and new interpretive museum constructed inside the one-of-a-kind depot. Visitors can also take home books for $1 or own a unique piece of history with the Blenko Glass Company suncatchers manufactured in Cobalt Blue to represent St. Albans Junior High School. In addition, other railroad books and memorabilia will be available in support of the St. Albans Depot. The first Saturday of each month, the Depot will be open to the public from 10 AM to 2 PM so folks can see the progress on the layout and the museum.

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It’s a big day for fans of Disco Music today on The AIR.  Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL marks four years of flying her freak flag high while shaking her groove thing with her 100th episode, airing on a special day and time.  To mark the occasion, The AIR will debut new, Disco-themed episodes of Beatles Blast and Curtain Call this afternoon, leading into MIRRORBALL 100, which will kick off a four-day marathon of every episode of Mel Larch’s Disco showcase to date.

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 Disco-tinged Beatles music, including Disco turns from Paul and Ringo, and a variety of Disco and Soul covers of classic Beatles tunes from  Earth Wind & Fire, The Main Ingredient, John Holt and more.

Check out the playlist…

Beatles Blast 110

Wings “Goodnight Tonight”
Earth, Wind & Fire “Got To Get You Into My Life”
The Main Ingredient “Get Back”
Stars On 45 “Beatles Medley”
Ringo Starr “Simple Love Song”
John Holt “I Will”
Sarah Vaughan “I Want You”
Cafe Creme “Beatles Disco Medley”
David Porter “Help”
Ringo Starr “Drowning In The Sea of Love”

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays most Thursdays at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon. However, this week the MIRRORBALL Marathon will bump those replays to next week.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch mixes her love of Disco with her love of Musical Theatre. Mel presents a mixtape of bizarre Disco takes on Musical Theatre classics. You’ll hear Disco versions of several Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes. Stephen Sondheim gets intepreted by Liza Minelli with The Pet Shop Boys. Ethel Merman shows up, and Mel has songs from Disco-based musicals, Here Lies Love and Summer. The hidden gem may be the opening track: Pattie Brooks, from the legendary flop attempt at melding Disco with Broadway in 1979 Got Tu Go Disco.

Check out this playlist…

Curtain Call 143

“Got Tu Go Disco” sung by Pattie Brooks from Got Tu Go Disco
“Don’t You Agree” sung by Róisín Murphy, from Here Lies Love
“Buenos Aires” from Festival: Evita by Boris Midney
“Memory” from Cats (Disco Version)
“MacArthur Park” sung by Ariana DuBose from Summer: A Donna Summer Musical
“Something For The Boys” by Ethel Merman
“Losing My Mind” by Liza Minelli & The Pet Shop Boys from Follies
“Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from Festival: Evita by Boris Midney
“I Am What I Am” sung by Gloria Gaynor, from La Cage aux Folles
“Ladies In Blue” sung by Theresa Anderson, from Here Lies Love
“Nights On Broadway” by The Bee Gees

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, Most weeks you can hear replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. All of those replays will be bumped to next week due to the MIRRORBALL Marathon.

Finally, Wednesday at 4 PM (EDT), Mel marks four years (to the day) of her Disco Music showcase, MIRRORBALL with its 100th episode.

For an “Air Music Special” that nobody involved thought would ever get a second episode, MIRRORBALL proved to be a hugely successful surprise, and is one of The AIR’s most-listened-to programs.

To mark one hundred episodes of MIRRORBALL, Mel decided to bring you a solid hour of her all-time favorite Disco classics. You’ll hear Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, KC & The Sunshine Band, Chic and many other classic Disco artists.

It’s been an amazing journey getting here with what we thought was just a throwaway music special that nobody would listen to. We were wrong, and here we are celebrating with thousands of listeners and a worldwide audience. It was during the late summer of 2019 when Mr. and Mrs. PopCulteer were careenig through Eastern Pennsylvania, listening to The Rialto Report podcast about Andrea True, when Mel remarked on how much she loved classic Disco music, and we began to talk about doing a Disco show for The AIR. The show didn’t happen until the pandemic shut everything down and gave us more free time, and the first MIRRORBALL debuted as an AIR Music Special on May 1, 2020.

Of course, we had to include The Andrea True Connection in this anniversary show. Every song you’ll hear this week is a favorite of Mel’s AND is a certifieable Disco classic!

