It is the final Tuesday of 2025, and Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to lighten your mood and reassure you that life is worth living. This week we have a new edition of The Swing Shift, too!  Making things even better is the fact that both shows were recorded Monday despite constant interruptions, loud wind, and heavy traffic going right through my yard.  Actually that doesn’t really make it better. I sound like I’m talking a mile a minute to squeeze in the announcing between catastrophes, but I’m trying to be optimistic here. 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.

Radio Free Charleston brings you a new show with three full hours of newly-assembled music. We have great new tunes from David Synn (pre-order his new EP tomorrow!), Parry Casto, The Heavy Hitters Band, Heavy Set Paw Paws, Gardenn, The Black Keys, Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess, Men Without Hats, The Settlement, A Different Scene, Moron Police and more…and that’s just in the first hour!

The rest of the show is loaded with tons of great local, independent and just plain cool music, all tossed into our free-format blender, and processed to s smooth consistency.

Of note, David’s tune is a preview of an EP which will go up for pre-order tomorrow. Parry’s song is one of two that benefit recovery programs in the state. The second one will open next week’s show.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

RFC V5 253

hour one
David Synn “All of My Heroes Are Dead”
Parry Casto “I Just Want To Be Alive On Christmas Day”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Light Fight”
Jim & The Sea Dragons “Kringle All The Way”
Heavy Set Paw Paws “Commoner Boogie”
Gardenn “I’m HER”
The Black Keys “Down To Nothing”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Rhinoplasty”
Men Without Hats “Run Away”
The Settlement “Riff Destroyer”
Moron Police “Giving Up The Ghost”
A Different Scene “Sounds”

hour two
Stone Ka Tet “Ronin”
Mother Nang “Fuggin'”
They Might Be Giants “Istanbul Not Constantinople (live)”
Jethro Tull “Aqualung (Live)”
Ona “Tornado Rider (live)”
Toyah “Broken Special (live)”
Government Cheese “Cattle Prod (live)”
Dream Theater “Stream Of Consciousness”

hour three
Frank Zappa “The Man From Utopia”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Ornithology (The Story of Icarus)”
Custard Flux “Tomorrowland”
Aliza Hava “The Invitation”
Into The Fog “Sore Loser”
Corduroy Brown “Getting Older”
Julian Lennon “Keep On Searching”
John Radcliff“Look Smart”
Stephanie Adlington “Pick Your Poison”
Todd Burge “This Should’ve Been A Holiday”
Mediogres “Electric Sex”

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 get ready for a new edition of The Swing Shift. This one covers the Swing waterfront and as a bonus, some of the artists in this playlist will also have live links that will take you to pages where you can buy their music.

The Swing Shift 177

Hot Pants & Tony “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”
Gina Marie & The Golden Bucks “Snake Around”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Thrill Thing”
Katie Melua “Blues In The Night”
Tyler Pedersen “Hamming It Up”
George Benson “Without A Song”
SWR Big Band “St. Thomas”
The Andrews Sisters “Sing Sing Sing”
Gene Krupa & His Orchestra “Drum Boogie (live)”
Tim Timebomb & Friends “Choo Choo Ch’boogie”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Memphis Exorcism”
Swing Ninjas “My Blue Heaven (live)”
Dave Stuckey & the Hot House Gang “I Never Knew”
Pink Turtle “We Will Rock You”
June Christy “It Don’t Mean a Thing”

 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.