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Friday, Feb 12 2021, 7AM
Good morning, happy snowy Friday, and welcome to The Morning Show with John Richards!
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"Released 25 years ago tomorrow (Feb. 13, 1996), The Score was a rap album for everyone. Recorded almost entirely in New Jersey’s “Booga Basement” studio, located in Fugees musical mastermind Wyclef Jean’s uncle’s home, the LP comes packed with hard-ass battle raps, nerdy pop-culture references, political rants, spiritual musings, outlaw fantasies, and much more.": bit.ly
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"Killing Me Softly" was a number one hit for Roberta Flack in 1973, and a Grammy-winning cover version for the Fugees (with Lauryn Hill on vocals) in 199.
This song is a reworking of Kurtis Blow's old-school rap classic "If I Ruled The World." In the original version, Kurtis tells a story about becoming king and working to bring peace and eradicate poverty. Nas' version is more focused on living the good life in a material sense.
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That's 21-year-old Lauryn Hill on guest vocals. Nas said, "It's funny, because when we released the record, people didn't know it was Lauryn Hill. .....we didn't want any distractions from people to keep them from listening to me. At that point, the Fugees album had just come out and blew up, so we left her name off of it, and for about two to three weeks, by the time we let people know who was on the record, it was already taking off. So when they found out it was her, forget about it, man. Forget about it."
Made up of two Japanese-born musicians, Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, the hip band Cibo Matto, which means “food madness” in Italian, formed in New York in 1994.
This samples the drumbeat from Gus Poole's "Hallelujah, Alright, Amen," a funky disco soul track from 1970, and the bluesy sax riff from Joe Thomas' "Venus" (1976).
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Even by Beck's standards, this song has some pretty odd lyrics ("She's got the lily-white cavity crazes, she's got a carburetor tied to the moon"). Beck explained: "Most of the vocals on the record were scratch vocals. We just grew attached to them.": www.songfacts.com
Morcheeba are Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey. They formed the band along with Ross' brother Paul in 1995 and have sold over 10 million albums.
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Don't you love her voice? Watch a live version of "The Sea" from 2010: www.youtube.com
The Belgian band Hooverphonic formed in 1995 by original members Alex Callier, Frank Duchêne, and Raymond Geerts. The three first met up and formed a band called The Love Letter Boxes in 1994.
They then called themselves Hoover, but later changed their name to Hooverphonic after discovering other groups were already using the Hoover name and to avoid any legal issues with the vacuum cleaner company.
They became triphop icons when they released their first album 'A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular' in 1996 .
The song's title is a reference to the otherwise unrelated song "Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand" by Bruce Cockburn, from his 1978 album "Further Adventures Of".
Its chorus consists of a sample from the B.B. King song "How Blue Can You Get" from his 1971 album "Live in Cook County Jail.": "I've been downhearted, baby, ever since the day we met." www.primitiveradiogods.info
"Zealots" samples The Flamingos' 1959 “I Only Have Eyes For You.”
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Many rappers have talked about “droppin’ science”, but here the three Fugees do just that: Clef chooses astronomy as his means of dismantling lesser emcees (“Abstract raps – simple with a street format / Gaze into the sky and measure planets by parallax / Check out the retrograde motion, kill the notion / Of biting and recycling and callin’ it your own creation” – oh, the irony), Hill plays around with quantum mechanics (“Two emcees can’t occupy the same space at the same time / It’s against the laws of physics”) and Pras gets technical about the recording process.: bit.ly
The trumpet sample (and drum and bass samples) that can be heard throughout “What Really Goes On” was taken from Ohio Players’s 1971 song “Pain."
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The vocal sample “I-I-I-I don’t know” that can be heard at the end of the first verse was taken from James Brown’s 1971 song “Make It Funky”.
"I won't be soothed over...Like smoothed over...Like milk...Silk...A bedspread or a quilt...Icing on a cake...Or a serene translucent lake..."