Check out this all-star playlist…

MIRRORBALL 100

“Bad Girls” Donna Summer
“Dance Across The Floor” Jimmy “Bo” Horne
“Knock On Wood” Amii Stewart
“Let’s All Chant” Michael Zager Band
“That’s The Way (I Like It)” KC & the Sunshine Band
“Do The Boogaloo” Quango & Sparky
“Native New Yorker” Odyssey
“Le Freak” Chic
“At Midnight” T-Connection
“Bourgie Bourgie” Ashford & Simpson
“More, More, More” Andrea True Connection
“Stayin’ Alive” Bee Gees

Following this special Wednesday edition of MIRRORBALL, we hope you’re still in the mood to dance. Beginning at 5 PM (EDT) we will play every episode, from the first to the latest, with a few breaks in between for replays of the special 100th episode. It’s a four-day-plus MIRRORBALL Marathon on The AIR, wrapping up Sunday at Midnight.

We have another fun new RFC today on The AIR.  Just like with last week, our new episode of  Radio Free Charleston features one hour of new stuff, followed by two hours of a vintage RFC International that will make fans of Swing Music very happy.  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.

We open our show with the new single from Frenchy & The Punk. Let me stop right here and tell you to go to THIS POST and follow the link to their Kickstarter campaign so that they can fund their new album. The campaign just funded, but it ends Tuesday evening. You still have time to get in on it.

Okay, now that you did that, we also have a great tune to kick off a hard rock/heavy metal set. From the Chicago connection comes a Nashville band, OmenBringer. These guys are inspired by the classic doom and rock of Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and Thin Lizzy, and you’ll hear the first single off of their debut album, Thicc Darkness.

We bring you some heavier music in the first hour this week, with new tunes from The Dread Crew of Oddwood and Unmanned, and archive tracks from Wolves of The Calla, Membrane Cell, Science of The Mind, HARRAH and more.

Just to jar your senses, our second and third hours this week (just like last week) will bring back an episode of Radio Free Charleston International that served as one of the pilot shows for The Swing Shift.  Since I could play anything I wanted on RFC International, I devoted two early episodes to Swing music, which has been a passion of mine for over forty years. These shows proved so popular that they inspired me to create The Swing Shift, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this week’s RFC, we bring back the first of the two pilots, which has not been heard since I launched The Swing Shift in July, 2016. Now you get to re-live this important artifact of internet radio trivia!

Links in the artist’s names in the first hour of our playlist below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music.

Check out the playlist.

Radio Free Charleston V5 174

hour one
Frenchy & The Punk “Hypnotize”
OmenBringer “Tungs”
Wolves Of The Calla “Carpetbagger”
Membrane Cell  “Insignificant Other”
Science of the Mind “Rat”
Mother Nang “Peel”
HARRAH “Get Outta My Face”
The Dread Crew of Oddwood “Leather Ship”
Unmanned “Light The Beacons”
Lords of Atlantis “Barbary Corsairs”
The Paranoid Style “Last Night In Chickentown”
Adam & The Ants “Stand and Deliver (Demo)”
Astrodot “The Victor”

hour two
Raymond Scott “Powerhouse”
Royal Crown Revue “Zip Gun Bop”
Cab Calloway “Minnie The Moocher”
Lionel Hampton “Hamp’s Boogie”
Gene Krupa “Drumboogie”
Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive “Jack You Dead”
Orchestra Baobab “El Son Te Llama”
Kid Creole and the Cocounts “There’s Something Wrong In Paradise”
Royal Crown Revue “Brazil”
Sergio Caputo “Bibidin Babidin Bibidi Boo”
The Stranglers “Sanfte Kuss”
Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos ” Como Se Goza en el Barrio”
Stan Kenton “The Peanut Vendor”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Let’s Live It Up”
Louis Prima “Angelina/Zooma Zooma”
David Lee Roth “Just A Gigalo/I Ain’t Got Nobody”

hour three
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Hell”
Sam Butera “Night Train”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Save My Soul”
Fletcher Henderson “Happy as the Day Is Long”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Brown Derby Jump”
Woody Herman “23 Red”
Royal Crown Revue “El Toro”
Erskine Hawkins “Bear Mash Blues”
Oingo Boingo “Don’t Go In The Basement”
Earl Hines “Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues”
The Atomic Fireballs “Hit By A Brick”
John Cale “I Wanna Be Around”
Jools Holland “Well All Right”
Dean Martin “You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Loves You”

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, like last week, we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift since we have two bonus hours of Swing on RFC, I thought it might be overkill to crank out a whole new episode this week. The Swing Shift will return with a new show next week.

 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.