Radio Free California Episode 2201. Also, Goodbye to 2021. A terrible year for everyone, but a pretty good one for me.

And here it is, my first playlist for 2022. Mostly new releases, but I had to throw in a couple of songs by The Mute Goods, who I only discovered a couple of days ago and wish I had discovered sooner. It features Nick Beggs, who was the bassist for Kajagoogoo and plays one hell of a mean bass and Chapman Stick. New music from Hill Hunter, Ainsley Costello, Monalist Twins, Diet Cig, Johnny Marr and much more. Enjoy!

This week's artists, by twitter handle unless otherwise marked:

@iamhillhunter
Mister Green (https://open.spotify.com/artist/2aNES9DaZYm5tJZVxuxttg) with @tmorello
@ainsleymusic07
@scarypockets featuring loejeone (Facebook)
cranelikethebirdmusic (Instagram) with @rufuswainwright
@nmallstars with @LamarWilliamsJr and Sharisse Norman
@themutegods (featuring Alex Lifeson of @rushtheband)
@dietcig
@Johnny_Marr
@BestCoast
@TWEN_band
@fontainesdublin
@corywong (although if you watch the video, it's basically @vulfpeck)

Looking forward to great music in 2022!

Looking back at 2021

 January 2021:

The Republican Party, under the leadership of the former motherfucker, attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United Stated. Traitors, each and every single one of them, and they haven't been punished. That's pretty much the end, isn't it? It's been coming for a while, but this was the first real overt attempt.

I'm not sure this country recovers.

But 15 days later I released my first single of 2021:

The full story of that single can be found here. 

Also, this was a Big Fucking Deal.

February 2021:

There was a Super Bowl, and the NFL was more hardassed about COVID-19 than the CDC. This is no longer true but the disease is spreading at a more rapid rate NOW then it was then. The fucking priorities of this country.

I also released a single of a long archived track, and had a video commissioned that far exceeded my expectations:

At this point I planned out a schedule of releases of previously unreleased material (I had plenty) plus a couple of new tracks.

Also, Fuck Tom Brady, Megachurches and their COVID-19 spreading filth. And alas, we also said goodbye to Daft Punk.

March 2021:

I created my first crack at How to Watch Star Wars, which I have updated a couple of times since. 

I released another single:

I got vaccinated. You should too. The idea that people would side with the disease that's going to kill more than a million Americans is just fucking insane. 

I released a second single, an instrumental new-age classical thing that was once part of a pop-up art installation.

And at the end of the month I released a third single. There are two videos. You're welcome to go find the other one.

April 2021:

Then something unexpected happened.....

I hadn't planned on releasing this next song until May, but a radio station played the song and all of a sudden I was getting requests left and right. I had a video done up and once again the talented people on fivver came through and delivered a fantastic one. I had the release date pushed up to the 2nd of April and suddenly I had thousands of listeners. I got radio play, video play, followers on twitter, notices on multiple social media platforms - most of which I don't even participate in.

It was suddenly, and unexpectedly, the greatest success I had in music in over a decade and it screwed up my release schedule something awful.

No complaints though. The success of He Takes A Knee would eventually lead to this:

I'll be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the world. I simply didn't have time. I also had another single already planned for April, which allowed me to tell my Kevin Gilbert story.

And by this point I was getting pretty sick of all of these goddamned motherfuckers who seem to insist that we don't get over COVID, and released this:

And at the end of the month I finally released the single I had originally planned for the first week of April before He Takes a Knee exploded:

May 2021:

The #Fraudit began in Arizona. By the time it was over millions of dollars had been spent to determine that Joe Biden still won the state. But not before millions of people were convinced by a bunch of fucking liars that elections can't be trusted. 

Elections can be trusted. They're just fucking lying. They put a knife into the back of our country and started twisting it.

We also learned that MTG has such a hard-on for AOC.

I released a Piano Sonata mid-month, which led to a whole series of videos I commissioned by accident in the most dufus-like comedy of errors ever. This is one of the ones that came out right:

But 1, 2, 3, 4 of them came out differently than I had expected. I still like them though.

At the end of the month I re-released an old single of mine, recorded when I was still Jim Christopher, and put out a fun little lyric video that I enjoy.

June 2021:

I had to be hospitalized for an infection - NOT COVID. The experience was harrowing, especially the part about having to wait for someone to die before I could get a bed.

A DJ from Manchester England took my song "He Takes a Knee" and built an entire radio show around it's themes after a Football player for Manchester United took a knee publicly before a game. I discovered the Dance/Music troop "World Order" from Japan and became hooked on their goofy and fun videos.

