Radio Free California Episode 2452, Christmas programming, special times for shows this week, and so on.

 

New music this week from Darkcave, Jesse Welles, Vulfmon, Elettrodomestico, Guided By Voices, Soul Asylum, The Ceys, Girl Scout, The Lathams, Housewife and much more. Enjoy!

In theory, there could be an episode next week. I will see what comes out, but usually the last week of the year tends to be very slow - no sign artist wants to release new material while every radio station on the planet is playing a "best of the previous year" show. Tune in to this blog for updates. Meanwhile...

RADIO FREE CHRISTMAS

We have special programming this week. I have made no secret of the fact that I HATE most Christmas music. It dominates every aspect of life outside the home from radio to TV to shopping to even my fucking Chiropractor's office. It' makes me see red. That said, I'm not a Grinch or a pre-reform Scrooge. I actually enjoy the holiday and believe in the gift-giving and spending time with family - I will be doing all of those things. But good lord how many times do you need to hear Burl Ives singing "Frost The Snowman"?

But I will relent on December 24th and 25th. There are songs I like and I will be playing them for 48 hours, starting one minute past midnight Pacific Standard Time on December 24th through just before midnight on December 25th. Some of the songs are traditional. Some are quite profane (one of them is called "Fuck Christmas"). Yes, Christmas Wrappings and Christmas Rappings will be played, as well as that Pogues song, an incredibly nasty and swear-filled duet between The Hives and Cyndi Lauper, and I've even added some new music to the list this year from artists like Skafish, Jacob Collier and Toad the Wet Sprocket. There is a Spotify Playlist here, but the radio station will play them in random order for two days. As a result, our usual Wednesday programming will be shifted by a day. See below.

ALBUM SHOW NOTES

Darkcave is an artist that I've been following for a few years now, and I'm just about the only one. He has no social media presence, no following on any of the various streaming services and I'll be honest I no longer remember who I discovered him. What he has been is consistently solid in his songwriting and performing and he's one of the few artists to put out an album this week. When you have onyh 20 followers on Spotify you can afford to not worry about radio. His new album is called "Hansen, Saul & Fuller. Welcome"

Other new releases worth your time include "Ed" by Ellettrodomestico, which is technically an EP and has some interesting guests such as The B-52's Kate Pierson, "Slowly but Shirley" from Soul Asylum which is kind of a throwback to before they were a signed act, and "New Old Horse" from Twine.

All albums are available in all the usual places.

The Album Show plays on Thursdays at 9am and 9pm Pacific Standard Time. 

RFC 2452

For those of you who stay away from Spotify the current week's additions are usually played on Wednesdays, but this week we will be playing them all on Thursday the 26th because of the special programming we are doing the previous two days. The playlist will be inturrupted by The Album show and 10 at 10, but will otherwise play the entire day. Every other day will be the usual rotation, but we set aside Wednesdays Thursday for just the new additions for the week. This week that's 29 songs which we will play in the same order that they're in on the Spotify playlist of the same name up at the top of this post. So if you tune in at just about any time on Wednesday Thursday you will hear the whole playlist. 

10 at 10

One last programming note: Every Thursday at 10pm and again on Sunday at 10am and 10pm we will feature our show "10 at 10", where we play 10 (and sometimes 11 or even 12!) songs from a year we pick at random. Again, all times are PST. Last week I played a group of songs from 2010 and this week we're going to pick one of the few years we haven't gone to yet.

As always, you can go to https://global.citrus3.com:2020/public/radiofreecalifornia to listen to the station, and there is an imbed below. And did you know the station is available as an app? It's only for Google Play (sorry iphone users - Apples terms and conditions were too restrictive for me) but you can listen on your phone at your convenience too.

No cheap shots this week. Face it, we all need a break. rest up folks, the Resistance starts shortly. For now, how about we try to be nice to one another? 

And because I love you, if you haven't been checking out the US version of "Have I Got News For You" that started this year, hosted by Roy Wood and featuring Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black and broadcast on CNN of all things, let's give you a taste: