Once again we have come to Tuesday on The AIR  but our boilerplate is a bit different this week. Today we deliver unto you a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, and a brand-new edition of The Swing Shift but as a bonus we have a special treat as Dexter Checkers, the host of Ska Madness, who stepped down a few years back for health reasons, returns again for a special episode of his show that brings you a mixtape of a classic Two-Tone Ska band and their related atts.

So that’s five hours of particularly nifty and new internet radio!  You simply have to take your cursor over and point it at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).

We have a  wild and eclectic new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with a new song by The Paranoid Style, a band that includes WV’s own, William Matheny,  and we pay tribute to the late George Crumb, with some selections from his vast ouvre.

In our second hour we’ll bring you The Kronos Quartet, and their rendition of Crumb’s work, The Black Angels. The rest of our three-hour show is jam-packed with new music from Jim Lange, Minor Swing, Byzantine, Korn, Nomadic Narwhal, Paul Calicoat, Jethro Tull, Billy Bragg and more.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages)…

RFC V5 078

hour one
The Paranoid Style “Barney Bubbles”
George Crumb “Dances of The Ancient Earth” from Ancient Voices of Children
Jim Lange “Everything’s Alright”
Nomadic Narwhal “Arrival”
The Bob Thompson Band “Fly High”
Minor Swing “Ma Premiere Guitare”
Drawing Hands “Jetsons”
Byzantine “Stick Figure”
Spitboy “Moral Casualty”
Cassius At Best “Hornets”
Korn “Start The Healing”
Disarm The Fallen “Cold Dead Night”
Dream Theater “The Farandole”
John Cale/Lou Reed “Forever Changed”

hour two
Hello June “Fight, Don’t Fight”
Paul Calicoat “Clown Face”
Jethro Tull “Mine Is The Mountain”
The Anchoress “My Confessor”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “I’m Still Here”
U2 “Your Song Saved My Life”
Diablo Blues Band ‘Hell To Pay”
Kronos Quartet “George Crumb’s Black Angels, I, II, and III”
Feast of Stephen “Gomec”
Liam Gallagher “Everything’s Electric”
The Jam “English Rose”
A Story Told “Fall Back”

hour three
J Marinelli “Worker and Parasite”
Skafish “Nothing I Can Do”
Hate Your Face “Vampire”
The Specials “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around”
Joseph Hale “Raw Emotion”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Earth Above My Roots”
The Dollyrots “Valentine’s Day”
Lady D “Somebody’s Gotta Move”
John The Conqueror “She Said”
Billy Bragg “The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More”
The New Relics “Different Kind of Crazy”
David Synn with Matthew Fitzwater “Lower”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 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 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 an encore of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and a special new Ska Madness at 2 PM.

Dexter Checkers returns with the first new episode of Ska Madness since last November at 2 PM. He has recovered nicely from his serious health issues and has returned to work at The Haversham Recording Institute. He’s been threatening to give us a new Ska Madness, and this week he was in the mood to give us a mixtape that combines music from The English Beat with tracks from their spin-off bands, General Public and Fine Young Cannibals, plus some solo material from Ranking Roger.

We didn’t get a playlist, but he promises that it’ll be a skankin’ show.

Ska Madness will be repeated this week Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 11 AM and late Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM we have a special new mixtape edition of The Swing Shift that brings you an hour of Western Swing. This show gives you classic Western Swing artists like Bob Wills and Sapde Cooley, and tosses in just a couple of modern bands playing tribute. We even get Ella Fitzgerald’s foray into the genre.

Western Swing is very important in the evolution of American pop music, and provided part of the musical DNA for what would become Rock and Roll. Just as you wouldn’t have Chuck Berry without Louis Jordan, you wouldn’t have Bill Haley without Bob Wills.  And without Chuck Berry and Bill Haley, we wouldn’t have Rock and Roll as we know it.

Best of all, Western Swing still swings!

Check out this playlist:

The Swing Shift 126

Brazos Valley Boys with Hank Thompson “Woodchopper’s Ball”
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys “San Antonio Rose”
Noel Boggs and His Day Sleepers “Stealin’ Home”
Curly Williams “Southern Belle”
Spade Cooley “Boggs Boogie”
Johnny Lee Wills “Milk Cow Blues”
The Light Crust Doughboys “Pussy, Pussy, Pussy”
Bob Wills “Sioux City Sue”
Dickie McBride “Tulsa Twist”
Fort Worth Doughboys “Sunbonnet Sue”
Leon Mcauliffe & His Western Swing Band “Panhandle Rag”
Ella Fitzgerald “Cow Cow Boogie”
Noel Boggs-Wade Ray “It’s All Your Fault”
Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers “When You’re Smiling”
Modern Mountaineers “Everybody’s Trucking”
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys “Across The Alley From Alamo”
Jesse Ashock “My Bank Account Is Gone”
National Radio Station “Hesitation Blues”
Arthur Smith “Fingers On Fire”
Kitty Rose and The Rattlers “Might As Well Be DEad”
Hank Penny and His Radio Cowboys “Won’t You Ride In My Little Red Wagon”
Al Petty “Al’s Steel Guitar”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 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.