I invite you to tune in Wednesday afternoon, as The AIR brings you a very special episode of Beatles Blast.  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 that explores the recently-released expanded edition of The Beatles 1962-1966, AKA “The Red Album.

And music histrorian, Kevin Howlett did all the heavy lifting. This week’s show collects all three parts of the recent audio documentary about The Red Album  that he wrote and produced for The Beatles’ website, with the addition of one Beatles tune, an intro from yours truly, and a bonus cover at the end that sees Dwight Twilly doing his version of the final track on the remastered version of the album.

Howlett’s documentaries include interviews with all four Beatles, as well as with folks like George Martin, Brian Wilson and others.

The Red and Blue albums were the first compilations released by EMI/Captiol under a new contract negotiated by Allen Klein in 1973.  For many people who weren’t quite old enough while The Beatles were making new music, these two 2-LP sets were their introduction to the band.

The new reissues, along with the improved sound quality, also expand the track listing of each album by 50%, correcting some of the more glaring omissions from the original release.

Next week Beatles Blast will kick off the new year with Howlett’s look at The Blue Album.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch brings you an encore episode from five years ago, to tie in with Wednesday’s new Beatles Blast.  In 2018, tied in with the week of the late Mark Scarpelli’s massive Beatles Marathon, where his band, Rubber Soul, joined by dozens of guest musicians, covered every song that The Beatles released. In this episode of Curtain Call, Mel brings you the rare cast album of Beatlemania, from 1976.

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 evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault brings you the final new episode of the year, with a vintage collection of Kermit Schafer’s (mostly faked) Bloopers.

Schafer was the master of collecting bloopers, and if he couldn’t find them, he’d just go in the studio and “recreate” them, with little regard to whether or not they really happened.

He sold a ton of records on the K-tel label via TV ads, and growing up, I don’t know anybody who actually bought one, but probably the funniest thing about his records is that so much of them are obviously faked. So enjoy the fake foul-ups tonight on The Comedy Vault.