We have a fun new RFC today on The AIR.  Our new episode of  Radio Free Charleston features one hour of new stuff, followed by two hours of a vintage RFC International that will make fans of Swing Music very happy.  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 tons of replays throughout the week.

Today we open with one hour of our usual RFC blend of local, independent and world famous musical artists. We open the show with a new track, released just yesterday for Earth Day, by Chicago’s Ethan Sellers.  Ethan is the driving force behind the bands Tautologic, Logical Fleadh and Le Travaillant, all of whom you have heard on RFC. “She” is Ethan’s first release under his given name in over fifteen years, and it’s a treat to have it open the show.

We also feature new music from Massing, Unmanned, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, The Paranoid Style and another Chicago band, The Vaudevilens.  Vaudevileins’ new album,  Lights Out, was released to coincide with the solar eclipse and they will be celebrating the release with a show at ROXY in Lockport, IL on Sat, April 27. Written during the pandemic and in the wake of its aftermath, the songs on Lights Out explore darker themes, the sense of giving up, and inevitability—a reflection of 2020’s isolation and the era’s political and societal landscape.

Our first hour also includes new music from Ian Hunter, a couple of tribute album tracks, a classic from the Maestro, Chuck Biel, and a track from Mind Garage, who really, really ought to be in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Our second and third hours this week and next will bring back two episodes of Radio Free Charleston International that served as the pilot shows for The Swing Shift.  Since I could play anything I wanted on RFC International, I devoted two early episodes to Swing music, which has been a passion of mine for over forty years. These shows proved so popular that they inspired me to create The Swing Shift, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this week’s RFC, we bring back the first of the two pilots, which has not been heard since I launched The Swing Shift in July, 2016.

Links in the artist’s names in the first hour of our playlist below will take you to a website where you can find our more about them and maybe buy their music.

Check out the playlist.

Radio Free Charleston V5 173

hour one
Ethan Sellers “She”
Douglas Imbrogno/GarageCow “Lights”
Massing “Frozen Blood (Rejuiced)”
Unmanned “Red Shirt Blues”
Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates “Shotgun”
The Paranoid Style “Bad Day For The Group Chat”
Vaudevileins “Killing Feelings”
Mind Garage “Doctor John”
Alan Davey, Paul Rudolph, Nik Turner, Adam Hamilton, Danny Faulkner “Epitaph”
Keith Richards “I’m Waiting For The Man”
Ian Hunter “This Ain’t Rock And Roll”
Split Enz “Ghost Girl”
Chuck Biel “Tears At Sunset”

hour two
Joe Jackson “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Aint Got That Swing”
Glen Gray “Casa Loma Stomp”
Louis Prima “Buona Sera”
Jools Holland & Kt Tunstall “Night & Day”
Royal Crown Revue “The Rise And Fall Of The Great Mondello”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Hey Now, Hey Now”
Oingo Boingo “Minnie The Moocher”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Jump Jive ‘n Wail”
Bonzo Dog Band “Tubas In The Moonlight”
Bill Haley & His Comets “Rock This Joint”
Raymond Scott “The Toy Trumpet
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Ding Dong Daddy of the D Car Line”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Put A Lid On It”
Pardon Me Boys “Stairway to Heaven”
Atomic Fireballs “The Man With The Hex”
Ella Fitzgerald “Air Mail Special”
Tom Jones “St. James Infirmary Blues”

hour three
Glenn Miller and the Air Force Band “St. Louis Blues March”
Ruth Brown “Lucky Lips”
Benny Goodman “Sing Sing Sing”
The New Morty Show “Enter Sandman”
Big Joe Turner “Boogie Woogie Country Girl”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Honky Tonk Train Blues”
Ronnie Lane and Pete Townsend “Catmelody”
The Clash “Look Here”
Fats Waller “Handful of Keys”
Cab Calloway “Do You Want To Jump, Children”
Eartha Kitt “Ain’t Misbehavin’”
Der Dritte Raum “Swing Bop”
Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grapelli “Topsy”

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,  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 recent episodes of The Swing Shift since we have two bonus hours on RFC, I thought it might be overkill to crank out a whole new episode this week. The Swing Shift will return with a new show in two weeks.

 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.