Radio Free Charleston 189, “NASA Shirt,” takes the show in a slightly new direction. We are shaking up the format on RFC a bit. The plan is that we will be doing longer shows, and taking a little extra time between them. This is going to allow us to make episode 200 very special when it hits next February, and it will still let us bring you lots of new music. We’re also going to be doing some bonus mini-shows along the way. I’ll tell you more about them later in these notes.

This week we have music from three bands making their RFC debuts, plus we have a new tune from a returning favorite and some cool promo clips and weird stuff. Our musical guests are Motion Theatre, Zeroking and Snakebox, plus The Diablo Blues Band. We kick off the show with a look at ShockaCon, the cool Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy convention coming to Charleston’s Historic East End in September.

Our first musical guest this week is Motion Theatre, and I don’t know them very well yet, so I’m going to resort to raiding their PR, “Hailing from the mountains of Southern West Virginian Coal Country, Motion Theatre stands out as a group of individuals who have a lot to say about the grandeur that exists inside themselves and around them. With their upbeat guitar melodies intertwined with nostalgia-driven ambiance, they attempt to provide musically what they themselves are searching for… authenticity.”

I’d say they found it. We recorded them unplugged at The Empty Glass in June, after they’d had a long layoff. I’m hoping we can record them for the show again in the future and get to Greg,Robbie, Krystion and Jason better. them better. We feature Motion Theater, recorded live at The Empty Glass, with their song, “Devils.”

We next feature a promo clip for The Alban Arts Center production of “The Wind In The Willows,” which you should all go see next weekend. It’s tremendous fun.

We just recorded Snakebox at The Empty Glass last week, and while we caught this new musical collective at their minimum strength (they feature between four and seven musicans, sometimes even more), we were mightily impressed with their distinctive sound.

Continuing with the trend of quoting our guest’s PR this episode, “Snakebox, from Charleston, WV, is an ever evolving nest of undulating sounds. Original songs and music tangle around guitarist and lead vocalist Kevin Crump, fiddle player and vocalist Beth Summers, bass player Thom Walker and drummer Dave Roberts. This orchestral orgy is often heard with violist Alasha Al-Qudwah, keyboardist Christopher Harris, trombone player Logan Umlor, and other fine specimens from the local music scene. Stick your hand in the box and be surprised!” Snakebox makes their RFC debut with “Super Baby,” but they will return in our next show with another song from last Thursday.

Our old friends, The Diablo Blues Band have risen from limbo with a slightly new line-up. Johnny C, Tom, John Chic and Kevin were joined by their new singer, Jessica. We caught up with them last week at The Blue Parrot, and we’re bringing you a brand-new song–the first time the band played it in front of an audience, in fact. There are a couple of minor audio glitches in this recording, but the song is so good we wanted you guys to hear it. Chances are you’ll probably hear this tune on the show again in the future.

We head into the end credits with The Diablo Blues Band performing “One for Magoo.”

That’s our new, longer Radio Free Charleston. Our next show will hit in three weeks, and will feature Decomposing in Paris, The Renfields, The Dread Crew of Oddwood and it will kick off with Snakebox. You can expect some other cool weirdness tossed in there, too.

And we also have an announcement to make about some upcoming “mini-shows.” Starting in a week or two, we will begin dropping some short clip shows in between regular episodes of Radio Free Charleston. These mini-shows will be under ten minutes long, and will feature local bands doing cover songs. I’ve discovered that some episodes of RFC are banned in some countries because we’ve featured covers of songs that have fussy publishers.

But we have some great local bands that only do cover songs. We are going to put those bands into our mini-shows, so that the bands with original songs aren’t penalized simply for being in a show with bands that don’t write their own material. That way we can still bring you cover songs without limiting our audience for the full-blown episodes of RFC.

Look for the first RFC mini-show, featuring Jabberwocky, in a week or two, here in PopCult.