We travel through time this week as we reach back to the spring of 2015, while simultaneously looking forward one week on Radio Free Charleston!

Tuesday means a new RFC on The AIR.  And this week  Radio Free Charleston presents three hours of listenting enjoyment for you. 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.

We open with an all-new first hour this week because your humble blogger and radio Svengali is leaving for a week in Chicago, and doesn’t want to deprive his listeners, so I recorded two episodes of the show back-to-back on December 2.  Our second and third hours this week are a tribute to Tommy Medvick, the late drummer for The Swivels and Feast of Stephen, who passed away shortly before this show originally aired in April, 2015.

That first hour features new music from Bad Keys of the Mountain, Dinosaur Burps, The Spackles, Wendy James, The Polkamaniacs,  SPACE FREQ, The Heavy Hitters and more. It’s over-loaded with local and indie musical wonderfulness.

The remainder of the show revives a tribute to Tommy that was originally an episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three, on Voices of Appalachia radio, the predecessor to The AIR.

Tommy was a great guy and one of the most powerful drummers I’d ever seen. Always upbeat and hilarious. He was a frequent guest on the original Radio Free Charleston broadcasts and he was not just a good friend, but a great friend. I am going to miss him terribly, and I’m hoping that this tribute can help his friends remember him, and let those who didn’t know him understand what a wonderful person he was.

Over the course of two hours you will hear music from The Swivels and The Feast of Stephen, two of the major musical projects Tommy worked with. You may also remember, if you are elderly enough, that The Swivels started out as The Swivel Rockers, then shortened their name late in 1989.He was also the lead figure in Tommy Spear and The Mints, but sadly I don’t have any of their music in my archives.

What we do have is pretty incredible. Tommy was an amazing musician and I hope that you can get an idea of how fantastic he was in this show. This show includes some rare demos that the Swivels recorded, which come to us courtesy of Tom’s bandmate in both the Swivels and Feast of Stephen, John Radcliff. We also have some excerpts of The Swivels, including Tommy, on one of the original RFC broadcast shows. We also have tracks from Feast of Stephen, which were supplied by the band’s producer, Dave McClanahan, as well as a few tracks from the Feast of Stephen reunion on RFC in 2007.

Links in the first hour of this playlist will take you to the artist’s page, so you can buy their music. Keep in mind that the first Friday of every month is “Bandcamp Friday,” so if you buy their music from Bandcamp on that day, they get to keep all the moolah.

RFC V5 204

hour one
Bad Keys of the Mountain “I’ll Get By”
Dinosaur Burps “Interstellar Dust”
The Spackles “Spy In The House of Frankenstein”
Wendy James “The Crack And The Boom Of The Creeps And The Goons”
Rat Ship “The Roots of Our Teeth, Intertwined”
Tim Heidecker “Bows and Arrows”
Father John Misty “She Cleans Up”
The Polkamaniacs “Dream Water Wheel”
SPACE FREQ “Spacetripper”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Ornithology (The Story of Icarus) live”
Astral Magic “Over The Edge”
Propaganda “Vicious Circle”
The Settlement “Be Yourself”
Skafish “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”

hour two
The Swivels

“On My Own”
“Redemption Song”
“I’m Me”
‘Chemical City”
‘Panama”
“Cinnamon Girl”
‘No Vaccination”
“Chemical City”

Feast of Stephen

“Forbidden Dance”
“Bank Robber”
“Scratch Out The Belly”
“Tired of Sinking”
“Superfund”
“No Vaccination”
“Battle With The Sun”
“Falling”
“Gas”

hour three

Feast of Stephen

“Coal Tattoo”
“Watch Me Plow”
“Urge To Care”
“Blinded Baby In A Cage”
“Revolution (World’s On Fire Tonight)”
“Mighty Gomec
“Season of the Wizard
“Escape The Man
“Sound 9
“Mystery Hole

Feast of Stephen 2007 Reunion

“Tired of Sinking”
“Bank Robber”
“Mystery Hole”
“No Vaccination”

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 we give you an encore of two classic episodes of The Swing Shift.

 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.