And I took an old song of mine and remixed it because the political sentiment hasn't changed after all these years. I had a video made:

July 2021:

The state of Texas began it's ever rapidly increasing revocation of the civil rights of its citizens by telling the people who write textbooks that they can't call the KKK "bad". Fuck Texas.

I released two EPs in July. The first was a bunch of demos and an old track of mine that I was finally able to release unedited after a lengthy embargo from Bob Dylan was finally lifted.

The 2nd EP was a small batch of covers, which I had initially recorded for my 2004 album "The Long Goodbye" but cut when digital distribution became the man way people got their music, because the rights for such things were pretty complicated in those days. It's pretty simple now. My remake of Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy" got a bit of traction, and that was gratifying.

August 2021:

I spent a lot of August railing against the attempted recall of Governor Gavin Newsom of California. I also came to realize that I have PTSD from my hospital stay. But mostly this was a happy month for me as I was nominated for 4 awards from the Independent Music Awards - my first nominations in 12 years. I didn't release any new material but I did a lot of promotions and found myself collaborating with a couple of artists I had met during the year.

More on that in September.

September 2021:

When I was young I had had a goal of visiting all 50 states at some point. I no longer want to do that. We kept our Governor, by almost exactly the same margin as we elected him by. 

I won one of those 4 awards:

The song also hit #1 on the Independent Music Chart - my second #1 single of my career.

Two songs I sang on, just backing vocals, were released. This one is now nominated for a grammy:

And on this one I only sang 4 notes but it was a lot of fun to do:

And to celebrate my win I released the one cover I had held back, because it's in Japanese and becaue it was the theme of an anime the rights are more complicated. But I felt emboldened, and it's gained me a small following from that country. There are two versions of this video:

October 2021:

Colin Powell died and I shared the story of how I nearly came to work for him.Boy would my life had been different.

I spent October working on collaborations with other artists that you haven't seen yet. And you may never see them - I have no idea. That's part of the whole "studio musician" gig and job description. You do the work but it's the main artist who decides what to do with it. I also booked a couple of future collaborations for 2022 and I have one more that I'm still working on.

I'm not going to name the artists in question. They're friends and if you follow me on twitter the odds are you follow them too. While I love what I did for them, I'm not going to out them to try and get my stuff released. That's kind of a bitchy thing to do, don't you think? Do I want them out there? Sure. But it's not my call and it shouldn't be my call. I've done this for a very long time now, and there's work I've done going back to the 1980's that you don't know I did.

That's the gig.

November 2021:

We finally got infrastructure week. We didn't get enough of it because of a West Virginia coal Baron, but we still got a lot. We got ravaged by the Delta Varians, and Omicron was just about to start. A lot of anti-vaxxers died, but there are still a lot of them out there.

I also released my final single for the year, a remix of an older track that I had always wanted to be a single and it never quite happened. It performed as well as I could have hoped - my 2nd most successful single of the year. I also got a great video for it.

December 2021:

We finally started getting some clarity as to how January 6th, 2021 happened, and I put out there my own opinion that the Republicans wanted a fight but didn't know how to react when it turned out that the group they wanted to have a fight with turned out to not even exist.

I updated my "I hate Christmas Music" playlist.

And after seeing a post joking about it, I remember that I had tried to record a series of "silent" tracks back in the 1990's. I released it on a lark and while it's certainly never going to tear up the charts it's had a few listeners - mostly people curious to see if there's something hidden in the 66 minutes I recorded.

There's not.

The year ended with a final fuck you to the American Psyche, with the death of Betty White. We've lot a lot of great talent this year, from the drummer for The Moody Blues to the greatest jazz arranger I've ever personally worked with to the original vocalist and violinist for Kansas and so many more, but fuck you 2021.

January 2022:

That single I released in November got picked up by the same radio network that made "He Takes a Knee" such a big hit. I wouldn't have even mentioned it but they premiered it on New Year's day, which was still December 31st where I live.

I discovered a TON of great new music in 2021, great new artists, and have even made friends with a few. Lots of people follow me as the musician, but if you also follow me as the playlist creator, you can get access to the same stuff I've been grooving to for the past couple of years, and discover a TON of artists you never knew.

Great music is out there and it isn't all that hard to find, but you have to TRY to find it. Radio isn't going to bring it to you. But I do.

Let's see if we can't make 2022 the year we finally get past all the bullshit we've just been through.

Oh, and if you're not yet vaccinated, fucking get vaccinated.