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Watch a live version from 2010: www.youtube.com
This 1996 release was Modest Mouse's debut album. The album's title really fits the lonely and desperate tracks, which are predominantly about driving alone in a car.: modestmouse.bandcamp.com
Yes, Fugees sample themselves on this song. They include a portion of their song "Ready or Not." They also sample Cymande's 1972 song, "Dove.": bit.ly
The music video for "Stakes Is High" has all three members of De La Soul on an episode of The Maury Povich Show (with Povich appearing as himself) about hip-hop culture in the 1990s and how much of an influence it is on the world, along with clips of each De La Soul member doing typical household chores (raking leaves, doing laundry, etc.). Fellow Native Tongues group A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Common & Jerry Stackhouse also made cameo appearances in the music video.: youtu.be
Luscious Jackson's first release "In Search of Manny" was the first non-Beastie Boys release on the young Grand Royal Records. So from the very start, Luscious Jackson's primary following were Beastie Boys fans looking for something else to get into. When the word came out that Luscious Jackson's drummer Kate Schellenbach had been one of the original Beastie Boys, more interest swirled around LJ.: www.beastiemania.com
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"Naked Eye" was the first single off 1996's 'Fever in Fever Out.' It would end up landing in the top 20 of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Here's the video! www.youtube.com
Stereolab took the title of this album from Shuji Terayama’s 1971 film "Tomato Kecchappu Kôtei," an abject and poetic satire of utopianism. In 2019, Pitchfork went back to take an in-depth look at this classic album from this influential band: pitchfork.com
Corin Tucker was 23 and Carrie Brownstein was 21 when their band, Sleater-Kinney, recorded Call the Doctor with drummer Lora Macfarlane, but they’d already been fixtures of the countercultural, zine-driven riot grrl movement for years.: diffuser.fm
"DJ Shadow (Joshua Paul Davis), in thrall to the rhythm, offers listeners a 60 minute lesson on the power of the drum. What is so unique about said lesson, however, is its construction. Entirely sample-based, Endtroducing….. is a collage of sounds taken from other records and then looped, scratched, cut and spliced to create something entirely new.....Shadow assembled a massive, moody, instrumental masterpiece that is just as fresh today as the day it dropped in late-1996." Read a tribute to DJ Shadow's debut album: bit.ly
Porno for Pyros was an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1992, following the break-up of Jane's Addiction. The band comprised former Jane's Addiction members Perry Farrell (vocals) and Stephen Perkins (drums), as well as Peter DiStefano (guitar) and Martyn LeNoble (bass).
Chan Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums in December 1994 in a small basement studio in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up "Dear Sir" and "Myra Lee," released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996.
Influenced by Mia Zapata, their very first show was as openers for The Gits. Featuring members from a previous band called Barbie’s Dream Car, 7 Year Bitch formed in 1990 in Seattle. Their guitarist passed away from a heroin related incident, and fairly soon after, the murder of Mia Zapata took place. Both losses deeply affected the band and in 1994 in honor of their lost friends, they released their next album, ¡Viva Zapata! 7 Year Bitch drummer, Valerie Agnew helped form Home Alive, the Seattle organization that works towards teaching self-defense to women and awareness of bringing an end to violence towards women.: www.kexp.org
See the official video of Ministry's cover of this gentle Bob Dylan song: www.youtube.com
The hook is interpolated from a 1988 Teena Marie song called "Ooo La La La." Marie sings:
"Ooo la la la, is the way that you feel when you know it's real."
Lauryn Hill transforms this section into:
"Foo la la la, it's the way we rock when we're doing our thing."
Much of the track is sampled from the 1972 Ramsey Lewis instrumental version of "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right."
