RFCv4011
It’s a throwback show this week on Radio Free Charleston on The AIR, as we time travel 26 years into the past to bring you a (mostly) unedited aircheck of an actual original Radio Free Charleston over-the-air broadcast from March, 1990.
You can hear it Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM (EDT) at the AIRadio website or right here in this cool widgetry-type doohicky…
I have posted large chunks of this broadcast in the past, but until now I was forced to cut out all of the non-local content due to having a limited internet broadcast license. Now, with The AIR, we can bring you almost half of an original RFC show. The reason we can’t bring you the entire show is two-fold. First, the original show was four hours long. Our current show is two hours. Second, recent changes in the radio licensing rules will not allow us to play an entire album by one artist, so we still can’t bring you the feature album (you will hear it mentioned, though, and it was a good one).
What you will get to hear is a little more than half of the original show. I have excised the non-entertaining commercials, and a couple of songs for time, but you will get the original Radio Free Charleston experience, complete with live guests in the studio (after 2 AM) and live call-ins, plus our spur-of-the-moment requests and a mix of alternative and punk music with the then-best of the local music scene. You will hear what it was like listening to RFC back in 1990, really late on a Saturday night, starting at 2 AM and running a bit past 4 AM. You will notice that the host runs out of steam a bit as the show progresses. This was all done live on the air.
In the studio we have Gary Price, Tommy Medvick and John Radcliff, of The Swivels. This is pretty bittersweet, since Gary and Tommy are no longer with us, but it is wonderful to hear them at their peak of goofiness, having fun and cutting up with me playing the role of the exasperated host. This was also the show where we rebroadcast the song that we’d recorded live over the phone from Key West the previous Thursday. Kris Cormany and Brian Young called into the station from a pay phone and serenaded us with the song “Broken Vase” live at 11:35 PM. On this show we replayed the tune and had a phone call from Brian to tell us what all happened that night after we went off the air.
This show also featured the debut of new RFC jingles by my buddy, Bridget, who you may know now as Bridget Lancaster, the newly-minted co-host of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS. Bridget came into the radio studio one night and sang several jingles and we goofed around and did some improv on a bunch of little comedy bits that you will hear sprinkled thoughout the broadcast.
For this week, RFC volume 4 is suspending our all-local format so we can bring you a taste of the excitement of RFC volume 1. This was the show that marked the most fun period of my life…until now, when I get to recreate this feeling with Radio Free Charleston and Radio Free Charleston International and bring my old radio shows into the internet age to share with my PopCult audience.
Radio Free Charleston airs Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM with replays on Saturday. Stay tuned because more replays and exciting new programs are coming soon to The AIR.
The playlist…
Rudy Panucci “The WVNS Disclaimer”
Charleston Playhouse Quartet “Radio Free Charleston Theme”
John Lennon “Cold Turkey”
Three Bodies “Broken Vase”
Lost Luggage “Anything You Like”
Beckner, Price and Panucci “Got Drunk, Got Married, Got Screwed”
Electronic Moog Orchestra “Cantina Band (from Star Wars)”
Wire “Mr. Suit”
Eugene Chadbourne with Camper Van Beethoven “Voodoo Vengence”
David Bowie “Fame 90”
Soul Asylum “Barstool Blues”
The Bounty “Silver and Gold”
The Swivels “Cinnamn Girl”
Three Bodies “Gardens of Hope”
Go Van Gogh “Shut Up, I Love You”
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band “Flash Gordon’s Ape”
Crack The Sky “Lost Boys”
Kate Bush “Be Kind To My Mistakes”
Sinead O’Conner “Mandinka”
Jane Siberry “Dog Song”
Brian Young on the phone.
David Bowie “Jene Genie”
The Clash “Lost In The Supermarket”
XTC “Toys”
The Replacements “Talent Show”
The B 52s “Planet Claire”
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