Tuesday on The AIR we deliver a mostly brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston.  In order to hear some great new musical treasures, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this convenient embedded radio player…

We have a mostly-new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This show kicks off with “Lay That Burden Down,” a tribute to the late Congressman and Civil Rights icon, John Lewis. This song was written by Ron Sowell and Jon Wikstrom, and features vocals by “Lady D,” Doris Fields and Sowell. There is an accompanying music video which can be found at WestVirginiaville, along with an in-depth behind the scenes article by Douglas J. Imbrogno and an interview with Ron Sowell. You should check it all out. The video is awesome and the story of the song inspiring.

Our first hour is all-new, loaded with great music from local and international artists. In our second and third hours we re-present a very special episode of Radio Free Charleston International from almost four years ago. I’ll tell you about it below, after you check out the full playlist to see all the fantastic goodies we bring you this week…

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hour one
Lady D and Ron Sowell “Lay That Burden Down”
Todd Burge “Weight Too Heavy”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “The Wind That Shakes The Barley”
The Bounty “These Things Take Time”
Abandon The Ship “Rub Hubbard (Demo)”
Jay Parade “Machine”
Battleship Battleship “Ad Hominem”
Mark Beckner Group “Odessa”
Andy Prieboy “I Had A New Wave Act”
The Empty Hears “Sometimes…”
The Aquabats “Sneak Attack”
The Dollyrots “Hyperactive”
King Crimson “The Sheltering Sky”
Sufjan Stevens “Goodbye To All That”
Prince “Rebirth of The Flesh”
Smashing Pumpkins “Confessions of a Dopamine Addict”

In hours two and three we bring you an encore of a special episode of RFC International that took way too much time to curate. In this show your humble host and PopCulteer brings you two hours of music where every song has something to do with the song that comes after it. Your challenge is to figure out just exactly what that connection is. It might be that the two songs are written by the same person, or share a producer, or a member of one band produced the song by another. It might be a tenuous connection, like both musical artists appearing on the same television show, or it might be a rock-solid tie, like two groups that share members.

Some of the songs you’ll hear in this revived replay of Radio Free Charleston International are by cutting-edge underground artists, some of them are from ultra-hip cult artists, while other tunes are by high-profile artists and may have been major hit records. But every song has something in common with the next.

At the end of the show, you get to hear me come in and ad-lib a six-minute explanation, in one take, of how each song ties into the next.

If you want to get a head start on trying to figure it out first, here’s the playlist:

Nu Tra “Superhuman”
The Aquabats “The Controller”
Oingo Boingo “Change”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Dear Joy”
Surf Punks “Welcome To California”
Size 14 “Superbabe 2000”
Pink Floyd “In The Flesh”
Paul McCartney “On The Way”
The The “This Is The Day”
Rip Rig and Panic “Sunken Love”
Madness “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”
Suggs “I’m Only Sleeping”
Alice Cooper “Eleanor Rigby”
Hollywood Vampires “Come and Get It”
Badfinger “Baby Blue”
Todd Rundgren “Terra Firma”
XTC “Dear God”
Shriekback “Nemesis”
The Veils “Lavina”
Julie Cruse “Falling”
Sparks “I Predict”
FFS “Johnny Delusional”
Franz Ferdniand “Take Me Out”
The Cardigans and Tom Jones “Burning Down The House”
The Firm “Satisfaction Guaranteed”
DEVO “Communication Break Up”

To be honest, I’d forgotten most of the connections before I re-listened to the show. I never revisted this concept because it took so long to put the show together. It came out so good that I decided to share it again this week, because I had a short window to record my announcing segments due to a B-29 which kept flying over my house.

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM, Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 7 AM and 7 PM, Saturday at 11 AM and Midnight, Sunday at 1 PM and the next Monday at 8 PM, exclusively on The AIR.