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Here's the official video: www.youtube.com
Alan Sutherland, who goes by Land Of The Loops, is a Boston keyboardist who, inspired by avantgarde ensemble Negativland, composes eccentric collages of samples. This song was apparently used in a Miller Lite commercial: kspc.org
Jamiroquai are a British funk and acid jazz band, created by Jason Kay. The name of the band is a compound word created from "Jam session" and the name of the Native American tribe, the "Iroquois".: spoti.fi
Here are the lyrics to this Sly & Robbie remix of "Fu-Gee-La": genius.com
Mazzy Star co-founder David Roback died last year at the age of 61. This KEXP tribute features music from his projects Mazzy Star, Opal, and Rain Parade: www.kexp.org
Hi John, One of my favorite albums of 1996 is Soundgarden’s "Down on the Upside." Could you please play "Burden in My Hand"? There’s something uniquely comforting about that song, let’s me know I’m not the only one in the desert sometimes. Thanks, Evan (in Poulsbo)
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Chris Cornell wrote this song, the second single from Soundgarden's fourth studio album. Guitarist Kim Thayil called it "the "Hey Joe" of the '90s."
There's a desert, dead fish, and the band in the video for "Burden in My Hand": www.youtube.com
"Someone once described them to me as a Flannery O’Connor short story come to life....Led by yelper/songwriter David Eugene Edwards–whose grandfather, I am obligated to tell you, was a hellfire preacher–16 Horsepower came from Colorado but sounded like they came from some mythical Christ-haunted, death-dealing South. They made rock music that didn’t sound like rock music, often relying on the banjo and the concertina (it’s like a little accordion). And the lyrics were aggressively fundamentalist." Learn more about 16 Horsepower: bit.ly
The Afghan Whigs played live in the KEXP studio back in 2017: www.youtube.com
Oh wow, 1996. I know you have a glut of excellent choices for '96, but if you're taking requests and if you think it fits, maybe the Presidents' single Supersonics, the redo of their own song Supermodel? I remember loving that back in the day and haven't heard it in years. --Rose in Ballard
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"Supersonics! Oh, yeah!!": www.youtube.com
"Pinkerton" was Weezer's sophomore album. After abandoning plans for a rock opera entitled "Songs from the Black Hole," Weezer recorded the album between songwriter Rivers Cuomo's terms at Harvard University, where he wrote most of the songs. Cuomo said earlier this month, “It was supposed to be our magnum opus and it just got destroyed.”: bit.ly
Here's the official video for "Santa Cruz" from Norman Cook's (Fatboy Slim) debut studio album.: www.youtube.com
"Taking aim at corporate America, cultural imperialism, and government oppression, Rage Against the Machine formed in Los Angeles in the early '90s out of the wreckage of a number of local groups: vocalist Zack de la Rocha (the son of Chicano political artist Robert de la Rocha) emerged from the bands Headstance, Farside, and Inside Out; guitarist Tom Morello (the nephew of Jomo Kenyatta, the first Kenyan president) originated in Lock Up; and drummer Brad Wilk played with future Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. Rounded out by bassist Tim Commerford, a childhood friend of de la Rocha's, Rage debuted in 1992...": www.allmusic.com
Want to know more about the samples in this song (which include Van Morrison's group Them and James Brown)?: whiskeyclone.net
This review calls Lush' "Lowlife" "a feminist antidote to Britpop’s dude overload.": music.avclub.com
Bikini kill is grrrl punk straight out of Olympia, WA! The group of singer Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy Karren, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and drummer Tobi Vail pioneered the riot grrrl movement, with radical feminist lyrics and fiery performances. You can listen to the members of Bikini Kill reflect on the Riot Grrrl movement as it stands today-
www.kexp.org
While ranging in sound and concept from solo acoustic work to full-band performances, Neutral Milk Hotel essentially remained the work of Jeff Mangum, a singer/songwriter from the remote town of Ruston, Louisiana.: www.allmusic.com
Read a discussion of The Wrens' sophomore release, "Secaucus," inspired by life in their tiny hometown.: www.homedefenceuk.com
John welcomed Sebadoh into the KEXP studio in 2019 for a wonderful live performance: www.youtube.com
"Everything is gonna be all right..."
This is the Fugees great cover of Bob Marley. Read about the original and covers by both Joan Baez and Fugees: timscoverstory.wordpress.com